Latin America

Brazil’s president-elect Jair Bolsonaro (known for his likeness in expressing himeself with US President Trump) has stressed the difference between being a man or a woman, criticizing what he understands as “gender ideology” as a denial of Christian values.

The number of Venezuelan migrants and refugees in Latin America is expected to rise to 5.4 million by the end of next year, UN agencies said on Friday as they appealed for aid financing. There are currently 3.3 million Venezuelans who have left their crisis-hit country, as the exodus has been continuing at an average rate of 5,500 people per day this year.

“They have managed to silence radio and television, and they have made independent print media disappear, converting them into platforms. We were the only national newspaper which still had a print edition,” El Nacional quoted its CEO Miguel Henrique Otero as telling the Spanish newspaper ABC.

Crisis-hit Venezuela has handed the International Monetary Fund economic data for the first time in more than a decade. Earlier this year, the IMF accused President Nicolas Maduro’s government of withholding economic data that could help observers to understand and solve the country’s economic crisis.

Rafael Ramirez, who served as Venezuela’s UN ambassador and as chief of PDVSA himself, had earlier announced Martinez’s death and blamed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for it. “Nelson Martinez just died… kidnapped and abused for a year under the orders of Maduro, who knew of his chronic illness,” Ramirez wrote.

The US multinational Goodyear has decided to halt its production of tires in Venezuela in light of the continuous economic deterioration in the South American country, which is also going through an institutional and political crisis, and the impact of the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.