Venezuela has been Telefónica's last stronghold in Latin America since Wednesday. It is the only country where the "telecom" telecom maintains its business after reaching an agreement to divest its subsidiary in Mexico for approximately 389 million euros. Specifically, Telefónica has reached an agreement with the consortium Melisa Acquisition, made up of Oxio and Newfoundland Capital Management, for the sale of its stake in the Mexican subsidiary, as the company has communicated to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV).

The US Congress passed two formal resolutions in 2008 (the House of Representatives) and 2009 (the Senate) apologizing to African Americans for slavery and racial segregation. In 2022, Belgium also apologized in the Congo for colonial abuses. Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom have also made similar gestures. In contrast, in Spain, every step in that direction infuriates the right wing. This is precisely what happened after King Felipe VI said on Monday, at the opening of an exhibition on indigenous women in Mexico, that during colonization there was "much abuse" and "ethical controversies." In response to these words, the leader of the People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called it "nonsense" to pass judgment on what happened in the 15th century. And Vox spokesperson Pepa Millán asserted that the colonization of America is "the principal evangelizing and civilizing work in universal history" and that the rights of the "subjects" were always respected. Feijóo's words demonstrate a complete lack of empathy for the peoples of the American continent, where the legacy of colonialism is still visible today. And Millán's are simply false and lack the slightest historical rigor. However, both harbor the outdated vision of Spanish national Catholicism and an undisguised Western supremacism, which considers the indigenous peoples of America to have been culturally inferior and in need of being "civilized" by Europeans.

Recent history is replete with episodes of intervention by the United States, as well as other major powers, in countries of the Global South to influence political and economic decisions in favor of their interests. In Latin America and in the case of the US, the most recent explicit examples are the support for coups d'état and neoliberal dictatorships of the second half of the 20th century. After a softening of these dynamics in recent decades, since Donald Trump's arrival at the White House, especially during his second term, interventionism has once again become fiercer and less disguised, and in recent months cases of interference have multiplied.

In late November 1975, barely 50 years ago, a secret meeting took place in Santiago, Chile, between members of the intelligence services of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. At this meeting, a transnational system of coordinated repression was formalized among these countries, with the objective of suppressing leftist opposition through the persecution and disappearance of people. The strategy, which Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil would later join, was called "Operation Condor," named after the emblematic Andean condor that watches over the continent from the heights and which, in the military sphere, is used to convey strength and dominance. Operation Condor sought to "complete the domination of the right," explains researcher John Dinges, who lived in Chile, working as a journalist, during the last year of Salvador Allende's government and for five years of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship: "Condor was an alliance between civilians that embraced fascist ideas for building totalitarian governments." In the context of the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union vied for ideological hegemony, the right wing in Latin America deployed all its resources to ensure that communism did not spread in the region: "the objective of eliminating the left was international, therefore the solution had to be international as well." The targets were members of revolutionary movements, guerrilla groups, labor unions, and, in some countries, members of the Church who supported progressive movements more than conservative ones. Because this was a coordinated strategy between states, exile ceased to be a safe haven for dissent: Federico Jorge Tatter Radice is the son of Federico Jorge Tatter Morinigo, a Paraguayan communist activist who went into exile in Buenos Aires with his wife and three children, fleeing the dictatorship of Alfredo Videla and the Argentine armed forces under his regime.

Hispanic heritage has sparked a fundamental debate on the Spanish right. In the fight over immigration, the People's Party (PP) wants to prioritize Latin America to welcome newcomers, to the detriment of African nations or those with an Islamic origin. It has devised the points-based visa, which rewards "cultural proximity", and has done so claimed Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has said that "Hispanic immigration is not immigration"The offensive raises questions such as what Hispanic heritage entails and how it can impact the demos. That is, what does it mean to be Spanish? Spanish nationalism looks toward the 48 million inhabitants of Spain or the 600 million it claims to include. Hispanic heritageImmigration policies are just the first link in a rumor that hides linguistic and religious reasons behind the product of colonization. Thus, the Spanish intelligentsia is speaking out, as is the case of an academic with a long career in Latin America: the philosopher and educator Gregorio Luri supported Ayuso's approach and, in conversation with ARA, maintains that "Hispanic immigration is not immigration." He says he has lived in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, etc. and that he has "never" felt "foreign," but "much closer than with France." Hispanic identity, with the Castilian cultural and linguistic thread, has consequences, which is why history has placed "in the hands" of Spain "a tool" and it can be "used as a throwing weapon or as a tool to build the future."

Peru's Congress expressly removed the country's president, Dina Boluarte, from office on Thursday night after declaring her "permanent moral incapacity" to address growing citizen insecurity and the rise of organized crime. The removal comes just six months before the 2026 general elections. The elections are still ongoing, and until then, the government will be led by the president of Congress, José Jerí, who has assumed the role of interim head of government.

