Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido meets with U.S. President Donald Trump Wednesday at the White House as Guaido tries to rekindle his campaign to depose President Nicolas Maduro.In a statement announcing Guaido’s visit, the White House said, “We will continue to work with our partners in the region to confront the illegitimate dictatorship in Venezuela, and will stand alongside the Venezuelan people to ensure a future that is democratic and prosperous.”Guaido’s visit to Washington comes at the end of a world tour that included visits with European and Canadian leaders in an attempt to revive his campaign after an unsuccessful uprising against Maduro last year.The United States and dozens of other countries recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate interim president. Guaido was a guest at President Trump’s State of the Union speech in Washington Tuesday night.Maduro called for direct talks with the U.S. last month, describing them as a “win-win.” Maduro also suggested U.S. oil companies could benefit financially if the U.S. lifted sanctions against Venezuela, including the OPEC member’s state oil company, PDVSA.Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with Maduro Friday in Caracas in a show of support for the socialist leader.Russia has criticized the U.S. sanctions as illegal and harmful, while the Guaido-led opposition has urged Washington to increase pressure on Moscow for supporting Venezuela diplomatically, economically and militarily.Maduro won a second term in office in May 2018, and Guaido declared himself interim president eight months later. 
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The United States is calling for international sanctions on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his allies to pressure the government to hold free and fair elections this year.
The United States agrees with Venezuelan activists and opposition leaders that nothing except free and fair elections will end the country’s political crisis.  Congressional elections are supposed to take place by the end of the year, but so far, no date has been set.Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido listens as President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 4, 2020.U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva Andrew Bremberg says for elections to be credible, they must be open to all parties and candidates, and the independent media must be allowed unrestricted access to cover the event.  He is calling on international partners to support opposition leader Juan Guaido.”We encourage partner nations to implement serious travel and financial sanctions against Maduro and his allies.  We also ask our partners to call on Russia, Cuba and China to cease providing support to Maduro,” he said.Several Venezuelan parliamentarians in exile and other activists have come to the United Nations in Geneva to raise awareness of the plight of the Venezuelan people and to garner U.N. support for free and fair elections.Miguel Pizarro has been an elected member of Venezuela’s National Assembly since 2010.  He was forced to flee the country to Italy last July after being convicted on false charges of conspiracy.He says the U.N. is not toothless.  He says it can effect change and already has done so.  He notes the U.N. human rights council has succeeded in putting the spotlight on the situation of abuse that exists in Venezuela.  Pizarro says U.N. agencies have informed the world about the abysmal humanitarian conditions in the country, which have forced millions of people to flee as refugees.  He tells VOA the United Nations has an important role to play both before and after an election.“If we won an election in Venezuela, we will need observation, multilateral observation, because an election is not only because we know for sure, the day we are able to vote is the last day of the regime in the power.  And that will need a lot of international support to achieve the transition because it will not be an easy peace,” he said.Pizarro says he appreciates the important role played by the U.N. in regard to Venezuela’s humanitarian and refugee crisis.  He says he would like to see the U.N. play a more active role in the political sphere.      
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Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is recognized as the country’s interim president by the United States, was guest at Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, U.S. media reported.Guaido was invited by Trump to attend the flagship event in Washington in a public show of support for his efforts to dislodge President Nicolas Maduro, CNN and NBC reported.Guaido has defied a travel ban to leave Venezuela and meet with officials abroad as he struggles to maintain momentum in his year-long campaign to oust Maduro.The U.S. quickly recognized Guaido as the legitimate leader of Venezuela after he invoked constitutional powers and named himself interim president in January 2019. More than 50 other countries have also recognized Guaido.Maduro won a new term in 2018 elections that were widely criticized internationally as fraudulent.Trump’s choice of guests for the annual speech to Congress are carefully chosen.Trump also invited a senior border patrol officer, a woman whose brother was murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2018, and former Caracas police chief Ivan Simonovis who spent years in jail under Venezuela’s far-left government.
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Argentina’s Buenos Aires province narrowly averted falling into default on Tuesday, saying it would make a $277 million payment on a 2021 bond after creditors would not grant a last-minute approval to delay it.Provincial governor, Axel Kicillof, said the province would use recently received resources from the local market to make the principal and interest payments on Feb. 5, the end of a 10-day grace period.The province had sought to delay until May 1 a $250 million payment originally due on Jan. 26, but fell short of the consent needed, Kicillof said at a news briefing after an extended deadline expired for bondholders to respond to the proposal.The local government needed approval by holders of more than 75% of the debt, but only obtained more than 50%, Kicillof said, after repeatedly pushing back the deadline for consent and sweetening the offer in hopes of winning approval.”It was a very complex process,” Kicillof said. “We have decided to face … the payment deadline with the province’s own resources, without assistance from the national government.”The last-minute move to avoid default buoyed prices of over-the-counter sovereign bonds, which rose on average 1.8% on Tuesday. The 2021 bond, which had earlier fallen, reversed course to rise 6.5 cents on the dollar.Guzman meets with IMFArgentine Economy Minister Martin Guzman met for two-and-a-half hours with the head of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva on Tuesday to discuss the country’s economic emergency, a statement from the Economy Ministry said.”We also discussed the policies being put in place to resolve Argentina’s sovereign debt crisis in a sustainable way,” the statement quoted Guzman as saying.”We agreed to continue deepening our dialog next week, when a technical mission from the IMF will visit Argentina,” Guzman said, calling Tuesday’s meeting “very constructive.”Buenos Aires, Argentina’s most populous province, faced slipping into default if it could not strike a deal with bondholders or make the full payment before Wednesday.On Monday, the provincial government offered to make an up-front $75 million capital payment on the bond, a conciliatory move to encourage holders of the debt to accept its proposal to delay the rest of the payment until May 1.However, Kicillof said that while many bondholders supported the plan, he criticized one fund which he said held around a quarter of the debt and had requested to be paid the full capital in installments, which he said was not possible.He said the province would begin a process to restructure its foreign currency debt in the coming days.”What we need to do urgently is put in process a program that takes into account both external creditors and the provincial economy of Buenos Aires,” he said.The province, struggling to service its debts amid a wider economic malaise, is seen as a litmus test for larger negotiations to restructure around $100 billion of sovereign payments facing new Peronist President Alberto Fernandez.Argentina swapped $164 million in sovereign bonds due this month for four new instruments maturing in August 2021, the government said on Tuesday, as it responded to a credit crunch by improving its debt profile. 
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Residents in Mexican town form a militia to combat cartels’ organized crime.  Masked kids of militia members join and train alongside their adult counterparts.
 
