The Latin American Report # 680

U.S. security forces were actively pursuing, following coordination with Panama, a third tanker vessel involved in transporting crude from Venezuela. After the first seizure last week, Trump ordered via Truth Social a "total naval blockade" of Venezuela, targeting OFAC-sanctioned vessels. However, the second seizure, on Saturday, was executed against an unsanctioned vessel, under the argument that, in any case, it was transporting "sanctioned," or stolen oil; the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has been sanctioned since the first Trump administration and is currently only permitted to work with Houston-based Chevron. Regarding the active pursuit apparently taking place yet at night this Sunday, the most important distinction that emerges is that the sanctioned, dark fleet-member, crude oil carrier Bella 1, unlike the previous ones—which had left Venezuelan jurisdictional waters with approximately 1.8 million barrels each—was heading empty to a Venezuelan port with the presumed intention of loading crude.

Seeing the United States taking physical control of ships laden with crude, and even pursuing an empty one, is very concerning, reinforcing a pattern where the realist paradigm of international relations is cemented as the most predominant at the behest of Donald Trump. The question is whether this will be enough for the Republican administration to bend Nicolás Maduro, who, to the contrary, does not seem inclined to yield to the American psychological warfare, which has already resulted in the killing of 104 individuals allegedly involved in drug trafficking activities in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Another recent tool deployed by the owner of the Resolute desk is to discourage air traffic to and from Venezuela. After this and now the seizures, I think the Trump team only has left to execute military operations within Venezuela's jurisdiction, a possibility that, together with other Washington-related issues, has cracked the consensus of an organization not prone to disunity like CARICOM.

It will be very difficult for the Cuban authorities to guarantee, as they did last year with many troubles, that we enter 2026 with the entire island illuminated. Deficits in power generation capacity are reaching record levels consistently by these days due to the inoperability of the thermal generation network and the lack of fuel, the latter situation worsening in the face of the aggression against Venezuela and pressure on other benefactors of Cuba in this matter, such as Mexico.

Honduras

At 3:50 PM Honduras time, and after restarting the murky special scrutiny process, integrated into an even more scandalous general scrutiny process, the Trump-backed Nasry Asfura remains in the lead, quite stable now with an advantage over 25,400 votes compared to Salvador Nasralla. The vote-counting process has been an absolute disaster, marked by incompatible partisan interests that the law itself allows, by design, to muddy an electoral scene where all contenders denounce fraud and cheating.

I find, at the same time, very suspicious the passivity with which the OAS and the European Union are treating very reasonable complaints—I'm not saying they are necessarily true—like those of electoral advisor Marlon Ochoa, although I think his demand to recount vote by vote all the ballot boxes from the corresponding polling stations activated on general election day does not apply. However, for example, I do agree with Ochoa that it is inconceivable for the number of ballots in a ballot box not to match the number of voters who signed the voting register, a crude dynamic that, according to his complaint, has already been detected in nearly 100 ballot boxes processed during the special scrutiny process. The deadline for the electoral authority to issue an official declaration on the election result is December 30th, but the process is far from being in fast-track mode, while Nasralla demands a vote-by-vote recount of 8,845 ballot boxes whose tally sheets the Liberal Party has challenged due to various irregularities.

Immigration

Via X 👇

This is all for today’s report.