Unlike what had happened with the 37 Africans “stacked” on the southern border of Spain, over the weekend, this time there were no images of the 50 bodies of Latin Americans on the southern border of the USA.
But the justifications of the rulers were similar. Speaking alongside the Spanish prime minister, the American president blamed human trafficking networks for the “tragic loss”.
“This incident underscores the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal trafficking industry that preys on immigrants and leads to many deaths,” Biden said, according to the New York Times.
Two days earlier, in Spain’s El País, Pedro Sánchez had also blamed “the mafias that traffic human beings” for the deaths — and praised the police for their response to the “violent attack on Spain’s territorial integrity.”
But Biden and Sánchez are not speaking without opposition. The Republican governor of Texas blamed the president for the crisis on the border, which has, as the same NYT noted, “a record number of crossings for this time of year.”
And El País heard later, from a spokesperson for the surviving Africans: “Why does Sánchez say we are mafias? We don’t have mafias, we came together. We don’t pay anything. [atravessar a fronteira] because we suffered a lot”.
On the other, blaming the European Union as a whole: “You welcome Ukrainians with flowers and, because we are black, you send us to hell.”
According to the Spanish newspaper, Biden and Sánchez, in their “warm and personal” meeting, would have agreed to support each other in the face of the “challenges” of immigrants from Latin America and Africa.
CARLSON & BOLSONARO
On Fox News, Tucker Carlson announced on Monday, with Rio in the background, that it will broadcast all week from Brazil, culminating in an interview with Jair Bolsonaro. On Tuesday, he addressed topics such as the “Chinese threat” in solar energy.
He’s here to shoot a documentary about “the rise of Chinese power” in the country, for streaming Fox Nation. Brazil is “the United States’ most important ally” in Latin America, he says, “but the Biden administration seems determined to hand it over to the Chinese Communist Party’s sphere of influence. Why?”
FBI ALSO
At the end of last week, reports the Metrópoles newspaper, FBI director Christopher Wray visited Abin (Brazilian Intelligence Agency) and the Federal Police in Brasília to “increase cooperation”, because “no country alone can control the crime”.
