标签： South America

A years-long political controversy in Colombia reignited this week when national prosecutors formally filed abuse of power charges against Laura Sarabia, a former top official and close ally of the country’s first leftist president Gustavo Petro. The charges stem from a 2023 incident that first upended Sarabia’s political career, when she allegedly leveraged her official position to force her former nanny into a coercive polygraph test over a missing cash dispute.

The scandal first broke to the public in 2023 via reporting from Colombian news weekly *Semana*, which revealed that Sarabia — then serving as President Petro’s chief of staff — had arranged for her employee Marelbys Meza, the woman hired to care for Sarabia’s young son, to be hooked up to a law enforcement polygraph. The investigation targeted Meza over claims that a briefcase holding thousands of dollars in cash had gone missing from Sarabia’s personal residence.

Meza, who has repeatedly denied any involvement in the alleged theft, told *Semana* she was transported by Sarabia’s personal driver to an official government building directly across from the presidential palace, an experience she described as feeling identical to a kidnapping. Once at the facility, active police officers administered the polygraph exam and interrogated her about the missing funds. She passed the test with a negative result, confirming her denial of wrongdoing, and has stood by that account in all subsequent public comments.

Following the initial reporting of the incident in June 2023, Sarabia stepped down from her post as chief of staff. However, her political career did not end there: just over 18 months later, she was appointed to the role of Colombia’s foreign minister, a position she held from January through July 2025. After resigning from the foreign ministry, Petro appointed her as Colombia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, a post she still holds as of this reporting. At 32 years old, Sarabia has long been counted among President Petro’s most trusted and senior advisors, throughout his full term in office which concluded in August 2026.

Prosecutors formalizing the charges this week outlined their core accusation: by arranging for active police personnel and state-owned law enforcement equipment to investigate a private personal dispute unrelated to her official government duties, Sarabia intentionally misused public resources and abused the authority of her elected office. Sarabia has issued a flat denial of all wrongdoing in response to the charges. During her initial court hearing on the case, she rejected the accusations without offering additional comment. Prior to the hearing, she posted a statement to social media noting that her legal team was handling the proceedings, adding that she respects Colombia’s judicial system and has confidence in the integrity of its final decision.

Just three months after winning the Colombian presidential election on a hardline anti-crime platform, President Abelardo de la Espriella has followed through on a polarizing campaign pledge by signing a executive decree rolling back long-standing restrictions on the public carry of legally owned firearms. The new order lifts a 10-year-old suspension that required even permit-holding gun owners to obtain extra, case-by-case approval before carrying their registered weapons outside the home.

The original restriction was first introduced in December 2015 by then-president Juan Manuel Santos as a short-term temporary security measure for the Christmas and New Year holiday season. What was meant to be a brief adjustment, however, was extended annually by three successive presidents from across Colombia’s political divide: conservative Iván Duque, and left-wing Gustavo Petro, turning an emergency measure into a decade-long policy.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, de la Espriella pushed back against criticism of the move, framing the policy shift as a matter of principle for his administration. “It is unjust that criminals are fully armed while law-abiding citizens are stripped of the right to defend themselves,” he stated, adding, “A man’s word is his honor, and I have honor — that is why I keep my campaign promises.” The president also emphasized that the new decree does not open the door to unregulated gun ownership, noting that strict background checks and permit requirements for gun ownership will remain fully in place. He argued the change merely removes a permanent restriction that was never intended to be permanent in the first place.

According to estimates from Spanish daily newspaper El País, the policy change will impact approximately 700,000 Colombians who already hold valid carry permits for firearms. Moving forward, these permit holders will be allowed to carry their registered firearms outside their homes as long as their permits remain active and up to date.

The announcement has drawn sharp criticism from opposition lawmakers. Ariel Ávila, a senator with the left-leaning Green Alliance Party, condemned the decree as a “serious mistake.” Ávila warned that legally held firearms will ultimately be diverted to criminal networks, arguing that only official state security forces should hold the authority to carry firearms in public as the guarantors of citizen safety, creating an ethical contradiction in the new policy.

De la Espriella has rejected claims that the reform will undermine public safety. He countered that his administration is already aggressively targeting illegal gun possession, with security forces having seized more than 15,000 unregistered firearms so far in 2026. Most of these seized weapons, he said, were linked to breakaway factions of the former FARC rebel group and the powerful Gulf Clan transnational criminal gang, the primary sources of organized violence in the country.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — At 18, Martín Taborda stepped into the Faculty of Law at Argentina’s iconic University of Buenos Aires, carrying his family’s hope that he would become the first member of his household to earn a university degree. Just two years later, that ambition has collapsed under the weight of growing economic hardship.

