Brazilians are split on a proposed overhaul of the country’s pension system, a poll showed on Tuesday, while most said they approve of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s performance.

In one of the first major surveys since Bolsonaro’s Jan. 1 inauguration, 45.6 percent of respondents said they disapprove of the proposed pension reform, while 43.4 percent said they approve. The rest said they did not know or did not respond.

It was the first time a poll, conducted by the MDA institute and commissioned by the CNT transportation lobby, directly asked respondents if they approved of pension reform.

Other polls in the past year have shown large swings in voter opinion on pension reform, from over two-thirds against to figures in line with the MDA survey.

Bolsonaro’s proposal to address a widening pension deficit by raising taxes, delaying retirements and creating individual savings accounts is the cornerstone of his economic agenda.

Last week, the president delivered his proposal to Congress, aiming to save over 1 trillion reais ($266 billion) in the next decade. Most economists agree the system must be overhauled to shore up public finances and foster growth.

On Bolsonaro’s popularity, 57.5 percent approved of his performance, while 28.2 percent disapproved and 14.3 percent did not offer an opinion.

In the survey, 38.9 percent said Bolsonaro’s government was “good” or “excellent,” 29 percent said it was “regular” and 19 percent said it was “bad” or “terrible.”

MDA surveyed 2,002 Brazilians between Feb. 21 and 23. The poll has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points.

 
…

A resumption of talks over Nicaragua’s political standoff has raised hopes among those who believe it could help resolve the nearly year-old crisis and also caused some division among opponents to Daniel Ortega, with some saying they fear it could give “oxygen” to the embattled president. 

The Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference has said it will participate as an observer in the talks that open Wednesday, while the government has yet to say whether Ortega or his wife, the powerful Vice President Rosario Murillo, will take part. 

Nor has a time or location been made public, though speculation has centered on the headquarters of the Central American Institute for the Administration of Businesses, about 10 miles (15 kilometers) south of the capital, Managua. It’s a school where young people receive business training, and student leaders sought refuge from police there during 2018’s deadly protests. 

“We are all going to meet in reconciliation and in affection,” Murillo said Monday in one of her frequent appearances on official television. The official website El 19 said the talks would be between the government and the private business sector. 

Ortega, a 73-year-old former guerrilla, announced last week that negotiations would take place “to consolidate peace,” and the opposition group Civic Alliance said soon after that its delegation would comprise six businesspeople, two students, two academics, a politician and a feminist lawyer. 

But that brought criticism from others in the opposition, in part because it did not include a farmworkers’ movement that supported the student protests last year. Three of its leaders were given lengthy prison sentences related to their rural protests the same day Ortega announced the talks. 

Other criticisms called for greater participation by students and women  — the lawyer and one of the students are the only female opposition representatives to the talks, and both of them substitutes. 

The opposition coalition said it will have four primary demands: the release of some 770 people it considers political prisoners; restoration of media freedoms following a crackdown on journalists and outlets critical of the president; electoral reform and an earlier date for elections now scheduled for 2021; and a plan to seek justice for protesters killed in the government crackdown, who number about 325 according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 

Those demands are widely shared across the opposition spectrum, but many say they should be preconditions for sitting down with the government rather than points of negotiation. 

“Public freedoms and human rights are nonnegotiable,” Vilma Nunez, president of the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights and a former official in Ortega’s first Sandinista government from 1979 to 1990, told The Associated Press. “The government must respect them because they are principles established in the constitution.”

“You have to give the dialogue a chance, but we have our reservations,” she continued. “I think the Alliance acted hastily by accepting a negotiation, and that creates suspicions.” 

Nunez said she doesn’t believe Ortega is approaching the dialogue in good faith and fears he will use the talks to buy time and “perpetuate himself in power.” 

Unlike in the previous talks, Roman Catholic officials will only be “witnesses,” and Bishop Silvio Baez, auxiliary bishop in Managua and one of the church’s most fervent voices in opposition to Ortega, will not take part. 

Members of the Committee on Political Prisoners demanded they be allowed representation. 

“Our children must be released before Wednesday. They are not a bargaining chip,” said Carlos Silva, the father of a prisoner accused of “terrorism” for helping during the protests to tear down one of the symbolic “trees of life” sculptures that Murillo put up across Managua. 

The protests that spurred the deadly crackdown last year by security forces and armed, pro-Ortega civilian groups have all but died out. But tensions remain, with hundreds of people behind bars, many more in hiding or in exile and government opponents denouncing ongoing persecution.

Nicaraguan media reported on Monday that the dead body of Bryan Aburto had been discovered. The 18-year-old student took part in the demonstrations and had fled to neighboring Costa Rica before returning to Nicaragua a week ago. 

Civic Alliance leaders say Ortega is coming to the table weakened and hopes to burnish his image and avoid further sanctions from international organizations at a time when key ally Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is under pressure from the region and beyond. 

