Forrest Hylton

Lula raised the budget for school lunches, improved access to higher education and free medication, and increased the hiring of public health professionals by a third. He restarted public housing and community policing programmes, restricted access to firearms and provided debt relief. He created a new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and made advances towards participatory budgeting at the federal level. He removed Brazil from the UN Hunger Map and strengthened affirmative action measures for Afro-Brazilians in higher education. Should Flávio Bolsonaro become president, every one of these gains will be reversed, remaining state enterprises will be privatised, coup plotters will receive amnesties and the military will return to government.

On 10 August, three days after the inauguration of President Abelardo de la Espriella, Colombia experienced a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, the country’s worst since 1979. With the epicentre in San José del Palmar, the western cities of Cali, Pereira and Manizales were directly affected, along with the entire Chocó department, where the lack of a census, the collapse of communications and the absence of transport infrastructure have stymied relief efforts.

Wearing a football jersey and waving the national flag, Abelardo de la Espriella trotted out the quasi-fascist trinity from the days of Operation Condor, ‘Dios, patria y familia’, promising to end gay marriage and abortion, introduce megaprisons on the Bukele model, cut government spending by 40 per cent by eliminating ministries and privatising state enterprises, and slash whatever taxes and regulations remain on trade, production and commerce to attract US capital. Trump would ‘co-pilot’ his government, he said. Bernie Moreno, the Republican senator for Ohio, said Colombia will be at the centre of the Shield of the Americas.

During popular insurrections like the one underway in Bolivia, which is calling for President Rodrigo Paz’s resignation after just six months in office, the experience of time and space changes, acquiring an extraordinary charge from day to day, even hour to hour. Indigenous campesino insurgents have long characterised such moments as belonging to ‘another time’.

Unfortunately for Mexicans, Mexico has moved to the top of the US foreign policy agenda. After Trump kidnapped the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, he threatened Mexico with ground operations against ‘cartels’ that the DOJ designated terrorist organisations.