Do You Know What Happened in Latin America? Monthly Bulletin of the ALERTA Latam Observatory – October 2026
Brazil: The First Round Leaves an Open Runoff and a Human Rights Agenda at Stake
Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) came first in the first round on October 4, but without reaching the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. With 99.97% of votes counted, according to the count, he obtained 56.1 million votes (47.04%) against Lula da Silva’s 53.8 million (45.15%). Turnout approached 80% and both candidates will face each other in a second round on October 25. The result came as a surprise: previous polls gave Lula a three-point lead among valid votes, and the president himself admitted that he had expected a different outcome.
Beyond the electoral race, what is at stake is the direction of a human rights agenda with deep-rooted shortcomings. According to Amnesty International, around 98% of investigations into police officers are shelved and fewer than 2% of deaths caused by the police go to trial, while police operations predominantly affect the Black population. Added to this is violence against human rights defenders, particularly environmentalists, Indigenous peoples and quilombolas, and the pressure on Amazonian territories: in August, Human Rights Watch asked UN rapporteurs and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to demand justice for the 2020 police operations on the Abacaxis River. The three weeks between the two rounds will be decisive in determining what place these issues will occupy in the next government of the largest country in the region.
Argentina: Rising Poverty and a Green Light for Foreign Ownership of Land
Poverty rose again in Argentina. According to INDEC, it reached 32.3% of the population in the first half of 2026, up from 28.2% in the previous half-year: some 9.7 million people in the 31 urban agglomerations surveyed, of whom 2.25 million are in a situation of extreme poverty (7.5%). Extrapolated to the country as a whole, the figure amounts to some 15 million poor people. The Argentine Catholic University (UCA), for its part, estimates that it could reach 35% by year-end. The figure was released just a few hours after Milei stated in New York that his administration had lifted 14 million people out of poverty, while overwhelmed soup kitchens and barter clubs attest to the deterioration of everyday life.
Added to the social crisis is a crisis in access to land. On September 29, the Supreme Court removed the obstacles to the sale of land to foreigners: it revoked the injunction that kept the Land Law (Law 26,737) in force against article 154 of Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) 70/2023, thereby effectively achieving the repeal that the government had sought since its first month in office. Justices Rosatti, Rosenkrantz and Lorenzetti ruled on procedural grounds that the Center of Malvinas Ex-Combatants of La Plata lacked standing and that there was no “case,” without ruling on the constitutionality of the decree, and rejected the notion that territorial sovereignty is a right of collective incidence.
The repeal entails eliminating the 15% cap on foreign ownership of rural land and the 1,000-hectare limit in the core zone, and it enables purchases in border zones, riverside areas and permanent bodies of water. The Senate rejected the DNU in March 2024 (40 votes to 25), but the Chamber of Deputies needs to gather 129 votes to overturn it, and the blocs that have already spoken out against it total about 110.
The ruling comes only a few weeks after the August mobilization that halted the land chapter of the Law on the Inviolability of Private Property, and peasant and environmental organizations, such as the Mesa Agroalimentaria Argentina, read it as a political decision that undermines the popular will. The two pieces of news feed into each other: a country where one in three inhabitants is poor also loses tools to regulate who controls land, water and the commons. These are resources on which food sovereignty, peasant and Indigenous communities, and the possibility of a development model that does not deepen exclusion all depend.
Colombia: Violence Rises in the First Month of the New Government
The Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) warned that 112 social leaders and human rights defenders were killed between January 1 and August 31, 2026. Indepaz puts the figure at 119 people at the beginning of October. Its assessment of the first month of Abelardo De la Espriella’s government (August 7 – September 7) records the killing of 16 social leaders and five signatories of the Peace Agreement.
Massacres follow the same trend. Indepaz counted 89 massacres and 336 victims as of September 11, 14% more than in 2025; the Ombudsman’s Office notes that Cauca (13), Antioquia (12) and Valle del Cauca (10) have the highest numbers. An important nuance: as of September 7 there had been 104 leaders killed, compared with 142 on the same date in 2025, that is, fewer cases, but in a context where collective violence is increasing. In Remedios (Antioquia), the killing of a community leader on September 12 was followed by threats from the Clan del Golfo against communities and by displacements.
