Regional Round-Up: Brazil - Bolsonaro Jnr. To Run for President; Infamous El Helicoide Prison in Caracas; Frida Kahlo Works Missing; Trouble & Unease in West Mexico Ahead of World Cup

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio with a round-up and analysis of stories from the region. 

To read the article by Belen Fernandez referenced in this episode, copy & paste the link below:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/12/6/world-cup-2026-re-disappearing-mexicos-disappeared

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Transcript

Hi everyone, and welcome back to our regular round-ups, in this, the run-up to Christmas, and if you’re looking for definitive election results from Honduras, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, there is still no news, and we’ve been reminded by the electoral authority that they have until the end of December to issue the results. Yes, you heard right, the end of December. It’s a timeline that stands in stark contrast to most other elections in Latin America (not including Venezuela) where electoral systems are fast, verifiable and definitive. 

Staying on elections, news from Brazil as imprisoned, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s eldest son Flavio Bolsonaro - also a senator - has said he will run for the Brazilian presidency in 2026. Elections are scheduled 4th October, and it seems that Flavio Bolsonaro automatically has the nomination from the far-right Liberal Party of Brazil, which issued a statement saying the elder’s Bolsonaro’s patronage of his son meant that Flavio had the endorsement of the party, of which Jair Bolsonaro is considered the figurehead. 

Bolsonaro Senior is of course now in prison, beginning his sentence of  27 years for plotting a coup after he lost the last election, having exhausted all his appeals. 

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Over in Venezuela - not a US/Venezuela stand-off story this - the administration have taken on one of the in-vogue political strategies of our time: sportswashing. Yes, it’s alive and well in Caracas, where Venezuela's most infamous prison, especially for political prisoners, and which also happens to be its most architecturally distinct, has started hosting basketball matches in its upper sections.

El Helicoide, built as a spiral and initially designed as a shopping center, is so big that it can be seen from almost anywhere in the capital. But now, the government of Nicolas Maduro, in an attempt to change its sinister associations, has relocated its basketball league to a court atop the prison. It’s a pretty chilling development, as towards the upper sections, crowds cheer their teams, whilst down below, prisoners languish.

And in a related story, the death of Alfredo Diaz, former governor of Nueva Esparta state, a collection of islands off Venezuela's Caribbean coast, and also prisoner at El Helicoide, was announced this weekend. He had been held at the prison for more than a year, since being detained in 2024 after disputing the election, having been accused of “terrorism” and “incitement to hatred.”

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Over in Mexico, Frida Kahlo is in the news, as it seems that a number of her pieces have gone missing from her famous Casa Azul over the last few years. Earlier this year, a report by a former director at the house - one of Mexico City’s most visited landmarks - alleges the disappearance of two oil paintings and eight drawings between 1957 and 2011. Given the fact that Kahlo is a national Mexican emblem, it is also being considered a crime “against the property of the nation.”

Adding to the intrigue, one of the missing works, 1952’s Congress of the Peoples for Peace, was sold in 2020 by an art gallery in New York. Apparently the gallery was also offering another stolen painting - Self-Portrait Inside a Sunflower, with no information as to where it came from.

The current administration of the Casa Azul say that there are no missing works, but has not provided any counter-evidence. The work of Frida Kahlo continues to have huge international cachet, and fetches huge prices at market.

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We’re going to stay in Mexico, in western Mexico, with two final stories. First up, Saturday saw an explosion outside a local police station in Michoacan, killing at least three people and wounding many more. It’s noteworthy because - despite Mexico’s other problems - bombs are not usually on the list, but the incident comes as the Federal government has increased its presence in the state after two recent high-profile assassinations. 

And nearby, in Jalisco, which is home to the greatest number of the disappeared in the country, the World Cup is bringing renewed trauma, locally, as authorities are accused of taking down protest signs and portraits from the so-called ‘roundabout of the disappeared’, in the center of the city, in order to remove the very visible memory of the violence and killings suffered by the state, and the country more broadly, as a result of organized crime and the war on drugs.

There’s a really interesting article by Belen Fernandez in Al Jazeera on the topic, which we’ll link to in the show notes, for anyone who wants to take a more detailed look. 

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Thanks for listening, and goodnight!