Latin America

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s embattled president was forced on Thursday to hold a private ceremony amid heavy security for what is usually a public celebration of one of the country’s founding fathers.

CULIACÁN, Mexico (AP) — An intense gunfight with heavy weapons and burning vehicles blocking roads paralyzed the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state Thursday after security forces located one of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s sons who is wanted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Venezuela won a contested election for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday despite a campaign by over 50 organizations and many countries opposed to Nicolás Maduro’s government and its rights record.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador defended his militarized police force and blamed past administrations for Mexico’s chronic violence.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Longtime Mexican oil workers union boss Carlos Romero Deschamps, who ruled the syndicate with an iron fist for nearly three decades, resigned Wednesday following repeated scandals over alleged corruption.

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban government says it will allow citizens to use 10 foreign currencies to buy products like televisions and air conditioners at state stores in an attempt to compete with a multi-billion-dollar informal market in imported goods.

Sounds of what may be automatic weapon fire were widespread on social media.

PERGAMINO, Argentina (AP) — Juan Rossi walks between rows of green wheat at his farm in one of Argentina’s most fertile agricultural regions, worrying about the future of the farming sector that is the main economic engine of this country.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — President Jovenel Moïse broke his silence Tuesday and said it would be irresponsible for him to resign amid Haiti’s unrest, which has entered a fifth week of deadly protests that have paralyzed the economy and shuttered schools.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — President Lenín Moreno survived the toughest political crisis of his presidency by negotiating an end to indigenous anti-austerity protests. Now he faces an even tougher challenge.

MORELIA, Mexico (AP) — Grieving family members of the 13 police officers killed in an apparent cartel ambush gathered outside a funeral home in the Mexican state of Michoacán on Tuesday, many of them angry at the government and police chiefs they believe sent their loved ones to a certain death.

Front-runner Alberto Fernández and current President Mauricio Macri faced off over the state of the Argentine economy, past corruption scandals and a national debate over abortion legalization.

Though the postwar years saw a relative flowering of democracy in Latin America, the Rio Treaty was not envisioned as an instrument for advancing democracy.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s embattled president faced a fifth week of protests on Monday as road blocks went up across the country after opposition leaders said they will not back down on their call for Jovenel Moïse to resign.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Thousands of indigenous demonstrators, student volunteers and local residents launched a mass cleanup Monday of a Quito park where anti-austerity protesters fought police for days, leaving piles of burning tires, trees and construction material.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Protesters burned tires and spilled oil on streets in parts of Haiti’s capital on Friday as they renewed their call for the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse just hours after a journalist was shot to death.

The Indigenous communities arrived in Quito earlier this week and have been protesting all over Ecuador due to Moreno’s decision to end government fuel subsidies.

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Hundreds more indigenous protesters poured into Ecuador’s capital from the country’s Amazon on Friday, increasing pressure on President Lenín Moreno over fuel price hikes and economic measures that have sparked more than a week of anti-government demonstrations.

The suggestion that El Salvador can protect asylum seekers is misleading.

MIAMI (AP) — After seeking asylum in the United States at the Mexican border, Pablo Sanchez was placed in a detention center and is now facing what has become an increasingly common scenario under President Donald Trump: deportation to Cuba.

While there is little certainty as to its origin, many scholars believe the statue arrived in Portobelo in the 17th century.