Pirate Wire Services

04/11/2022

Colombian President Petro's Peace Plan Prompts Parlay with Venezuela's Maduro: Tackling armed groups, smuggling, and even forest fires won’t be possible without a relationship with Caracas.

Read this week's feature by Joshua Collins
https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/colombian-president-petros-peace

28/10/2022

"Demonising [protesters] and criminalising them, calling them dogs, bastards. Saying anybody who protests his regime is not a Nicaraguan, they should go to the US": In Nicaragua, exile, silence & repression is the cost of voicing opposition

By Amy Booth

A year ago, Nicaraguans voted in a flawed election that cemented President Ortega’s grip on power. Since then, he has ramped up attacks on the press, intellectuals, universities, and religious leaders

24/09/2022

Brazil is holding presidential elections on 2 October, and from political murders to fraud accusations before the ballots are cast, the tension is up to 11. We break down the details on the upcoming faceoff between Lula and Bolsonaro.

By Amy Hummuswumman Booth

From political murders to fraud accusations before the ballots are cast, this election season the tension is up to 11. We break down the details on the upcoming faceoff between Lula and Bolsonaro

14/09/2022

Pirate Wire Services first set sail on 17 September 2021, which means we're about to celebrate our first birthday! Since then, we've written and recorded dozens of newsletters and podcasts from all over Latin America and over 500 of you have signed up to read and listen to us. We couldn't be more grateful - journalists would be nothing without our audience!

With that in mind, we've interrupted normal transmission to record a special message for you all. Props to Dani, who has spent this weekend in her director’s chair on the deck, on a video editing marathon.

If you can afford five dollars a month for a paid sub, you’ll be helping us spend another year chasing the stories that sail below the radar. And if you can't afford that, we'd be super grateful for shares and signal boosts, too!

11/08/2022

During a reporting trip to indigenous communities in the Gran Chaco last month, Amy found that several communities had had bad experiences with journalists.

One gender violence activist said the last reporter had brashly told her to “collect three women who’ll talk to me.” A community leader said that an influencer had claimed he was raising money to buy the village a new truck, then gave it as a private gift to a family, who promptly crashed it. Another had used the interviews for political campaigning in his home country.

As society's understanding of trauma improves, what steps can journalists take to ensure their reporting process doesn't do further harm to vulnerable sources?

Reporters covering abuse, violence and trauma must be more sensitive to their sources' pain

30/07/2022

Colombia’s largest gang has put a $4,000 bounty on police officers

The most powerful armed group in Colombia, the Gaitanista Self Defense Forces (AGC), also known as the Gulf Clan, is paying up to $4000 for assassinations of cops that won’t sign onto their payroll, in a brutal new hit scheme they’re calling “Plan Pistola”.

A report released Wednesday by the Armed Conflict Research Center of Colombia (CERAC) revealed that 2022 is already the deadliest year for public forces since 2017, raising the macabre spectre of Escobar’s famous “silver or lead” (bribes or bullets) ultimatum.
The aggression casts doubt on the outgoing government’s claims that it is winning its fight against them, and raises questions about president-elect Gustavo Petro’s scope for implementing peace during his mandate.

See the full story for more!

A week before the inauguration, hits on 15 officers cast doubt on Petro’s peace promises

26/07/2022

Colombia has just elected its most diverse congress ever. It includes growing numbers of indigenous, Afro-Colombians and LGBTQI+ representatives, as well as substantially more women. But can they really bring about peace? Daniela Diaz Rangel takes a look.

Broad representation, including from long-voiceless conflict zones, represents a sharp departure from the past and includes record numbers of women and Afro-Colombians

08/07/2022

Will the departure of Argentina's economy minister push it "over the edge"? Martín Guzmán's resignation has sparked a dramatic run on the peso and equally dramatic price rises: Read our analysis in this week's newsletter.

https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/will-the-departure-of-argentinas

03/07/2022

When Colombia signed its historic 2016 peace accord aimed at ending half a century of armed conflict, it created a Truth Commission. This week, the commission released a major report detailing the findings of a five-year investigation, and the results are damning: over 450k died during the conflict (double previous formal estimates), 80% of them civilians, only 2% of them in combat and most at the hands of right wing paramilitary groups.
121,700 forcibly disappeared, 50,000 kidnapped, 8 million displaced, and more than 16,200 children recruited to armed groups.
The report also said that the real number of deaths could be as high as 800,000 due to underreporting.
For this week's podcast, Joshua Collins analysed the report's findings. Listen here: https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/truth-commission-report-shines-light

26/06/2022

What's behind Ecuador's general strike?

