Latin America Legal

Legal developments & business opportunities arising in Latin America

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By: Squire Patton Boggs

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Squire Patton Boggs
Perrin Brown
Miguel Cano
Diego Capistrano
Mayte Fedowitz
Jose Feris
Paula A. Galhardo
Carolina Gamba
Ketan M. Ganase
Trevor Garmey
Mayte Gutierrez
Eduardo Guzman
Ludmilla Kasulke
Jan Kubicz
Josue Marti
Jose Martin
Loana Martín
Alvaro Mestre
Rory Murphy
Miguel Nasser
Clay Porter
Sarah Roa
Ludmilla Savelieff
Carolina O. Soto Hernández
Stacy Swanson
Sergey Treshchev
Melissa M. Valdez García
José María Viñals

Latest from Latin America Legal

On November 12, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced a bill initiative that, if enacted, will have a significant impact on outsourcing and the use of service entities currently in use to minimize Mexican employee profit-sharing obligations. The initiative includes amendments to the Federal Labor Law, the Social Security Law, the Mexican Tax Code, including changes to income and value added tax regulations, and several others. The President submitted this initiative to Congress and it…
As US citizens go to the polls, Latin American governments, businesses and citizens should examine how a re-elected President Trump or a newly elected Vice- President Biden may shape Western Hemisphere relations. The results of this election will certainly affect Latin America, as each candidate views the region through fundamentally different lenses.  President Trump has taken a transactional approach to foreign and trade policy, emphasizing trade deficits and surpluses while examining bilateral relationships in the…
On Monday, October 5, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented a package of 39 infrastructure projects that he intends to move forward in conjunction with the Mexican private sector. These projects would invest approximately 300 billion pesos in the communications, energy, tourism and water sectors. This announcement represents the reactivation of the previous plan that was presented in November 2019, but postponed by the 2020 global health pandemic. It is estimated that this investment…
With the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) recently going into effect on July 1, the President of Mexico made his first visit to the United States on Wednesday, July 8. This marks his first visit to the White House and his first foreign trip since taking office in December 2018; it comes ahead of the U.S. election cycle in November. President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s delegation includes Secretary of Foreign Relations Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon; Mexican Ambassador to…
On June 22, 2020, Mexico’s independent antitrust regulator (“COFECE”) filed a legal claim (controversia constitucional) with the nation’s Supreme Court arguing that the Ministry of Energy’s (“SENER”) Agreement setting forth the Policy of Reliability, Safety, Continuity, and Quality of the National Electric System (“Policy”), as published in the Official Gazette of the Federation on May 15, 2020, not only violates articles 16, 28, and 133 of the Mexican Constitution, but also Mexican laws applicable to…
On Wednesday, June 10, the Mexican court specialized in economic competition issued an order granting the definitive suspension of the Ministry of Energy’s (“SENER”) Agreement setting forth the Policy of Reliability, Safety, Continuity, and Quality of the National Electric System (“Policy”) and the independent system operator’s (“CENACE”) preoperative testing restrictions. This means that neither the Policy nor CENACE’s restrictions may be further pursued or enforced until a final judicial order on the matter is issued…
Since our May 20 blog post, the Energy Regulatory Commission (“CRE”) added its name to the list of agencies disturbing Mexico’s legal and regulatory certainty. Additionally, the López Obrador administration has spent time publicly defending recent Ministry of Energy (“SENER”) and independent system operator (“CENACE”) regulatory changes affecting renewable energy projects. On the evening of May, 28, 2020, CRE, in extraordinary session, passed two resolutions modifying the tariffs applicable to the transmission services used…
The impact of COVID-19 on global economies is being unfolded as we continue to experience the period of prolonged economic uncertainty. As the virus’ epicenter has shifted from Asia to Europe, and now Latin America, financial markets have plummeted and with them sectors such as the project development, infrastructure or construction sector on a worldwide scale. The construction sector, has started to experience the effects of the pandemic, nonetheless, the coming months will unravel the…
With presidential and congressional elections scheduled to take place on July 5, 2020,[1] the President of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina Sánchez, announced last Sunday May 17, 2020, a set of measures for a staged reopening of the Dominican economy. This raises the question of what happens if these reopening measures result in drastic spikes of new COVID-19 cases and the elections are therefore not held on July 5, 2020. There is a lot…
On April 29, 2020, Mexico’s independent system operator (“CENACE”) notified generators of its decision to indefinitely suspend all legally mandated pre-operation tests for solar and wind projects in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such suspension purportedly seeks to safeguard the national grid against system interruptions clean intermittent energy projects could cause during the pandemic, and essentially bars any such projects from connecting to the grid until further notice. According to industry groups AMDEE and ASOLMEX,…