Marked Marxist

Colombian police thwarted an assassination attempt against Rodrigo Londoño, former commander of the demobilized FARC rebels better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, a senior official said Sunday.     

General Oscar Atehortua, director of Colombia’s national police, said officers killed two men who planned to commit the attack, which was ordered by commanders of dissident rebels who decided to return to conflict last year.

Londoño, who was the highest commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) when a peace deal was signed in 2016, now heads the FARC political party, which preserved its Spanish initials after changing its name to the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force.

Last Man Standing

Haitian President Jovenel Moise could be ruling by decree later this week, a scenario he said would help break the Caribbean nation’s political deadlock but which critics fear will undermine its fragile democracy.

In the early hours of Monday, the president said the mandates of lower house deputies and most senators formally expired because no successors were elected in October after the troubled country failed to hold elections.

The power vacuum could deal a significant blow to democratic governance in the poorest country in the Americas, three decades since the end of the dreaded Duvalier family dictatorship.

Golden Oldie

A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City reveals it was part of the plunder Spanish conquerors tried to carry away as they fled the Aztec capital after native warriors forced a hasty retreat.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the findings of new tests of the bar in a statement on Thursday, a few months before the 500-year anniversary of the battle that forced Hernán Cortés and his soldiers to temporarily flee the city on June 30, 1520.

The bar was originally discovered in 1981 during a construction project some 16 feet (5 meters) underground in downtown Mexico City - which was built on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán - where a canal that would have been used by the fleeing Spaniards was once located.

Asylum Tweaker

Guatemala’s new president discussed with Trump administration officials how to slow illegal immigration and improve border security in a meeting before he was due to take office on Tuesday, as Washington pushes him accept an asylum agreement. 

A conservative former surgeon and ex-prison chief, Alejandro Giammattei, 63, ran for top office three times before his victory in an August runoff on a tough-on-crime platform that included returning the death penalty.

One dilemma facing Giammattei is whether roll back or expand an agreement with the United States forged by outgoing President Jimmy Morales that makes Guatemala a buffer zone to reduce U.S. asylum claims; The U.S. may attempt to include Mexican immigrants in the agreement.

Parra Qué

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on seven Venezuelan politicians it said led a bid by President Nicolas Maduro to wrest control of the country’s congress from U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó.

Earlier this month, troops blocked Guaidó from entering congress long enough for the Socialist Party to declare allied legislator Luis Parra as head of parliament. Opposition legislators in a separate session on Jan. 5 re-elected Guaidó and later returned to the legislative palace to hold session.

Washington blacklisted Parra and six of his allies “who, at the bidding of Maduro, attempted to block the democratic process in Venezuela,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

No Sweat

President Alberto Fernández said he has set a March 31 deadline to renegotiate Argentina’s rampant public debt and that a more “innovative” International Monetary Fund approves of the direction his government is taking.

Argentina is in talks with bondholders and other creditors to restructure about $100 billion in debt, among them the IMF to whom it owes about $44 billion.

After assuming the presidency a little over a month ago, his government has announced plans to hike taxes on farm exports, as well as efforts to gain revenue from foreign assets and Argentine tourism dollars spent abroad.