International
How Latin America has reacted: from the rejection of Chile and Argentina waiting for Brazil and Mexico
After knowing the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on the presidential elections that, according to the entity, was won by President Nicolás Maduro, there have been various reactions in Latin America from the request for transparency of Chile and Argentina to the caution of Brazil and Mexico.
One of the first to react was the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, who at first said that the results “are difficult to believe” and on Monday he claimed that it is necessary to deliver all the electoral records to both independent international observers and the opposition.
“As long as that is not done, we as a country are going to refrain from recognizing what the National Electoral Council has pointed out,” Boric said.
“I have stated, and I have also discussed it with the chancellor and with different people in Latin America and in the world, that the elections, and elections that generate as much expectation as this, have to be absolutely transparent and verifiable by international observers who are not dependent or supporters of the Government,” added the Chilean leader.
The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, described on Monday the results of this Sunday’s presidential elections in Venezuela as an “electoral scam” and ignored the announcement of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of that country, which gave Nicolás Maduro as the winner, results that the opposition denounced for irregular.
“Not even he believes the electoral scam that celebrates. Neither does the Argentine Republic,” the Argentine president wrote about Maduro on his profile on the social network X.
“We do not recognize fraud, we call on the international community to unite to restore the rule of law in Venezuela, and we remind the Venezuelan people that the doors of our homeland are open to every man who chooses to live in freedom,” added the publication of the ultraliberal politician.
“Condemn the electoral fraud perpetrated by the regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Argentina demands total transparency in the counting of votes. We are not going to consolidate any results without the support of international observers; of course, that they are not puppets of the Chavista regime,” the presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, said earlier.
The Government of Brazil celebrated on Monday the “peaceful character” of the elections in Venezuela, but ratified that it will wait for all the results to pronounce on the victory attributed by the electoral authorities to Nicolás Maduro.
In an official statement, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs “reaffirms” that “the principle of popular sovereignty must be observed through the impartial verification of the results” and adds that Brazil “waits, in that context,” the publication of all the data “detailed by a polling station.”
That last requirement, according to the statement, is “an indispensable step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the result of the electoral lawsuit.”
In the same waiting line, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, spoke out, who said that he will recognize Maduro’s triumph, if Venezuela’s CNE “confirms the trend” after Sunday’s elections, although he asked to “wait for the count.”
“We are going to wait for the result, and when the count has been carried out, see what the legal process is and then we are going to pronounce, if the electoral authority confirms this trend, we are going to recognize the Government elected by the people of Venezuela,” López Obrador said in his morning conference.
The Mexican ruler assured that “they cannot ignore any result” of the CNE, which during the night announced that Maduro won with 51.2% of the votes compared to 44.2% by Edmundo González Urrutia of the opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) of Venezuela.
The president of Panama, José Raúl Mulino, announced that he “suspends” diplomatic relations and announces the withdrawal of his diplomatic corps in Venezuela “until a complete review of the minutes” of the votes is carried out after rejecting the results of the elections.
Mulino, who pointed out the “deterioration” during the last years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, said: “I make this decision out of respect for the history of Panama, the millions of Venezuelans who chose our homeland to live, and my democratic convictions, I cannot allow my silence to turn into complicity.”
“I believe, and I hope I am wrong, that the flow of Venezuelans will increase for obvious reasons and we have to take the appropriate decisions to safeguard their life and integrity,” Mulino said.
At the same time, the Government of Peru denounced the attempt of the Venezuelan authorities to “consolidate a fraud” and detailed that it remains “in active observation” in the face of the possible “migratory effects” of the announcement of the re-election of Nicolás Maduro.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that, along with other competent authorities, it is “in a state of active observation in anticipation of migratory effects as a result of the seriousness of the course of Venezuelan electoral events.”
The president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, was one of the first leaders in the region to react and considered that Maduro’s “victory” is a “great way” to remember the late leader Hugo Chávez on his birthday.
“We congratulate the Venezuelan people and President @NicolasMaduro for the electoral victory of this historic July 28. Great way to remember Commander Hugo Chávez,” Arce wrote on the social network X, where earlier he recalled in another message the 70th anniversary of the birth of the former Venezuelan president.
