Dealflow.la #21 - CDMX 🇲🇽 deploys national guard to protect Subway, Brazil's 🇧🇷 January 6th?, and Iran 🇮🇷 to send warships to Panama Canal 🇵🇦 to counter USA 🇺🇸.

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Jan 13, 2023

Funding

Viziomed 🇧🇷 raised a $200,000 Seed Round led by DOMO Invest 🇧🇷 to provide image-oriented health diagnostic services. The company's platform offers easy adaption within the workflow of hospitals and clinics that helps in the early identification of cancer and other serious diseases, using analysis of medical images such as x-ray, mammography, and tomography, enabling health centers with early discovery and treatment of diseases.

DataRebelsMX 🇲🇽 raised a $330,000 Pre-Seed Round led by Cemex Ventures 🇪🇸with funding from FEMSA 🇲🇽 and Blue Zone Ventures 🇲🇽 to offer data literacy content & data project management software to improve data project adoption.

Transfeera 🇧🇷 raised a $1 Million Venture Round led by Honey Island Capital 🇧🇷 and 4um Investimentos 🇧🇷 with funding from Curitiba Angels 🇧🇷 and Bossanova Investimentos 🇧🇷 to automate payment routines safely and quickly. The company specializes in automating financial routines which helps to save time and money, make payments to employees, suppliers, and customers quickly and safely, and avoid high-interest rates from banks, enabling clients to simplify and update the way they pay and receive payments.

Hero Guest 🇲🇽 raised a $2.3 Million Seed Round led by MVS Communications 🇲🇽 with funding from Grupo Anderson’s 🇲🇽 to offer training and coaching materials to frontline workers with a focus on the restaurant and hospitality industries. The company's platform provides customized digital learning and operation tools so that the staff has a better performance in their work, which dignifies their sector, generates more tips, and minimizes turnover, enabling businesses to have a positive impact on the business and achieve their business goals.

Habi 🇨🇴 raised $6.3 Million in Debt Financing from Bancóldex 🇨🇴 to simplify the process of buying and selling residential properties for middle-class consumers. The company's platform reduces sales time, mitigates the risks facing sellers in traditional transactions, and eliminates the need for intermediaries by combining advanced analytical tools with human insight, enabling clients to buy, sell and improve homes quickly and also giving them access to the necessary information.

Sociopolitical News

🇦🇷 Argentina

Argentina's inflation rate is at 95%, the highest since 1991. Argentina's annual inflation hit its highest rate in more than 30 years last month as prices almost doubled versus a year ago, official data released on Thursday showed, further eroding consumers' dwindling purchasing power. In December, consumer prices jumped 5.1% month-on-month, according to the national statistics agency INDEC, while inflation in the 12 months through December reached 94.8% in the South American country's ailing economy. (Reuters)
Cost of living: Argentina sees prices almost doubling last year. Official figures show consumer prices jumped by 94.8% in the 12 months to the end of December. (BBC)

🇧🇴 Bolivia

Bolivia’s state airline has enlisted an “interspecies communicator” – or animal psychic – to track down a lost cat, after a passenger’s pet went missing in transit. The incident has prompted pointed questions over the performance of Bolivia’s many state companies, a continual source of debate between the leftist government and its opposition. (The Guardian)

🇧🇷 Brazil

For context: Brazil congress attack: what we know so far. (The Guardian)
Brazil police find draft decree intended to overturn election result in former Bolsonaro minister’s home. (CNN)
Hundreds of the protesters who stormed Brazil's Congress have been arrested but mystery still surrounds the identity of the people pulling the strings. Could a fleet of buses seized by police hold the key? (BBC)
Democrats push for Bolsonaro to be booted from the U.S. as Brazil investigates riots. (NPR)
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has ordered the arrest of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres, who served under former President Jair Bolsonaro and who was in charge of public security in Brasilia during Sunday's invasion of government buildings, a source told Reuters on Tuesday. (Reuters)

