标签： South America

LIMA, Peru — After final vote tallies were certified Friday, Peru has locked in its two candidates for the June 7 presidential runoff election, pitting a scion of one of the country’s most powerful political families against a nationalist former trade minister who has vowed to upend Peru’s long-standing mining policy. This runoff will shape the future of a nation that has seen eight presidents in just a decade, grappling with widespread public anger over crime and corruption even as its resource-driven economy holds strong against chronic political instability.

Final official results from the April 12 first-round vote confirm that conservative Keiko Fujimori, leader of the Fuerza Popular party and daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, secured first place with 17.18% of the vote. Trailing narrowly at 12.03% was nationalist congressman Roberto Sánchez of the Juntos por el Perú party, who edged out 33 other contenders to claim the second runoff spot. Both candidates have centered their campaigns on addressing Peru’s skyrocketing violent crime rate, which ranks as the top concern for most Peruvian voters.

The first-round election was marred by widespread logistical failures, including widespread ballot shortages that left thousands of eligible voters both in Peru and overseas unable to cast their ballots on election Sunday. Authorities responded by extending voting for more than 52,000 Lima voters on Monday, as well as for Peruvian citizens registered in two U.S. voting locations: Orlando, Florida, and Paterson, New Jersey. Ballot access issues have already spurred an official investigation, with police raiding the former election chief’s home and a Peruvian court setting a mid-May deadline for the completion of official vote counting.

The election unfolded against a backdrop of soaring violent crime and persistent corruption scandals that have left most Peruvian voters deeply disillusioned, with widespread public distrust of nearly all candidates’ integrity and preparedness to lead. In response to voter anger, dozens of first-round candidates put forward hardline crime proposals, including plans for mega-sized prisons, restricted inmate meals, and a return of the death penalty for serious offenses.

Against this turbulent political landscape, Peru’s economy has emerged as an unexpected bright spot. As the world’s second-largest copper producer, the country has posted consistent 3% annual growth across 2024 and 2025, defying predictions that the constant turnover of presidents—three have held office since October alone—would derail economic performance. The mining sector that drives this growth is now one of the biggest points of contention between the two runoff candidates.

The upcoming June contest echoes Peru’s 2021 presidential runoff, which also featured Fujimori as a candidate. That year, she faced off against rural schoolteacher and political outsider Pedro Castillo, whom Sánchez has openly supported and even emulates by wearing Castillo’s signature wide-brimmed campaign hat. Castillo defeated Fujimori by a narrow margin of roughly 42,000 votes, fueled by overwhelming support from low-income rural communities, but his presidency ended in impeachment and arrest in December 2022 after he attempted to dissolve Congress to block an impeachment vote.

This marks Fujimori’s fourth run for the presidency. She has run on a promise of a hardline crackdown on rising crime, but her record is contradictory: her party supported legislation in recent years that legal experts say undermines criminal prosecutions, including measures that eliminated preliminary detention for certain offenses and raised the legal bar for seizing assets tied to organized crime. Sánchez has pledged to repeal these same laws, while also promising to strengthen police intelligence units to combat extortion, a crime that has increased fivefold across Peru in the last five years.

On economic policy, Sánchez has broken with the market-friendly policies that have defined Peru for the last two decades. His core proposal is a sweeping overhaul of the country’s mining sector: he has promised to renegotiate existing contracts with foreign mining firms to increase state tax revenues, grant rural indigenous communities partial ownership stakes in mines operating on their land, and ban harmful open-pit mining operations. Political analysts note these reforms face steep odds, however, as Sánchez’s party does not currently hold a majority in congress.

Will Freeman, a Latin America Studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that Fujimori holds a key structural advantage: she is one of Peru’s only remaining national career politicians, heading the country’s only enduring political organization with a full nationwide infrastructure. Freeman argued this structure could help her deliver on crime policy, but that her track record suggests any crackdown would be inconsistent. He pointed to the irony of Fujimori’s history: in the 2010s, her party supported anti-organized crime legislation that prosecutors later used to open corruption investigations against Fujimori herself, leading the party to roll back many of those same anti-crime measures in subsequent years.

The winner of the June 7 runoff will be sworn in for a five-year presidential term on July 28.

