标签： South America

In a latest escalation of the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign against suspected Latin American drug trafficking networks, the U.S. military announced Sunday that it destroyed two small vessels it accuses of smuggling narcotics in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The operation left five people dead and one person rescued, marking the most recent deadly action in a crackdown launched back in early September. Since the administration began labeling its targets “narcoterrorists” and authorizing open-target strikes, the death toll from these U.S. military boat attacks has climbed to at least 168, according to official data.

U.S. Southern Command, the military branch overseeing operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, confirmed the Saturday strikes were carried out along well-documented smuggling corridors that traffickers routinely use to move contraband north toward the United States. Unlike many previous strikes, the command did not release any concrete evidence to verify the boats were actually carrying illegal drugs at the time of the attack. Footage circulating on the social platform X, formerly Twitter, captures the two small craft moving across open water before large, bright explosions engulf both vessels.

Following the strikes, Southern Command said it alerted the U.S. Coast Guard to launch search-and-rescue operations for the lone reported survivor. The Coast Guard has confirmed it is leading coordination for the search effort and stated it will release further updates as more information becomes available.

The operation comes as the Trump administration is simultaneously ramping up military pressure on two separate global fronts: Latin American drug networks and the Iranian government in the Persian Gulf. Just hours after the Pacific strike, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. Navy will implement a full naval blockade of Iranian ports and restrict all commercial traffic moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass. The blockade announcement comes just days after ceasefire negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegates held in Pakistan collapsed without any breakthrough, ending a fragile multi-week truce that had paused open hostilities between the two nations.

Trump has framed the ongoing boat strikes against suspected traffickers as a core component of what he calls an “armed conflict” with transnational drug cartels, arguing the escalated military action is critical to cutting off the flow of narcotics into the U.S. and reducing the record number of fatal drug overdoses that kill tens of thousands of Americans annually. To date, however, the administration has failed to produce substantive public evidence backing its repeated claims that those killed in the strikes are confirmed “narcoterrorists.”

Critics have raised two core objections to the campaign: they question the legality of extrajudicial military strikes targeting non-state actors in international waters, and they cast doubt on the policy’s actual effectiveness in addressing the country’s overdose crisis. Policy analysts have pointed out that the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is responsible for the vast majority of fatal overdoses in the U.S., is almost exclusively trafficked across the land border with Mexico. Fentanyl is primarily produced in Mexican laboratories using precursor chemicals imported from China and India, making maritime Pacific smuggling a negligible contributor to the overall drug flow.

The simultaneous dual military deployments mark a rare moment where the U.S. is carrying out active offensive operations in two separate regions. While the Trump administration has prioritized its counternarcotics campaign in the Western Hemisphere, it has shifted significant naval and air resources to the Middle East over the past several weeks following the outbreak of open hostilities with Iran. The new blockade of Iranian ports is designed to cut off Iran’s key oil export revenue, its primary leverage in the ongoing war, after Tehran briefly closed the Strait of Hormuz earlier this month.

Related developments unfolding alongside the Pacific strike include a growing public feud between former President Trump and newly elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, over the U.S.’s war with Iran, as well as an immediate spike in global oil prices following the blockade announcement, as markets react to the threat of disrupted global crude supplies.

As Peruvians head to the polls on Sunday for a high-stakes presidential election, the Andean nation finds itself grappling with deep-seated public anger, a spiraling crime crisis, and a historic political reshuffle that will shape its governance for years to come. This election will mark the selection of Peru’s ninth president in just one decade, a statistic that underscores the chronic political instability that has long plagued the country. A field of 35 candidates — ranging from a seasoned former cabinet minister to a popular comedian and the heir to one of Peru’s most famous political dynasties — are competing for the nation’s highest office, in the largest candidate pool the country has ever seen.

The entire campaign has been defined by one overwhelming public concern: a dramatic surge in violent crime and entrenched political corruption that has left most voters convinced that every candidate lacks integrity and is unprepared to tackle the country’s most pressing challenges. Official government data paints a stark picture of the security breakdown: homicide rates have doubled since the start of the decade, while extortion cases have jumped fivefold. In 2025 alone, more than 200 public transportation drivers were murdered across the country, a statistic that has spread fear across every layer of society. A 2025 national survey from Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics found that 84% of urban respondents worry they will fall victim to a violent crime within the next year.

