Reaching for the faucet felt like a frustrating game of chance for Elizabeth Robles.

 

At first, water flowed only one or two days a week, so Robles, president of her homeowners’ association, hired trucks to fill the building’s underground storage tank. With self-imposed rationing, the residents had water — but only for an hour, three times each day.

 

“When you get home at five in the afternoon all sweaty, you couldn’t take a shower,” said Robles, a small business owner and lawyer. “It’s like punishment by water.”

 

Finally they were fed up. Since the government couldn’t provide water, they decided to drill their own well alongside their apartment building in the tony Campo Alegre neighborhood, an increasingly popular solution among the well-to-do as Venezuela’s water system crumbles along with its socialist-run economy.

Venezuela’s meltdown has been accelerating under President Nicolas Maduro’s rule, prompting masses of people to abandon the nation in frustration at shortages of food and medicine, street violence, rampant blackouts — and now sputtering faucets.

Robles said she and her neighbors hired a drilling firm in February for $7,000 — roughly $280 per family. At least three other buildings on their tree-lined street, which is near the city’s most-exclusive country club, have hired the same engineer.

The firm moves its crew and towering yellow rig from one work site to the next. The noisy diesel-powered machine clatters around the clock for several days until the drill strikes water, generally about 260 feet (80 meters) down.

Meanwhile, the less fortunate struggle with dwindling public water supplies, hoping sporadic flows will fill their 150-gallon (560-liter) plastic storage tanks fitted with buzzing electric pumps. Or they stand in line at trickling hillside springs to fill up empty jugs for free. 

“Sometimes your dirty clothes pile up,” said Carlos Garcia, an unemployed construction worker who used up eight hours one day filling containers at a spring.

 

Neighborhood water shortages have sparked more than 400 protests countrywide in the first five months of the year, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict.

Caracas once had a world-class water system, pumping water from far-off reservoirs over towering mountains into the valley that cradles the city. Now its pipes are bursting, pumps are failing and a small herd of cattle grazes at the bottom of the Mariposa reservoir outside the city, feeding on grass that should be deep underwater.

 

A lack of rain compounds the lack of maintenance, experts say.

 

Jose Maria de Viana, former president of Caracas’ state-run water provider, Hidrocapital, blames incompetence, and dismisses the government’s explanation that the rainy season has been slow to kick off and replenish drained reservoirs. The system was designed to see the city through dry spells, he said.

“Without staying on top of the problems every day, we’ll have less and less water in the city,” De Viana said. “We’ll only have more protesting and rage.”

 

Officials at Hidrocapital and Venezuela’s Ecosocialism and Water Ministry did not respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.

 

Well driller Fernando Gomez at the firm Venezuela Pump Engineering said calls have spiked in the last two months from people desperate for water. The phone rings four or five times a day, compared to one or two calls a week a year ago. He said the company’s single drilling rig doesn’t get a rest.

 

“Everybody in the world wants it now,” Gomez said.

 

Even the U.S. Embassy has drilled its own well in case the city supply fails.

 

Most of the private wells are going in illegally. The law requires a permit before drilling starts, but the paperwork can take up to two years, and few are willing to wait. When officials stick their nose in, a building’s residents ask the best-connected among them to pull strings.

 

But drilling isn’t an option for the vast majority of Venezuelans who have seen wages pulverized by a collapsing currency and five-digit inflation. The minimum wage amounts to less than $2 a month.

Down a maze of narrow passageways in Petare, one of Venezuela’s most sprawling slums, Carmen Rivero said water is a source of celebration when it flows, and anger when it doesn’t — which is most of the time. She said the neighborhood recently went three months without tap water, and before that, a full eight months. Residents get by filling water barrels from a spring and service from city water trucks.

 

One night recently, a surprise surge of water made her neighborhood break out in joy. “Everybody shouted, ‘Ay, the water came!'” said Rivero, who rushed to a spigot in her home.

 

She filled up blue tub, like an oversized children’s swimming pool, which hogs the corner of her small concrete and red-brick shack.

 

Frustration over water recently erupted, driving residents into Petare’s streets in protest, some mothers carrying their children. Rivero said heavily armed national guard soldiers wearing riot gear met them, threatening arrest if they didn’t return home.