Arce, who has a political affinity with Maduro, also maintained that he followed “closely” the “democratic party” in Venezuela and greeted “that the will of the Venezuelan people has been respected at the polls.”
The congratulations were also joined by the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, who described the result as a “great victory that that heroic people” delivers to Chávez, while the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel considered it as a “triumph of dignity.”
For its part, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) congratulated Maduro, for what he sees as an “unobjectible triumph” in the presidential elections.
“The member states of the ALBA congratulate the people and government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, for the unobjectionable triumph of President Nicolás Maduro Moros in the presidential elections this Sunday, July 28, 2024,” the bloc said in a statement published on its website.
International
At least ten dead in Iran in a bus accident in the west of the country
At least ten people lost their lives this Saturday when a passenger bus fell down a ravine on a highway in the province of Lorestan, in western Iran.
“The bus that left Andimeshk (Juzestan province) to Poldokhtar (Lorestan), went off the road and fell into a ravine so unfortunately at least 10 people have died,” announced the executive director of the Red Crescent of the province of Lorestan, Mohammad Ghadami, reported the Tasnim agency.
The official did not give details about the number of injured in the accident and their state of health.
Ghadami said that four rescue teams were sent to the scene of the incident immediately after it was reported at 12:39 local time (9:10 GMT) this Saturday.
Mortality on roads, one of the highest in the world
Traffic accidents are very common in Iran, where the road mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, with an average of 20,000 deaths per year.
Many of the accidents are due to the poor condition of the vehicles and the poor compliance with traffic rules by drivers.
Last August, at least 28 Pakistani pilgrims died when the bus in which they were traveling overturned in central Iran, in an accident that occurred due to a brake failure.
International
Helene, the violent hurricane that destroyed the southeastern United States
Hurricane Helene is one of the extreme climatic events that have starred this 2024 after leaving more than 150 direct deaths and billions of dollars in losses in six states of the southeastern United States, according to preliminary figures.
The deadly Helene, which in the continental United States has only been surpassed by Katrina (2005), ended with more than 150 deaths, at least a hundred in North Carolina, in addition to leaving a path of destruction that reached the mountainous area of that state with special virulence.
After impacting Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula, Helene made landfall on September 26 with winds of 225 kilometers per hour in the Big Bend region of Florida, in the northwest of that state, as the most powerful cyclone in that region since records have been available.
From Florida, where it arrived as a major hurricane, and while it weakened progressively to become a tropical depression, Helene continued on land through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
North Carolina was the one that took the worst part, not only for the number of deaths but for the economic losses, which amount to more than 59.6 billion dollars, according to an update from the state government released this month.
The historic rainfall of up to 76 centimeters caused floods and landslides in this state, which caused serious damage, and long-term, both in homes and in public infrastructure and the agricultural industry.
Million-dollar economic losses
Quantifying at this time the economic losses in all the states impacted by Helene, which generated strong winds and tornadoes, is difficult because there are discrepancies in the damage assessment since it produced “a large-scale disaster,” as Mónica Escaleras, professor of the Department of Economics at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), told EFE.
“The widespread nature of the damage, the diversity of affected sectors and ongoing recovery efforts” are factors that prevent an accurate estimate at present, he added.
Escaleras believes, however, that Helene is a reflection of how in recent years “extreme weather events have become increasingly frequent and intense, altering infrastructure and supply chains.”
A preliminary report from the Institute of Agricultural and Food Sciences of the University of Florida (UF/IFAS) estimates that agricultural losses in this southern state due to Helene can range between 40.3 and 162.2 million dollars, after destroying 6.1 million acres (2.4 million hectares) of arable land.
More hurricanes like Helene in the future
A key factor in Helene’s intensity were the high temperatures in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, whose surfaces were at about 29.4 degrees Celsius when the system began to form.
A preliminary study by the World Weather Attribution network of scientists reflected that this temperature is the result of climate change, which made Helene’s effects worse, responsible for example for 10% more rain.