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Platinum-selling reggaeton act Gente de Zona were barred from a New Year’s Eve concert in a Miami park. The mayor of Miami declared another Cuban singer persona non grata and her concert in a private club was canceled. Fellow artists Jacob Forever y El Micha were shut out of a July 4 concert in the neighboring South Florida city of Hialeah last year.As President Donald Trump tightens the trade embargo on Cuba, some members of the United States’ largest Cuban-American community are once again taking a hard line on performers from the island who support its communist government or don’t speak out against it.The degree of support for a hard line on Cuba among South Florida’s roughly 1.2 million Cuban-Americans could influence the 2020 presidential election. Partly because of Republican anti-communism, Cuban-Americans have long been an historically GOP-supporting bloc in a swing state with 29 electoral college votes.While some polls in recent years have shown weakening Cuban-American support for the embargo, observers say Trump’s attempts to cut off the government’s income is emboldening activists who want to punish the Cuban government and its supporters in hopes of fueling regime change.One of those activists is Alex Otaola, a 40-year-old Cuban-born YouTube personality who has organized boycotts of figures like Gente de Zona and singer Haila Mompie that have led to de facto bans on their performing in South Florida.FILE – Randy Malcom Martinez and Alexander Delgado of the Cuban duo Gente de Zona perform in Vina del Mar, Chile, Feb. 22, 2018.Gente de Zona earned Otaola’s wrath by praising Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Mompie was blacklisted for praising and kissing revolutionary leader Fidel Castro during a concert in 2010.”These are artists with ties to the Cuban dictatorship, who are used as tools of the dictatorship,” said Otaloa, who emigrated from Cuba in 2003.He said he was offended by artists who support communism at home but make money by performing for Cuban-Americans in South Florida.”Enough of the hypocrisy,” he said.But many Cuban-Americans interviewed by The Associated Press said they disagreed with the cultural hard line.Carlos Nardo, a retiree who arrived in 1970 and has never gone back to the island, said he does not agree with the cancellation of concerts.”It is art, they are artists,” said Nardo. “If you are against them, don’t go to their performances.”Gente de Zona were barred from a concert organized by the Cuban-American singer Pitbull in a public park in Miami after Republican Miami Mayor Francis Suarez spoke out against them.”You have to understand that an artist who declares themselves in favor of communism or gives communism credibility is considered persona non grata,” said Suarez, a Republican. “It’s not about intolerance or censorship, it’s about respect and recognizing the mortifying history of communism, especially in Cuba.”Heavily Cuban Hialeah canceled a July 4 concert by reggaeton artists Jacob Forever, Senorita Dayana y El Micha because they perform in Cuba.’Politics has turned us Cubans small-minded’In 2019, the Miami city council passed a resolution asking Congress to cancel cultural exchanges with Cuba, which had flourished under former President Barack Obama.”We’ve gone back to the Cold War,”said Andy Gomez, a political analyst and former director at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.He said he believed that much of the offensive against Cuban artists was tied to 2020 electoral politics, both national and local.Local politicians “are thinking that those who shout and get passionate about Trump will win votes” in November, he said.Mompie hasn’t spoken out on her ban but her son Haned Mota Mompie said on Instagram that “politics has turned us Cubans small-minded, and turned us against each other.” Gente de Zona didn’t respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.Cuba’s ambassador to the U.S., Jose Ramon Cabanas, responded to the Gente de Zona ban by tweeting, “Cultural terrorism? Miami politicians ask for Cuban artists to be excluded from a local concert.”Cuban-born South Florida businessman Hugo Cancio brought Cuban singers Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes to Florida venues during the Obama-era detente and was met by street protests, largely from older Cuban-Americans, that didn’t stop the performances.The current bans, which have support from a mix of older and younger Cuban-Americans, “are, to me, an act of total discrimination,” Cancio said.They’re censoring artists, he said, “for the simple fact that the only crime they commit is thinking differently and living in the country of their birth.”
 
