Mexico’s economic activity shrank sharply in the second quarter as measures to slow the coronavirus pandemic closed key industries and services such as vehicle production and tourism, revised government data showed.
Latin America
Mexico’s government is working with private broadcasters to deliver televised classes to 30 million public-school students, many of whom lack internet access.
The global tourism downturn that has accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic is being felt most acutely in the world’s less-developed nations, such as Mexico, where tourism is an important driver of economic development.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has made his political bones fighting corruption, found himself denying corruption allegations after two videos emerged showing his younger brother accepting an envelope and a paper bag stuffed with cash in 2015 for the president’s political movement.
Argentines are once again rushing to the safety of the U.S. dollar, a sign the country’s deal with creditors to restructure $65 billion in foreign debt has failed to restore confidence in government policies.
Mexico and Argentina have reached agreement with AstraZeneca to produce for Latin America the Covid-19 vaccine that it is developing with Oxford University.
Poorer countries experienced a slower run-up in coronavirus cases and deaths, but now seem stuck on a long, deadly plateau that is stretching on for months.
The former head of Mexico’s state-oil company accused former president Enrique Peña Nieto and his former finance minister of instructing him to funnel bribes to the 2012 presidential campaign, the country’s Attorney General said.
The new coronavirus has spread beyond Brazil’s megacities, tearing through smaller towns and rural areas as the country’s president says stricter public-health rules would do too much economic harm.
The region faces a 9.4% GDP decline this year, the worst downfall on record, and will likely lag behind other emerging markets in any recovery. It’s a major blow for millions who were making the long climb out of poverty.
An investigation of former President Álvaro Uribe is focusing on allegations of witness tampering involving an ex-member of a now-defunct paramilitary group.
The government says the largely rural Andean country’s internet connections aren’t good enough to support virtual classrooms during the pandemic.
Election authorities in the South American nation of Guyana declared opposition candidate Mohamed Irfaan Ali president, ending a stalemate that had hampered the region’s newest oil-producing nation since March.
Mexican authorities say José Antonio Yépez, or ‘El Marro,’ led an organized-crime group that siphoned fuel from pipelines and fought the Jalisco Cartel.
Eusebio Leal, a charismatic, self-taught historian credited with saving the colonial heart of Cuba’s crumbling colonial capital of Havana after decades of neglect, has died.
Two former senior Mexican police officials were indicted in New York on charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Sinaloa Cartel in exchange for protection and allowing tons of its cocaine to flow through Mexico unhindered.
Chileans rushed to tap their retirement savings just days after the government allowed it. Within five hours of the new program coming online, nearly two million Chileans logged on to pension websites, briefly crashing online platforms.
Mexico’s economic output fell 18.9% from the second quarter of 2019 as shutdowns to slow the spread of the coronavirus brought many factories and services to a standstill.
At least 22 doctors have been fired from their jobs at public hospitals in the country since early June, and doctors say the dismissals are government retaliation for calling attention to the coronavirus pandemic.
As governments in Latin America respond to the coronavirus pandemic, corrupt officials see moneymaking opportunities.
