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CBP agents stand by a plane that's believed to have carried Mexican drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, who were arrested in El Paso, Texas.
Sinaloa cartel leaders arrested
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the leader and co-founder of the notorious Sinaloa cartel was arrested on Thursday in El Paso, Texas, along with Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, the son of imprisoned cartel boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The two men are considered to be among the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, and this is a major victory for US law enforcement agencies that have hunted figures like Zambada for years.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the men face “multiple charges” for leading the cartel’s criminal operations, which include “its deadly fentanyl manufacturing and trafficking networks.”
The DEA has directly attributed the deadly synthetic drug crisis in the US, involving substances like fentanyl and methamphetamine, to the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels and their associates.
“Fentanyl is the deadliest drug threat our country has ever faced, and the Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Garland said.
A congressional report earlier this year pointed to fentanyl as the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45. The opioid crisis is a major political issue in the US and has emerged as a key topic in the 2024 presidential election.
Though these arrests are a win for the Justice Department, experts doubt they will put a major dent in the drug trade — and suggest the arrests could lead to a spike in violence due to infighting that was already prevalent.Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, candidate for the Presidency of Mexico by Sigamos Haciendo Historia coalition shows a electoral ballot before casting their vote at a polling booth during the 2024 Mexico s general election on June 2, 2024,
Mexico elects first woman president — will she bring change?
Claudia Sheinbaum made history on Sunday, with preliminary results showing she won roughly 60% of the vote to become the first woman elected Mexico’s president. Her victory was never really in doubt, given the support she enjoyed from outgoing and immensely popular President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. But that same popularity means it will be hard for Mexico’s first female president to emerge from her predecessor’s shadow.
Mexican presidents are limited to a single six-year term, but AMLO has pitched Sheinbaum as his loyal successor. He’s promised she will carry on the work of what he calls Mexico’s populist “Fourth Transformation” (the first three being Mexican Independence in 1821, the civil war of 1858-1861, and the revolution 1910-1917).
Her vote more than doubled the runner-up’s, and her party took 251 seats in the lower house and 60 in the Senate, which should give her so-called “qualified” majorities in both houses alongside coalition partners. In other words, she can change the constitution, and perhaps enact some of the controversial changes AMLO failed to implement.
When the fiesta dies down at Morena headquarters, Sheinbaum will face demands from voters to tackle cartel violence, the country’s historically high murder rate, and immigration – problems she has slim chances of resolving. On the latter issue, she’s at the mercy of Washington, as folks crossing her southern border with Guatemala are trying to get to the United States, not stay in Mexico. She won’t have a clear picture of the policy environment she can act within until the gringos vote in November.
And she’ll need to break away from AMLO’s “hugs not bullets” policy, which has utterly failed to protect Mexicans, especially women and girls, from the predations of drug traffickers. The trick will be doing so without implicitly criticizing her former boss.
“The challenge is to follow Lopez Obrador, manage an extremely challenging security situation, ensure macroeconomic fundamentals remain sound and potentially deal with Trump,” said Eurasia Group analyst Daniel Kerner, who was at Sheinbaum HQ on Sunday. “And if she tries to do the constitutional reforms, economic and social stability will suffer.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a press conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan May 28, 2024.
Hard Numbers: Multinationals stay in Russia with love, Narcos play squid game in Greece, Biden helps Cuban entrepreneurs, PNG suffers landslide amid political earthquake
2,100: More than 2,100 international firms have stayed in Russia since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sparked a raft of EU and US sanctions, according to a study by the Kyiv School of Economics. Why stay? Some are reluctant to leave a market of 140 million people while others are hamstrung by Kremlin rules that impose huge costs on any companies from “unfriendly” countries that try to leave. Still, despite those obstacles, some 1,600 multinationals have done so.
240: The international drug trade is putting cephalopods behind the eight ball now, it seems, as Greek port authorities in Piraeus found 240 pounds of cocaine in a shipment of frozen squid this week. Across Europe, authorities are making record cocaine busts as soaring production from Latin America finds its way into the EU, now the world’s number one market for the drug.
11,000: The Biden administration has announced measures to help the roughly 11,000 small businesses that have formed in Cuba since the impoverished island’s communist dictatorship eased restrictions in 2021. The White House said it hopes the move, which includes access to US bank accounts, will help “stem irregular migration.” In a staggering exodus during 2022 and 2023, nearly 5% of Cuba’s population fled, mostly to the US. Despite the small business move, there’s no sign of further easing of the six-decade-old US embargo against the island.
2,000: A landslide in Papua New Guinea has killed as many as 2,000 people, according to local authorities. The disaster comes amid political turmoil in which Prime Minister James Marape has recently suffered a mass defection from his party and will likely face a no-confidence vote.
Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa looks on as his wife Lavinia Valbonesi (not pictured) takes part in a referendum that asks voters to support mostly security-related questions to fight rising violence, in Guayaquil, Ecuador April 21, 2024.
