Argentina, Latin America: Week in Review, Southern Cone
Falkland Islanders To Vote On Sovereignty
June 13, 2012 By Staff
Top Story — The Falklands Legislative Assembly announced Tuesday that voters on the Falkland Islands will hold a referendum to decide whether the approximately 3,000 inhabitants of the remote islands will remain part of Britain’s self-governing overseas territories. The vote is expected to be held in early 2013 and will come more than 30 years after the brief war between Britain and Argentina over the islands, known as Las Malvinas in Argentina. “I have no doubt that the people of the Falklands wish for the islands to remain a self-governing Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom,” Gavin Short, chairman of the assembly, said. According to Short, the British government fully supports the referendum and is seeking to counter Argentina’s continued claims of sovereignty over the Falklands. Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has argued that Britain’s claim to the islands is an obsolete legacy of British colonialism in the southern hemisphere, and has insisted on bringing the dispute before the international community, an idea that Britain has continued to reject.
Read more from Reuters.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Officials allege that leaders of Mexico’s Zetas cartel have established a prominent horse breeding association in the U.S. that has allowed them to launder millions of dollars.
- Data shows that the Obama administration’s new policy of “prosecutorial discretion” towards lower-priority deportation cases has led to a dismissal of less than 10 percent of pending deportation cases, frustrating immigration reform advocates.
- A Mexican zoo has acquired nine young elephants from Namibia’s Namib Game Services private reserve, but claims that the elephants were orphaned babies is reportedly not true.
Caribbean
- The U.N. Independent Expert on human rights in Haiti has asked U.N. member nations not to deport Haitian migrants back to Haiti in an effort to ease the burden on the country’s limited resources.
- A new requirement that Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic need work permits has raised concerns that the cost of new paperwork will be too high for many migrants to afford.
- ING Bank NV will pay $619 million to settle a lawsuit by the U.S. government that the bank violated sanctions against Cuba and Iran by concealing transactions by its U.S. banks that involved the sanctioned countries.
Central America
- Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina said that two suspected members of the Mexican Zetas cartel have been arrested in northern Guatemala.
- El Salvador’s National Public Security Academy said that the police academy has run out of money to train recruits and will only be able to admit one class of 400 students this year.
Andes
- The Nasa indigenous community in Colombia has released a video allegedly showing the aftermath of an extrajudicial killing by the Colombian army in Cauca department.
- Peruvian officials say that they have located the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed with fourteen people aboard.
- Boliva said that it may revoke Glencore International PLC’s mining concession after 1,000 cooperative miners seized control of Colquiri lead and tin mine at the end of May.
Southern Cone
- Lawmakers investigating Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said that they would extend a bribery investigation that began in Mexico to include Brazil, South Africa, China and India.
- More than 800 trucks were stranded Tuesday outside the Cristo Redentor tunnel linking Argentina and Chile after a snowstorm hit the Andes mountains.
- Bolivia will increase natural gas exports to Brazil and Argentina due to a cold winter in the southern hemisphere.
Image:.v1ctor. @ Flickr.
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