Fifteen Latin American asylum seekers who were deported to the Democratic Republic of Congo under the former Trump administration’s hardline, widely panned migration crackdown are now stranded in a country they never knew existed, facing an impossible choice no protected refugee should ever have to make. For the 29-year-old Colombian woman at the center of this case, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, what was supposed to be a search for safety after fleeing persecution has devolved into what she describes as an unending nightmare—an outcome far removed from Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi’s dismissive description of their situation as “living the Congolese dream.”

The Colombian woman’s account lays bare the severe human cost of the opaque third-country deportation deals the Trump administration struck with at least eight African nations. Legal experts widely frame these agreements as a deliberate legal loophole designed to bypass longstanding U.S. asylum protections. The woman’s case mirrors that of dozens of other deportees: she had already received a formal protection order from a U.S. immigration judge, which barred her forcible return to Colombia, where she faced threats from armed groups and ongoing abuse at the hands of a former government-linked partner.

Her journey to this crisis began in 2024, when she fled Colombia for Mexico, secured a U.S. border appointment through the official government system, and successfully established a credible fear of persecution at an Arizona port of entry that qualified her for asylum processing. For 18 months, she remained in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where she described routine dehumanization: repeated racist abuse from officers, punitive solitary confinement, revoked access to basic amenities like showers, and a complete loss of personal privacy even when using restroom facilities. In May 2025, a federal judge granted her formal protection under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, confirming she could not be safely repatriated to Colombia. She won her release from detention in February 2026 and relocated to Texas, where she was required to wear a GPS monitoring device as a condition of her release. But at her first routine check-in with ICE, she was taken back into custody immediately.

All officials told her was that a third country had agreed to accept her, she recalled. Less than three weeks later, she was strapped into a 24-hour charter flight to Congo—her destination was only disclosed to her 24 hours before departure. “When they told me they were going to deport me, I almost fainted,” she said. She and the 14 other Latin American deportees arrived in Kinshasa on April 17, their hands and feet shackled throughout the entire journey.

Since her arrival, the woman and the other deportees have been confined to a locked hotel compound near Kinshasa’s N’djili Airport, housed in tidy white bungalows with all current costs covered by the Congolese government, according to the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration, which oversees the group’s daily management. Deported migrants are only permitted to leave the hotel compound once per week, and every trip is strictly chaperoned by IOM staff—there is no unsupervised movement, even for routine errands like grocery shopping or banking. “They choose where we go and what we buy,” the woman explained. While IOM has organized recreational activities including painting classes, music groups and volleyball matches, many deportees have lost interest in the repetitive routine. The woman spends most of her time alone in her room, making late-night calls to her 10-year-old daughter who remains in Colombia, constantly uncertain of when she will see her again.

With their three-month Congolese visas set to expire imminently, there is still no clear plan for their future, leaving the group in total legal and personal limbo. IOM has presented the woman with two unworkable options: accept “assisted voluntary return” to Colombia, where the U.S. judge already confirmed she faces extreme danger, or remain permanently in Congo with absolutely no financial, housing or social support from any agency. “What would one do in a completely unknown place, without a place to live and without knowing what to do?” she asked. She has experienced persistent stomach illness from the unfamiliar food, cannot speak French or Lingala—two of the most common languages in the country—and feels deeply unsafe in a setting that is entirely alien to her. “They treat us like we’re children,” she added. “The worst part is having to go through all of that without having committed any crime, simply for going to another country to ask for safety and protection.”

Alma David, the woman’s U.S.-based attorney, has condemned the entire process as a fundamental violation of U.S. domestic law and international human rights obligations. “By deporting them to a third country with no opportunity to contest being sent there, the U.S. not only violated their due process rights but our own immigration laws and our obligations under international treaties,” David explained. She noted that current ICE policy allows for deportation to any third country that provides blanket diplomatic assurances it will not persecute deportees, requiring no additional screening, no advanced notice to the deportee, and no individual risk assessment.