Ortega and allies in Nicaragua are also under threat of tough financial sanctions from the United States and the European Union. 

“We will accompany you step by step,” Luis Carrion, a former Sandinista commander who broke with Ortega, said in an open letter to the Civic Alliance, “but we will also ask for accountability and demand that you respond to the confidence we are entrusting with you.”
…

Mexico’s president on Tuesday said he would not take sides on the crisis in Venezuela, a day after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence urged Mexico to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s rightful president.

A political and economic crisis in Venezuela reached a new pitch last month when Guaido, president of the country’s National Assembly, declared himself interim president in opposition to the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

“I don’t want to get involved in this, it’s quite clear,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters at his regular morning news conference. “Mexico will respect the decision taken by other people, by other governments.”

Guaido has been backed by the United States and several European powers, but the leftist Lopez Obrador has repeatedly refused to add Mexico’s name to the list of his supporters.

Asked if he would back Guaido after Pence’s remarks on Monday, Lopez Obrador urged all sides in Venezuela to seek a peaceful solution to the crisis and said the United Nations should help resolve a dispute over humanitarian aid.

 “We don’t want to take sides,” he said later.

Lopez Obrador was also asked to comment on the brief detention in Venezuela’s presidential palace of Mexican-born Univision anchor Jorge Ramos and his team on Monday.

“I voice my solidarity with him from here. What I don’t want to do is get involved in a matter which is highly polarized,” he said, adding that he supported the Mexican foreign ministry’s protest about the incident in the Miraflores palace.
…

In its efforts to slash its climate-changing emissions nearly to zero by 2050, Rio de Janeiro has chosen a perhaps unlikely place to start: its trash bins.

At a huge waste treatment plant outside of the famed beach city, methane gas released by buried municipal garbage is captured and turned into energy as part of the city’s key push to meet its ambitious goals to become carbon neutral.

Every day, trucks unload 10,000 tons of waste at the CTR waste treatment plant in Seropedica, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

The plant turns household and industrial food and yard waste, which once would have rotted in a landfill – creating a major source of climate-change-spurring emissions – into biogas that is sold to industries or to the state’s gas company.

The waste treatment plant, unusual in Latin America, can produce 20,000 cubic meters of purified gas an hour, according to Jose Henrique Monteiro Penido, the head of environmental sustainability at COMLURB, Rio’s waste management company.

“Everyone talks about recycling but the biggest environmental problem is the organic fraction of garbage,” he said.

Once in a landfill, rotting material releases methane that can, in the short term, drive climate change at a much faster pace than emissions from other sources, such as automobiles or air conditioners.

That gas, and the slurry left over from putrefying waste, “is the most serious problem,” Penido said.

Rio de Janeiro, part of the C40 Cities initiative – a network of cities pushing climate action – has committed to reducing its climate changing emissions by 20 percent between 2005 to 2020.

The city of about 6.7 million is also one of more than 70 cities worldwide that are aiming to become “carbon neutral” by 2050, meaning they will produce no more climate-changing emissions than they can offset by other means, such as planting carbon-absorbing trees.

Cities account for about three-quarters of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations, and consume more than two-thirds of the world’s energy.

That means whether they succeed or fail in curbing emissions will have a huge impact on whether the world’s goals to prevent the worst impacts of climate goals are met.

From planting trees to promoting renewable energy and cleaner methods of transport, such as electric cars and buses, each city is going about achieving its carbon neutral goals in different ways, and with varying degrees of success.

In Rio de Janeiro’s case, changes to waste treatment are responsible for about two-thirds of emissions reductions made so far, according to Jose Miguel Carneiro Pacheco, manager of climate change and sustainable development at the city’s department of conservation and environment.

Biogas production from the Seropedica plant alone accounts for a third of the reductions in emissions so far in Rio de Janeiro, Pacheco said.

Goals at risk?

Whether Rio de Janeiro will reach its emission reduction targets in full by 2020 is unclear – and the goal is at risk, officials and environmentalists say.

A lack of private investment and delays in large-scale public works have lowered the city government’s estimate of the emissions cuts possible by 2020 to 18 percent “if everything stays as it is”, Pacheco said.

The launch of an additional waste treatment center, for example, has been delayed, as has a new metro train line for the city, as well as installation of new high-capacity express bus lanes.

The 2020 targets could still be achieved, Pacheco said, but only if the delayed projects – or other efforts – push ahead, he said.

“We need to measure the emission reductions contained in the 2017-2020 strategic plan to see if we can achieve the remainder by 2020,” Pacheco said.

But the push for lower emissions comes as Rio struggles to recover from its worst financial crisis in decades, brought on in part by public corruption scandals and lower prices for its key export products, including oil.

That financial crunch has made efforts to attract private funding for clean energy projects and other emissions-reducing ideas harder, Pacheco said.

The city, for instance, failed to find a taker for a public tender to replace the city’s 430,000 street lights with energy-saving LED bulbs. It is now looking for a partner to install solar panels in about 1,500 schools, he said.