The data confirm a pattern that this bulletin already documented with the situation of women defenders in March and with structural racism in May: violence is concentrated in territories with a presence of armed groups and illegal economies, and it strikes those who sustain social participation, the Peace Agreement and the defense of the territory. Each killing weakens the community fabric and reinforces impunity, and it raises a question that the new government should answer with effective protection policies and a State presence that goes beyond the military.
Mexico: More Than 132,000 Disappeared Persons and a Response That Falls Short
The National Registry of Missing and Unlocated Persons counts 132,844 people as of August 29, 2026, and more than 72,000 bodies remain unidentified in forensic services. According to figures cited by Amnesty International, at least 45 searchers have been killed or disappeared since 2010. The latest record of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances places Mexico at the top of urgent actions, with 877 requests and 73 new ones between March and August.
Official search results contrast with that magnitude: between September 2025 and June 2026, the National Search Commission carried out just 6,679 actions and located 284 people, 198 alive and 84 killed. September 26 marked twelve years since the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa student teachers, and the IACHR asked the State to preserve the progress made and accelerate the search, also warning of the resurgence of narratives that minimize the Army’s involvement.
The gap between the figures for disappeared persons and those for people located shows that the bottleneck is not only the search, but also forensic identification, institutional coordination and the protection of those who search, mostly women who take on the work that the State does not do. As this bulletin reported in May, the UN Committee has already activated article 34 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the IACHR published 40 recommendations. The question remains how much international pressure is needed for a political response commensurate with the gravity of the situation.
Latin American Migrants: Expelled to Third Countries by the United States
At least 25,447 people had been sent by the United States to third countries as of August 31, under agreements with 35 countries and some $410 million in funding. The vast majority were sent to Mexico; Guatemala had received 3,045 people of other nationalities (2,848 of them Mexican) and Paraguay at least 77. On September 18, a federal appeals court halted this practice, but on September 29 the Supreme Court allowed, on a temporary basis, expulsions to resume.
Behind the figures are concrete stories. The Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara was detained while covering a protest against ICE in Atlanta, was held for more than a hundred days and was deported to El Salvador, a case that gave rise to the investigation. Human Rights Watch reported that at least eight Nicaraguan exiles stripped of their nationality, seven of them among the 222 political prisoners expelled by Managua in 2023, have been detained by US immigration authorities, some with pending asylum applications. In total, the United States deported more than 6,300 Nicaraguans between January and July 2026, compared with 3,323 in the same period of 2025.
For migrants, being sent to a country with which they have no meaningful ties means being left without a family network, without access to asylum and, often, at risk of subsequent return to places where they may suffer persecution or torture, something that international law prohibits. Moreover, the Latin American region becomes the recipient of a policy it did not decide, with States that sign agreements in exchange for benefits and vulnerable populations that bear the cost.
Haiti: A Security Crisis That Is Spreading Without Protection for the Civilian Population
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, reported that at least 5,700 people were killed or injured in Haiti between January 1 and September 11, 2026, at the hands of gangs or in operations against them. In that period, gangs kidnapped more than 230 people and raped more than a thousand women and girls, and self-defense groups caused some 280 deaths or injuries, according to the same assessment. The Gang Suppression Force, authorized for 5,500 personnel, has only about 1,500, according to the US ambassador to the UN.
Violence is no longer concentrated in Port-au-Prince: almost 1.5 million people are displaced, a record, and around 80% live outside the metropolitan area. The UN office in the country (BINUH) counted more than 3,000 deaths in the first half of the year, and Human Rights Watch documented at least 19,380 deaths between January 2023 and June 2026 in incidents of violence linked to gangs, self-defense groups and security forces.
The overall picture shows a structural crisis: gangs expanding into rural areas, security responses that also generate abuses and summary executions, an incomplete international force and an underfunded humanitarian response in the middle of hurricane season. Haiti plans to hold its first elections in a decade and a constitutional referendum on December 13, in a context where guaranteeing the vote and the safety of the population remains a challenge. As this bulletin noted in May, what is missing is a civilian protection architecture that neither the State nor the international community has managed to build.
