Leonardo Rocha

It's very strange that the whole roof collapsed in one go. That's what people are saying, that there is something wrong, because you might have bits of the roof collapsing, people running the other direction. The building was a 1970s building that began as a disco, as a nightclub, and then became a music event, you know, a venue later.

Es gab viele Leute online, Leute, die ich auf der lokalen TV sah, die Nachbarn, die sagten, was passiert ist, es gab ein Feuer da ein paar Jahre ago, ich weiß nicht, ob es strukturelle Schäden war, es gab Berichte von Wasserlösen.

And also because it was closed during the COVID pandemic, that when it reopened, it reopened with new infrastructure on the roof, air conditioning generators and that might have put a strain on the roof. It's been investigated and what witnesses said, survivors, is that they thought it was an earthquake. It felt like an earthquake, trembling and the whole thing came down on them.

There are dozens of people who are outside, they are praying, they are sharing pictures, asking for people to inform, is my husband, is my daughter, is my brother here or in some hospital.

So the rescue efforts are going on and we have to say that the Dominican Republic has a history of hurricanes and earthquakes and they have a very developed team, very well trained and very well equipped and they are doing all they can to find survivors.

In Peru and Lima mainly, the metropolitan area, it's a big city, millions of people there. What you have is mainly extortion. People saying that transport companies are forced to pay extortion money or protection money. Businesses have to pay basically to avoid violence. There's lots of kidnappings for ransom.

There have been brutal killings of young people, girls that are killed if their families don't pay ransom. So there's a bit of lawlessness on that side. If you go to Lima, you normally don't feel the violence like other cities in Latin America, like Rio, Sao Paulo, Caracas. But that's a problem that everyone talks about.

And also criminal gangs, the Tren de Aragua, this gang from Venezuela, they control some areas of Peru in terms of mining. And there's a lot of blame, of course. It's not all done by foreigners. And you had this incident with this very popular singer, Paulo Flores. He was killed.

And what he was saying before the killing was the government should do something about extortion against the music business. You went to play a gig somewhere, they demand that you pay money to local gangs.

I don't think so. I mean, Gina Boloati, she basically inherited power when her predecessor was impeached for trying a coup, for corruption. There was all sorts of scandals. Peru is very unstable and she is not hugely popular. What I think the government was forced to do here was to act... because there have been warnings and people criticize the government for not doing enough.

Apparently, the poorest are the ones suffering. They are also forced to pay extortion. The richest, they don't suffer in the same extent. I mean, it's a measure to put troopers out and to show people that the security will be enforced, but I don't know how effective that will be.

Leonardo Rocha.

And alcohol.

He published a note on social media saying exactly that, that migration is not a crime and that Colombian nationals should have been returned on civilian planes and he wouldn't accept them otherwise. So those two flights, apparently one of them took off and had to return shortly after and the other didn't even take off from the United States.

But one thing that needs to be said here is it's nothing really new. What's new here is the use of military planes. That's new from the United States. But last year, under the Biden administration, there's a record number of people deported from the U.S. 271,000 people were deported, and Colombia came as number five on that list, most of them to Latin America.

It's just the way that's being done and the perception that there's more to come that is creating these problems here.

Soon after President Petro said that he wouldn't take these migrants back, President Trump announced sanctions against Colombia, very stiff sanctions. He said he will impose emergency tariffs of 25% on all Colombian imports for the first week, will go up to 50% the second week. Also travel ban on government officials and their families.

visa sanctions as well, and the American consulate in Colombia will stop dealing with visas for Monday. So it's a very strong response. And in President Trump's statement, he called Mr. Petro a socialist and unpopular leader.

That's something recent. These gangs, they evolve all the time. They have new symbols to identify them. These gestures were developed in prison when prisoners, they had to communicate from a distance using silent language and they developed that. The gesture itself was an offensive in Brazil. The older generation was associated with the Second World War and victory in Churchill.

Others with peace and love, the hippie generation. But many people are unaware of that, like those people who were killed. The V, of course, stands for the CV. And the other main gang that operates in Brazil, the PCC that came from Sao Paulo, They have a variation of three-finger gestures to symbolise the three letters, the PCC, the three letters.

It's all a bit silly, but it's extremely dangerous.

Yes, these gangs created in the 80s and the 90s, they're not gangs anymore. They're major, big criminal organisations. They have a lot of impact on politics. The PCC is deeply involved in illegal mining in indigenous lands in the Amazon. They're very powerful. And what they have done now, going beyond the idea of just selling drugs, is they control territory a bit like mafia style.

And they charge people who live in the area protection money. They force people to buy, for example, gas canisters or water or beer from them. And that's why it's so important for them to have the territory. And when people show the wrong gestures at the wrong place, that's seen as a sign of disrespect.