 

“You’re a human being, and you know we can’t do anything without water,” Rivero recalled telling a soldier. He replied that his family was just like hers, but he had to follow orders.
…

Days before Mexico’s presidential election on Sunday, the two mainstream candidates remain mired in a knock-down fight to be the second-place challenger to the anti-establishment favorite, hoping they can mount a last-minute surge.

For months, instead of focusing attacks on Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to diminish his double-digit lead, both Ricardo Anaya, of a right-left coalition, and the ruling party’s Jose Antonio Meade have targeted firepower on each other.

There is method to the apparent madness – in Mexico there is no run-off vote despite a multi-party system and second-placed candidates often rapidly gain ground in the final weeks of campaigning as voters tactically switch from obvious losers to stop their least favorite.

While third-time candidate Lopez Obrador has broadened his appeal during this campaign with a big tent approach and soothing words for markets, many Mexicans still see him as a populist who will unwind decades of free-market economic reforms in Latin America’s No. 2 economy.

Those are voters both Meade and Anaya are trying to draw into their camp in the final hours of the campaign.

“I will vote for whichever candidate who, even if they are not my favorite, can prevent the country from falling into the hands of populists manipulating fear,” said 70-year-old Guadalupe Rivero, a retired publicist.

But unlike other recent elections in Mexico, neither Anaya or Meade has broken away in opinion polls, leaving them in a technical tie, bogged down by mutual accusations of corruption and crony capitalism.

Lock him up

Just last week, Mexico’s political rumor mill was in overdrive ahead of a news conference by Anaya’s campaign.

Many were expecting the 39-year-old to follow up on allegations of crony capitalism against Lopez Obrador he made during the last debate.

But, instead, his team said they were demanding an investigation into Meade for signing contracts given to a unit of Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht, which is embroiled in corruption charges in several countries. Meade denies wrongdoing.

Leading an alliance between his National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), Anaya has sought to capitalize on public anger over corruption.

He has painted himself as an “intelligent change” in contrast with what he says are Lopez Obrador’s outdated ideas.

At campaign events that look like Silicon Valley product launches, he pledged to transform Mexico from a manufacturing-based economy by creating “knowledge-based” jobs.

“This election is between just two: between Ricardo Anaya and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. And the people know that,” said Salomon Chertorivski, Anaya’s top economic adviser.

However, growing momentum behind Anaya early this year was derailed by reports of an investigation by authorities into alleged money laundering surrounding a land deal by Anaya in his home state of Queretaro.

“They were very effective attacks,” said Guillermo Valdes, from political consultancy GEA.

Anaya denied any wrongdoing, and, accusing the government and Meade of a smear campaign, went on the counter attack.

He moved to out-do Lopez Obrador’s anti-corruption platform by pledging to set up a truth commission to investigate graft during Pena Nieto’s administration.

During the final TV debate in June, Anaya turned to Meade, saying: “With all that you and the government have invested in false news, in attacking me, maybe you can convince people.”

“But let it be very clear: if you do not succeed and I’m president, you’re going to face justice.”

Citizen Meade

Former Finance Minister Meade was chosen by the ruling party as a clean face to head its re-election bid.

Having served in the cabinet of President Enrique Nieto and his PAN predecessor Felipe Calderon, Meade is respected by the technocrat wings of both parties.

Meade is not a member of the PRI, and he has projected himself as irreproachably honest and the only candidate capable of maintaining hard-won economic stability.

His early campaign failed to ignite when he embarked on a tour of PRI strongholds, cozying up with leaders synonymous with allegations of corruption that have dogged the party.

After months in third place, recent polls show him gaining some ground and being technically tied with Anaya. PRI leaders insist that their party is Mexico’s only national force with a well-oiled machine that can turn out the vote.

Meade is mounting “a last-minute surge that has an outside, but real chance of winning,” said Luis Madrazo, a senior member of Meade’s campaign.
…

As Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos prepares to step down, he says he’s confident that his crowning achievement — the peace deal with leftist rebels that brought him a Nobel Peace Prize — will survive despite sharp criticism of it by the man now coming into office.

