Our Monday Sociedad Media Now newsletter on the latest in Peru, Colombia and the most recent round of Cuba sanctions from the U.S. State Department.
Peru’s Constitutional Court Strips Congress of Spending Power In Post-Election Power Struggle
LIMA, PERU — Peru’s Constitutional Court reversed its own 2022 ruling fifteen days before Keiko Fujimori takes office on July 28 — stripping Congress of its spending initiative and returning budgetary power exclusively to the executive branch, in a decision critics say moves in step with political power rather than constraining it.
The same court that expanded congressional spending authority when Fujimorists controlled the legislature has now taken it back as a Fujimorist is about to control the executive.
President-Elect Keiko Fujimori prepares to inherit a copper-dependent economy absorbing falling commodity prices, a legislature where no party holds a majority across two chambers, and a Constitutional Court whose independence is questioned by virtually every major democratic monitoring organization in the country.
Washington Sanctions Cuba’s Paramilitary Groups, Tourism Ministry, and Forced Labor Exporters
MIAMI — The Trump administration designated ten Cuban entities on Monday, July 13 — the most direct targeting yet of the regime’s domestic repression apparatus — sanctioning the Rapid Response Brigades that beat protesters in the streets, the civilian paramilitary Milicias de Tropas Territoriales, the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution that conducts surveillance on dissidents, Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism, two energy companies handling fuel logistics during the island’s fourth islandwide blackout of the year, and a GAESA subsidiary that exports Cuban forced labor to Angola.
This latest batch is the sixth round of Cuba sanctions since May 1 — as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio simultaneously extends on July 11 the most explicit diplomatic offer Washington has made to Havana in the Trump era: economic aid, reconstruction assistance, and a renewed bilateral relationship in exchange for genuine political reforms that Cuba’s government has so far declined to accept.
Petro To Use Every Lever He Has Left to Block De la Espriella Handover. Here’s Where Things Stand
BOGOTÁ — Twenty-five days before the August 7 inauguration, outgoing President Gustavo Petro is using every institutional lever available to him to complicate a transfer of power Colombia’s electoral authorities certified on June 24 — barring de la Espriella from holding his swearing-in at a military base by invoking his authority as commander-in-chief until the moment of handover, suspending the formal transition process after publicly refusing to recognize the election result.
Petro has filed an annulment lawsuit before the Council of State alleging Israeli companies algorithmically manipulated the vote count, and comparing his successor to “Hitler” — as Colombia’s attorney general has stated there is no evidence of fraud, international observers found the election free and fair, and de la Espriella has called on the armed forces to disobey any orders Petro may give to the contrary.