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A regional human rights organization said Tuesday that Venezuela has denied entry to a delegation that sought to review the human rights situation in the crisis-torn country.The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said the delegation would instead meet on the Colombian border with representatives of civic groups.The delegation’s leader, Esperanza Arosemena, posted a picture and message on social media saying the group had been prevented from boarding a Copa Airlines flight to Venezuela in Panama.She said they were informed by the airline that it “received instructions from the Venezuelan regime that we were not authorized to enter the country.”The government of President Nicolas Maduro had previously indicated it would not authorize a visit by the commission, an autonomous body of the Organization of American States.The OAS recognizes Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s legitimate president.Maduro withdrew his government’s diplomats from the organization last year, and its seat was taken over by a representative designated by Guaido.In a statement, the rights commission said the delegation’s visit was organized at the invitation of Gustavo Tarre, Guaido’s representative.
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John and Laura Hunter live in southern California and over the past few years they’ve been heading out into the desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to make sure people making the trek to the U.S. from South and Central America have what it takes to stay alive during their passage. But not everyone agrees with the help the migrants are getting. Genia Dulot has the story. 
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John and Laura Hunter live in southern California and over the past few years they’ve been heading out into the desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to make sure people making the trek to the U.S. from South and Central America have what it takes to stay alive during their passage. But not everyone agrees with the help the migrants are getting. Genia Dulot has the story. 
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Venezuela’s Juan Guaido told a large crowd of cheering expatriates in Miami on Saturday that he will soon make his return to Caracas from an international tour, bringing with him the “world’s backing” to oust President Nicolas Maduro. “We have a plan. We have a strategy,” Guaido said. “We’re not alone, and we’re going to restore democracy.” The opposition leader bent on unseating the socialist president, however, presented few details for executing this plan upon returning, saying additional sanctions are “the only strategy” available. Guaido’s visit to Miami rounds out a two-week world tour that took him first to Colombia, then across Europe and Canada, where he held meetings with a list of world leaders. He delivered a message that Venezuelans are pressing for freedom from a “dictator,” but they need help. A key meeting absent from Guaido’s trip was with his most important ally, President Donald Trump, who earlier in the day tweeted a picture of himself golfing at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club, saying he was “Getting a little exercise.” Meeting with president?When asked about a possible meeting with Trump, Guaido said, “Stay tuned,” but he also said he was already preparing his return to Venezuela. An estimated 3,500 people crowded into a Miami convention center to hear Guaido, the most promising opposition political figure to surface in years with the chance of ending two decades of rule launched by the late President Hugo Chavez. Guaido urged the crowd to remain unified and to resist, despite living away from Venezuela. “All options are on the table, but also under the table,” Guaido said. “There are things that are not talked about. All necessary actions will be used to finally liberate Venezuela.” Venezuela was once an energy powerhouse with the world’s largest oil reserves, but crude production has plummeted over the last two decades, which critics blame on corruption and mismanagement. Today, an estimated 4.5 million Venezuelans have emigrated from the country of 30 million, leaving behind crumbling infrastructure, broken hospitals, power failures and gasoline shortages with mile-long lines at filling stations across much of the South American nation. Guaido, 36, rose a year ago to prominence, named leader of the opposition-led National Assembly. In this position he claimed presidential powers, vowing to oust Maduro and reverse the political and social crisis. He won backing from the U.S. and nearly 60 nations that considered Maduro’s 2018 election a fraud and blamed his socialist policies for the crisis that’s driving mass migration and threatening the region’s stability. Maduro holds onMaduro, however, has maintained power with firm backing of the military and key foreign allies, including China, Cuba and Turkey. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to visit Caracas in the coming days. Before the rally, Guaido met with James Story, charge d’ affaires for the Venezuela Affairs Unit of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. The opposition leader also mingled with Venezuelans who have fled their homeland for the United States over the last two decades. Many at the rally wore baseball hats with bright yellow, blue and red, representing the colors of Venezuela’s flag. When Guaido stepped on stage, they cheered and held up their phones for photos. “We want him to tell us what’s going to happen,” said Gloria Bejaramo, 65, who traveled from Venezuela to South Florida to visit a daughter. “I’ve always supported him, and everyone is looking for a way out of this situation to achieve democracy.”  
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Surrounded by the millions of monarch butterflies that Mexican environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez fought to protect until his mysterious death, relatives and friends paid tribute to him Thursday.Gomez Gonzalez’s sudden disappearance two weeks ago had sparked an outcry in Mexico, an increasingly violent country where activists are routinely threatened, harmed or killed as a result of their work.Gomez Gonzalez, who worked passionately to protect a Mexican forest where monarch butterflies spend the winter, suffered head trauma as well as drowning, authorities announced Thursday night, potentially adding weight to the fears that he was murdered.Rebeca Valencia Gonzalez holds a picture of her husband, environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez, in their home in Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico, Jan. 30, 2020.Even before the announcement, relatives of Gomez Gonzalez speculated his death wasn’t accidental.“Something strange is happening, because they’re finishing off all the activists, the people who are doing something for society,” the dead man’s brother, Amado Gomez, said Thursday at the funeral.Gomez Gonzalez’s body was discovered Wednesday in a holding pond near the mountain forest reserve that he had long protected. Michoacan state prosecutors said that an initial review indicated a drowning and found no signs of trauma, but their latest statement said more detailed autopsy results produced evidence of a head injury.Authorities gave no other information on the injury and did not say how it might have been inflicted. They said an investigation continued.Grinding poverty and gang violence fuel twin threats to the butterfly reserve — illegal logging and encroaching plantations of avocados. The latter is the only legal crop that provides a decent income in this region.Gomez Gonzalez had spent a decade working as an activist, though he became best known for posting mesmerizing videos of the black and orange insects on social media, urging Mexicans to treasure the El Rosario reserve, a world heritage site.Mourners pray around the coffin of environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez at his wake in Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico, Jan. 30, 2020. The cause of the anti-logging activist’s death is under investigation.His brother said Gomez Gonzalez, an engineer, was so compelled to do something after the number of butterflies dropped dramatically that he eventually gave up his job to work on projects aimed at protecting them.“This was his passion,” his brother said. “He loved promoting the butterflies, filming them, researching them.”He also worked to persuade about 260 fellow communal land owners that they should replant trees on land cleared for corn plots. By local accounts, he managed to reforest about 150 hectares (370 acres) of previously cleared land.Like other places in the world, increasingly scarce water also plays a role in the conflict. Gomez Gonzalez and other communal land owners had asked the nearby town of Angangueo for payments in return for water they receive from clear mountain streams that survive only because the forests are protected.“A lot of the communal landowners fear that with his death, the forests are finished,” Amado Gomez said.“I would like to ask the authorities to do their job and do more to protect activists like my brother, because lately in Mexico a lot of activists have died,” he said. “With his death, not only my family lost a loved one; but the whole world, and the monarch butterfly and the forests lost, too.”Workers prepare a grave in the cemetery where environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez was to be buried in Ocampo, Michoacan state, Mexico, Jan. 30, 2020.London-based Global Witness counted 15 killings of environmental activists in Mexico in 2017 and 14 in 2018. In an October 2019 report, Amnesty International said that 12 had been killed in the first nine months of that year.Millions of monarchs come to the forests of Michoacan and other nearby areas after making the 3,400-mile (5,500-kilometer) migration from the United States and Canada. 
They need healthy tree cover to protect them from rain and cold weather.Reuters contributed to this report.
 