“The city’s economic situation is not favorable for these projects, which demand big investments,” he said.

Growing risks

Nationwide, environmentalists fear Brazil’s growing deforestation – a driver of climate change – will worsen under the right-leaning government of President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in January and has promised to open up more protected land for mining and agriculture.

Brazilians consider climate change the main threat to the country’s and the planet’s safety, above terrorism and the state of the economy, a 2017 study from the Washington-based Pew Research Center found.

For Mauro Pereira, executive director of the non-profit Defensores do Planeta, a youth-led environmental rights group based in Rio de Janerio, the city’s leaders are doing too little to keep pledges to curb emissions and ensure residents get a voice in decisions made.

“Until 2012, City Hall did well but not in the last years,” Pereira said in a telephone interview.

For instance, he said, when Rio hosted the 2016 summer Olympics, it had an agreement with the Olympic committee to plant 12 million tree seedlings in the city – and 24 million in the state as a whole – to compensate for the environmental impacts of the event.

But, to date, only about half of those – 5.5 million – have been planted in the city, Pereira said.

In a statement, Rio’s City Hall said it was “unaware” of the number cited by Defensores do Planeta and confirmed only a commitment to plant 13,500 trees in the Parque Radical de Deodoro park as an Olympic environmental legacy.

In addition, City Hall said the 24 million tree-planting target was proposed by the state of Rio de Janeiro but was re-evaluated and discarded after the state, the Olympic Committee and other bodies involved found that it was not feasible.

Pereira, however, said he had followed the negotiations for the Olympic games and that the targets were not dropped.

He said the city was doing well on some other environmental measures including improving waste treatment, adding bike lanes to curb emissions and installing solar energy in schools.

He said he was concerned about the effects of climate change in Rio, especially in its poorer areas, and urged city officials to carry out more risk assessments.

Almost every year, torrential rainstorms trigger fatal mudslides and flooding in mountaintop neighborhoods in and around Rio de Janeiro.

The flatter and largely poor zones to the west of downtown also face a growing heat threat, as climate change brings more extreme temperatures, he said.

“The West zone is very hot – 48, 49 degrees, and that’s in addition to torrential rains. We’re already worried about the rainy season from January onwards,” he said. “We just want City Hall to comply with its international agreements for the city to become an example for the world.”

 
…

Spanish-language U.S. television network Univision said a news team led by anchor Jorge Ramos was detained at the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Monday while interviewing President Nicolas Maduro.

The six-person team was held for more than two hours in the Miraflores palace after Maduro said he did not like the questions they asked him, Ramos told Univision by phone.

The veteran anchor said he asked Maduro about the lack of democracy in Venezuela, the torture of political prisoners and the country’s humanitarian crisis.

Ramos said Maduro stopped the interview after he showed the embattled leader a video of Venezuelan children eating from a garbage truck.

“They confiscated all our equipment,” Ramos told Univision in an interview. “They have the interview.”

In response to Univision’s claims, Venezuelan information minister Jorge Rodriguez said on Twitter the government had in the past welcomed hundreds of journalists to the Miraflores presidential palace, but it did not support “cheap shows” put on with the help of the U.S. Department of State.

Univision and the U.S. Department of State called on Maduro to release the journalists after Ramos rang the network to say they had been detained.

Maduro conducted interviews with U.S. media networks on Monday as the U.S. government targeted Venezuela with new sanctions and called on allies to freeze assets of its state-owned oil company PDVSA.

The moves followed deadly violence at the weekend that blocked humanitarian aid from reaching the country.
…

The Lima Group said Monday it has “serious and credible threats” against the life of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Diplomats from 10 Lima Group countries meeting in Bogota said Monday they will hold Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro responsible if anything happens to Guaido or his family.

Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said “any violent actions against Guaido, his wife, or family” would be met by all “legal and political mechanisms.”

Guaido heads Venezuela’s National Assembly. He used his authority to invoke the constitution to declare Maduro’s leadership illegitimate because of election fraud and declare himself interim president.

The United States was the first to recognize Guaido as president, followed by about 50 other countries.

Lima Group members also want the International Criminal Court to declare Maduro’s refusal to let humanitarian aid into the country a “crime against humanity,” but ruled out the use of force to push Maduro out of office to make way for new elections.

“The transition to democracy must be conducted peacefully by Venezuelans within the framework of the constitution and international law, supported by political and diplomatic measures without the use of force,” it said in a statement.

But Guaido wants the international community to consider all options in dealing with Maduro.

“All political and diplomatic resources have been exhausted. Now, what can we do as a region in order to support Venezuela?” he told the Lima Group.

President Donald Trump has said all options are on the table, but he has not specified under what conditions he would send in the U.S.

Panama’s president Juan Carlos Valrela — recalling the 1989 U.S. invasion to oust dictator Manuel Noriega — said Monday he hopes it doesn’t come down to that in Venezuela.