This widespread anxiety has translated into raw voter disillusionment, shared by Peruvians from all walks of life. Juan Gómez, a 53-year-old construction worker supporting five children, summed up the prevailing mood as he carried groceries home: “You can’t trust anyone anymore, nothing’s going to change. Criminals come on motorcycles, put a gun to your head… you look around and there’s no police officer. What are you going to do? You just let them rob you.” Retiree Raúl Zevallos, 63, echoed that fear, describing the constant risk of daily travel: “You get on the bus, and you have to sit far from the driver; you don’t know if you’ll make it home alive. Criminals drive by on motorcycles, shoot, kill the driver, and you could die, too.”

In response to public demands for action, most candidates have rolled out hard-line security proposals to win over frustrated voters. Planks on the campaign trail include constructing large-scale “megaprisons,” requiring incarcerated people to work to earn access to meals, and even reviving the death penalty for the most serious violent offenses.

The best-known candidate in the race is Keiko Fujimori, a conservative former congresswoman and daughter of late Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who is making her fourth bid for the presidency. Fujimori has campaigned on a promise of an iron fist crackdown on organized crime, but her record has drawn scrutiny: in recent years, her party backed legislation that legal experts argue has made it far harder to prosecute criminal offenders, eliminating preliminary detention for certain offenses and raising the legal bar to seize illegally gained assets. If elected, Fujimori has pledged to allow criminal case judges to serve anonymously and mandate that prisoners work to earn their food rations.

Another top conservative contender is Rafael López Aliaga, the former mayor of Lima, Peru’s capital. López Aliaga has proposed building new high-security prisons in the country’s remote Amazon region, also backs anonymous judge protections, and has promised to expel all undocumented migrants living in Peru. A more unconventional candidate is Carlos Álvarez, a comedian who has pivoted to politics, who has pledged to bring in security policy expertise from the leaders of El Salvador, Denmark, and Singapore if elected.

Beyond the presidential race, this election carries historic implications for Peru’s governing structure: for the first time in more than 30 years, voters are also selecting a new bicameral Congress, after lawmakers pushed through constitutional reforms in 2024 that shift significant power to a newly created upper Senate chamber. This reversal of a decades-old unicameral system comes despite 80% of voters rejecting a bicameral model in a 2018 public referendum.

Under the new framework, the sitting president will lack the power to dissolve the Senate, while the upper chamber will gain the ability to remove a sitting president from office through impeachment. The threshold for impeachment has also been lowered dramatically: impeachment will now pass with just 40 votes out of the 60-member Senate, compared to the previous requirement of 87 votes out of 130 unicameral legislators. Political analysts widely credit the frequent use of the impeachment power by the old unicameral Congress for the chaotic “revolving door” of presidents that has seen Peru turn over eight leaders in 10 years.

The new Senate will also take on sweeping powers beyond impeachment, including the authority to appoint and discipline top government officials, ranging from the national ombudsman and constitutional court justices to central bank board members. It will also hold the power to review and amend legislation passed by the lower congressional chamber. Alejandro Boyco, a researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies, warned that the concentration of power in the small 60-person Senate creates new corruption risks. “They’ve concentrated too much power in a 60-people chamber,” Boyco said. “They are not going to be immune to being corrupt.”

Voting is mandatory for all Peruvian citizens between the ages of 18 and 70, with more than 27 million registered voters nationwide. Around 1.2 million registered voters are living abroad, mostly in the United States and Argentina, and will cast ballots outside the country. While an outright win requires a candidate to capture more than 50% of the vote, political analysts widely agree that a June runoff election is all but guaranteed, given the deep divisions among the electorate and the historically large field of candidates competing for support.

As Peru prepares for a pivotal general election on Sunday that will install a new president and full Congress, one of the country’s most damaging and profitable illicit activities — unregulated illegal gold mining — has been almost entirely sidelined by political candidates, even as the industry pushes deeper into the Amazon rainforest and protected Indigenous territories.

Industry and policy experts warn this widespread silence from campaigners exposes a systemic national failure to confront what is now Peru’s largest illicit economy, a multi-billion dollar trade that inflicts escalating damage on critical ecosystems, public health, and Indigenous communities that have called the Amazon home for millennia.