“The accord is bulletproofed,” Santos told the Associated Press in an interview Monday at the presidential palace, which in six weeks he’ll hand over to incoming President Ivan Duque.

“Just the fact that Timochenko voted for the first time, as ex-commander of the FARC and now head of a political party, shows that the accord worked,” he said, referring to the former leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, several of whose former rebels will be sitting in Congress next month when Santos delivers his final address to the legislature.

He also noted that the country’s constitutional court has ruled it’s binding on the next three governments.

Santos, 66, won international praise for signing a peace agreement with leftist rebels to end five decades of conflict that left an estimated 260,000 dead and 7 million displaced.

However, he’s not seen as a prophet at home, where he faces decidedly dismal approval ratings and sharp polarization over his pursuit of peace. A recent poll found about 20 percent of Colombians approve of his performance.

Challenges ahead

Santos leaves Duque a string of challenges, among them a rise in criminal activity in areas vacated by the FARC that fueled a record boom in cocaine production last year, according to a White House report released Monday. He’ll also have to contend with a political and economic crisis in neighboring Venezuela that has led more than 1 million migrants to flee their homes for Colombia, putting added stress on the country’s already overburdened health and welfare services.

But by far the biggest challenge — and opportunity — is implementation of the 310-page peace accord. While some 7,000 fighters have already surrendered their weapons and are making the transition to civilian life, what Santos calls the “ambitious” portion of the 2016 accord — efforts to bring development to Colombia’s long-neglected countryside — is just getting under way and faces a budgetary as well as security constraints.

Many Colombians believe Santos offered far too generous terms for former guerrillas behind scores of atrocities. His successor, Duque, has vowed to “correct” the accord, starting with rolling back the rights of former rebel commanders to occupy seats in Congress even before they confess their crimes and provide reparations to victims.

This week, on his instructions, his party blocked passage of a law essential for special peace tribunals to start hearing testimony from former combatants, prompting a standoff with Santos and putting at risk the accord’s promise of justice for victims.

Santos said he’s never fixated on opinion polls, saying he’s following the example of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to do what’s right by his country even if it’s unpopular. Still, with time, he said he hoped Colombians will remember him as someone who worked tirelessly to promote peace and modernize a country long beset by poverty, political violence and one of the world’s highest rates of inequality.

“This accord wasn’t made for the FARC, it was made for the local communities,” he said. “These are extensive areas of the country that were totally abandoned for more than 50 years and sooner or later the state had to arrive there.” 

Call for unity

Duque worked for Santos two decades ago, first as an employee of his Good Government Foundation and then as an aide in the finance ministry whom he endorsed for a job at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington. Santos described his successor as smart and someone with sound judgment.

He’s hopeful Duque’s reputation for pragmatism will prevail over calls from hardliners within his Democratic Center party to tear up the accord, and said he was heartened by Duque’s call on election night for unity, something that proved elusive during his presidency.

“If he manages to achieve that it will be very positive,” he said of Duque’s pledge to turn the page on years of bitter polarization. “The country needs it.”

But if Duque does try to change the accord, he’s likely to confront stiff political and legal obstacles that will leave him little room to maneuver, Santos said. They include a fragmented Congress, overwhelming international support for the deal and a ruling by the constitutional court that the accord is binding on the next three governments.

“I told the president-elect that if there are proposals that improve the accord and that can be reached by consensus then they are very welcome,” he said. “But what you can’t do is impose changes that alter the accord’s essence, among other reasons because it would require a constitutional reform.”

Retirement plans

Once he leaves the presidency on Aug. 7, Santos said he looks forward to spending time in Bogota with his newborn granddaughter, his first. He also has an invitation to work with Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate for economics, on issues of poverty reduction and plans to lecture internationally on his government’s efforts to promote peace and protect the environment from the effects of climate change.

Even though he’s vowed in retirement to stay out of Colombia’s rancorous political battles, he can’t resist one last piece of self-interested advice to Duque.

“If I were in the new president’s shoes, I’d focus on my other campaign promises,” Santos said. “The country has a lot of needs, a lot of challenges. He shouldn’t wear himself out on something that was already negotiated, that’s working and that everyone agrees is in the country’s best interests.”
…

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos on Tuesday authorized the use of drones to spray coca leaves at low altitude using the herbicide glyphosate as part of the Andean nation’s battle to eliminate the plant’s use in cocaine production.