“Let’s hope that the pressure of the international community, dialogue, and prudence will prevail. Although the circumstances are similar, we must have the capacity to find a solution different than the one used back then,” he said.

Sanctions

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was also in Bogota for Monday’s Lima Group meeting. He announced sanctions against four Venezuelan state governors who back Maduro.

Their U.S. assets are blocked, and U.S. citizens and firms are banned from doing business with them. Pence said there are more sanctions against the Maduro regime on the way.

“In the days ahead … the United States will announce even stronger sanctions on the regime’s corrupt financial networks. We will work with all of you to find every last dollar that they stole and work to return it to Venezuela,” he said.

Pence called on all Lima Group members to follow the United States and freeze assets Venezuela’s state-run oil company may have in their countries.

Pence also announced another $56 million in U.S. aid to Latin America countries who are taking care of the more than three million Venezuelans who have fled the country.

Humanitarian aid

Monday’s Lima Group meeting came after a violent weekend along Venezuela’s borders with Brazil and Colombia, where food, medicine, and other aid — much of it sent by the United States — is sitting in warehouses waiting to be delivered.

Maduro has refused to let the aid into the country, calling it the pretext for a U.S. invasion.

At one border point, aid trucks caught fire, leading the crowd to rush to save the boxes of food and medical supplies.

A U.S. State Department official traveling with the American and Brazilian aid convoy told VOA that two trucks crossed the border into Venezuela on Saturday, but were not allowed through the military checkpoint and turned back to the Brazilian side.

Maduro supporters fired bullets at those attempting to get aid trucks into Venezuela, while Venezuelan border troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

The support of the Venezuelan military is the key for Guaido to prevail or for Maduro to continue as Venezuelan president.

Pence has urged Venezuelan soldiers to place their loyalty behind the opposition.

“You can choose to accept President Guaido’s generous offer of amnesty, to live your life in peace with your families and countrymen. But if you choose the other path — continuing to support Maduro — you will ultimately be held accountable,” Pence said Monday.

Patsy Widakuswara and Brian Padden contributed to this report.
…

Costa Rica’s president has launched an economy-wide plan to decarbonize the country by 2050, saying the Central American nation aims to show other nations what is possible to address climate change.

Costa Rica’s environment minister, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, said that if the plan is achieved, his grandchildren in 2035 will have the same carbon footprint as his grandparents did in the 1940s — and by 2050 his grandchildren will have none at all.

“Not only are we going to reduce that footprint but we are going to bring many benefits with it,” Rodríguez said. But Jairo Quirós, an electrical energy researcher at the University of Costa Rica, warned the plan would be challenging, and “should be viewed with some caution.”

Under the roadmap launched Sunday, Costa Rica by 2050 would achieve “zero net emissions,” meaning it would produce no more emissions than it can offset through things such as maintaining and expanding its extensive forests.

Such emission cuts — which many countries are expected to try to achieve in the second half of the century — are key to holding increases in global temperature to well under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

The Costa Rica plan aims to allow the country to continue growing economically while cutting greenhouse gases. The country’s economy grew at 3 percent last year, according to World Bank data.

Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican former U.N. climate chief, called the goal “unprecedented” in international politics.

Only the government of the tiny Marshall Islands also has laid out a detailed plan to achieve that goal, but “they still do not have the whole plan articulated sector by sector,” Figueres said in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

President Carlos Alvarado noted that while Costa Rica represents only a tiny share of the world’s climate-changing emissions, the experiments tried in the plan could be a model for other nations.

“We can be that example… we have to inspire people,” he said at the plan’s launch, noting the country was “doing what’s right.”

But Quirós, of the University of Costa Rica, warned the plan will take hard work to achieve.

Some goals, he said, such as ensuring all buses and taxis run on electricity by 2050, may be difficult, not least because the changes will be expensive.

“Although one tends to see that (electric bus) prices are falling over time, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding that,” he said.

Green Transport

Transport today creates about 40 percent of Costa Rica’s climate-changing emissions, making it the main source of them, according to the National Meteorological Institute.

To cut transport emissions, the plan aims to modernize public transport, including through the creation of an electric train line.

The new line would connect 15 of the 31 neighborhoods in the San Jose metropolitan area and carry about 250,000 of the area’s 1 million people each day, according to the Costa Rican Institute of Railways.

Construction on the lines is expected to start in 2022, according to the institute.

“A modern and efficient public transport system has a much greater impact on achieving decarbonization than just electrifying our vehicle fleet,” said Claudia Dobles, the president’s wife and coordinator of the transport chapter of the plan.

Dobles, an architect and urban planner, has been coordinating many of the country’s public transport efficiency initiatives, including the electric train project and a reorganization of bus routes.

Under Costa Rica’s decarbonization plan, the number of cars circulating in urban areas would be cut by half by 2040, the environment minister said.