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An important financial operator for the Sinaloa Cartel and two other inmates facing extradition to the United States who escaped from a Mexico City prison were driven out of the penitentiary in a jail transport van, city officials said Thursday.The escape is feeding a debate over a judicial system that critics say is being manipulated to criminals’ advantage. Video of Wednesday’s escape show it occurred at 5:50 a.m. and yet supervisors were not alerted until 8 a.m.Officials in Mexico’s capital say city jails are not the appropriate facilities for high-value prisoners and that judges are allowing inmates to manipulate the system to be transferred to or remain in lower-security lockups.Mexico City Interior Secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said that at the end of the jail’s second shift, when a headcount is supposed to be taken at 7:45 a.m., the report was that nothing was amiss. The alarm was not raised until the next shift came on at 8 a.m.Ulises Lara, spokesman for the capital’s prosecutor’s office, said the preliminary investigation suggested eight jail workers did not follow procedures and thus allowed the escape.Icela Rodriguez said the jail’s director and head of security had been dismissed.FILE – Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City, Mexico, Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014.High-value escapeeThe biggest name among the escapees was Victor Manuel Felix Beltran, who was designated by the U.S. Treasury in 2015 under the Kingpin Act. The designation described him as a “high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel trafficker, who operates from Culiacan and Guadalajara.” It noted that he was the son of drug trafficker Victor Felix Felix, who moved cocaine and laundered money for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.The Mexico City prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Luis Fernando Meza Gonzalez and Yael Osuna Navarro were the other two escapees.Icela Rodriguez said the men’s cells were unlocked and they cut through a bar to drop down to a common area. They used wire cutters to cut through fencing at the top of a wall and drop into an outdoor jail yard. Then they used a ladder to scale a wall, cut through the wire at the top and get into a vehicle on the other side. The vehicle was still within the prison’s security perimeter and when it went through a guarded exit it was not opened as required by procedures.The guards driving the van had orders to transport another prisoner to a hospital and city surveillance cameras show the van driving to the hospital. However, they did not capture the moment in which the prisoners got out of the van, she said.Prisoners pick the prisonThe escape brought renewed attention to the issue of legal maneuvers that prisoners have employed to be in the penitentiary they desire.Felix Beltran entered the jail on Mexico City’s south side on Oct. 28, 2017, and was transferred to the maximum security Altiplano prison in Mexico state six days later, two years after Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaped it through a tunnel.But on Nov. 9, 2018, a federal judge ordered that Felix Beltran be returned to Mexico City jail, said Icela Rodriguez.On Thursday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recognized that the issue of prisoners blocking transfers was a problem.“They need to look at the issue of the appeals,” Lopez Obrador said. “There are hundreds of appeals like this, they don’t want to be moved to other prisons because they dominate inside or have communication with the outside.” He said the judiciary was looking into it.Challenging legal reformsMexico is engaged in a heated debate over whether changes are needed in legal reforms that gave more protections to suspects.Mexican prosecutors have complained the system is too lenient, and leaked copies of proposed reforms included less stringent limits on questionable evidence.But the judicial reforms also allowed inmates to file appeals against being transferred to other prisons, and in recent years authorities have blamed those appeals — and judges who grant them — for prison escapes, and deadly prison riots. Dangerous gang leaders have won court orders for transfers back to medium-security prisons that can’t safely hold them.That was the case in a 2016 riot at a prison in northern Mexico state of Nuevo Leon in which 49 prisoners died.Nuevo Leon Gov. Jaime Rodriguez said judicial reforms have given inmates greater ability to appeal transfer orders that could send them farther from their hometowns. The 2016 riot was alleged sparked by a member of the infamous Zetas drug cartel, Juan Pedro Zaldivar Farias, who had successfully fought to be moved to Topo Chico, and a rival gang leader at the prison had also won a similar appeal against transferring him elsewhere.“Basically this is creating the conflicts in the prisons,” Rodriguez said.Lopez Obrador and other officials have also criticized corruption in the judiciary branch that, along with lenient laws and ill-equipped prosecutors, have contributed to freeing suspects or allowing them to be transferred to less-secure prisons.On Wednesday, the federal judiciary council, an oversight body, announced the 6-month suspension of a federal judge who is being investigated an almost surreal allegations of malfeasance.The council said the judge is accused of employing family members in his court, sexually harassing workers, threatening to kill one who refused to resign, and using court employees to launder money and perform personal services like cooking, cleaning and driving him around.
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A U.S. law firm that was hired for $12.5 million by a top official in Nicolas Maduro’s government has decided to dump the controversial Venezuelan client amid a major outcry by critics who accused it of carrying water for a socialist “dictator,” The Associated Press has learned.The AP reported Monday that Foley & Lardner had agreed to represent Maduro’s Inspector General Reinaldo Munoz. Filings with the Justice Department showed Foley & Lardner, which has offices in Washington, in turn paid $2 million to hire influential lobbyist Robert Stryk to help its client ease U.S. sanctions on Maduro’s government and engage the Trump administration in direct talks.Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott immediately decried the move, saying in a letter to the firm that he would urge his Senate colleagues to follow his lead and boycott the firm until it cut ties with the “dangerous dictator.”Three people familiar with the matter said Thursday that Foley was withdrawing from the case. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.Foley’s communications director, Dan Farrell, declined to comment.“I hope the last few days will serve as a lesson to any other lobbying firms, consultants or organizations that if you support Maduro and his gang of thugs I won’t stay quiet,” Scott said in an emailed statement to AP.A senior Venezuelan government official said the reversal wouldn’t discourage the Maduro government from seeking honest dialogue with the Trump administration. The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.The outreach by Maduro’s government came as criticism has also been directed at U.S. support for opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom the U.S. and about 60 other nations recognize as Venezuela’s rightful president.A year into the U.S.-backed campaign to oust Maduro, the embattled leader has successfully beaten back a coup attempt, mass protests and punishing U.S. sanctions that have cut off his government’s access to Western banks.Randy Brinson, a conservative activist from Alabama who has teamed up recently with an evangelical Venezuelan pastor to deliver humanitarian aid to the country, said regular Venezuelans would suffer the consequences of possible dialogue with Maduro being stymied.