“Political parties do not grasp that illegal mining has become the country’s dominant criminal enterprise, generating more illicit revenue than any other activity,” said César Ipenza, a prominent Peruvian environmental lawyer. “There is either profound ignorance about what this crisis means for Peru’s future — or, in too many cases, political actors have already become complicit participants in this illegal economy.”

Projections from the Peruvian Institute of Economics estimate illegal mining will generate more than $11.5 billion in revenue in 2025, accounting for over 100 tons of annual gold exports. The scale of the illicit industry now rivals the size of Peru’s formal legal gold mining sector and outpaces the revenue generated by drug trafficking, long considered the country’s top illegal trade.

A small number of candidates have put forward limited proposals to address the crisis, including former officials and technocratic candidates Jorge Nieto and Alfonso López Chau. Their plans include measures such as mandatory gold traceability systems, enhanced financial intelligence tracking, and expanded protections for at-risk environmental defenders. But these proposals remain scattered across platforms and fall far short of a comprehensive national strategy to curb the industry’s growth.

Many other leading candidates, representing Peru’s most influential conservative and populist parties, have centered their campaigns on issues like public security, broad economic growth, and expanded extractive development, with no direct mention of illegal mining or its deep ties to systemic corruption and illegal territorial control in the Amazon. A handful of high-profile candidates — including media personalities turned politicians Ricardo Belmont and Carlos Álvarez — omit the issue entirely from their published policy platforms.

“Illegal mining and other large illicit economies are not a priority in any major party’s governing plans,” said Magaly Ávila, director of environmental governance at Proetica, a leading Peruvian anti-corruption organization. According to Proetica’s analysis, roughly 64% of all party platforms fail to address the illegal mining crisis in any meaningful way, while only 5% of parties tackle the issue “clearly and explicitly.”

A March 2026 analysis from Peru’s official Observatory of Illegal Mining reinforces these findings. The audit found that only 12 of the country’s 36 registered political parties have released specific policy proposals to address illegal mining, while the remaining parties either offer only vague general statements without actionable measures or do not mention the issue at all.

Peruvian governments have repeatedly announced new crackdown operations and national strategies to combat illegal mining in past years, but enforcement of these policies remains severely limited, experts say. The Associated Press reached out to multiple Peruvian government entities to request comment on illegal mining and protections for Indigenous territories ahead of the election, but received no response prior to publication.

Peruvian lawmakers have repeatedly extended a temporary regulatory program that allows informal miners to continue operating while they pursue formal legal status. Critics of the program argue it has been widely abused by criminal networks and has directly enabled the expansion of illegal mining across the country.

At the same time, recent changes to Peruvian national legislation have weakened the ability of prosecutors and judges to pursue organized criminal groups, including large-scale illegal mining networks, according to international human rights and environmental groups. Analysts say these policy rollbacks came in response to intense political pressure from small-scale miner associations, which have organized large public protests to demand looser regulations. These protests have made tightening enforcement far more politically difficult for incumbent and aspiring politicians alike.

Julia Urrunaga, Peru program director for the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), noted that many small-scale miner protests appear to be highly coordinated from behind the scenes, indicating that powerful criminal networks are pulling the strings to advance their policy interests.

The rapid expansion of illegal mining in recent years has been largely driven by soaring global gold prices, which have climbed to between $4,500 and $5,000 per ounce, making even small deposits of gold extremely profitable for miners. Once concentrated almost exclusively in the southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios, illegal mining operations have now spread to new parts of the Amazon basin and beyond Peru’s traditional mining corridors.

“Gold prices have hit historic highs, and that has directly driven the explosive expansion of illegal mining across the country,” Ipenza said. “The Peruvian state simply does not have the institutional capacity to respond to or prosecute this activity at its current scale.”

Illegal mining operations almost universally rely on liquid mercury to separate gold from ore, a cheap but highly toxic process that releases massive amounts of the heavy metal into Peruvian Amazon rivers. From there, mercury builds up in the tissue of fish, entering the food chain that millions of Peruvians rely on for sustenance.

“In Amazonian river communities, between 50% and 70% of the daily diet comes from local fish,” explained Mariano Castro, Peru’s former vice minister of environment. “So human exposure to mercury grows exponentially. Mercury is extremely toxic, and it causes severe, permanent neurological damage for people exposed over long periods.”