By 2035, 70 percent of the country’s buses would be electric and 25 percent of its cars, Rodríguez added.

Juan Ignacio Del Valle, director of operations for hydrogen-powered transport company Ad Astra Rocket Company, said the plan still needs work on some issues, such as cargo transport.

Technological innovation will be needed to achieve some of the goals, he said.

Ad Astra has been testing hydrogen fuel cell buses in Costa Rica for about eight years — a fuel switch that is “vaguely” contemplated in the new plan, Del Valle said.

Hydrogen transport will need more research, but it could prove the most efficient option in areas where electric vehicles fall short, including carrying cargo and for other heavy transport, he said.

Oil Revenue

For Costa Rica, the potential political battles around decarbonizing its economy are less than in many other countries because it does not have a fossil fuel extraction industry, Rodríguez said.

But dependence on oil revenue could still cause roadblocks for the switch. Fuel taxes, vehicle import taxes and driving taxes, for instance, account for about 12 percent of government revenue, the minister said.

To phase out fossil fuels without slashing government income, the government will need to push for “green tax reform” to find new revenue sources, he said — something that could take time, as it would need legislative approval.

Under the decarbonization plan, the country’s state-owned petroleum distributor would change course and begin research on alternative fuels, such as hydrogen and biofuels, and look at helping fossil fuel workers move to clean energy jobs.

The plan also calls for further expanding forests — though at the moment most of the money to pay for that comes from taxes on fossil fuels, Rodríguez admitted.

The country already has one of the region’s strongest reputations for forest protection.

“In the 1960s and 70s, Costa Rica had the highest per capita deforestation rate in the world. We have managed not only to stop deforestation but to double forest coverage” as the economy grew, Rodríguez said.

Forests that covered 25 percent of the country in the 1980s covered more than 50 percent of it by 2013, according to data from the State of the Nation report, assembled by the country’s public universities.

Over that period, the country’s GDP grew from $4 billion in 1983 to $57 billion in 2013.

Costa Rica has already carried out some of the needed decarbonization work, officials said.

Last year, 98 percent of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources, according to the Costa Rican Electricity Institute, the state-owned company in charge of electricity generation and distribution.

Quirós, the University of Costa Rica researcher, said the country’s plan, while “a little utopic” was clearly “a step in the right direction.”

“It’s good to be ambitious,” he said.

Figueres said she believed the the country faced a “hard task” achieving its ambitious aims, but predicted it would “lead to a transformation like no other we’ve seen in decades.”
…

The head of Mexico’s immigration agency says the country has received 112 Central American migrants from the United States, including 25 minors in a policy reversal

Mexico has accepted 112 Central American migrants from the United States, and they include 25 minors in a policy reversal, the head of Mexico’s immigration agency said Monday.  

Late last month, the U.S. launched the so-called “remain in Mexico” program negotiated with Mexico to make some asylum applicants wait in Mexico during the months and even years that it can take to resolve such cases.

17 families from 3 countries

National Immigration Institute Commissioner Tonatiuh Guillen had said last month that Mexico wouldn’t accept migrants younger than 18 while they await the resolution of their U.S. asylum claims. But Guillen said Monday that Mexico is accepting children who are accompanied by their parents, saying the numbers remain small.

Guillen said the 112 migrants sent back through Feb. 21 included 17 families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. The migrants return to Mexico through the El Chaparral crossing in Tijuana.

So far, there has been capacity to handle the returnees in Tijuana’s shelters, but Guillen said that “there’s a limit.”

Concerns with program

The U.S. has expressed interest in expanding the program to other ports of entry along the border, but so far it remains limited to Tijuana. Guillen believes the program’s expansion would draw more legal challenges in the U.S. alleging that it violates the due process of the asylum seekers or puts them in danger.

“The paradox is that by the same amount that the returns grow, so does the possibility that this program, which is the United States’, is unsuccessful — (that) the lawsuits that are already in their courts increase,” he said.

Guillen said Mexico is also taking steps to restrict the passage of large caravans of Central American migrants that drew U.S. attention last year. Central American migrants will now have to apply for Mexican humanitarian visas in their countries’ capitals rather than applying once they arrive in Mexico, he said.

Since late last year, Mexico has issued more than 15,000 “visitor cards for humanitarian reasons.” Giving them to a migrant who has already entered Mexico would be a rare exception now, Guillen said.

‘Regional visitor’

Those arriving at Mexico’s southern border now are more likely to be eligible for “regional visitor” permits or “border worker” permits that would require the migrants to stay in southern Mexico.

“Yes, we are trying to take more control,” Guillen said. “It’s not convenient for anyone to have these kinds of movements … We’re going to try to review closely the situation of each person. There are those who need humanitarian support, but there is also another group that has been very aggressive and doesn’t have the expected profile of those who are asking for help.” 

 

 
…

Coffee producers in Peru are abandoning their farms to work on plantations that grow coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, due to slumping coffee prices and delays in certifying organic beans, the country’s main coffee association said on Monday.