“It is unfortunate that the outreach has become so politicized,” said Brinson.Brinson said he met with Munoz on two occasions recently and considers him an “invaluable” ally in the humanitarian relief effort brokered between the Maduro government and pastor Javier Bertucci, a former presidential candidate.Stryk, a winemaker and former Republican aide who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Yountville, California, is one of the top lobbyists in Trump’s Washington.A former unpaid Trump campaign adviser on the West Coast, his firm, Sonoran Policy Group, had no reported lobbying from 2013 to 2016 but has billed more than $10.5 million to foreign clients since the start of 2017.Like Venezuela, many of the clients have bruised reputations in Washington or are under U.S. sanctions, such as the governments of Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior, which signed a $5.4 million contract in May 2017.Munoz’s contract with Foley, for a flat fee of $12.5 million, extended until May 10. Stryk’s share of the deal, as a consultant, was $2 million.Foley said in its filing that it received slightly more than $3 million in initial payments on behalf of Munoz from what appear to be two Hong Kong-registered companies. Its work was also to include discussions with officials at the U.S. Treasury Department and other U.S. agencies regarding sanctions against the Maduro government.  
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The Perla family of El Salvador has slipped into a daily rhythm in Mexico while they wait for the U.S. to decide whether to grant them asylum.A modest home has replaced the tent they lived in at a migrant shelter. Their 7- and 5-year-old boys are in their second year of public school, and their third son is about to celebrate his second birthday in Tijuana.They were among the first migrants sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy that dramatically reshaped the scene at the U.S.-Mexico border by returning migrants to Mexico to wait out their U.S. asylum process.The practice initially targeted Central Americans but has expanded to other nationalities, excluding Mexicans, who are exempt. The Homeland Security Department said Wednesday that it started making Brazilians wait in Mexico.Today, a year after the policy began, many other migrants have given up and gone back to the home countries they fled.Others, like the Perlas, became entrenched in Mexican life.The system known as the Migrant Protection Protocols helped change Washington’s relationship with Mexico and made the neighbor a key ally in President Donald Trump’s efforts to turn away a surge of asylum seekers.The Perlas are faring better than most of the roughly 60,000 asylum-seekers, many of whom live in fear of being robbed, assaulted, raped or killed. Human Rights First, a group critical of the policy, has documented 816 public reports of violent crimes against those who were returned to Mexico.In this June 19, 2019, photo, Juan Carlos Perla, left, embraces his wife, Ruth Aracely Montoya in the entrance to their home in Tijuana, Mexico.Late last year, the body of a Salvadoran father of two was found dismembered in Tijuana. A Salvadoran woman was kidnapped into prostitution in Ciudad Juarez.Rapid expansion of the policy was key to a June agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that led Trump to suspend his threat of tariff increases. The Republican president said at the time that Mexico was doing more than Democrats to address illegal immigration.American officials praised President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government last week after security forces repelled a caravan of Honduran migrants on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.“Mexico continues to be a true partner in addressing this regional crisis,” Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said on Twitter.U.S. border authorities say the policy has contributed to a sharp drop in illegal crossings, though legal challenges could modify or even block it. Immigration judges hear cases in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, while other asylum-seekers report to tent courts in the Texas cities of Laredo and Brownsville, where they are connected to judges by video.This month, judges in El Paso began hearing cases of people who were returned to Mexico through Nogales, Arizona, the last major corridor for illegal crossings where the policy hadn’t been adopted. This has forced migrants to traverse dangerous sections of Mexico and travel hundreds of miles to make court appearances.Richard Boren, a teacher, accompanied two Guatemalan women and their four children, ages 4 to 16, across an international bridge to their El Paso hearing. The Guatemalans traveled 13 hours by bus from the Arizona border.“I was really worried about them,” said Boren, 62, who met them after they were returned to Mexico through Arizona and reconnected with them for their first hearing.Of nearly 30,000 cases decided through December, only 187, or fewer than 1%, of asylum-seekers sent back to Mexico won their cases, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Lack of legal representation helps explain why. Fewer than 5% have lawyers.In this July 10, 2019, photo, Nahum Perla studies a map with his younger brother, Carlos Isai Perla, as their father, Juan Carlos Perla, right, gets ready to make the journey from their home in Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego for an asylum hearing.Juan Carlos Perla, 37, said all five legal-services agencies that U.S. authorities say provide free representation in San Diego declined to represent him. Many attorneys refuse to represent clients in Mexico.The Perlas abandoned their small bakery in El Salvador’s capital for Mexico in December 2018, arriving during a small window when the Mexican government issued one-year humanitarian visas with permission to work. The family told U.S. immigration authorities that they could not pay extortion fees to gangs in San Salvador.“We were told that if we did not pay the last two months, the next time they would come to our house not to beat us but to kill us,” Ruth Aracely Monroy, 26, Perla’s partner and mother to their children, told U.S. officials, according to a transcript. “We left to save our lives.”After bouncing around migrant shelters in Tijuana, they found a rental house for the equivalent of $65 a month an hour’s drive from downtown, where factories on the city’s east side give way to dairy farms and hillsides dotted with olive trees. The older boys walk one block to school in a densely packed neighborhood of concrete-block homes with satellite dishes on the roofs.Perla is grateful to be in Mexico, but grinding fear about the future has taken its toll on his health. “I am the driving force that keeps them from having to suffer from hunger,” he says.Monroy’s sister, brother-in-law and their children fled El Salvador and became neighbors in June. Their first court date was in December in San Diego.Perla earned enough at a factory that makes wood pallets to pay monthly rent with barely a week’s work, but he lost his job when his work permit expired. While he waits on a renewal, he scrapes by as a street vendor.The family appears to face long odds of winning asylum, especially without a lawyer. The grant rate for Salvadoran asylum-seekers is 18%, and cases involving gang violence can be among the most difficult.The family plans to take its chances and if they lose, try to return to Tijuana to live. Their sixth, and possibly final, hearing in San Diego is scheduled for March 26.“Mexico has been very kind,” Perla said.
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A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and eastern Cuba on Tuesday, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no reports of casualties or heavy damage.
    