Environmental and public health experts have already confirmed that mercury contamination in many affected regions exceeds international safety standards, creating long-term public health risks for local populations. Ipenza warned that continued expansion of illegal mining across the Amazon “will bring widespread contamination, growing influence for transnational criminal groups, and direct existential harm to Indigenous and local populations.”

“Illegal mining already puts our health, the Amazon’s biodiversity, and our traditional ways of life at grave risk,” said Tabea Casique, a board member of AIDESEP, Peru’s largest national Indigenous organization. “Most political parties are still not taking this problem seriously or presenting concrete plans to address it.”

Castro, the former environment vice minister, called past state efforts to rein in illegal mining “completely insufficient,” noting that lawmakers have systematically weakened legal tools to prosecute criminal mining networks. These changes include reduced penalties for illegal mining and new restrictions that make it harder to classify large-scale mining operations as organized crime. Widespread gaps in regulatory oversight also allow illegally mined gold to be laundered into formal legal supply chains, most often through small-scale processing plants that mix illicit and legal gold for export.

Ipenza called for sweeping reforms, including stronger regulatory oversight of small-scale gold processing plants and improved inter-agency coordination between customs officials, financial intelligence units, and criminal prosecutors to track gold flows and crack down on illegal activity. Analysts agree that weak gold traceability systems are one of the central vulnerabilities enabling illegal mining’s expansion.

“There is no functional system to trace gold mining production in Peru,” EIA’s Urrunaga said. “Different authorities hold fragmented bits of information, but there is no unified system — and apparently no political will — to connect those pieces and track illegal gold.”

“We are talking about more than $12 billion in illegal gold exports every year,” she added. “How can this activity continue with almost total impunity?”

Policy and environmental experts warn that delaying action on the crisis will only make it far harder to contain in coming years. The next Peruvian government will immediately face mounting pressure to confront a crisis that is already spiraling out of control.

“Authorities cannot fulfill their fundamental responsibility to protect Peruvian citizens if they continue to normalize an activity that causes such widespread, irreversible harm,” Castro said.

Nestled in the shadow of the snow-capped Andes, Virginia de Valle walks through her family’s 16-hectare Bodega Gieco vineyard in Argentina’s renowned wine hub Mendoza, gesturing to the rows of grapevines that produce 100,000 litres of premium wine annually. Her opening remark carries unshakable gravity: “Without water, there would be no wine.” For Mendoza’s winemaking community, every drop of irrigation water traces back to the Andes’ winter snowpack and ancient glaciers – natural reserves that now sit at the center of a fierce national debate following recent parliamentary approval of sweeping reforms to Argentina’s landmark 2010 glacial protection law.

For generations, Mendoza’s identity has been tied to its glacial water supply. Residents call the region “the daughter of the Andes’ water,” and as droughts grow more frequent and severe across the semi-arid province, glacial melt has become a critical buffer that keeps vineyards productive and household taps running. De Valle’s fear is shared by millions across the country: the rolled-back protections will open vulnerable glacial ecosystems to destructive large-scale mining, putting vital water sources at irreversible risk. “Every drop of water counts,” she emphasizes, a warning that resonates far beyond Mendoza’s vine rows.

Argentina was a global pioneer in glacial conservation when it passed the 2010 Glacier Law, the first national legislation in the world dedicated specifically to protecting these critical frozen water reserves. The original law designated all glaciers and surrounding periglacial environments – including permafrost that traps billions of liters of frozen water – as strategic national reserves, banning any commercial activity that would damage them, and required a full national inventory maintained by the country’s leading glacial research body, the Argentine Institute of Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences (Ianigla).

The new reforms shift all decision-making power to provincial governments, which will now determine which glaciers within their borders qualify as “strategic” – defined as reserves that provide water for consumption, agriculture, biodiversity, scientific research or tourism. Glaciers deemed non-strategic can be removed from the national protected inventory, stripping them of all legal environmental safeguards. Proponents of the changes, led by President Javier Milei’s libertarian administration La Libertad Avanza, frame the original 2010 law as an unnecessary regulatory barrier that has blocked Argentina from unlocking its vast mineral wealth. They argue that opening glacial regions to copper and lithium mining will catalyze regional economic growth and accelerate the global transition to clean energy, which depends heavily on both minerals. Milei, who has campaigned on cutting red tape to attract foreign investment, has pointed to neighboring Chile, which shares the Andes mountain range and exports $20 billion worth of copper annually, while Argentina currently exports no copper at all. According to Bloomberg reporting, major global mining firms including Glencore, Lundin and BHP Group have already met with Milei, with plans to invest roughly $40 billion into Argentina’s untapped copper reserves if regulations are loosened.