The group, the Junta Nacional del Cafe (JNC), said farmers starting migrating to drug-trafficking regions in December to work on coca plantations, where they can earn higher pay of between 70 and 120 soles ($21 and $36) per day.

The pace has picked up since then, with hundreds of farmers abandoning their coffee crops daily, the JNC said.

“Coffee … exports are in real trouble, and we lack the support of the government with clear actions to overcome them,” said the JNC’s head, Tomas Cordova. “This foments poverty, unemployment and the expansion of illegal crops.”

Devida, Peru’s anti-drug agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The trend would mark setback for efforts to combat drug trafficking in Peru, a leading producer.

Peru and the United States have spent years investing in programs aimed at helping coca farmers switch to alternative crops, mainly coffee and cacao. But potential cocaine production in Peru rose 20 percent to a 25-year high of 491 tonnes in 2017, according to a White House report in November.

Coca cultivation rose 14 percent to 49,900 hectares (123,300 acres) in 2017 as the price of coca leaf rose and eradication fell, according to a joint report in December by the United Nations and Devida.

The JNC called for the government of President Martin Vizcarra to do more to help coffee farmers keep up with global trends. It said that last year, sales of organic coffee in Germany were suspended pending certificates showing beans did had no traces of agrochemicals.

Last year, Peru produced 6 million 46-kilo bags of coffee, most of which was exported, JNC said.

While Peru’s coffee production lags behind neighboring Colombia and Brazil, it has carved out a niche as an organic producer.
…

Vice President Mike Pence is en route to Bogota, Colombia, where he is due to meet with the U.S.-recognized interim president of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, and deliver a speech to the Lima Group on the growing crisis in Venezuela.

Pence and regional leaders are expected to discuss strategy to hasten the departure of disputed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and how to get humanitarian aid currently piling up on the border in Brazil and Colombia into Venezuela, where supplies of food and medicine have run low.

In a briefing to reporters, a senior Trump administration official said the United States intends to bring the “full measure of economic and diplomatic weight” to bear on the Venezuela issue, and the speech will show “concrete examples of what that means.”

Pence is expected to hold meetings with Guaido and Colombian president Ivan Duque, before delivering his remarks. The vice president is also scheduled to meet with Venezuelan exiles and their families before heading back to Washington.

The Lima Group meeting is being held after a weekend of unrest and violence on the Venezuelan borders with Colombia and Brazil, where Maduro’s troops and loyalists have blocked the delivery of food and medical supplies. Maduro insists the aid is a pretext for an armed U.S. invasion. 

“We are looking forward to speaking with the Lima Group and regional partners after Maduro has shown his true colors, using vandalism and violence to obstruct and frustrate international efforts to deliver the humanitarian aid,” said the senior official.

Use of force

Meanwhile, representatives of Guaido have signaled that at the meeting he will call for the use of force against Maduro for blocking humanitarian aid and unleashing violence on the border.

Guaido’s government’s representative to the Lima Group, Julio Borges confirmed the plan in a tweet late Sunday.

Guaido declared himself interim president in late January and is recognized by the U.S. and dozens of other countries as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state.

The senior administration official declined to elaborate on the use of force other than that the U.S. will have meetings with Guaido and the Lima Group “to discuss the next steps.”

Aid not getting through

None of the aid that’s currently piling up in Colombia and Brazil has been able to get through Maduro’s forces. At one border point, aid trucks caught fire, leading the crowd to rush to save the boxes of food and medical supplies. 

A U.S. State Department official traveling with the American and Brazilian aid convoy told VOA that two trucks crossed the border into Venezuela on Saturday, but were not allowed through the military checkpoint there and turned back to the Brazilian side.

The senior White House official said that the administration is undeterred. “What we’d like for Maduro to do is focus on the bottlenecks,” he said. “And if you overcompensate and focus on that, there will be opportunities elsewhere.”

UN condemns violence

On Sunday the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the head of the U.N. Human Rights Office Michelle Bachelet called for violence to be “avoided at any cost and for lethal force not to be used in any circumstances.”

On Saturday, Maduro supporters fired bullets at those attempting to get aid trucks into Venezuela, while Venezuelan border troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

According to the U.N. “the excessive use of force used by the Venezuelan security forces, as well the involvement of pro-government elements”, have resulted in at least four confirmed deaths and more than 300 injuries on Friday and Saturday.

Dany Bahar, a Venezuela expert at Brookings Institution said the next steps for the international community will be to find ways to increase pressure diplomatically and financially on the Maduro regime, and “to try to get the United Nations on board, which has not happened yet.” 
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Opposition leader Juan Guaido has called on the international community to consider “all options” to resolve Venezuela’s crisis, a dramatic escalation in rhetoric that echoes comments from the Trump administration hinting at potential U.S. military involvement.