Ecuador votes to get tough on drugs
Ecuadorians showed overwhelming support for a government crackdown on drug-related violence in referendums this weekend in what could become a regional trend. Quito won support for joint police-military patrols, extradition of wanted criminals, tighter gun control, and tougher punishments for murder and drug trafficking, among other measures.
Cocaine boom: Ecuador had long maintained a reputation for tranquility despite being sandwiched between the major cocaine production hubs of Colombia and Peru. Coke is in the midst of a major resurgence, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, with seven straight years of growing use.
Consequently, traffickers are trying to ship more blow than ever to the US, and increasingly doing so through Ecuador’s conveniently located ports. With the drugs come weapons, money, and violence, tearing at the social fabric. In August of last year, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated after receiving death threats from gang leader Jose Adolfo Macias, who later escaped prison.
Iron fist: Ecuador is far from alone in experiencing a surge in drug violence, and leaders in Latin America are looking at Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “mano dura” (iron fist) crackdown as an example.
“Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa took from the Bukele playbook in realizing that citizens are open to more draconian type measures,” says Eurasia Group associate Yael Sternberg, though she emphasized that the actual policies and problems are different.
If it pays off for Noboa like it has for Bukele, Sternberg says Chile is the country to watch next, with a growing crime issue and elections next year.
FILE PHOTO: Palestinian employees at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) prepare food aid rations for refugees, in Gaza city on January 19, 2022
Hard Numbers: Alt-aid for Gaza, 2024 economic outlook, Continent-sized drug racket busted, Stolen bear on the loose
30 million: Canada has made a new pledge to send nearly $30 million in aid to Gaza. The move comes after Canada followed the US lead in cutting funding to UNRWA, the UN relief agency, in light of Israeli accusations that members of the organization had participated in the Oct. 7 attacks. According to the last full year of data, in 2022 Canada gave about $24 million to UNRWA. The new batch of Canadian aid will be delivered by other UN agencies such as UNICEF, the UN Population Fund, and the World Health Organization. (What’s UNRWA and why is it controversial? Read our explainer here.)
1.4: The IMF’s latest forecasts see Canada’s economy expanding by 1.4% this year, good for second place in the G7’s league of wealthy democracies. The top spot goes to the US, which is expected to grow 2.1% in 2024. Behind Canada, France is in third place at 1%.
19: The US this week charged 19 people from the US, Canada, and Mexico with running a pan-North American drug trafficking scheme involving as much as $28 million worth of methamphetamines, cocaine, and fentanyl, destined chiefly for the streets of Canada. A dozen of the suspects have been arrested, and the others remain at large.
500: Speaking of criminals at large, Canadians, please keep an eye out for anyone trying to sell you a 500-pound taxidermied polar bear. You can’t miss it: It’s 12 feet tall and frozen forever in a “scary roaring bear” pose. Again, it weighs 500 pounds. It was stolen from a resort in Edmonton last month in a rash of taxidermy heists valued at more than $25,000.US ships during an underway replenishment in the Philippine Sea. January 19, 2023.
Hard Numbers: US camps in Philippines, Malaysia may nix death penalty, Bulgaria’s close vote, Burkina Faso vs. journalists, hungry as a bear in Japan
4: On Monday, the Philippine government confirmed the location of four new military camps that will indefinitely host rotating US forces, despite China’s opposition. The new encampments, which were announced last February, place US forces closer to Taiwan and key trade routes in the South China Sea, where China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.
1,300: Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament approved a bill on Monday to abolish mandatory death sentences, possibly sparing over 1,300 death row inmates. If the bill passes the upper house as expected and gets the king’s signature, it will mean capital punishment is no longer obligatory for crimes like murder and drug trafficking.
5: So far, it’s a dead-heat in Bulgaria’s parliamentary election, the 5th in two years, between center-right PM Boyko Borisov and liberal ex-PM Kiril Petkov. Corruption and inflation were the top concerns for voters in the former Soviet ally, which has struggled to form a durable ruling coalition in recent years. Final results are expected later this week.
2: Burkina Faso’s military junta has expelled two French reporters in its crackdown on journalists. The junta, which seized power in a coup last September (the country’s second in 2022), has not offered an official reason for the move, but it comes after one of the journalist’s publications investigated the execution of children inside military barracks in the northern part of the conflict-plagued West African country.
17: Japanese bear encounters have been on the rise in the wild … and at dinner. A new vending machine in Semboku, northern Japan, is clawing a profit by selling wild bear meat for $17 (2,200 yen) per 250 g. It’s proving so popular that the operator is getting mail-order requests from as far away as Tokyo.Members of parliament hold placards after the result of the vote on the first motion of no-confidence against the French government at the National Assembly in Paris, France, March 20, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Slim win for Macron, protests in South Africa, Trump’s legal woes, Colombia peace collapsing?