Unemployed and carrying $1,300 in outstanding debt, Taborda can no longer cover even the basic costs of his education: the daily bus fare from his working-class suburb to the central campus, and the textbooks required for his courses. This struggle plays out even at UBA, a tuition-free public institution that has lifted generations of working-class Argentines into the middle class.

Taborda’s story is far from unique. Data from the Center for City Studies, an Argentine non-profit that analyzes central bank economic data, shows that nearly half of Argentina’s 45 million residents currently hold outstanding debt, with more than 5 million borrowers behind on their monthly payments. Borrowers under the age of 25 face the highest delinquency rate of any age demographic, hitting 37.6% of all young borrowers.

“There is barely any work available for anyone in this country right now,” Taborda explained. He originally took out a $100 equivalent loan via a popular digital mobile payment app in 2024 to cover school expenses, but compound interest on missed payments swelled his balance to 10 times the original borrowed amount. Forced to depend on friends and family to get by, he described the emotional toll: “You start to feel like a parasite.”

This growing crisis of household survival debt has emerged as a major political challenge for President Javier Milei, eroding support among the young voters who were key to his 2023 election victory, and handing Argentina’s fragmented opposition an opening to mobilize disillusioned voters ahead of the 2027 presidential election.

Opposition lawmakers have called a special congressional session this Wednesday to debate emergency legislation, including proposals to cap predatory lending interest rates and create structured frameworks to help struggling borrowers renegotiate their outstanding balances. Labor unions and grassroots debtor advocacy groups have planned a public protest outside Congress during the debate, a direct challenge to the core principles of Milei’s radical free-market economic agenda. The shift in voter concern comes even as Milei can claim a major policy win in taming decades-high runaway inflation, with voters now prioritizing urgent struggles over jobs, stagnant wages, and household affordability.

In their legislative proposal, left-wing lawmaker Nicolás del Caño and co-sponsors framed the bill as a necessary response to a national emergency, writing, “Households took on debt just to survive, and now they cannot repay it.”

Milei has flatly rejected calls for government intervention, arguing that unpaid debts are a private matter between individual borrowers and lending institutions, not a symptom of broader systemic economic failure. Economy Minister Luis Caputo recently told reporters that private banks have already agreed to loosen repayment terms for struggling borrowers, but added, “We shouldn’t confuse empathy with public policy.”

On a recent weekday afternoon, Taborda joined a group of several dozen fellow University of Buenos Aires students in an economics department classroom for a confidential support group focused on the emotional and financial toll of unmanageable student and household debt. The meeting follows the anonymity-centered structure of Alcoholics Anonymous, designed to reduce the stigma around debt distress. When the moderator asked for a show of hands on three key questions — who had bought groceries on installment payment plans, who had borrowed via digital apps to cover basic needs, and who had taken out new debt to pay off old loans — the vast majority of attendees raised their hands.

Since taking office in late 2023 on a promise to dismantle Argentina’s decades-long discredited political and economic establishment, Milei has delivered on his core promise of cutting runaway inflation. He slashed the federal budget deficit and brought annual inflation down from a peak of 289% in early 2024 to roughly 34% by July 2025. This new macroeconomic stability has encouraged private banks to expand lending, but steep government cuts to long-standing subsidies for gas, electricity, and public transportation have driven utility and transit costs far faster than household incomes can keep up, forcing millions of Argentines to borrow just to cover daily basic needs.

In previous eras of high inflation in Argentina, regular wage increases tied to rising prices gradually reduced the real burden of fixed loan payments. Today, slower inflation means far smaller annual pay adjustments, while sky-high borrowing costs remain in place as part of the government’s tight monetary policy designed to keep inflation in check. Digital mobile payment apps, which have become the primary lending source for low-income and young Argentines, require far less paperwork than traditional banks but charge exorbitant interest rates — often reaching three digits annually — to offset higher default risk.

Vanesa Bittoco, a spokesperson for grassroots advocacy group Organized Debtors, which campaigns for flexible repayment plans tied to borrower incomes, explained how the nature of household borrowing has shifted dramatically in Argentina: “There was a time when people took out loans to buy a house, an apartment, a car. Now people take out loans to buy food to make it to the end of the month.”

At the students’ debt support meeting, attendees described feeling trapped, deeply ashamed, and increasingly hopeless about their long-term futures. This psychological distress extends far beyond university campuses: data from the University of Buenos Aires’ Applied Social Psychology Observatory shows that more than 80% of adults surveyed in Buenos Aires and its surrounding suburbs in April 2025 reported that ongoing economic crisis had severely harmed their mental well-being.