Guaido’s comments late Saturday came after a tumultuous day that saw President Nicolas Maduro’s forces fire tear gas and buckshot on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.

For weeks, the U.S. and regional allies had been amassing emergency food and medical kits on Venezuela’s borders in anticipation of carrying out a “humanitarian avalanche” by land and sea to undermine Maduro’s rule.

With activists failing to penetrate government blockades and deliver the aid, Guaido announced late Saturday that he would escalate his appeal to the international community — beginning with a meeting Monday in Colombia’s capital with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of an emergency summit of leaders of the so-called Lima Group to discuss Venezuela’s crisis.

He said he would urge the international community to keep “all options open” in the fight to restore Venezuela’s democracy, using identical language to that of President Donald Trump, who in his public statements has repeatedly refused to rule out force and reportedly even secretly pressed aides as early as 2017 about the possibility of a military incursion.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also stepped up the belligerent rhetoric, saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that Maduro’s “days are numbered.”

A close Guadio ally, Julio Borges, the exiled leader of congress who is Guaido’s ambassador to the Lima Group, was even more explicit in urging a military option. “We are going to demand an escalation of diplomatic pressure … and the use of force against Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship,” he said Sunday.

It’s a prospect that analysts warn risks fracturing a hard-won coalition of Latin American nations who’ve come together to pressure Maduro’s socialist government. Most Latin American governments, even conservative ones like those in neighboring Colombia and Brazil, are on the record opposing a military solution and would face huge dissent should they back any military action led by the U.S., whose interventions in the region during the Cold War remain an open wound.

“These governments know they would face a huge tide of internal opinion greatly offended by a US-led invasion for historical and political reasons,” said Ivan Briscoe, the Latin America director for the Crisis Group, a Belgium-based think tank.

At the same time, though polls say Venezuelans overwhelmingly want Maduro to resign, almost an equal number reject the possibility of a foreign invasion to resolve the political impasse.

Resting at the foot of the Simon Bolivar bridge as work crews in Colombia began removing debris left by the unrest, Claudia Aguilar said she would support a military invasion but worries it would lead to more bloodshed.

The 29-year-old pregnant mother of three said she crossed illegally into Colombia on Sunday to buy a bag of rice and pasta for her family after Maduro ordered a partial closure of the border two days earlier.

“We’re with fear, dear God, of what will happen,” she said standing near the dirt trail she took to sneak across the border. “More blood, more deaths. The president of Venezuela does whatever he wants.”

In addition to weakening multilateral pressure against Maduro, analysts say the opposition saber rattling also risks undermining Guaido’s goal of peeling off support from the military, the country’s crucial powerbroker.

The 35-year-old Guaido has won the backing of more than 50 governments around the world since declaring himself interim president at a rally in January, arguing that Maduro’s re-election last year was illegitimate because some popular opposition candidates were barred from running.

But he’s so far been unable to cause a major rift inside the military, despite repeated appeals and the offer of amnesty to those joining the opposition’s fight for power.

“How many of you national guardsmen have a sick mother? How many have kids in school without food,” he implored Saturday night, standing next to a warehouse where 600 tons of food and medicine have been stockpiled on the Colombian border. “You don’t owe any obedience to a sadist … who celebrates the denial of humanitarian aid the country needs.”

Maduro has deftly courted support from the military since becoming president in 2013, offering top commanders key posts in his cabinet, including the presidency of state-run oil giant PDVSA, the source of virtually all of Venezuela’s dollar earnings.

More than 100 members of the security forces, most of them lower-rank soldiers, deserted and took refuge inside Colombia during Saturday’s unrest, according to migration officials. But none of them was higher ranked than a National Guard major, and there’s been little suggestion any battalion or division commanders are willing to defect despite almost daily calls by Guaido and the U.S.

To be sure, there’s no indication the U.S. is planning a military invasion and Trump has made a habit of threatening friends and foes alike — China, North Korea and Canada among them — only to dial back the rhetoric down the road. Washington still has more diplomatic tools available, including extending oil sanctions to punish non-American entities that conduct business with Maduro’s government in much the way such sanctions strangled communist Cuba for decades.

Still, as early as 2017, Trump reportedly raised the possibility of a U.S. military incursion in Venezuela similar to the 1989 invasion that led to the ouster of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, both in an Oval Office meeting with then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other aides, as well as at a session with leaders of four Latin American allies on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, according to a senior administration official who has since left the White House.

In both cases Trump abandoned the war talk at the urging of his advisers and allies in the region. Prior to the current crisis, there was never any war planning by the military, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private conversations.

Still, momentum toward a confrontation seems to be building as hopes for a quick crumbling of Maduro’s government fade.

“It acts like a magnet,” said Briscoe of the possibility of a U.S.-led intervention. “As Plan A and B fail, it’s where everyone seems to be going. But the further you move in that direction, you weaken the multilateral approach and reduce the possibility that large parts of the military will turn against Maduro.”
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Cubans voted Sunday on a new constitution that expands recognition of private property and updates a Soviet bloc-era charter for the socialist nation.