Santos, who leaves office in August, approved the measure a day after the United States said Colombia’s coca cultivation had increased 11 percent to 209,000 hectares (516,450 acres) in 2017 and potential cocaine output had risen 19 percent to 921 metric tons a year.

Colombia, one of the world’s largest cocaine producers, suspended aerial spraying using glyphosate in 2015 after the World Health Organization linked it to cancer.

Glyphosate is a key ingredient in the world’s most widely used herbicide, Roundup, produced by Monsanto Co.

Santos’ decision was made at a meeting in Bogota of the National Narcotics Council, a government body that designs strategies to fight drug trafficking.

“Today we discussed the use of so-called drones, unmanned aircraft that due to their height simulate ground, not aerial, fumigation,” said Santos, who will be replaced by right-wing President-elect Ivan Duque.

Low-flying drones limit the dangers associated with glyphosate, Santos said, adding the government aims to eradicate 110,000 hectares (271,816 acres) of coca this year.

Colombia has been plagued by violence associated with drug trafficking for decades. Marxist rebel groups, right-wing paramilitaries and crime gangs make billions of dollars selling cocaine overseas.

The government signed a peace accord in late 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which was heavily involved in coca production and cocaine trafficking. Since the group demobilized, many new gangs have moved in and taken over its lucrative business and trafficking routes.

The United States, the main consumer of Colombian cocaine, supports the government’s fight against the illegal drug trade.

Between 2000 and 2015, Colombia received $10 billion for military and social programs, although aid has since been reduced to about $400 million annually.
…

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has arrived in Brazil for a Latin American trip expected to focus on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Venezuela.

Brazilian officials also want to discuss the separation of Brazilian children from parents who were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pence landed Tuesday in Brasilia, the capital of Latin America’s largest nation. Brazil’s Foreign Ministry has said the trip is important, but it’s unclear what can be achieved in discussions with Brazilian President Michel Temer. Temer is deeply unpopular and a lame duck ahead of October elections.

Still, the U.S. is hoping to persuade Brazil to do more to isolate the socialist government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro was re-elected last month in a vote condemned as illegitimate by the U.S. and others.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump says all illegal migrants should be deported immediately without a trial, as the border gets clogged with thousands of new arrivals, while the previous ones are still awaiting due process. The While House said Monday it is running out of resources to keep migrant families together until their cases are heard. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the administration is calling for a permanent solution to stop illegal immigration at the U.S. southern borders.
…

Historic levels of violent crime in Mexico have sparked a record increase in the country’s car-armoring business, with an industry group predicting a double-digit jump in the number of vehicles bulletproofed this year.

There were more than 25,000 murders across Mexico last year, the highest annual tally since modern records began, government data shows, with 2018 on track to be even worse.

That insecurity will help drive a 10 percent rise in car-armoring services this year to 3,284 cars, above the previous all-time high in 2012, according to the Mexican Automotive Armor Association (AMBA).

That figure is small relative to the 15,145 cars armored in 2017 in Brazil, which expects to see a 25 percent jump this year.

Demand in Mexico has grown so strong that more global automakers have started bulletproofing cars on their own Mexican production lines as opposed to the usual practice of after-market armoring.

Audi began making an armored version of its Q5 light sport utility vehicle exclusively in the central state of Puebla in mid-2017 for local sale and export to Brazil and Argentina. The company declined to give recent sales figures.

Audi’s Mexico arm said its factory-made armored Q5, which cost $87,000 locally, was cheaper for consumers than using an after-market firm, which one industry expert estimated would boost the car’s cost to more than $95,000 and void the factory guarantee.

BMW, Jeep and Mercedes-Benz have made armored cars in Mexico for several years.

After being assaulted and robbed multiple times in recent years, Arturo Avila, who owns a security company, now only travels in armored cars to traverse the streets of Mexico City.

“One of the crimes that hurts us most is kidnapping, that’s what we’re afraid of,” he said, adding he changed his car every two years.

