Annual Report 2023

In 2023, as the war between Russia and Ukraine threatened to extend indefinitely, the world was surprised by Hamas’ terrorist military incursion against Israel, unleashing a conflict in Gaza whose ramifications today extend to the Red Sea, compromising international maritime traffic.

The positive international news was the relative stabilisation of relations between the United States and China, following the meeting of Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco (despite warnings about the inevitability of the annexation of Taiwan), and the agreement reached at COP28, which calls for progressively abandoning the use of fossil fuels. The decline in inflation at a global level could also be included.

Latin America had its own surprise with the triumph of libertarian Javier Milei, who became President of Argentina promising to fix and open the economy, thus ending a long Peronist cycle of clientelist statism. With shock policies in place, it will be a case to watch closely.

In turn, Nicolás Maduro’s controversial regime created the conditions for an armed crisis in the region by mounting a referendum to annex a large part of neighbouring Guyana, in further proof that declaring “zones of peace” is a futile exercise. The limits on the actions of irresponsible states must be clear. For now, the support of the United States for Georgetown and the mediation efforts of some countries seem to have served to calm the waters.

Organised crime, on the other hand, continued to flourish in all its manifestations, such as drug and human trafficking, illegal mining, kidnappings and other crimes, thus turning Latin American criminal organisations into some of the most powerful in the world.

In the case of Chile, 2023 was marked by a constitutional process that led to the rejection of a second proposed constitution, the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état (which did not exactly reduce polarisation), the lack of economic growth, and an increase in homicides with firearms.

All of these topics were addressed by AthenaLab through different activities, a summary of which is provided in this report.