The new document, which had been tweaked after a series of public consultations, maintains control by the Communist Party, but adjusts the nation’s legal system to account for years of greater opening to small-scale private enterprise and closer ties to Cuban emigrants abroad.

Passage of the measure was assured, despite opposition by some evangelical Christian leaders upset that the document opens the possibility for eventual legalization of gay marriage.

Lines stretched from schools used as polling places on Sunday following days of heavy official promotion for a “Yes” vote and less prominent opposition sentiment expressed on social media sites recently opened to a broader range of Cubans.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel took to Twitter to encourage support, writing “CubaVotesYes” and saying the document “guatantees the rights of each and every citizen of the nation.”

The previous constitution was adopted in 1976 at a time when Cuba depended heavily on Soviet aid and trade and tightly restricted private enterprise. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union slammed Cuba’s economy in the early 1990s, the island has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to launch small private businesses, though their scale has been tightly restricted. The new constitution would allow some such businesses to legally hire a few workers.

Islandwide consultations led to numerous changes in the document, notably omitting an article that would have legalized gay marriage. But evangelicals were alarmed that it seems to open the way for eventual legalization by omitting the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.

The document also would create the post of prime minister, promote cooperatives and recognize dual citizenship.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is looking for ways to get humanitarian assistance into Venezuela, after troops loyal to President Nicolas Maduro repelled aid trucks in clashes at the borders with Brazil and Colombia.

In an interview on CNN Sunday, the top U.S. diplomat did not suggest how the U.S. might carry out the aid mission in the face of armed opposition. 

He said, however, that the United States would consider imposing more sanctions against the Venezuelan government to increase pressure on Maduro to quit in favor of the country’s interim president, Juan Guaido, the president of the National Assembly.  Guaido is considered by the U.S. and dozens of other countries as the legitimate leader in Caracas.

Pompeo called Maduro a tyrant, saying, “I’m confident that the Venezuelan people will ensure that Maduro’s days are numbered.”

Maduro has blocked the aid effort spearheaded by the U.S., saying it is a pretext for an armed U.S. invasion.

On Saturday, Maduro supporters fired bullets at those attempting to get aid trucks into Venezuela, while Venezuelan border troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets.

Foro Penal [Criminal Forum], a group that tracks violence in Venezuela, reported four deaths at the Brazilian border with Venezuela on Saturday. It said the victims were shot by pro-government militia members.

A spokesman for the group, Alfred Romero, posted a video on Twitter saying more than two dozen other people were wounded in the violence.

At one border point, aid trucks caught fire, leading the crowd to rush to save the boxes of food and medical supplies.

A U.S. State Department official traveling with the Brazilianaid convoy told VOA that the trucks crossed the borderintoVenezuela, but were not allowed through the military checkpoint there, and did notunload their cargo.

Afterward, Guaido pressed the case for new foreign assistance to oust Maduro. “Today’s events force me to make a decision: to pose to the international community in a formal way that we must have all options open to achieve the liberation of this country that is fighting and will continue to fight,” he said on Twitter.

The European Union, also supporting Guaido, condemned Maduro’s actions to repel the trucks with the humanitarian aid.  “We repudiate the use of irregular armed groups to intimidate civilians and lawmakers who have mobilized to distribute assistance,” EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on behalf of the 28-member bloc of countries.

Sunday, Pompeo deplored the fact that the Venezuelan military, despite a small number of defections to the opposition, has mostly remained loyal to Maduro.

“We hope the military will take that role back in protecting their citizens from these tragedies. If that happens, I think good things will happen,” he said.

“We’re aimed at a singular mission — ensuring the Venezuelan people get the democracy they so richly deserve and the Cubans and the Russians who have been driving this country into the ground for years and years and years no longer hold sway,” he said.

Colombian officials said more than 60 Venezuelan soldiers defected Saturday. Venezuelan Army Major Hugo Parra announced his defection, telling VOA Noticias he recognizes Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

Guaido tweeted his praise of the soldiers’ actions.  “They aren’t deserters,” he said. “They’ve decided to put themselves on the side of the people and the constitution.”

Maduro announced in a speech to his supporters Saturday that he is cutting off diplomatic ties with Colombia. Colombia President Ivan Duque has been making public appearances with Guaido as they work to transport aid across Venezuelan borders.

Duque said Colombian ambassadors and consuls have 24 hours to leave Venezuela.

Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holms Trujillo released a statement in response, saying, “Colombia holds the usurper Maduro responsible for any aggression or violation of the rights of Colombian officials in Venezuela.”

Maduro also said he would defend Venezuela’s independence with his life. He called Guaido a puppet of the White House.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted his support for Guaido.

“The people of Venezuela stand at the threshold of history, ready to reclaim their country  and their future. God Bless the people of Venezuela!” Trump said.

 
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