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☀ Domingo Brief — Tchau X, We Hardly Knew Ye
Each Sunday, take two minutes to catch key stories and opportunities shaping Latin America.
Latinometrics
September 01, 2024 • Reading Time: 3 minutes
Welcome back to the Domingo Brief! This week, we’re following Mexico’s judicial reform, new Caribbean airline routes, and more.
Trivia of the Week
Exactly three-quarters (75%) of you were correct in answering Lava Jato (’Car Wash’) as the name of the mid-2010s political scandal which blew up Brazil’s political scene. The investigation, launched in 2014, originally centered around a small car wash in Brasilia suspected to be involved in money laundering and eventually evolved into a sweeping anti-corruption probe which implicated three former presidents in Brazil (including the current one!) and four presidents in neighboring Peru. Ramifications were also felt in countries as distant as Mexico and Panama.
Each week, tune back in for the answer to the previous week’s trivia question. No cheating!
In which country was famous revolutionary Simón Bolívar born? |
🇧🇷 X (formerly Twitter) has officially been blocked in Brazil following an order by Supreme Federal Court minister Alexandre de Moraes. This move follows months of back-and-forth between de Moraes, nicknamed Xandão or “Big Alex,” and X owner Elon Musk, following the former’s demand that X suspend accounts accused of spreading disinformation. As of today the roughly 20M Brazilians (one-tenth of the population) with X accounts cannot access the site; if they attempt to use a VPN to mask their usage, they are liable to be subjected to an over $8K fine per day.
Latinometrics: Big debates around free speech and content moderation are being raised by this entire situation. For some, this is just the latest in a long series of judicial overreaches by de Moraes in recent years as the jurist has become perhaps the second-most powerful man in Brazil. For others, this is one attempt for Brazil, which has a relatively young (and clearly fragile) democracy, to regulate the deepening crisis of misinformation and polarization which has wrought havoc on its politics for roughly a decade now.
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