The quake was centered 139 kilometers (86 miles) northwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 140 kilometers (87 miles) west-southwest of Niquero, Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It hit at 2:10 p.m. (1910 GMT) and the epicenter was a relatively shallow 10 kilometers (6 miles) beneath the surface.
    
Dr. Enrique Arango Arias, head of Cuba’s National Seismological Service, told state media that there had been no serious damage or injuries reported on the island.
    
The Cayman Islands were rocked by several of the strong aftershocks that followed in the area, including one measured at magnitude 6.1. Water was cut off to much of Grand Cayman Island, and public schools were canceled for Wednesday.
    
Gov. Carlos Joaquin Gonzalez of Mexico’s Quintana Roo state, which is home to Cancun, Tulum and other popular beach resorts, said the earthquake was felt in multiple parts of the low-lying Caribbean state but there were no reports of damage or injuries.
    
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center initially warned that the quake could generate waves 1 to 3 feet above normal in Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Mexico and Belize, but issued a later message saying the danger had passed.
    
The quake was felt strongly in Santiago, the largest city in eastern Cuba, said Belkis Guerrero, who works in a Roman Catholic cultural center in the center of Santiago.
    
“We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move,’ she said. “We heard the noise of everything moving around.”
    
She said there was no apparent damage in the heart of the colonial city.
    
“It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened, “she told The Associated Press.
    It was also felt a little farther east at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the southeastern coast of the island. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages, said J. Overton, a spokesman for the installation, which has a total population of about 6,000 people.
    
Several South Florida buildings were evacuated as a precaution, according to city of Miami and Miami-Dade County officials. No injuries or road closures were reported. No shaking was felt at the Hard Rock stadium in Miami Gardens, which will host the Super Bowl on Sunday.
    
In the Cayman Islands, the quake left cracked roads and what appeared to be sewage spilling from cracked mains. There were no reports of injuries or more severe damage, said Kevin Morales, editor-in-chief of the Cayman Compass newspaper.
    
The islands experience so few earthquakes that newsroom staff were puzzled when it hit, he said.
    
“It was just like a big dump truck was rolling past,” Morales said. “Then it continued and got more intense.”
    
Dr. Stenette Davis, a psychiatrist at a Cayman Islands hospital, said he saw manhole covers blown off by the force of the quake, and sewage exploding into the street, but no more serious damage.
    
Claude Diedrick, 71, who owns a fencing business in Montego Bay, said he was sitting in his vehicle reading when the earth began to sway.
    
“It felt to me like I was on a bridge and like there were two or three heavy trucks and the bridge was rocking but there were no trucks,” he said.
    
He said he had seen no damage around his home in northern Jamaica.
    
