International Women's Day
Female activists marched throughout Latin America to celebrate but demand better opportunities and less violence as part of International Women's Day. In Ecuador, dozens of women mobilized in the capital to protest against all the female blood spilled in recent years in the South American nation, marked by immeasurable violence—since last Thursday more than twenty people were killed in Guayaquil amid an internal war in the gang called “Los Tiguerones”; five inmates were found dead in the notorious Penitenciaría del Litoral, although there is talk of a possible outbreak of tuberculosis there. In Bolivia, hundreds of women have marched since Friday night to call attention to the cancer of femicides.
There is also strong criticism of the impunity surrounding these despicable acts. A monitoring initiative reports that in 17 Latin American countries, there are almost 12 femicides per day, with Brazil and Mexico standing out in a negative light. “There is a struggle, which is going on all the time, which does not sleep, which does not rest, [because] women are killed... transvestites, trans people; [...] there is a wage gap, there is domestic violence, there is violence in the street, there is discrimination,” a 38-year-old English teacher told The Associated Press from the Argentine capital. “All that is all the time, 24 hours [...] Plus hunger, plus poverty,” added the conscientious woman in a country whose leader rejects—from political discourse and effective practice—all this movement as advancing so-called ”woke ideology.”
Cuba
The Cuban government is once again trying to “tame” the market through a new price control measure aimed at critical products such as rice and beans produced domestically. Havana has recognized at times that price ceilings end up being counterproductive, as they only contribute to repress or hide inflation. That is, products end up being sold furtively at higher prices than those set. In the context of chronic supply deficit, falling productive and industrial activity, and lack of foreign currency—all this explained by the far-reaching U.S. sanctions and the internal imbalances in terms of economic and political management—prices will naturally reflect such a state of comprehensive crisis.
However, when push comes to shove, a system such as Cuba's—oriented to universal subsidies and the assurance of a basic level of supply, both dynamics cracked by the crisis—will get its hands on the market. According to a senior official of the Cuban Ministry of Finance and Prices, current production costs and the guarantee of a reasonable profit margin for producers were taken into account when setting maximum prices for rice and beans. However, this is a regulation that was not built through a consensus with those producers—who often assume costs that do not appear in the official picture. Consensus and not imposition from above is the only way this type of measure can work.
SourceVenezuela
Caracas seems to be responding from a position of strength to the Trump administration's decision to revoke the license granted to San Ramon, California-based Chevron to produce and export Venezuelan oil in alliance with state-owned PDVSA. The White House had initially left the license active, in an apparent arrangement with Maduro in exchange for his receiving Venezuelans deported from the United States, including alleged members of “El Tren de Aragua” gang. Strong oil interests in Florida also appeared to have played a role in the decision at first.
However, this week, the Treasury Department imposed a 30-day deadline on Chevron to halt all its activities in Venezuela, following a clash between forces with very different interests in managing relations with Venezuela. Now, Maduro says that bilateral communications, critical to coordinating the continuation of the deportations agreement, have been damaged, although formally this was never tied to the continuation of Chevron's license. “I was interested in the communications that we had opened, because I wanted to bring all the Venezuelans who are imprisoned and unjustly persecuted just for being migrants,” Maduro said at an event on Saturday in Caracas.
#EnVideo 📹 | Presidente Maduro confirma suspensión de vuelos de repatriación desde Estados Unidos por revocación de licencia a Chevron
March 8, 2025— El Universal (@ElUniversal)
El presidente de la República, Nicolás Maduro, afirmó este sábado durante el gran encuentro por el Día Internacional de las Mujeres, en… pic.twitter.com/qTMjarQcj2
