LATAM POLITICS TODAY-Canada sanctions Haitian gang leader over humanitarian crisis

Cuba welcomes gay rights as progressive family code takes hold HAVANA - Cuban Pedro Rafael Delgado, a 56-year-old accountant, saw his life change dramatically just days after Cuba approved a set of laws by referendum in September that allow gay marriage.

The latest in Latin American politics today: Canada sanctions Haitian gang leader over humanitarian crisis

Canada sanctioned Haitian gang leader Jimmy Cherizier on Monday, citing serious human rights abuses that are causing a humanitarian crisis, the foreign ministry said. The actions against Cherizier, leader of the so-called G9, an alliance of Haitian gangs, effectively freezes any assets he may hold in Canada and imposes a travel ban and arms embargo

"Canada has reason to believe this individual has engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Mexico's president dismisses protest against electoral overhaul

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's president on Monday shrugged off a major demonstration against his plan to overhaul the country's electoral authority, dismissing it as a "racist" and "classist" protest and challenging his adversaries to stage a bigger one. Likening Sunday's protest in Mexico City to a "political striptease" by his opponents, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador repeated his assertions that his proposal to cut the National Electoral Institute's (INE) budget and change how its board is picked would strengthen democracy rather than weaken it as critics have argued.

Pension reform boosts Chilean president's approval rating SANTIAGO - Chilean President Gabriel Boric's approval rating rose for the first time since mid-September after he sent a bill to Congress to change the country's controversial pension system, according to a poll released on Sunday night.

The weekly survey by private pollster Cadem said support for the progressive president rose eight percentage points to 33%, while disapproval fell 11 percentage points to 58%. At the beginning of November, Boric's approval fell to 25% and disapproval rose to 69%, according to the pollster, weighed down by a September plebiscite rejecting a proposal for a new constitution.

Biggest rainforest nations form triple alliance to save jungle NUSA DUA, Indonesia - The world's three largest rainforest nations - Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia - on Monday formally launched a partnership to cooperate on forest preservation after a decade of on-off talks on a trilateral alliance.

Reuters reported in August that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, elected as Brazil's president at the end of October, would seek a partnership with the two other leading rainforest nations to pressure the rich world to finance forest conservation. Cuba welcomes gay rights as progressive family code takes hold

HAVANA - Cuban Pedro Rafael Delgado, a 56-year-old accountant, saw his life change dramatically just days after Cuba approved a set of laws by referendum in September that allow gay marriage. For more than a decade, Delgado, who works at a Communist Party office, lived as "friends" with his 62-year-old partner, Adolfo Lopez. He lacked basic rights and felt shunned even by his own family because of his sexual preference.

"Being gay was the embarrassment of the family and I always lived with that," he told Reuters. Cuba's family code, a set of measures and regulations that establishes the rights of all Cubans, regardless of sexual orientation, to marry and adopt children, changed everything, Delgado says. (Compiled by Steven Grattan Editing by Bill Berkrot)

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