Latin America Notebook - May 2025

Latin Americans build global solidarity

Environmental activists from Latin America and the world converged on London this May to hold protests at the AGMs of mining companies and build networks of collaboration.

Mining multinationals Anglo American and Glencore and their subsidiaries do most of their mining in Latin America and Africa, yet both companies are listed on the London Stock Exchange and have headquarters in London. This makes London a magnet for representatives of mining-affected communities from around the world.

They come to Europe to build solidarity with other activists and to raise awareness of the way that the consumption of metals in the global north impacts the environment in the countries of the global south. With the growing pressure for European states to decarbonise their economies and move towards “net zero,” they seek to remind European societies that the corporations that will provide the resources for the “green transition” have a poor record of protecting the environment and respecting human rights.

Coal miners working for Glencore in Colombia complain of 84-hour working weeks.

One activist, 69 year-old security guard Luciano Flores Toledo, had left his corner of Southern Peru for the first time in his life to come to London and protest the Anglo American AGM. Meeting other activists from other regions and continents but facing the same opposition, he felt a “door had been opened” to global collaboration. The mine he is fighting against was opened three years ago, but he sat on a panel with an activist from Kabwe in Zambia, Lydia Moyo, whose community have been fighting for over 55 years for Anglo American to take responsibility for the lead poisoning in her town that today affects around 140,000 people. The law firm Leigh Day are hoping to bring a class action suit against the company on behalf of the residents of Kabwe.

At the AGM of minerals giant Glencore, in Baar, Switzerland, on May 28th, one protester stormed the podium and denounced CEO Gary Nagle as a criminal before being ejected. Other activists have acquired shares in order to attend and ask questions at the AGM. Diana Salazar from London Mining Network asked executives to acknowledge their intention to sue Colombia at an investment tribunal over the Constitutional Court of Colombia’s decision that Glencore’s Cerrejón coal mine cannot divert a river to expand its mining operation.

The threat of multi-billion dollar lawsuits using the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS) is increasingly being used by mining and fossil fuels multinationals to prevent environmental policies or judgements that might damage the profits they make in a host country. Glencore has started proceedings in four separate cases against Colombia using ISDS. Activists are calling on the British and Swiss governments to withdraw from or renegotiate the bilateral investment treaties that allow companies to sue foreign countries for projected profits lost.

Free speech at peril in El Salvador

Journalists are fleeing El Salvador as critics of President Nayib Bukele are rounded up, including one of the country’s most high-profile human rights lawyers.

On May 3rd, the editor-in-chief of investigative journal El Faro, Oscar Martinez, revealed they had been tipped off that several of their journalists were due to be arrested. El Faro, which is one of El Salvador’s leading newspapers, is now located in Costa Rica to avoid harassment, but still reporting on Salvadoran affairs. “Any capture or raid on our homes will be for having done journalism,” declared Martinez.

Specifically, the journalism they had done was to interview known gang members who alleged that they had taken money from President Nayib Bukele and his campaigns when he was running for mayor of San Salvador. The credible threats against their liberty caused three journalists to leave the country for Guatemala.

State Intelligence Agency chief Peter Dumas appeared to acknowledge that the threat of arrest for the journalists was tit-for-tat when he commented on the story with the words, “Don’t throw mortars at those who have bombs.”

On the night of May 18th, human rights lawyer Ruth Lopez of Cristosal was detained at her home, after having apparently been tricked into opening the door by security agents. Those detaining her did not say where she was going or allow her to speak to a lawyer. Lopez has filed several legal complaints against Bukele’s government for corruption, including misuse of COVID-19 funds and breaking transparency standards. Last year, the BBC included Lopez in their list of the 100 most influential women in the world for her efforts to highlight corruption. She is now the one accused of misuse of public funds.

Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a state of emergency justified by the need to tackle organised crime and reduce deadly violence. The emergency powers have facilitated the use of arbitrary detention and mass incarceration to tackle criminal violence. Now these same powers are being turned on Bukele’s critics, with Ruth Lopez like many thousands of her fellow Salvadorans accused of gang involvement being held without charge.

Nayib Bukele recently won a second 5-year term as president of El Salvador. His popularity is running as high as 91% approval in some polls, yet in a country that is sliding towards authoritarianism it becomes less clear what people think and what they think they ought to say. A recent poll from Latinobarometro found that 65% of citizens believed they could be punished for expressing political ideas.

Petro’s bad habits

In the midst of negotiations over labour reform that may come to define his presidency, Colombia’s first ever left-wing head of state, Gustavo Petro, has been fending off accusations of drug addiction from his own ex-Foreign Minister.

Alvaro Leyva, a former ally of the president who was ousted from his role by the Attorney General last year, initially posted on X on April 22nd allegations that Petro disappeared without explanation for two days while on official business in Paris. This event apparently confirmed Leyva’s suspicions that Petro was concealing a drug dependency. Petro dismissed the accusation by claiming that he had been visiting family members.

On May 6th, Leyva attacked again, this time with a longer letter detailing various incidents that led him to be concerned about the President’s well-being, such as being uncontactable when he was due to have an official call with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and going completely silent during a dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The damaging claims made by Leyva, supported by concerning circumstantial observations if no hard evidence, beg questions about why Leyva has taken so long to go public over an issue of this seriousness. Meanwhile, it is hard to escape the sense that Petro’s own presidential persona has contributed to the plausibility of the rumour, originating in 2018, and now the sticking power of this latest scandal.

Petro made comments in January this year that cocaine is only illegal because it is produced in Latin America, and that it is no more harmful than whiskey, joking that it could be sold like wine. Arguments for legalisation of drugs as a means of tackling organized crime are a staple of leftist rhetoric, yet tongue-in-cheek comments could sound like an admission of guilt to the morally conservative electorate of Colombia.

Like some other populist politicians in the age of social media, Petro has made a habit of whipping up controversy with comments on X, often posting late at night. Meanwhile, he has developed a reputation for poor timekeeping and suddenly changing plans at the last minute. Some have seen Petro’s supposed addiction issues as the missing piece of the puzzle that could explain some of his erratic behaviour and his tardiness.

Adding fuel to the fire, Petro has recently promoted to Interior Minister, the disgraced former Ambassador to Venezuela, Armando Benedetti, splitting the cabinet. Benedetti has been open about his struggles with substance abuse, but he claims that he is now clean after rehabilitating last year.

Petro’s enemies are, unsurprisingly, calling for him to be tested by a toxicologist to prove that he is clean. Petro, meanwhile, insists that Leyva is acting out because he is bitter about the nature of his sacking last year. He warns of a plot to oust him from the presidency, which surely cannot be ruled out given the gravity of the accusations.

This all amounts to a significant distraction from Petro’s attempts to wrangle an unsupportive senate into agreeing to a referendum on labour reform. The signs are that Petro’s last year in office will be as turbulent as the first three, if he can survive it.

Petro has insisted that his only addiction is to his morning coffee.