Political analysts warn that the growing household debt crisis could significantly erode Milei’s support among young voters as he campaigns for a second term in the 2027 presidential election, now just 14 months away.

“Clearly, the current economic model is hitting young people much harder than other segments of the Argentine population,” said Ana Iparraguirre, a public opinion consultant and partner at Washington-based global strategy firm GBAO. “If this crisis continues, Milei is putting his reelection at risk with the same electorate that helped him win office.”

Milei has shown little sympathy for struggling borrowers, publicly blaming the surge in delinquencies on irresponsible consumer spending. “They bought TVs to watch the World Cup and figured they’d decide later whether to pay,” he told a gathering of investors in the port city of Rosario last month. “Well, now they haven’t paid.”

The debt crisis comes as Milei’s overall national approval rating has already dropped sharply. A recent nationally representative online poll of 1,500 respondents conducted by prominent Argentine pollster Zuban Córdoba put Milei’s job approval at just 33%, down from 49% in December 2025. A majority of respondents reported that they are worse off financially today than they were when Milei first took office. The poll, fielded from July 22 to 26, 2025, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

For advocates like Bittoco, the government will be forced to act to address the crisis: “They’re going to have to provide a solution. Otherwise, they’re the ones who will have a problem.”

In a move that has sent shockwaves through Brazil’s political landscape just months ahead of October’s national presidential election, Supreme Court Justice André Mendonca—an appointee of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro—removed the nation’s top federal police official and his intelligence deputy from their posts Tuesday. The decision escalates an already bitter public feud between rival members of the country’s highest court and has pulled sitting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s reelection campaign directly into the growing crisis.

Mendonca’s ruling alleges that Federal Police Director-General Andrei Rodrigues, a Lula nominee, and intelligence director Leandro Almada oversaw the creation of six illegal intelligence reports tracking the justice’s activities through the end of August. This unprecedented action from a sitting Supreme Court justice comes amid two high-stakes, politically charged investigations that Mendonca currently leads. The first probe centers on the collapse of Banco Master, a scandal that has already implicated multiple opposition figures, while the second investigates alleged fraud in Brazil’s national pension system—a case that has already raised ethical questions tied to one of Lula’s own sons.

As of Tuesday evening, Lula’s administration had not issued an immediate response to questions from the Associated Press regarding whether it would file an appeal against Mendonca’s ruling. In a show of solidarity, William Marcel Murad, the federal police’s executive director, released a public statement affirming that Rodrigues retains the “full confidence” of the force, adding that rank-and-file agents “will not be shaken by attacks.”

The current crisis is rooted in a bitter public clash between Mendonca and fellow Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the judge who handed former President Jair Bolsonaro a 27-year prison sentence for his role in the 2022 attempted coup, a sentence he is currently serving under house arrest. Last week, Mendonca unsealed confidential federal police documents that revealed Daniel Vorcaro, the arrested owner of collapsed Banco Master, repeatedly sought legal advice from de Moraes long before his arrest.

De Moraes has previously denied any wrongdoing connected to Vorcaro, though public records confirm his wife provided legal services to Banco Master as part of a 130 million reais ($25 million) contract. Since the unsealing of the documents, de Moraes has faced growing pressure from across the political spectrum, media outlets and legal scholars to step down, and he has yet to issue a public response to the latest allegations.

Major Brazilian media outlets reported last week that Mendonca is pushing for de Moraes to be suspended from the Supreme Court until the body can rule on whether a full graft investigation is warranted. In a direct countermove, de Moraes issued a separate ruling calling for Mendonca to be investigated by the court and potentially impeached by the Brazilian Senate for conducting a private interview with Vorcaro in August that did not include federal police agents or federal prosecutors.

Tensions around the dispute boiled over on Brazil’s Independence Day this week, when tens of thousands of supporters of opposition presidential candidate Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro—son of the incarcerated former president and Lula’s October election opponent—marched along São Paulo’s main downtown artery. Many demonstrators carried signs and chanted calling for de Moraes’ removal from the court, while displaying a giant inflatable caricature of Mendonca and wearing branded shirts signaling their support for the conservative justice.

Brazil’s October election, which pits incumbent Lula against the younger Bolsonaro, is already one of the most polarized contests in the nation’s recent history, and the ongoing Supreme Court feud has amplified uncertainty about the lead-up to the vote, as well as its potential outcome.