Mexico’s National Seismological Service reported that the quake was felt in five states including as far away as Veracruz, on the country’s Gulf Coast.
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A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in the Caribbean Sea between Jamaica and eastern Cuba on Tuesday, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or heavy damage.The quake was centered 139 kilometers (86 miles) northwest of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 140 kilometers (87 miles) west-southwest of Niquero, Cuba, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It hit at 2:10 p.m. (1910 GMT) and the epicenter was a relatively shallow 10 kilometers (6 miles) beneath the surface.Dr. Enrique Arango Arias, head of Cuba’s National Seismological Service, told state media that there had been no serious damage or injuries reported.The quake was felt strongly in Santiago, the largest city in eastern Cuba, said Belkis Guerrero, who works in a Roman Catholic cultural center in the center of Santiago.”We were all sitting and we felt the chairs move,” she said. “We heard the noise of everything moving around.”She said there was no apparent damage in the heart of the colonial city.”It felt very strong but it doesn’t look like anything happened,” she told The Associated Press.It was also felt a little farther east at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the southeastern coast of the island. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damages, said J. Overton, a spokesman for the installation, which has a total population of about 6,000 people.Several South Florida buildings were evacuated as a precaujtion, according to city of Miami and Miami-Dade County officials. No injuries or road closures had been reported.The quake also hit the Cayman Islands, leaving cracked roads and what appeared to be sewage spilling from cracked mains. There were no immediate reports of deaths, injuries or more severe damage, said Kevin Morales, editor-in-chief of the Cayman Compass newspaper.Witness reportsThe islands experience so few earthquakes that newsroom staff were puzzled when it hit, he said.”It was just like a big dump truck was rolling past,” Morales said. “Then it continued and got more intense.”Dr. Stenette Davis, a psychiatrist at a Cayman Islands hospital, said she saw manhole covers blown off by the force of the quake, and sewage exploding into the street, but no more serious damage.Claude Diedrick, 71, who owns a fencing business in Montego Bay, said he was sitting in his vehicle reading when the earth began to sway.”It felt to me like I was on a bridge and like there were two or three heavy trucks and the bridge was rocking but there were no trucks,” he said.He said he had seen no damage around his home in northern Jamaica.The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the quake could generate waves 1 to 3 feet above normal in Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Mexico and Belize.The USGS initially reported the magnitude at 7.3.
 
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The U.S. Geological Survey says a powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica.
It was centered 125 kilometers north-northwest of Lucea, Jamaica, and hit at 2:10 p.m. (1910 GMT) Tuesday. The epicenter was a relatively shallow 10 kilometers (6 miles) beneath the surface.
It’s not immediately clear if there are damage or injuries.
The USGS initially reported the magnitude at 7.3.
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Efforts by Venezuelan parliamentary leader Juan Guaido to garner European support to unseat president Nicolas Maduro revealed divisions among EU governments as the United States ramped up pressures on Venezuela last week.It was Guaido’s first European visit since he proclaimed himself Venezuela’s acting president a year ago with support from the United States and most Latin American countries, which have backed repeated uprisings that failed to gain support from Venezuela’s military.Nicolas Maduro’s leftist government has managed to remain in power with security assistance from Cuba, Russia and Iran, according to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with Guaido at an Anti-Terrorist Summit in Colombia from where he flew to Europe.While most EU member states have recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president and denounced Maduro’s human rights violations, they have refrained from implementing the type of wider sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump who has left open the use of military force.A U.S. airborne unit has conducted joint exercises with Colombian forces along a border region with Venezuela over recent days, according to the Pentagon. Venezuela’s government claims to have intercepted a U.S. warship near its coast.Since leaving Venezuela, Guaido’s offices in Caracas have been raided and several of his top aides arrested by Venezuelan police officials, who accuse him of violating restrictions they imposed on his travel.The leader of Venezuela’s political opposition Juan Guaido addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 23, 2020.Guaido urged tougher measures against Maduro in personal meetings with European leaders and in an address to the annual world community conference in Davos, Switzerland.German Chancellor Angela Merkel and prime ministers from the Netherlands, Austria and Greece talked briefly with Guaido on the sidelines of the Davos conference, where his staff set up a workshop to promote Venezuela’s reconstruction.”We are confronted with an international criminal conglomerate and we can’t fight it alone,” he told the conference. “We need tools from the international community to bring pressure on the regime from various centers,” he said.Guaido specifically asked officials and bankers gathered in Davos to block Venezuela’s international trade in gold extracted from mines which, he said, Maduro has turned over to key army generals to secure their loyalty.Guaido’s tour got off to a promising start with a surprise welcome from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who received him under the glow of cameras at 10 Downing Street. French President Emmanuel Macron met him more privately at the Elysee Palace.But momentum was lost in Spain, where Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez failed to meet Guaido citing scheduling problems. He instead sent a newly appointed foreign minister to see him away from government premises.The awkwardness was exacerbated by revelations that a chief Spanish minister had secretly met Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, when she stopped at Madrid’s airport on her way to Turkey some days earlier.Conservative opposition leaders accused the government of violating existing EU sanctions that include entry restrictions of Maduro’s top officials. The U.S. State Department also issued a strong protest.Spain is especially important to Venezuela because of its deep economic, political and cultural ties to its former colony. Venezuela’s political leverage has grown recently with the inclusion of members of the far-left party Podemos in Sanchez’s cabinet.Sanchez has advocated a “dialogue” to resolve Venezuela’s crisis and his ex-foreign minister Josep Borrell, who is now EU chief of external affairs, has worked to promote negotiations with Maduro.An  EU communique following a meeting between Guaido and Borrell in Brussels said the two “have signaled the urgent necessity to find a common focus as much between the Venezuelan actors as with the international community which could lead to a significant political process.”  Guaido said in Madrid that EU-backed mediation efforts had been “degraded by the dictatorship” in Bogota, which was using them to “gain time.” 
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Ale Roque wanders the untamed orchard in Rio de Janeiro, pushing aside leaves to point out what she helped plant last year. “This is cacao, developing well … Look at this lime tree, it’s full … Lots and lots of tomato … That one’s acai …,” she says. It seems there’s always more. “Ginger… Avocado… Pineapple… Sweet potato.”She crouches toward a plump yam, and stops to make a mental note to pick it with the children she’s teaching to garden here and in several other spots in the community. In addition to providing free produce to residents, there’s another benefit: it’s markedly cooler in this blessed shade — a rarity in this part of the city, far from the sea breeze of Copacabana and Ipanema.
The scarce scrap of vacant land is just outside downtown on the slope of Providencia, Rio’s first favela, where working-class homes cram up against one another at slipshod angles and bullet holes attest to the presence of drug traffickers.This Jan.6, 2020 photo, shows an area where trees and plants were gardened by Ale Roque in Rio’s first favela Morro da Providencia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.It’s one of dozens of places where people are starting projects to create a greener version of a tree-starved urban landscape that contrasts with the verdant rainforest looming over the city. The activist group Catalytic Communities has mapped sustainable projects across the city, and is trying to foster a support network.
“There seems to be now, all of a sudden, in the last six months even, a growth in interest,” said Theresa Williamson, the group’s executive director.
Roque argues that if kids spend their waking days exposed only to alleys, bullets, empty drug capsules and trash, they’ll struggle to contribute good to the world. They need places to play and pick flowers.
“How are you going teach kids about Mother Nature if they don’t have contact with it?” says Roque, 49. “This could be happening in places all over the world, in other favelas, other little areas.”
Rio is famed for magnificent views of its coastal rainforest’s wild topography. Look outside the postcard, though, and there’s a picture of urban dystopia after decades of slapdash sprawl and government neglect. It’s said even the Christ the Redeemer statue, perched atop a jungle peak near the coast, has his back turned to most of the metropolis.
Whole neighborhoods have severed connections with the forest and, during Rio’s summer, residents feel the lack of greenery in their flesh.
The sun beats with discrimination, sparing leafy neighborhoods that tend to be affluent while punishing expanses of aluminum and asbestos roofs. Rio’s dense neighborhoods have among the least vegetation in Brazil; 80 of them have less than 1% tree cover, most in the industrial North Zone. Without shade or evapotranspiration, so-called “heat islands” make summer even more brutal.
This month, the city’s top temperatures breached 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), but people focus instead on “apparent temperature,” a measure that includes wind and humidity — “sensacao” — that spiked as high as 131 degrees (54.8 degrees C) on Jan. 11, just shy of the record.
In Rio’s North Zone, the Arara Park favela is so packed that a string of one-room shops were built over an open sewage canal. They’re brick kilns under the baking sun. Inside one, a beauty salon, Ingrid Rocha, 20, slouches beneath a whirring ceiling fan with another on the floor. Her air conditioning unit does nothing to cut the heat, so clients only show up after 4 p.m. That means Rocha, who’s pregnant, needs to work more than 12-hour days to hit her targets.
Deeper inside the favela, Luis Cassiano is sitting in a garden atop his home’s roof. As more and more houses cropped up over the last three decades, he felt the temperature rise to a point that became unbearable. The sun would set behind the far-off rainforest, but his home’s interior wouldn’t cool until after midnight.
Online research for a solution led him to install a green roof  — with bromeliads, succulents and a small, flowering quaresmeira tree — and he wants to do the same for neighbors. There’s an aesthetic bonus, too; the favela needs to mix some calming green into the scenery, he says, to offset the angry red of the homes’ bricks and the melancholic grey of their roofs.
So far he’s had few takers, but “if God wills, people will understand that it’s necessary and urgent and it will be a job that will be really useful,” he said, sitting in his rooftop garden just after midday. “I think people will, one day, really wind up joining. We’ll need it. Just look at the heat of all those roofs together!”
The nascent greening from such projects is a break with Rio’s recent past, according to Washington Fajardo, a visiting housing policy researcher at Harvard University. A Paris-inspired policy to plant shade trees fell by the wayside as modernism became Brazil’s reigning aesthetic. Lately, public works have resorted to palm trees that are resilient, but do little to reduce temperatures.
 