About 1.5 million cars were sold in Mexico in 2017, but just a tiny portion were armored, since the cars remain a luxury for the affluent and for companies that require executives to travel in bulletproof vehicles with bodyguards, said Avila.

Those companies include Mexico’s largest banks and multinationals like Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Both companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mexican security companies have also expanded rental and leasing offerings, services that are increasingly popular.

About 80 percent of armored car providers’ business is in the private sector, which seeks to protect executives and their families, with the rest from government.
…

To treat snake bites, bathe in a tea brewed from yellow button-shaped flowers, advises Melissa Espinoza Paez as she describes the medicinal properties of Costa Rica’s jungle plants, pointing out towering vines used to combat kidney problems.

In the lush mountains close to the Panama border that make up the Bribri indigenous territory, Espinoza hopes the country’s first certified indigenous tour agency can deliver a bigger slice of income from ecotourism directly to local women.

“When other agencies brought tourists to our territory, sometimes they’d give a small amount to the people here, but it wasn’t really the value of their work,” said Espinoza, 38, indicating a green dart frog trying to hide in the undergrowth.

“We’re giving a tourism experience that is truly cultural… We are trying to live a more dignified life,” she said at the Siwakabata farm near Bribri town, some 220 km (140 miles) southeast of the capital San Jose.

Based in Talamanca canton, one of the poorest in Costa Rica, the recently licensed Talamanca Indigenous Bribri Tour Guides Association (AGITUBRIT) wants to ensure the financial benefits start to trickle down to local families, said Espinoza.

Alongside medicinal plant and gastronomy tours, hiking, jungle and river trips are run through a network of indigenous guides who stamp their cultural identity on the expeditions.

Costa Rican tourists, who often have little knowledge of indigenous culture, as well as Europeans, have so far made up the visitors who come to find out more about the relatively isolated Bribri people.

Tourists often stay with local families in thatched wooden houses to absorb Bribri traditions and learn the language, while some make appointments with traditional doctors who prescribe plant-based medicines.

Home to dense jungles and cloud forests teeming with wildlife, Costa Rica has become one of the world’s best-known ecotourism destinations. A quarter of its territory is now national parks or protected reserves.

But while ecotourism offers an incentive to protect the biodiversity that pulls in visitors, there has been less success in channeling benefits to those who provide services and protect the local environment, say some in the industry.

“The tourism sector in general is still learning how to deal with the social factors,” said Saul Blanco Sosa, a sustainable tourism specialist with the Rainforest Alliance conservation group. “Dealing with people is more complicated than dealing with natural reserves.”

Tour companies need to think about ways to become more socially responsible and inclusive, and avoid disrupting communities with their activities, he added.

Culture Crash Course

Ecotourism ranks as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global travel market, and is worth around $100 billion a year, according to a 2017 report by the U.N. World Tourism Organization and United Nations Development Program.

The World Travel & Tourism Council says about 13 percent of Costa Rica’s gross domestic product comes from tourism, which is expected to employ 265,000 people directly and indirectly in 2018 to deal with its 3 million annual visitors.

Tourists have long come inland from Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast to explore the mountains, swim in waterfalls or float in long wooden canoes along the rivers lacing the Bribri territory.

But by the time middlemen have taken a hefty slice of their money, little is left for local people offering trips or cultural demonstrations, said Espinoza, who is learning English to help bring in more international tourists.

Guides from outside the area explaining the Bribri’s spirituality and strong connection with nature usually just learn their spiel from a book or the internet, she added.

“We live it, we feel it – but for the others, it’s just about money,” said Nora Paez Mayorga, who helps runs the 15-hectare (37-acre) Siwakabata agro-ecology project with her daughter Melissa.

No Jobs

For many women living in Costa Rica’s remote southeast corner with few formal qualifications, jobs other than raising chickens or growing crops such as plantain are hard to come by.

Younger people often have little choice but to head to San Jose to find work, said Paez, as she served up fried pastries and mugs of bitter chocolate drink.

Alongside its eight guides, the tour organization works with about 40 women from local indigenous communities. Some are employed at Siwakabata to cook for visitors, while others come to sell handicrafts, clothes, fruit and chocolate.

Demonstrating how to remove cacao seeds from their padded pods, dry and toast them on an open stove before grinding them to a paste, Basilia Jackson Jackson said she was looking to attract tourists to her home village of Coruma two hours away.