Opposition to the reforms has erupted across the country, from Mendoza’s wine valleys to Patagonia’s popular hiking destination El Chaltén, with the rallying cry “Los glaciares no se tocan” (Hands off our glaciers) painted on walls and sidewalks nationwide. More than 100,000 people registered to participate in a public hearing on the reforms in March, though fewer than 400 were able to speak during the two-day session. Agostina Rossi Serra, a biologist with environmental advocacy group Greenpeace, argues that widespread public opposition demonstrates this is not just an environmentalist cause – it is a fight for public water security. “It made clear that it’s not just environmental organisations who were asking for this law not to be amended; it was the people, the public, who were asking for water to continue to be protected,” she says.

Many of the provincial governments pushing for the reforms, including Mendoza and neighboring San Juan, are located in arid and semi-arid regions where water is already a scarce, highly contested resource. Serra accuses these regional governments of prioritizing mining revenue over the long-term well-being of local ecosystems and communities: “They are provinces that believe mining development is far more important than ecosystems and the communities themselves.”

Leading glaciologists have also pushed back on the core justifications for the reform, calling its central claims fundamentally flawed. Lucas Ruiz, an independent glaciologist researcher at Ianigla, explains that the argument that some glaciers do not contribute to river systems is scientifically baseless. “The most false part of it all is the claim that there are glaciers that do not contribute to rivers. If it’s a glacier, it has ice and contributes water. It’s very basic,” he says. Ruiz adds that the reform’s vague language creates massive uncertainty: “We are left not knowing what criteria will be used, not knowing which technical bodies will be involved, and clearly, any glacier and any periglacial environment could be at risk.”

Ruiz also acknowledges a painful paradox at the heart of the debate that complicates the scientific community’s position: glacial melt is accelerating globally due to climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions. Avoiding the worst-case scenarios requires a rapid global energy transition to renewables – a transition that depends entirely on large-scale extraction of copper and lithium for batteries, transmission infrastructure and clean energy technology. “It is a stark paradox, hard to accept, but it is the reality. Because the message from science is that energy transition is necessary,” he says. The solution, he argues, is not to roll back protections entirely, but to require rigorous environmental impact assessments for any mining project that would affect glacial ecosystems, and ensure all development is conducted responsibly.

Greenpeace remains deeply concerned that the profit motive will push provinces to weaken protections to attract investment. “If I have an international company looking for a place to develop a project, I’ll probably choose the province with the fewest environmental restrictions. That’s the concern we’re going to face,” Serra says.

Supporters of the reform argue that provincial control is the most fair and effective governance structure. Federico Palavecino, a Buenos Aires-based lawyer who advises mining projects on glacial regulation, says that since provincial communities will bear the consequences of any mismanagement, they should have the right to set their own rules. “Why should we tell them how to live?” he asks, arguing that removing regulatory barriers will bring much-needed economic investment to struggling rural communities.

Back in her Mendoza vineyard, De Valle is working to educate visitors about the potential consequences of the reform, framing the fight as one that affects all Argentines, not just winemakers. “It will affect wineries, but first, it will affect life,” she says. With more than 16,900 glaciers across Argentina feeding 36 river basins that supply water to seven million people across 12 provinces, the outcome of this debate will shape the country’s water security, economic future and environmental legacy for generations to come.

A simmering diplomatic dispute between Trinidad and Tobago and its fellow Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states erupted into open confrontation Friday, as Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar doubled down on her demand that bloc Secretary-General Carla Barnett leave office when her five-year term expires this August.

The rift at the heart of the conflict traces back to late 2025, when the United States deployed an unusually large military contingent near Venezuela’s borders in preparation for operations targeting then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The move split the 15-nation regional trade bloc, with most CARICOM leaders rejecting the U.S. military deployment and reaffirming their longstanding commitment to keeping the Caribbean a formal “zone of peace.”

Persad-Bissessar, who won Trinidad and Tobago’s general election one year ago, has broken sharply with that regional consensus. She has publicly dismissed the zone of peace framework as “zone of peace fakery,” and openly thrown her administration’s support behind both U.S. military strikes in the South Caribbean and the Trump administration’s broad crackdown on transnational drug trafficking and organized crime.

