Latin America

For the first time since 2006, China’s two biggest policy banks — the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China — made no new loans to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to analysts, the pandemic and the deterioration of financial conditions in the countries contributed to this, which made China more cautious and less willing to finance governments and risky projects.

Over the next few days, Spotify will launch its service in 85 new markets across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, as announced at its online event, "Stream On". The company will also add support to 36 new languages on the platform.

The streaming platform stated, "Our dedication to international artists and listeners is unwavering. Working closely with local creators and partners, we’ll deliver a Spotify experience that meets the unique needs of each market, with scaled language translations and specialized payment formats. These 80+ markets represent more than 1 billion people—potential Spotify listeners who have yet to tap into the power of our platform."

NuBank, a fintech based in São Paulo, Brazil, is valued at $25 billion as the fourth most valuable financial institution in Latin America and the largest digital bank in the world by the number of customers and app downloads.

The round was led by private and public investors including Singapore’s GIC, Whale Rock, and Invesco. Current investors Tencent, Dragoneer, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia also participated in the round.

In perpetuation of Trump administration policy and nearly two centuries of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden's nominee for secretary of state, told senators Tuesday that the United States will continue to recognize the coup leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

Reuters reports Blinken told senators during his confirmation hearing that Venezuela needs "an effective policy that can restore... democracy" to the nation of 28 million people.

Although Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has alienated allies and adversaries alike with his government's numerous and serious human rights violations, he was democratically elected in 2013 and reelected in 2018.

Mexico became the first country in Latin America to start vaccinating for Covid-19. The first person to receive one of the initial shipment of 3000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was intensive-care nurse María Irene Ramirez.

Shortly after Mexico started vaccinating, Chile and Costa Rico followed suit.

The results of the Gallup survey show that Mexican security forces continue to be immersed in an image crisis due to corruption and violence.

Of all Latin American countries only in Venezuela the population feels less safe and distrusts the police more. Arturo Alvarado Mendoza, author and doctor of sociology at the Colegio de México, says that the current police force is at the service of the government and that it must "begin to attend to citizens' problems and improve its relationship with the population" in order to change its perception.

The not yet published study led by Miguel Nicolelis, a professor at Duke University, suggests the possibility that vaccines approved or under development for dengue may result in some form of protection against the new coronavirus.

The study points out that places where a large part of the population contracted dengue last year and earlier this year took longer to have exponential community transmission of Covid-19 and recorded fewer numbers of cases and deaths caused by the new coronavirus, indicating a possible immunological interaction between the two viruses.

To validate the observation made in Brazil, Nicolelis expanded the analysis of the correlation between dengue and Covid-19 to 15 other countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and the behaviour was repeated, according to him.

Argentinean President Alberto Fernández announced Wednesday that the private laboratory AstraZeneca would begin to produce in Argentina and Mexico a vaccine against the coronavirus that is developed in conjunction with the University of Oxford.

The president explained the goal is "to produce between 150 and 250 million vaccines for all of Latin America -except for Brazil- that will be available by the first half of 2021."

Fernández stated, "Latin American production will be in charge of Argentina and Mexico, and that will allow timely and sufficient access to potential vaccine for all countries in the region."

Uber announced on Tuesday the launch of an app-based grocery service in 19 cities in Latin American and Canadian cities. The initiative is a partnership with Cornershop, a Chilean online grocery provider that Uber has held a majority stake in since October 2019.

Customers in eleven Brazilian cities, including Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, four Chilean cities, Colombia’s Bogota, Peru’s Lima and Canada’s Montreal and Toronto will be able to order groceries through the Uber Eats app. And starting later this month, grocery delivery will be available in Miami, FL and Dallas, TX.

Spotify has launched a real-time lyrics feature in 26 different markets across India, Latin America and Southeast Asia today. The feature is provided by the music data company Musixmatch.

The European Union has named 14 countries whose citizens are deemed "safe" to be let in from July 1, and the only Latin American country is Uruguay.

As infection rates in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are still high, their nationals will face travel restrictions.

The current list is formed by Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay.

President Jair Bolsonaro threatened on Friday to follow the US and pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization. The thread follows a warning from the U.N. agency to Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the coronavirus throughout the region.

USA will send on Monday June first the Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), an elite unit of the Army to Colombia in what declared is assistance in the fight against drug traffic. It's the first time such unit is deployed to Latin America.

Opposition and independent legislators considered this unconstitutional without Congress approval, a violation of sovereignty and a preparation to a possible attack against Venezuela from Colombian soil, threatening peace in the region.

On April the USA doubled it's number of ships in the Caribean and offered 15 million dollars for information tying Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other party members to drug trafficking.

Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced that Latin America has surpassed Europe and the United States in the daily number of confirmed Covid-19 cases.

"Now is not the time for countries to ease restrictions," Carissa Etienne, WHO director for the Americas and head of the Pan American Health Organization, said via videoconference.

On Tuesday night, Costa Rica became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriages, after a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2018 stating that "all of its signatory countries must allow same-sex marriage". The country has removed the sixth item of article 14 of Costa Rica's Family Code, which prohibited people of the same sex to get married, making marriage equality the law.

Latin America's largest airline Latam Airlines says it is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to a slump in travel worldwide sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Latam said the bankruptcy filing has the support of the Cueto and Amaro families, as well as large shareholder Qatar Airways.

The company said it had about $1.3 billion in cash on hand and its affiliates in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay were not included in the Chapter 11 filing.

LATAM Airlines' Brazilian affiliates are in discussions with the Brazilian government about the next steps and financial support for operations in the country.