Growing bananas and cacao, her family’s fortunes depend on the prices set by buyers, she explained, turning the wheel of a metal grinder.

“We’ve never dealt with tourists, we’re just getting involved with it… we could have a little bit more income – it wouldn’t be much, but it would help the family,” said Jackson, who traveled to Siwakabata with her daughter Flor. “In this area, we don’t have much work. Between women, we’ve got to get organized to see how we can help each other.”

Espinoza, who left to work in a factory in San Jose before returning to study and finally helping set up AGITUBRIT, is optimistic the agency will prove invaluable in strengthening the position of local women while protecting their culture.

“As indigenous women from here, we know what we need. We can help each other to develop this project – valuing, maintaining and respecting our world view and our culture,” said Espinoza.
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Leading presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would seek to increase investor confidence in Mexico to strengthen the peso and could hold auctions of oil rights, a top adviser said on Monday, striking a moderate tone days before the election.

Leftist Lopez Obrador is leading ahead of Sunday’s vote and Alfonso Romo, his top business adviser, told reporters a Lopez Obrador government will do everything it can – short of intervention – to help the peso.

Romo, Lopez Obrador’s nominee for chief of staff, said his government would seek to strengthen the rule of law and create business conditions that would give investors confidence in order to support the Mexican currency.

He echoed other advisers, saying Lopez Obrador would respect the independence of the central bank.

Mexico’s peso sank to a 1-1/2 year low this month, hit by a broad dollar rally, a deadlock in talks to rework the NAFTA trade deal and nervousness ahead of the election.

Lopez Obrador, 64, is an anti-system third-time presidential candidate who promises to clean up corruption. Some of his proposals, such as suspending oil auctions, have unnerved investors.

The former Mexico City mayor holds a commanding double-digit lead in all major opinion polls, although one survey on Monday showed his lead narrowing slightly, to 12 points.

Romo sought to calm any jitters on Monday, saying there could be more auctions of oil drilling rights as long as a review of contracts that have already been awarded to private companies showed no problems.

“We will revise them and everything good will remain,” he said, noting Lopez Obrador had taken the same message to investors in New York.

Romo said such a review should be finished quickly, ideally by October, during the transition period before Mexico’s next president takes office in December.

Romo said he felt “at ease” with what he had reviewed so far regarding the landmark energy opening under current President Enrique Pena Nieto.
…

The bodies of two Ecuadorean journalists and their driver, killed two months ago while being held captive by Colombian insurgents, have been found and identified, Colombia’s Attorney General Nestor Humberto Martinez said on Monday.

El Comercio reporter Javier Ortega, photographer Paul Rivas and driver Efrain Segarra were killed in April after being kidnapped by the Oliver Sinisterra front – a faction of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas that refused to adhere to a 2016 peace agreement with the government.

A captured member of the rebel group provided the location – in the inhospitable jungles area of southern Tumaco, police sources said, and a fourth body found with the media team is thought to be a dissident.

“Relatives have been informed that the bodies belong to the three Ecuadorian journalists,” Martinez told reporters in the city of Cali.

The three men disappeared on March 26 while reporting in the border area of the two Andean countries, a notorious region for drug traffickers, crime gangs and rebels. A proof-of-life photograph released shortly after their kidnapping showed them chained and padlocked by their necks.

Both Ecuador and Colombia offered rewards of $100,000 for information leading to the capture of alleged faction leader Walter Artizala, known by his alias “Guacho,” and stepped up military activity in the area.

The dissidents alleged in a statement after the journalists’ death that they were killed during a rescue attempt, but Colombia denied such an attempt was made.

Some 1,200 FARC fighters refused to demobilize under the peace deal and have continued with drug trafficking activities.

Those operating in Colombia’s southern jungles have repeatedly attacked Ecuadorean security forces along the border.

Ecuadorean President Lenin Moreno pulled his country’s support for peace talks between Colombia and remaining rebel group the National Liberation Army (ELN) shortly after the journalists’ deaths, saying Ecuador could not back the discussions while the guerrillas continue to wage attacks.

The talks were relocated to Cuba.
…