Macron’s narrow escape
It came down to the wire, but Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in France’s National Assembly on Monday, with 278 voting to topple the government, nine votes shy of the threshold needed to pass.
Quick recap: The motion was triggered after Macron used a constitutional provision last week -- bypassing a vote in the lower house -- to pass a controversial pension reform despite weeks of protests (more on that here).
Not only do 70% of French adults abhor Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 by 2030 – which he says is necessary to plug the growing debt hole – but the French electorate, which has long had a libertarian streak, is also furious that the government used what it says is an anti-democratic loophole to pass the measure.
Macron’s troubles are only just beginning. Hundreds were arrested in Paris over the weekend and on Monday as anti-government protests turned violent and smelly. Unions have called for nationwide demonstrations and strikes in a bid to pressure the government to roll back the measures (which will never happen).
Prime Minister Élizabeth Borne will likely take the fall and resign. Still, Macron, already unpopular before this debacle, will emerge a diminished political figure. After previously saying he understood that people were “tired of reforms which come from above,” it will be very hard for the ideological chameleon to regain the trust of vast swathes of the population.
South Africa’s day of demonstrations
Amid rolling blackouts and a slumping economy, the Marxist-linked Economic Freedom Fighters Party called for a national day of protests Monday, putting law enforcement on high alert.
The EFF, the country’s third-largest party led by longtime leader Julius Malema, is largely backed by poor Black South Africans, many of whom live in townships, as well as younger voters who feel they haven't benefited from the ruling African National Congress Party’s tenure in the post-apartheid era. Indeed, around one-third of South Africans are out of work and the economy is slated to grow by just 0.3% in 2023, down from 2.5% in 2022.
President Cyril Ramaphosa mobilized more than 3,000 troops nationwide in anticipation of mass protests. But turnout was lower than expected, prompting Malema to claim that the government was blocking buses transporting protesters.
The EFF “will still claim the wall-to-wall media coverage around the protests as a victory,” says Ziyanda Sturrman, a South Africa expert at Eurasia Group.
None of this is good news for Ramaphosa, who, after a series of political scandals, looks set to lose his parliamentary majority in next year’s general election. Still, Stuurman notes that if the ANC falls just below the 50% threshold, several small parties have already put their hands up to join an ANC-led coalition.
Trump vs. prosecutors
Former US President Donald Trump faces possible legal challenges on multiple fronts. The state of New York could charge him with fraud for alleged hush money payments to a porn star. The Justice Department could charge him with many suspected crimes related to efforts to overthrow the result of the 2020 election as well as the misuse of hundreds of classified documents recovered by the FBI from his Florida home. Prosecutors in Georgia could charge him with election fraud as part of his alleged effort to overturn that state’s 2020 election result.
If Trump is indicted, he’ll likely present himself for charges, while also calling for protests. He would then be released on bond pending trial, and it’s unlikely that any trial in any of these potential cases would take place in 2023.
Trump would continue his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. There’s nothing in the US Constitution to prevent him from being elected president. His fate would remain with voters. If elected, his presidency would begin in court. In theory, a president could pardon himself for federal crimes. That would have to be tested. But no president can pardon state-level crimes, like those he might be charged with in New York and Georgia. In short, prosecutors and Trump may be about to steer American politics into uncharted waters.
Colombia: Is Petro’s “total peace” going to pieces?
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro took office last year pledging to reach a negotiated “total peace” with the country’s various armed and criminal groups. But on Monday that strategy took a big hit when he was forced to suspend a three-month-old ceasefire with the fearsome Clan del Golfo (Gulf Clan), the Andean region’s most powerful narco-trafficking outfit. The Clan had allegedly attacked an aqueduct and opened fire on police officers.
The move puts Petro in a tough spot — ramping up military action risks escalating a conflict he was elected in part to end peacefully. But allowing cartels to run riot isn’t an option either.
The setback comes amid a broader season of discontent for Petro: a corruption investigation of his son, the departure of several key coalition ministers, and an approval rating that is net-negative barely six months since he took office.
Petro, a former guerilla who is the country’s first left-wing president, has made an effort to build bridges across the political spectrum so far. But his critics worry that if the going gets tougher, he might resort to a more populist style that could be explosive in a country as polarized as Colombia.
How to solve Colombia's cocaine problem
According to a 2022 White House report, during the pandemic, coca cultivation and production in Colombia reached a record 245,000 hectares and 1,010 metric tons. In an exclusive interview with GZERO World, Colombia's new president, Gustavo Petro, said that enough is enough.
“It's shameful that just because we are the producers of the coca leaf or cocaine we’ve believed that we must silence ourselves and accept the policies of world powers in this regard, even though they are totally wrong. This must end.”
Key to curbing Colombia’s drug problem, Petro explains, is reassessing the Colombia-US relationship.
The Biden administration has already signaled to Petro that they know the War on Drugs has failed. But both nations, Petro argues, must stop viewing the jungle as “the enemy.” Only then can there be progress.