“To get a tree to grow in an urban environment requires irrigation, because pollution makes it much harder for a sapling to reach adulthood,”  Fajardo, the prior mayor’s special advisor on urban issues, said by phone from Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We knew how to do that better at the start of the 20th century than we do today, strangely.”
Rio’s public policy for green spaces trails far behind other cities including Seoul, Lisbon, Durban and Medellin, and even Brazilian state capitals like Recife and Belo Horizonte, according to Cecilia Herzog, president of Inverde, an organization that researches green infrastructure and urban ecology. So people are taking matters into their own hands, she added.
The city has begun paying attention. Rio this month started planting native tree species to create 25 “fresh islands” in the city’s West Zone.
Meantime, it’s only getting hotter in Brazil, as in the rest of the world. Its southeast region — where Rio is located — has recorded three of its steamiest five years on record since 2014.
The heat can be felt at a plaza in the Providencia favela, where, though it’s still morning and there’s hilltop wind, Ale Roque uses a towel to dab sweat from her forehead, upper lip and chin. The passion fruit and acelora trees she planted are starting to gain stature. Those and other saplings now receive water from a rudimentary irrigation system.
Later that day, it’ll grow even hotter as she teaches preteens to compost, which will entail lugging more than 10 loads of old soil up two flights of stairs to a home’s back patio.
Why does Roque endure the labor and the heat?
“I want to make the world green!” she says and laughs, then collects herself. “It’s because someone has to do it, truthfully that’s it. Someone has to do it.”    
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Two days of heavy rains caused flooding and landslides in southeast Brazil that have killed at least 30 people, authorities said Saturday. Civil Defense officials said 17 people were listed as missing and 2,600 were evacuated from their houses in Minas Gerais state, which had been buffeted by 48 hours of torrential rains. Deaths were reported in the capital of Belo Horizonte and in the state’s interior. On Friday, Belo Horizonte received the greatest quantity of rain ever registered in 24 hours in the city. A view of flooded houses caused by heavy rains in Sabara municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Jan. 24, 2020. The rains led to flooding and landslides that killed dozens, authorities said Jan. 25.State Governor Romeu Zema will fly over the affected areas on Sunday to evaluate damages. More rain is expected in Minas Gerais as well as other parts of Brazil, including Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The announcement of the deaths came the same day as mourners elsewhere in Minas Gerais observed the first anniversary of a deadly mining dam collapse. 
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Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido joined thousands of supporters at a demonstration in Madrid on Saturday after arriving in Spain on the last leg of a European tour. Speaking in a central square packed with supporters holding signs calling for “democracy,” Guaido emphasized the importance of international support in unseating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “We need the support of the world to fight against the groups operating in Venezuela. We have the opportunity to get Venezuela back because we are together. We can heal Venezuela,” he told a crowd of people waving Venezuelan flags and chanting, “Yes, we can.” “It is the struggle of a whole country in favor of democracy,” he said. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez did not meet Guaido, a decision that angered right-wing opposition parties but was welcomed by Unidas Podemos, the far-left coalition partners of Sanchez’s Socialists. Podemos members have voiced support for Venezuela’s leftist ruling party in the past. Instead, Guaido met Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya as well as Madrid’s mayor and regional president, both from the conservative People’s Party (PP). Guaido’s visit coincided with a political spat in Spain over reports that Transport Minister Jose Luis Abalos secretly met a senior Maduro aide who is subject to a European Union travel ban at Madrid’s Barajas airport on Monday. PP leader Pablo Casado criticized Sanchez for not meeting Guaido and called on him to dismiss Abalos. Sanchez told reporters earlier in the day that Spain’s government wanted elections in Venezuela “as soon as possible,” but he criticized Spanish opposition parties for using the crisis in Venezuela “against the government.” He also voiced his backing for Abalos, saying “he put all his efforts into avoiding a diplomatic crisis and succeeded.” Guaido has defied a travel ban to seek support in Europe, where he has spoken at the European Parliament, attended the World Economic Forum in Davos and met with leaders including Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson. 
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From the roadside stand where his family sells mole, barbecue and chicken stew, Miguel Ángel Vázquez has seen all the caravans of Central American migrants and asylum seekers stream past his front door in recent years, throngs of people driven to flee poverty and violence in hopes of a better life in the United States.After watching armored National Guard troops and immigration agents break up the latest one right on his doorstep, loading men, women and wailing children onto buses and hauling them off to a detention center in the nearby city of Tapachula, he’s sure of one thing.Mexican National Guards block a highway in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico after a group of Central American migrants crossed the nearby border from Guatemala to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.“I can see that these caravans are no longer going to pass,” said Vásquez, 56.On Friday morning, life was back to normal at the river border between Ciudad Hidalgo and Tecun Uman, Guatemala.Carmelino Sánchez Cumes, 54, left his home in Champerico Guatemala at 4 a.m. to come buy medicine for two elderly aunts that’s not available back home.The partial closure of river crossings “was tough” on people accustomed to doing so as part of daily life, he said.The international bridge reopened at 5 a.m. and cars and motorcycles were crossing freely.National guard troops stood watch in groups of about a half dozen, visibly fewer than before, and said privately that the tension of recent days had vanished.One said it’s easy to distinguish local Guatemalans who cross for ordinary workaday reasons for their manner of speaking, and they’re welcome “because they’re neighbors.”Where the first caravans were allowed to pass through Mexican territory and even given humanitarian aid or transportation by many communities and some officials, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s administration changed that beginning last year in response to steep trade tariffs threatened by Washington.The result was on display Thursday on a rural highway in the far-southern Mexican city of Frontera Hidalgo, just across the river border between Mexico and Guatemala that the hundreds of migrants, mostly Hondurans, crossed before dawn.The migrants walked for hours before stopping at the crossroads where Vázquez’s stand lies, taking advantage of the copious shade on a road otherwise largely exposed to the beating tropical sun. They bought all the food the family and refreshments the family had and behaved respectfully, according to Karen Daniela Vázquez Robledo, his daughter.Then hundreds of national guard troops advanced their lines to within 100 yards (meters) of the migrants. A brief negotiation stalled, and the migrants knelt to the ground in prayer and began to chant “we want to pass.”National guardsmen advanced banging their plastic shields with batons and engaged the migrants. There was shoving and pepper spray as migrants were rounded up.Many of the people allowed themselves to be escorted to the buses without resistance. Women cradling small children or holding kids’ hands wept as they walked toward the buses. In all, 800 migrants were detained, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute.Others resisted and were subdued. One man dragged by three guardsmen and a migration agent shouted “they killed my brother, I don’t want to die,” presumably in reference to the possibility of being returned to his country.A paramedic attended to an injured woman lying on the highway shoulder.The road was left littered with water bottles, plastic bags and clothing. An irate man in a blue shirt yelled at the agents “this is a war against the Hondurans.”On Friday, López Obrador said he had been briefed about the operation and commended military commanders for not resorting to force, without explaining what he considered to be force.“I have information that the National Guard has acted well,” said López Obrador, who said he was briefed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard. “He told us there had not been injured, had not been wounded, that the problem has been resolved well.”López Obrador went on, as he has before, to describe the migrants as being “tricked” by unscrupulous organizers in Honduras who lead them to believe they will pass without problems. He added that his political adversaries, “the conservatives,” had hoped it would go badly for the Mexican government.“Clearly there is a need,” López Obrador said. “But there’s a management, we’ll say political. Fortunately, human rights have been respected.”Thursday’s confrontation was a sudden climax after the day had seemed to be winding down.Central American migrants cross the Suchiate River from Tecun Uman, Guatemala, to Mexico, Jan. 23, 2020.The migrant caravan had been diminishing since its last concerted attempt to cross the border Monday was turned back by Mexican National Guardsmen posted along the Suchiate River, which forms the border here.The national guardsmen intercepted the caravan on the edge of the community of Frontera Hidalgo, near Ciudad Hidalgo where the migrants crossed the river at dawn.In previous caravans, Mexican authorities have allowed caravans to walk for awhile, seemingly to tire them out, and then closed their path.Mexico and Guatemala have returned hundreds of migrants from the caravan to their home countries since the caravan set out last week, mostly to Honduras.Back at the roadside food stall in the southern state of Chiapas, Karen Vázquez, 26, was dismayed by what she saw unfold — the pepper spray, children running and crying.“It was something very unpleasant, seeing how the people are taken away, and us hiding as well so they don’t take us away,” she said. “It makes us sad because they don’t take them in the right way. In truth, they take them very badly.”
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For the past 20 years, young people in Venezuela have been on the front lines of protests to demand change in the socialist-run country.  But many university students interviewed by VOA in Caracas say they are disillusioned by the lack of change and have stopped taking part in protests because of government repression and fears for their safety.  From Caracas, reporter Adriana Nunez Rabascall has the story, narrated by Cristina Caicedo Smit. 
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Haiti should set a date for elections, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday, more than a week after Haiti’s president began ruling by decree. Pompeo did not specify which elections he was referring to, but Haiti failed to hold scheduled legislative elections last year. “We need to have the elections. That is important,” Pompeo said in an interview with the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. “Once those elections will be held, there’ll be a duly elected government. We won’t have to be concerned about ruling by decree.” The U.S. State Department provided a transcript of Pompeo’s interview with the newspapers. Pompeo said he voiced concerns about the political situation with his Haitian counterpart in a meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, on Wednesday. The Haitian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moise rules directlyHaitian President Jovenel Moise is three years into a five-year term, which began in 2017 after the results of an initial vote, in October 2015, were scrapped over fraud allegations. Moise’s support in the country has never been overwhelming. Electoral turnout for the rerun election was low, with Moise receiving only 600,000 votes in a country of 10 million people. FILE – Anti-corruption protesters fill the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 9, 2019.Last year, the country was mired in anti-corruption protests for months, with the opposition calling for Moise to step down. Nevertheless, Moise has outlived his political opposition for now. The mandate of all deputies and most senators expired earlier in January and there were no successors as parliament failed to approve an electoral law last year necessary for holding legislative elections. In this situation, under Haitian law, the president rules directly. Accusations tradedMoise has blamed parliament for failing to approve the electoral law last year, though his opponents have accused him of trying to take advantage of the law. The last two elected Haitian presidents, Rene Preval and Moise’s political benefactor, Michel Martelly, both ruled by decree at some points. Moise has said he wanted to overhaul the constitution. Though the precise changes he is seeking are not clear, the process would be aimed at strengthening the presidency, which was weakened after the 30-year Duvalier family dictatorship. 
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