Review of the press for January 22, 2022

Venezuelan migrants tries to reach the U.S. Boric. Drug cartels force MSC to suspend operations in Brazil. Narco-submarines. 2 Canadian citizens die in Mexico. FARC vs ELN. Carnival. Cuba. Mapuche

Caravan of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants tries to reach the U.S.

Hundreds of Venezuelans are part of a new caravan that has left Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico, for the United States. It is the first mobilization of its kind in 2022 and involves at least 500 migrants. The half thousand are children, women and men, and their first goal is to obtain a visa or temporary document to travel legally in Mexico on public transportation to reach the border with the United States. The migrants began their journey on the southern highway of Tapachula, a road that leads to Mexico City. They said they are heading north in search of a better future and that immigration authorities have not listened to their demands. During 2021, several caravans with thousands of migrants left Tapachula. However, the vast majority have been stopped and dismantled by Mexican security forces. The region is experiencing a record flow to the United States, whose Customs and Border Protection detected more than 1.7 million undocumented migrants at the border with Mexico in fiscal year 2021, which ended September 30. Mexico intercepted more than 252,000 undocumented migrants from January to November and deported more than 100,000 in the same period, according to the migration policy unit of the country's Interior Ministry.

Boric, female government: at Defense the granddaughter of Allende   

The female ministers of the future government of Gabriel Boric are 14, four more than their male colleagues, for a total of twenty-four seats. The name that has attracted the most media attention is that of Maya Fernandez Allende, socialist deputy and granddaughter of Salvador Allende, president deposed by Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état on September 11, 1973. Maya had been born two years earlier to Tati Allende, Salvador's daughter and main collaborator. After the coup, Tati and family took refuge in Havana, where the woman, suffering from depression committed suicide in 1977. Returning to Chile during the beginning of the Transition, Maya Fernandez has a history of long militancy in the Socialist Party. This did not prevent her from approaching Boric even before the center-left decided to support him. From March 11, when Gabriel Boric succeeds Sebastian Pinera, he will occupy the role of Minister of Defense.

Drug cartels force MSC to suspend operations in Brazil with Santos labeled the "world trade center" for cocaine

The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), the world's largest container company, has suspended land-based operations in Brazil, fearing drug cartels are creeping into its containers bound for North America and Europe. In a notice sent to customers in Brazil, the Geneva-based MSC said criminals were intercepting containers to try to ship drugs abroad. As a result, MSC decided to suspend operations throughout Brazil indefinitely. Drug crimes on MSC ships have made headlines in recent years and even saw U.S. authorities temporarily withdraw the company's Customs Trade Partnership (C-TPAT) certification after a record $1.1 billion shipment of cocaine was found on the MSC Gayane in 2019. Brazil's main port, Santos, was described as the "world's cocaine trade center" in a report released earlier this month by InSight Crime. The port has become a "crucial hub" for the global cocaine trade, the report states with much of the growth stemming from the rise of Primeiro Comando da Capital, a powerful narco-trafficking gang that dominates in Brazil.

The "king of narco-submarines" has been arrested but narco-submarines are more popular than ever

Óscar Moreno Ricardo, responsible for the proliferation of cocaine-laden submarines off Colombia's Pacific coast, was arrested in Medellín in early January, but the use of submarines to move coca is booming. Their advantages in maritime drug trafficking are unmatched, given the difficulty of detecting and intercepting them. In Colombia, where the design and manufacture of the drug submarine has been perfected, authorities seized 31 vessels in 2021, up from 23 in 2019. Suriname, Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana the countries where they are used the most. In 2019, the first drug submarine intercepted in Europe was found off the coast of Galicia, Spain. The ship was carrying 3 tons of cocaine from Brazil. In 2021, authorities raided a warehouse in Spain's coastal province of Malagá, where a narco submarine was being built.

Playa del Carmen: two Canadian citizens die in hotel shooting

Two Canadian citizens died yesterday in a shooting at the famous Xcaret Hotel, located in the Caribbean city of Playa del Carmen, in the Caribbean of Mexico. A third person was injured. Those involved in the shooting have criminal records related to drug trafficking. The Riviera Maya has been plagued by acts of violence in recent months, with shootings recorded in various tourist locations. In November, two suspected drug dealers were killed during a gunfight in Cancún, on a beach frequented by foreign visitors. A month earlier, another Canadian tourist was killed during a shootout between criminal gangs in Tulum, a popular beach destination.

