By Ilan Goldfain, Anna Ivanova and Jorge Roldos (*) – Governments will need to combine fighting inflation with structural policies that reignite growth.
Chilean authorities have reported Monday that unemployment nationwide had fallen in 2021 to 7.2% while in the same period of 2020 it had hit 10.3%. In the middle of the social uprisings of 2019 it had been recorded at 7.1%.
Argentine and Chilean authorities have reached a solution to the crisis affecting some 3,000 lorry drivers crossing the Andes through the Cristo Redentor-Libertadores route, it was announced.
Xenophobic violence is on the rise in the Chilean area of Iquique and it is specifically targeted at Venezuelan migrants. Iquique is where most undocumented migrants reach from Bolivia.
The Chilean central bank hiked its reference rate from 4% to 5,5% to contain inflation which last year reached 7,2%, the highest in fourteen years. The Monetary Policy council of the bank on Wednesday agreed unanimously to increase the reference rate by 150 base points, according to the official release.
Corruption in Latin America is one of the most notorious problems on the region's agenda after a decade of major judicial operations that exposed corruption schemes involving governments and companies alike. According to Transparency International (TI), corruption has been entrenched in Latin America for more than a decade with little progress and many setbacks in terms of democracy and human rights.
Argentina's Ambassador to Chile Rafael Bielsa Monday said the newly-paroled Mapuche leader Facundo Jones-Huala “could serve the rest of his sentence in Argentina.”
Chilean authorities have fined an appeal against the court ruling which granted parole to Mapuche leader Facundo Jones-Huala citing that the convicted person does not meet the legal and regulatory requirements to be eligible for the benefit, according to the brief from the Ministry of the Interior.
The conflict involving lorries trying to cross from Argentina into Chile through the Cristo Redentor-Libertadores pass has now escalated to the point of involving some 3,000 trucks stranded in the middle of the Andes, allegedly due to ultra meticulous sanitary requirements on the Chilean part.
A group of 23 Haitian migrants were stranded Sunday at Santiago's Arturo Merino Benítez international airport where they have filed for refugee status but nevertheless fear local authorities might deport them back to their country of origin where all lives are “at-risk” due to the ongoing crisis, according to Rodolfo Noriega of the local Migrant Ombudsman's Office.