“It is expected that the growing occurrence of these events will generate higher insurance premiums and may lead to the withdrawal of coverage in high-risk areas, which will affect both the real estate and business sectors,” Escaleras said.
This possible future scenario can, on the other hand, affect unprotected communities more, such as the Hispanic one in the United States. The Climate Power organization revealed last week a report that shows that Latino communities have been the great victims of the extreme weather events that occurred in 2024.
The report in question found that many Latino families in western North Carolina live in trailers flooded or destroyed by the storm, and that not mastering English they had obstacles when it came to receiving information about recovery tasks.
Antonieta Cádiz, executive director of the Climate Power In Action campaign, reminded EFE of the case of the workers of a plastics factory in Erwin (Tennessee) who died after a negligence in their evacuation, which was not carried out due to the imminent effects of Helene, employees who were mostly Hispanic.
The above, he said, is a sample of the disproportionate and “deep inequalities” that affect the Hispanic community when it comes to extreme weather events.
International
The piangua, the mangrove mollusk that empowers women in the Colombian Pacific
When the low tide in the Colombian Pacific, a group of women put on rubber boots, take a raft and enter a mangrove forest to collect the piangua, a mollusk that, in addition to providing food to their families, empowers them and gives them a voice in their territory.
They are in the community of La Plata, in the heart of the Uramba-Bahía Málaga National Natural Park, and they have just six hours to work before the sea rises again. Stuck in the mud they sing to liven up their days and regardless of the sun or rain they fill their containers with this mollusk similar to the mussel with which they prepare delicious recipes.
“It is a very important ancestral activity because it allows us to have economic sustainability as women, to be a symbol of resistance to cultural traditions and to take care of our gastronomic traditions,” Matilde Mosquera Murillo, legal representative of the Raíces Piangüeras Association.
Mosquera, 27 years old and a sociologist by profession, took on the challenge of leading that organization created in 2019 and has managed to bring together more than 70 women who are dedicated to this profession in the Community Council of La Plata-Bahía Málaga, where they play a fundamental role in conservation.
“We monitor mangroves, because we know the importance they have in the ecosystem, they are the cradle of thousands of species. We also make every process sustainable so that all the initiatives we lead allow us to take care of nature,” Mosquera insists.
International recognition
Their work already has international recognition and since 2023 they have held the ‘Meeting of Women of the Colombian Pacific’. In the first edition they asked the National Government to advocate before UNESCO to declare the piangüeo as Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
“We believe in the need for a political strengthening of women, that our voice is heard and that we are part of the decisions that are made in the country so that we have votes in public policies and that they recognize our ancestral work in the world,” she adds.
The environmental richness of the La Plata archipelago is enormous and its 32 islands and islets are the habitat of 1,396 species of birds, reptiles, mammals and felines, as well as 60 classes of frogs, 25 of lizards and 52 of snakes.
There are also eight species of sharks, 22 rays and 348 of fish that have six types of mangroves as their home: red mangrove, born mangrove, ped mangrove, button or button mangrove, bobo mangle and feeder mangle.
Unity and awareness
According to Santiago Valencia, leader of the Community Council of La Plata-Bahía Málaga, women use a ‘piangüímetro’, a tool that works as a rule that allows them to measure the mollusk when it has already passed its reproductive stage.
“Their organization is as strong as the roots of the mangrove and they even come together to reforest when they see it necessary. This unity has made them look for other alternatives because they see that everything is possible and today they see themselves as what they are: powerful women, businesswomen and nature lovers,” says Valencia.
Currently, women piangüeras work in the search for resources that allow them to access studies to improve and strengthen their processes.
Some of them have already created other ventures for the manufacture of ointments based on medicinal plants from the jungle, ancestral drinks and even think about packing the piangua in a vacuum to export it to other countries.
“When we go to the mangrove we sing as a symbol of power, to express our feelings, it also serves to harmonize our activity and understand that we are important; we will leave this inheritance to our children and it will continue for generations,” concludes Mosquera.
At least ten dead in Iran in a bus accident in the west of the country
Helene, the violent hurricane that destroyed the southeastern United States
The piangua, the mangrove mollusk that empowers women in the Colombian Pacific
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