The full terms of the deal between the U.S. and Congo remain undisclosed. While other participating African nations have received millions of dollars in compensation for accepting deportees, Tshisekedi claimed earlier this month that Congo agreed to the arrangement as a free “act of goodwill between partners,” with no financial payment. Many regional analysts attribute Kinshasa’s willingness to comply to ongoing U.S. diplomatic pressure over the M23 rebel insurgency in eastern Congo, where Washington has openly condemned Rwanda’s support for the rebel group. Tshisekedi has downplayed the crisis, noting that the migrants are technically free to leave Congo at any time, and quipped that “they dreamed of living the American dream, and now they are living the Congolese dream.”

Congolese human rights organizations have rejected the agreement as a blatant violation of international refugee law. The Kinshasa-based Institute for Human Rights Research has described the migrants’ confinement as “arbitrary detention by proxy for the United States.” The AP’s investigation has already uncovered similar abuses across other participating African nations, including a gay Moroccan asylum seeker deported to Cameroon, where same-sex relations remain criminalized nationwide.

In response to requests for comment on the Colombian woman’s case, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security declined to answer specific questions. The agency has previously defended third-country deportation agreements, claiming they “ensure due process under the U.S. Constitution” and are a necessary tool to remove “criminal illegal aliens” whose home countries refuse to accept their repatriation. A recent U.S. court ruling that found the U.S. likely acted illegally in the deportation of another Colombian man to Congo has left the woman and her legal team uncertain what, if any, relief it will provide her case.

In a statement on its involvement, an IOM spokesperson confirmed the organization provides humanitarian assistance to deportees based on individual vulnerability assessments, including protection support, service referrals and general wellbeing outreach, but declined to share further details. The organization offers assisted voluntary return services that cover travel documents, flight costs, transit and temporary housing for those who agree to go back to their home countries, and has stressed it plays no role in selecting which migrants are deported. IOM also reserves the right to end its assistance if “minimum protection standards” are not met, the spokesperson added. For now, the Colombian woman remains trapped, cut off from her family and her future, with no clear path forward.

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s political landscape has been upended by new allegations that Senate member and presumptive presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro solicited more than $12 million in funding from a jailed, fraud-accused banker, a scandal that threatens to derail his 2024 election bid against incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On Wednesday, the lawmaker issued a flat denial of any illegal activity connected to the request. The controversy first came to light via an investigation published by The Intercept Brazil, which released leaked voice recordings of Bolsonaro asking Daniel Vorcaro, a former bank chief at the heart of one of Brazil’s biggest recent corruption scandals, for 61 million reais to fund a biographical film about his father, Jair Bolsonaro, the disgraced former Brazilian president who is currently imprisoned on corruption charges. Bolsonaro has framed the project, titled *The Dark Horse*, as a private work chronicling the elder Bolsonaro’s political life. Vorcaro, who led the now-defunct Banco Master until its forced shutdown, has been in custody since March this year, facing a slew of charges including orchestrating a massive fraud scheme that conned thousands of the bank’s clients out of millions of dollars through deceptive, unregulated investment deals. Both Brazil’s Federal Police and the Supreme Court have been leading a sprawling probe into the scandal, which has already dragged multiple high-profile political figures into its orbit since early 2024. In his first public response to the revelations, Flávio Bolsonaro pushed back hard against any implication of wrongdoing. “This is simply a case of a son seeking private sponsorship for a private film about his father’s story. No public funds were involved at all,” the senator said in an official statement. He went on to reject all claims of impropriety, adding: “I never offered any illegal favors in exchange for funding, I never held secret off-the-books meetings with Vorcaro, I never mediated business deals with the federal government, and I have not received any money from him at this point.” Political analysts warn that the timing of the scandal, which comes just days before Flávio Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party is set to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate for October’s election, could deal a catastrophic blow to his campaign. Thomas Traumann, a veteran Brazilian political consultant, noted that Flávio Bolsonaro’s political identity is almost entirely tied to his family name. “Flávio Bolsonaro is still a relatively unknown figure to most Brazilian voters, and his biggest political asset by far is his status as the son of the former president,” Traumann explained. “A scandal of this magnitude, where he is caught asking for large sums of money from a banker under active criminal investigation for fraud, and showing clear personal ties to him, could be devastating. It may even force the Brazilian opposition to replace its candidate at the last minute to preserve its chances of winning in October.” According to The Intercept Brazil’s reporting, the messages from Flávio Bolsonaro to Vorcaro were sent back in October 2023, months before Vorcaro’s arrest. Since being taken into custody, the former banker has been negotiating a potential plea deal with federal prosecutors in exchange for cooperating with their investigation. Brazil’s Central Bank first moved to shut down Banco Master, which held more than $16 billion in total assets at its peak, last November, after regulators uncovered massive irregularities in the bank’s operations. Since the allegations against Flávio Bolsonaro became public, he and his political allies have launched a counteroffensive, making unsubstantiated claims that the entire scandal is a plot orchestrated by the current Lula administration to undermine his campaign. To date, Brazil’s Federal Police have found no evidence linking Vorcaro or his scheme to Lula or his government. The controversy is just the latest to hit the Bolsonaro-aligned opposition in recent weeks: earlier this week, Sen. Ciro Nogueira, a former chief of staff to Jair Bolsonaro, also denied published reports that he had accepted regular, undeclared payments from Vorcaro in exchange for political support.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Mass mobilization swept across major Argentine cities on Tuesday, as tens of thousands of demonstrators filled public streets to push back against sweeping funding cuts to the nation’s beloved public university system enacted by libertarian President Javier Milei.