In this week’s podcast, Daniela looks at Ecuador, where Amnesty International has sounded the alarm over a “human rights crisis” as protests are met with brutal repression by the security forces. Indigenous protesters, unions and social groups have been on national strike since 13 June, protesting rising food and fuel prices. At least two people have died so far and there are widespread reports of injuries. President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency last Friday suspending freedom of transit, assembly and association.

Don't forget to take a paid sub to support us!

https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/ecuador-national-strike-pws-podcast

18/06/2022

This Argentine "university" was actually a crypto ponzi scheme:
What does the Generación Zoe scandal tell us about savings, crypto and aspiration amid Argentina's economic omnishambles?

This week's episode involves a major fraud probe, a fugitive on the run on an undisclosed Caribbean island, and reflections on money that give us all pause for thought.

Have a listen and tell us what you think! Do you know anyone who's fallen prey to a crypto ponzi scheme?

https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/this-argentine-university-was-actually

10/06/2022

A journalist and an Indigenous specialist vanish in Brazil's Amazon. Why?

The disappearance of Indigenous specialist Bruno Araújo Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips on a trip to report on Indigenous land defenders points to a dark web of organized crime and a state that's absent - or complicit.

This week at Pirate Wire Services, we were horrified to hear that Bruno and Dom had disappeared. We all know what it is to take a chance and travel to a remote location because there's a story there that needs to be told. It should never cost us our lives.

Journalists in Brazil are doing an incredible job, accompanying search patrols and demanding that the State step up efforts to find the missing men. We at PWS can't be there in person, but we thought it would be valuable to look at why the tri-border region between Brazil, Peru and Colombia has become so dangerous. Paulo Rosas Chávez did a great job of pulling a lot of threads together and sensitively reporting this piece, which went out today.

https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/a-journalist-and-an-indigenous-specialist?s=w

The disappearance of Indigenous specialist Bruno Araújo Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips points to a dark web of organized crime and a state that's absent - or complicit

09/06/2022

Argentina: economist and far-right free-market fundamentalist Javier Milei is experiencing such a meteoric political rise that he aspires to the presidency in 2023, earning him profiles in media such as the Washington Post and Americas Quarterly.

He raffles off the salary he receives as a national deputy each month on the grounds that any money received from the state is ill-gotten gains. He swears and yells during interviews until he resembles Barney the Dinosaur in the years after he hit the bottle. Many analysts interpret his success as a response to a nation that feels neither the left nor the traditional right has solved Argentina's economic woes.

But beyond this third-way logic of the young, disruptive outsider, his values are cause for alarm. He has defended the right to bear arms, the right for those who "don't want" to work to die of hunger, and the right to sell one's organs. Many Argentines still strongly associate far-right neoliberal economics with the brutal dictatorships of the 20th century and argue that an agenda like Milei’s couldn’t be implemented in a democracy.

Amy took a look at him in this week's Ship's Log. This one's for paying subs, so if you're interested, please consider signing up for a monthly or annual subscription!
https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/the-ships-log-argentinas-javier-milei?s=w

(Image: Todo Noticias via Wikimedia Commons)

03/06/2022

Two weeks ago, Rodolfo Hernández was a virtual unknown in Colombian politics, the former mayor of the small city of Bucaramanga. Now, he could be its next president. In a shock result from the country's first-round presidential elections, Hernández pulled ahead of far-right candidate Federico Gutiérrez, and will face off against leftist former M19 combatant and erstwhile Bogotá mayor, Gustavo Petro.

But is he really the "Trump of the Tropics", as some have dubbed him, or is there more to this slippery figure? Some of his remarks - exabruptos, as we say here - give us reason for alarm, and he has displayed a disturbing affinity for authoritarian leaders such as El Salvador's Nayib Bukele. In this week's Pirate Wire Services podcast, Josh spoke to three Colombian political analysts about the businessman and former mayor who could become president of Colombia.

As always, please consider taking a paid subscription if you like our work: we're an independent cooperative with no advertisers or sponsors, and we can't grow without your support!

https://piratewireservices.substack.com/p/who-the-bleep-is-rodolfo-hernandez

31/05/2022

31/05/2022