Amid the struggle with Vox, immigration has become a key issue in the PP's discourse. But it has ignited a new war on the Spanish right, now over Hispanic-American immigration. While the far right is soaring in all the polls and the Popular Party remains stagnant and loses ground ahead of the 2023 elections, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party has chosen to toughen its immigration discourse and categorize migrants by differentiating between people of Hispanic origin and the rest. In fact, Madrid's president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, paved the way for Latin America with a controversial statement: "Hispanic immigration is not immigration"Feijóo followed in their footsteps this Thursday from Barcelona at a European PP event in front of around thirty international representatives of its member parties in the EU. "We share a world vision," he said, just after being infected by "order." A position that has clashed directly with Vox, which makes it clear that in Spain "there is no room for anyone else," and sources within the party maintain that it is a "mistake" by the PP, influenced by Ayuso's needs.

"Cooperate, yes, but without submitting." Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum keeps repeating this phrase as she navigates Donald Trump's erratic demands. The statement resonates with the Latin American collective memory and with a fear that the US administration has now rekindled with its war on drugs: Washington wants to take back its backyard. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's promise to carry out new military actions Similar incidents to Tuesday's attack on a vessel allegedly transporting drugs to the Caribbean Sea open a new phase in the White House's campaign to "regain US hegemony in the hemisphere," warns Manuel Balcázar, a researcher at the Center for Security, Intelligence and Governance Studies.

The 66th Mercosur Presidential Summit took place this Thursday in Buenos Aires, during one of the blog's most uncertain times. Brazil and Argentina, the region's two largest economies, have differing views on the organization's purpose and usefulness. The meeting of heads of state in Buenos Aires highlighted the well-known differences between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Argentine counterpart, Javier Milei, who has passed on the six-month presidency of the blog to him.

Can Gibert del Pla is a humble neighborhood in Girona with residents from 79 different cultures that is evolving positively against the current: it has plenty of subsidized housing, green spaces, public facilities, a dynamic neighborhood association, and a church that fills to overflowing thanks to the granite-like faith of the Latin American community. Now, it will also be close to and shared with Salt by the Health Campus, which includes the new Josep Trueta Hospital and the Faculties of Medicine and Nursing. The residents of this neighborhood, tucked between the River Güell and Passeig de Olot, believe that this new space for health, teaching, and research will give the area a new centrality, although they don't want the facility's urban counterpart to engulf Jordi Vilamitjana Park, a large green lung that connects them to Salt.

From euphoria to disenchantment. This is how Telefónica's withdrawal from Latin America could be summed up more than 30 years after making its first investment. Its entry into the region took place in the 1990s thanks to the privatization of the business by the state, but also on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where many countries were undergoing privatization processes for state-owned telecommunications operators. "Telefónica has been one of the driving forces behind the development of Latin America and will continue to be so because we are convinced that the development of telecommunications in the region will be very important in the coming years," the then president of the company argued in 2004. telecommunications, César Alierta.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has renewed his mandate. this Sunday at the polls With almost 56% of the vote, she faced Rafael Correa's successor, Luisa González, who obtained just over 44% of the vote and has said she does not recognize the results, alleging electoral fraud. The progressive candidate has announced that she will ask the National Electoral Council (CNE) to conduct a recount and open the polls: "Ecuador is experiencing a dictatorship," she proclaimed from the electoral headquarters in Quito, and spoke of the "most grotesque fraud in history." The president of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, was quick to confirm the results that declared Noboa the winner and said that "democracy is strengthened when the voice of the people is respected."

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, renewed his mandate this Sunday in the second round of the country's elections With almost 56% of the vote, she faced Rafael Correa's successor, Luisa González, who obtained just over 44% of the vote and has said she does not recognize the results, alleging electoral fraud. The progressive candidate has announced that she will ask the National Electoral Council (CNE) to recount the votes and open the polls: "Ecuador is experiencing a dictatorship," she said from the electoral headquarters in Quito, and spoke of the "most grotesque fraud in history." The president of the CNE, Diana Atamaint, was quick to confirm the results that declared Noboa the winner and said that "democracy is strengthened when the voice of the people is respected."

From the main square of Guatemala City's historic center, a shopping arcade opens with a tiled floor in a cream and black checkerboard pattern. Entering it feels like a step back in time. Right here inside is a restaurant that, if unfamiliar, might go unnoticed: El Portal. A simple diner hidden behind a wooden door. Once inside, a photograph of Che Guevara places this establishment in history. Here, the Argentine revolutionary recruited people to attack Cuba. Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias also wrote at these tables, a prominent figure who will be mentioned again later.

Remittances from Spain to abroad – money transfers made by workers – accounted for 0.7% of GDP (around €10.7 billion) in 2023, 0.5 percentage points more than in 2000, with Latin America accounting for 6% of the total, at 0.7%.

The official tally of Peru's elections is not yet finished, but Pedro Castillo, the leftist candidate, has already celebrated his victory. He has done so from Lima, at his party headquarters, with confetti and fireworks. "The people have spoken. According to our auditors, we already have an official count, and the people have won this victory".