Latin America

The queue for gasoline in Western Venezuela attracted 700 people by dawn on Sunday, as widespread fuel shortages continue to plague the crisis-stricken nation yet oil-rich nation.

Nicaraguan-American dual national Eddy Montes Praslin was one of 18 imprisoned anti-government protesters killed or wounded on Thursday in a disturbance at the La Modelo prison near the Nicaraguan capital city of Managua. Montes was reportedly shot dead by prison guards in what U.S. Ambassador Kevin Sullivan called an “unjustifiable use of lethal force against an unarmed political prisoner.”

A Cuban Evangelical pastor sentenced to two years in prison for homeschooling his children says his family has endured “psychological pressure and a war on behalf of authorities” for refusing to allow the Castro regime to indoctrinate his children into communist ideology.

Venezuelan soldiers loyal to the country’s socialist dictatorship oversaw the rationing of fuel at service stations across Venezuela on Sunday, forcing angry drivers to wait for hours for gasoline in the oil-rich country.

Daniel Llorente, an independent Cuban dissident who has repeatedly protested the communist regime by waving a U.S. flag in public, told the Cuban-American news outlet Radio Martí this weekend that police forcibly expelled him to Guyana in the dead of night, threatening to “disappear” him if he ever returned.

Leftist leaders in Cuba and Venezuela welcomed Chinese diplomats to their respective capitals this week to discuss support for their regimes amid ongoing economic crises.

Cubans stuck for hours in lines to buy basic goods like eggs, chicken, oil, and soap are sharing photos of their ordeal under the hashtag #LaColaChallenge, or “The Line Challenge.” The challenge is a tongue-in-cheek way to approach a crisis so pervasive that reports surfaced Thursday of mothers “renting” their children to ensure families have enough to eat.

Terrorists believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab are demanding a $1.5 million ransom to release two Cuban slave doctors abducted in April, Kenyan elders sent to Somalia to negotiation for their release said on Thursday.

Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó confirmed on Thursday that he had sent envoys to a meeting with representatives of the rogue socialist Nicolás Maduro regime in Norway this week, insisting, “there isn’t any sort of negotiation” between the two sides.

Argentina’s Supreme Court suspended former leftist president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s corruption case Wednesday, putting her one step closer to running again in this year’s presidential election.

Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of President Jair Bolsonaro, said on Wednesday that Brazil should consider becoming a nuclear power to guarantee its safety as a nation. 

Cuban Interior Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez claimed that most Cubans support a brutal new food ration policy that has forced those in major cities to stand on grocery lines for hours, the Cuban interest site CiberCuba reported on Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended air travel with Venezuela, citing conditions that “threaten the safety and security of passengers, aircraft, and crew.”

Early word has been mixed on the meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Sochi, Russia, on Tuesday, but the Russians took a moment to thank Pompeo for trying to restore relations between the two countries and mocked his predecessor Hillary Clinton.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a telephone conversation with Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó on Tuesday. Trudeau’s office said Guaidó “conveyed his commitment to holding free and fair elections as soon as possible, in line with the Venezuelan constitution.”

Members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) and Bolivarian Intelligence Service (Sebin) – the two armed services dictator Nicolás Maduro relies on to repress dissidents – blocked lawmakers from entering the national legislative palace for nearly two days, preventing them from working to remove Maduro.

Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro may flee Venezuela through an underground tunnel network in the event of a U.S. invasion of the crisis-stricken country, a former National Guard official has revealed.

The captain of the Manuela Saenz, a Venezuelan oil tanker, fought back against orders to send a shipment of unleaded and diesel gasoline to Cuba last week, prompting dictator Nicolás Maduro’s political police forces to stop the ship and replace him, according to a report in Argentine news outlet Infobae on Tuesday.

Cuba’s communist regime is actively subjecting tens of thousands of doctors, musicians, professors, engineers, athletes, and other professionals deployed on international missions across the world to “crimes against humanity,” including “enslavement, persecution, and other inhuman acts,” two prominent non-governmental organizations (NGO) revealed on Tuesday.

A Venezuelan general who participated in a failed coup d’etat alongside Hugo Chávez in 1992 published a video this week urging soldiers to rise up against dictator Nicolás Maduro and suggested the communist government in Cuba killed Chávez to install Maduro as their puppet.

China sent its latest shipment of humanitarian aid to Venezuela on Monday, to be controlled by the regime of socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and distributed only to his allies.

A small number of radical leftists who illegally invaded the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC, late last month after socialist regime diplomats fled remain inside, but authorities removed several individuals on Monday night and those remaining are facing imminent expulsion.

The communist regime controlling Cuba announced a “rally for inclusion and respect for diversity” Monday after near-universal condemnation of the use of state violence to shut down an LGBT pride parade in Havana.

Diosdado Cabello, considered second in command to Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s dictatorship, has begun a “witch hunt” against those who oppose Maduro after being left out of contingency plans to abandon Maduro by other regime insiders, according to a report Saturday by the Spanish newspaper ABC.

Cuba’s communist regime sent police to beat and violently haul away some of the estimated 300 people congregating in Havana Saturday for an “illegal” gay pride march, organized after the regime canceled the annual Castro-led “conga against homophobia.”

A top court in Guatemala is expected to rule on Monday whether or not to uphold a constitutional ban that allegedly prohibits Zury Rios, a conservative presidential candidate and daughter of a former military dictator, from running for president due to her father’s participation in the country’s 1982 coup.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceled a trip to Berlin this week and instead made an abrupt visit to Iraq.

The former head of Venezuela’s feared secret police force, the SEBIN, published a video Thursday confirming his defection from the socialist regime of Nicolás Maduro and urging the country to move towards “reconstruction and a return to order.”

Voters who are tempted by any of the Democrats currently in the running for president should consider that the country’s next turn to the left could well be permanent.

The ongoing proliferation of Chinese surveillance and information technologies in Latin America can be used to exert social control, erode democratic governance, and challenge U.S. and regional strategic interest, expert witnesses told a House panel on Thursday.