Well, what I found interesting is that the reaction has been quite muted. I don't know if it's out of fear. People are really terrified of those gangs or because violence has become normalized in the country. People who are from there, they know those symbols. They know, for example, that the red colour is associated with the red command, the CV. The black colour is associated with the police.

And actually, the club was informed of these implications of this hand gesture by the fans who posted messages online. Otherwise, they wouldn't have known about that. But I think it's a sign of how deep the situation, how serious the violence is in Brazil.

President Trump is determined to go ahead with his policies. All the measures that he has signed into law or some special decrees that he signed have been challenged in court and he's going ahead with them. I think he's very defiant and very determined here.

He's using a law from, I believe, from the 18th century about invasion of American borders to say that these foreign gangs are a threat to America in the same way that the foreign army was. He's gone ahead with it. And from day one, he's very determined about to, as he put it, stop the flow of mass migration.

Have to bear in mind also that his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is of a Cuban family from Florida. And he not only speaks Spanish fluently, but he's very aware of the situation in Latin America. And I think that's a priority of the Trump administration there.

It's for a couple of reasons. First, the president of El Salvador, Naibe Bukele, is a young right-wing politician, enthusiastic, very supportive of the Trump policies. He said he was willing to take them. The United States apparently agreed to pay $20,000 per prisoner per year for him to house them in El Salvador. And there's also another reason, is the fact that Venezuela has

has a socialist, a left-wing government that's been subjected to sanctions by the United States. So they're refusing to take their parties from the United States. There was a sort of good start between President Maduro and the Trump administration. But since then, the Trump administration has issued new sanctions against the Venezuelan government that they have stopped.

So what I see here is President Trump imposing his policies. He needs third countries to accept these migrants. And El Salvador is the only country that has agreed to accept convicted criminals or people accused of belonging to criminal gangs.

According to reports from Venezuela, some of them are members of a criminal gang, the most powerful criminal gang in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua, which was mentioned by President Trump. But others are just migrants who entered the country illegally or working there without the proper documentation. So they were being deported anyway.

I mean, it's part of the Trump administration mass migration program they've created. been arresting people, thousands of people, even a day, and deporting them. And the interesting situation is because over the past decade or so, you have almost 8 million Venezuelans left the country. Most of them went to neighboring countries, to Colombia, but many ended up in the United States.

But because Venezuela and the U.S., they don't have diplomatic relations yet, Venezuela refused so far to accept repatriation flights. So these Venezuelan migrants will probably be sent to a third country. It could be Mexico or El Salvador, a different country. And now, to the surprise of many people, they are going back to Venezuela.

Well, to the surprise of most people, the Trump administration sent an envoy to Venezuela on the 31st of January, and he reached a deal with the Maduro government. The Venezuelan government accepted to take back deported migrants, and in exchange, Venezuela released six American citizens who had been held in prisons there. The U.S.

said they were innocent and were being held in prisons in Venezuela. And that's apparently the deal. But there must be more. And it's unclear what's behind the deal.

Well, that's interesting. I mean, those who are members of the Tren de Aragua, of this gang, they will be arrested. The concern of many people in Venezuela is that people left the country, some because they were escaping poverty, but others for political reasons. And there are fears that the Venezuelan government... they will have a list of people they want back.

So if there are people who are wanted for any political dissent or being linked to the opposition in the past, that they might be arrested as political prisoners in Venezuela. So that's very worrying. Others who are economic migrants who have nothing, they'll just be released and go back to normal.

We have the inauguration of President Nicolas Maduro. He's going to be inaugurated into a third term next Friday in a week's time. And I think it's a message for the opposition candidate telling him, don't try to come back. If you do, we're going to arrest you. I'm saying that because Edmundo Gonzalez said a few weeks ago, a couple of months ago, that he was planning to go back to Caracas.

It took everyone by surprise. for the inauguration ceremony, but not for Maduro's inauguration ceremony. He was going to come back to claim the presidency. What the Venezuelan opposition say is that they won the election by a wide margin. They have provided what seems to be clear evidence of that.

It was accepted by many countries, including countries in the European Union, the United States, proving that they won the election. Nicolas Maduro was declared a winner by a government-appointed election commission, but he never published the breakdown of the vote, and many countries refused to accept.

One of the main allies of President Maduro in South America, President Lula of Brazil, for example— sort of broke off with him. So he's not going to attend the ceremony in Venezuela next week. He's going to send his ambassador. Other countries that are very loyal to him will be there, like Cuba, Nicaragua, which is of the hardcore of the left in Latin America.

But many people, including those who are left-wing allies, have distanced themselves from him. Leonardo Rocha.