FARC dissidents declare 'no quarter' war on ELN in Colombia

The FARC's 28th Dissident Front has declared "relentless, no-holds-barred" war on the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN), following clashes and attacks in recent weeks in the department of Arauca. In a video one of the commanders of the 28th Front acknowledges responsibility for the car bomb attack perpetrated on January 19 in the city of Saravena, for which he apologizes, but states that "the war will be without quarter." They are already at least 34 dead in this department on the border with Venezuela since the beginning of 2022.

Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo postpone Carnival to April

"This is a necessary postponement," said health authorities, who are dealing with a new wave of covid-19 in Brazil, and so the carnival samba school parades in Rio and São Paulo, scheduled for late February, have been postponed until April.

The incredible story of the first narco-submarine seized in Europe

Three burly men confined to a tiny space of just five feet square for 27 long days. Sailing underwater, breathing wet and cold all the time. With little room to move. Taking turns sleeping in the hold of the submarine they were traveling on. The bathyscaphe didn't have an evacuation system, so they did their business in a bag. They ate canned food, industrial pastries, energy bars and cans of Red Bull to stay awake. They had sores on their skin, caused by the wet, greasy wetsuits they wore all the time. And only six narrow windows to look out of. These three men crossed the Atlantic Ocean between October and November 2019, traveling more than 3,500 nautical miles between Brazil and Europe aboard a small, precarious, homemade fiberglass submarine. The submarine was carrying 3,068 kilos of cocaine. A police operation christened "Black Tide", which will go down in history for having seized the first narco-submarine to arrive in Europe from Latin America, foiled their plans and ended with the arrest of those three men. Now they have just gone on trial in Spain. They have pleaded guilty, although none of them wanted to cooperate with the justice system for fear that the drug trafficking organization that sent the drugs and the one for which they were destined might retaliate against them or their families. Sentencing is expected to come out soon. Each of them can be sentenced to spend between 12 and 13 years in prison.

The U.N. Committee Against Enforced Disappearances has asked Cuba for explanations of what happened after the July 11 protests

The U.N. has asked the Cuban dictatorship to report by Feb. 7 on disappearances in connection with last year's historic July 11 protests. The Committee Against Enforced Disappearances explained that this request was made to the Cuban regime "after analysis of the allegations presented" by the NGO Cubans for Democracy and "other sources." The complaint of Cubans for Democracy includes the calculation of the NGO Prisoners Defenders, which monitors human rights in Cuba, and which reported 187 forced disappearances following the anti-government protests of July 11. Yesterday, Cuban courts concluded two weeks of judicial hearings against more than a hundred protesters arrested after the historic July protests and who are now awaiting sentencing after being charged with crimes for which some could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. I propose exposé piece on what is happening in Cuba.

Argentine Mapuche leader Facundo Jones Huala has been released from Chile

A court in Chile yesterday freed Facundo Jones Huala, the leader of the indigenous Mapuche Resistencia Ancestral Mapuche (RAM) movement in Patagonia. The Court of Appeals in the southern city of Temuco granted "conditional release" to Huala, who is serving a six-year sentence for arson and illegal possession of weapons. Huala had been arrested in Argentina in June 2017 after two years of absconding from the Chilean justice system. Authorities in the neighboring country had requested his international capture from Interpol in 2015. After his arrest, then-Argentinean President Mauricio Macri ordered his extradition after the Supreme Court granted Chile's request. The indigenous leader's release immediately sparked controversy in Argentina, with Macri's former security minister, Patricia Bullrich, claiming that Jones Huala wants to "continue the violence." The Biobío, Los Ríos and La Araucanía regions of southern Chile have been plagued by several arson attacks on private property and trucks by radical indigenous groups in the context of a centuries-old conflict in which the Mapuche are demanding land they claim as their ancestral right and which the Chilean state has ceded primarily to forestry companies. The original inhabitants of Chile and parts of Argentina, the Mapuche ("people of the land" in their native language) number about 700,000 on Chilean soil, out of the country's roughly 17 million inhabitants.