In a statement late last year, as the U.S. finalized its operational plans against Maduro, Persad-Bissessar argued that CARICOM had incorrectly taken sides with what she called “the Maduro narco-government” under the false pretense of the zone of peace agreement. Her comments came as multiple regional governments raised formal complaints over the civilian harm and alleged illegality of deadly U.S. boat strikes carried out as part of the anti-drug campaign.

The prime minister’s months-long campaign to oust Barnett has grown increasingly intense, ultimately forcing CARICOM leaders to hold an emergency summit Friday to discuss the secretary-general’s planned reappointment. As leverage to push her agenda, Persad-Bissessar has repeatedly reminded fellow leaders that Trinidad and Tobago contributes roughly 22% of CARICOM’s total annual operating budget, equal to approximately $20 million. She has made clear that her administration holds deep dissatisfaction with the bloc’s current policy direction, saying she cannot understand why the majority of regional states have aligned with Venezuela and Maduro rather than backing the U.S. position on counter-narcotics and regional security.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A weeks-long political standoff in one of Brazil’s most high-profile states has been extended, after the country’s Supreme Court announced a last-minute delay Thursday to a critical ruling on who will assume the Rio de Janeiro governorship. The vacancy, which opened three weeks ago, has left the state’s urgent policy matters, from public security funding to transit infrastructure and fuel pricing, in the hands of an interim caretaker with limited mandate to act.

The opening for the governorship was created by law on March 23, when incumbent Cláudio Castro stepped down to launch his campaign for a Senate seat in Brazil’s October general election, a requirement under Brazilian electoral law. What was meant to be a straightforward succession has instead devolved into chaos, as every constitutionally next-in-line candidate is unable to take office.

Thiago Pampolha, Castro’s former deputy governor, would have been the automatic replacement, but he resigned from the deputy role earlier in 2025 to take a position at a state government oversight agency, disqualifying him from the succession. The next candidate in line is Rodrigo Bacellar, speaker of the Rio state legislature, who was recently arrested on corruption charges and removed from his public post.

The Supreme Court’s delay came after Justice Flávio Dino requested additional time to review the central legal question of the case: whether Castro’s interim replacement, who will serve only until January 2026, should be selected by a special early popular election or appointed by the state’s historically scandal-plagued legislative body. Dino will have up to 90 days to complete his review and return the case for a final court ruling. As of Thursday’s partial vote, the 10-member court is split 4-1 in favor of an appointment by the state legislature, with the remaining votes yet to be finalized.

Currently, the top justice of Rio’s state judiciary, Ricardo Couto de Castro, is serving as acting governor on an emergency basis. Local media reports indicate that the interim role was never intended to be long-term, leaving Couto de Castro facing major pushback from state administrative officials who are unwilling to commit to major policy decisions under an unelected temporary leader.

Notably, a new permanent governor will not take office until January regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling, as Rio voters are already scheduled to elect their next full-term leader as part of October’s national general election. But the months-long leadership vacuum has already created tangible harm for Rio residents, political analysts warn.

Thomas Traumann, a veteran political consultant and former Brazilian government minister, called the prolonged uncertainty not just a national embarrassment, but a public risk. “The federal government recently reached an agreement to bring down sky-high diesel prices, which have spiked because of ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” Traumann explained. “Rio is one of the only states that has not been able to sign on to the deal, because there is no sitting governor with the authority to approve it. That means Rio will now have the most expensive diesel in all of Brazil.” He added that the vacuum leaves the state vulnerable to security crises: “If criminal gang violence erupts tomorrow, who has the authority to order police to respond?”

Local media also added that justices within Rio’s state judiciary are growing increasingly concerned that their core work will grind to a halt, as their leader is tied up managing the entire state’s executive branch with no clear end to his interim tenure in sight.

The succession dispute has already become tangled up in national political tensions, with major partisan actors lining up behind opposing outcomes. Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and a prominent conservative voice ahead of October’s election, has publicly pushed for the legislature to appoint state lawmaker Douglas Ruas to the interim post. On the opposing side, supporters of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — and Lula’s endorsed candidate for Rio governor, Eduardo Paes — have argued that the vacancy requires a direct popular vote to fill the interim role.