Marches originating from multiple points in central Buenos Aires converged on the Casa Rosada, the Argentine government’s executive headquarters, where protesters voiced fierce opposition to chronic budget shortfalls that are steadily eroding the financial backbone of the country’s public higher education network. For nearly 75 years, Argentina’s public university system has stood as a cornerstone of national identity: tuition-free since 1949, it has cultivated a highly skilled national workforce deeply valued by the country’s large middle class, and counted five Nobel Prize winners among its alumni. Last year, Argentina’s Congress passed bipartisan legislation mandating that the government adjust university operating budgets and professor salaries to match the country’s sky-high persistent inflation. But rather than enacting the law, the Milei administration has instead challenged its constitutionality in the courts, leaving the system starved of needed funding.

Milei’s ideological framing of the cuts aligns closely with that of his prominent American ally and backer, former U.S. President Donald Trump: the president has repeatedly painted public university campuses as hotbeds of progressive “woke” indoctrination. The funding slashes form a core part of his controversial austerity agenda, which leans on dramatic cuts to overall public spending to correct what he frames as decades of fiscally irresponsible spending and entrenched corruption under prior left-leaning administrations.

Tuesday’s cross-sectional protest drew participants of all age groups and political affiliations, unfolding as Milei’s national approval ratings have plummeted in recent months amid a steep economic downturn. The country has struggled with contracting economic output, eroding real wages, and rapidly rising unemployment under his watch. A growing wave of corruption scandals has also fueled public anger, most notably an ongoing investigation into unexplained lavish spending by Milei’s close confidant and Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni, whose lifestyle appears far out of step with his modest public salary and officially declared assets. Protesters carried placards calling out the discrepancy, with one common sign reading “How much does Adorni cost us?”

Alejandro Álvarez, Milei’s appointed undersecretary for university policies, dismissed the mass demonstration as a purely partisan political action. He claimed the government has already provided increased funding to offset rising operating costs, but university unions and faculty organizations have uniformly rejected these marginal adjustments as woefully inadequate to address the system’s needs.

In its legal challenge to last year’s congressionally approved funding law, the Milei administration argues the legislation does not identify specific revenue streams to cover the mandated funding increases amid the country’s ongoing harsh fiscal austerity program. The case is currently on track to be decided by Argentina’s Supreme Court, and protesters on Tuesday issued a direct public call for the nation’s highest judicial body to heed the widespread public outcry across the country’s public squares.

Data from Argentina’s largest national faculty federation shows that since Milei took office in late 2023, the real inflation-adjusted value of university professors’ salaries has dropped by roughly 33 percent. Ricardo Gelpi, rector of the nationally prestigious University of Buenos Aires, warned that the dramatic erosion of purchasing power has already pushed more than 580 research faculty in engineering and hard science departments to leave the public system for higher-paying positions at private institutions or other sectors.

Speaking from the march in Buenos Aires, 24-year-old University of Buenos Aires law student Sol Muñíz summed up the widespread public sentiment around the cuts. “It’s very clear this government is determined to defund public education,” she said. “University is a source of pride for us. It is the best thing we have.”