🇨🇱 Chile

Robbers pull off a multimillion-dollar copper heist in a Chilean port. Chilean authorities said on Wednesday they were investigating a violent heist in Chile's main seaport where thieves stole several shipping containers filled with copper belonging to state-owned giant Codelco. Juan Carlos Catalan, the local prosecutor, said in a statement that ten armed men entered the San Antonio port early on Tuesday morning, attacked workers and stole 13 containers, 12 of which had copper. (Reuters)
Chile’s justice minister resigns in face of opposition to protester pardons. Marcela Ríos stands down before expected congressional complaint over pardons of those involved in 2019 political violence. Lawyer Luis Cordero Vega will take up the job in the coming days, leftist Boric added in a video statement, thanking Ríos for her work during her 10 months in the role. (The Guardian)

🇨🇴 Colombia

Colombia's VP says a bomb discovered near her home was an assassination attempt. Francia Marquez shared a police report on her Twitter account which says a drug-sniffing dog alerted to the bomb, which was made of ammonium nitrate, powdered aluminum, and shrapnel, and that anti-explosives officers blew it up in a controlled explosion on Monday. (NPR)

🇪🇨 Ecuador

Ecuador will lower taxes on capital sent abroad and items like alcohol and trim overall value-added tax on specific shopping days this year, President Guillermo Lasso said on Tuesday. Capital sent abroad will this year be taxed at 2%, instead of 4%, Lasso said in a televised address, making imported products like machinery cheaper and attracting foreign investment. Sales tax will be cut to 8% from 12% during four long weekends this year, Lasso, a conservative former banker, added, and taxes on sugary drinks, beer, alcohol, and other items will also fall an unspecified amount. (Reuters)

🇸🇻 El Salvador

El Salvador renews state of emergency as gang crackdown continues. The government says emergency measures have led to a drop in murders, but rights groups raise concerns about reported abuses. (Al Jazeera)
El Salvador passes law on cryptocurrency transfers. El Salvador, which became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as a legal tender two years ago, has approved a law that would regulate the issuance of other digital assets by both the state and private entities. The bill, backed by ruling party lawmakers allied with President Nayib Bukele, aims to attract national and foreign investors while creating new financing opportunities for citizens, companies, and the government. (Al Jazeera)

🇭🇳 Honduras

Ex-Honduras president says current government impeding U.S. defense case. A lawyer for Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former Honduran president who is facing U.S. drugs and weapons charges, on Tuesday accused the Central American country's current government of setting up obstacles to his defense. In a hearing on Hernandez's case in Manhattan federal court, defense lawyer Raymond Colon said individuals in Honduras he was hoping to speak with were "being intimidated," without providing evidence. (Reuters)

🇲🇽 Mexico

Biden and Mexico's López Obrador find common cause on migration after a rocky start. "You are the first president of the United States in a very long time who has not built even one meter of wall. We thank you for that, sir," said López Obrador, lauding Biden as "a man with conviction" at the end of the North American Leaders' Summit. (NPR)
The mayor of Mexico’s capital has announced that 6,060 National Guard officers will be posted in the city’s subway system after a series of mechanical problems and accidents that officials suggested could be due to sabotage. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said, in recent months, “incidents have been occurring that we categorize as not normal.” She appeared to suggest, but did not say, that it could involve some form of sabotage. Sheinbaum added that she had asked President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to dispatch the quasi-military National Guard and he agreed. The officers would be posted at subway stations “and some other facilities” in the system and would be there “for some months”. She did not explain how the National Guard officers, mostly drawn from the army and assigned to law enforcement, could help control a situation that appears to be caused by maintenance, design, or operational flaws. (Al Jazeera)

🇵🇦 Panama

Iran will send ships to Panama Canal on a military mission. Iran will dispatch warships to the Panama Canal this year, Iranian officials vowed Thursday in a sign that Tehran seeks to expand its military footprint far beyond the Middle East and into the backyard of the United States. Iranian Rear Adm. Shahram Irani, commander of the Iranian navy, offered few details about the planned mission during a public speech, but state-controlled media played up its ominous nature. The Islamic republic’s “navy units are getting closer to the coasts of the Americas,” said the opening of an article posted on the website of the government-run Fars News Agency. (Washington Times)

🇵🇪 Peru

Peru barred Bolivia's socialist former president, Evo Morales, from entering its territory on Monday, Peru's government announced in a statement, a decision Morales later derided as an attack meant to distract from rights violations. The move to ban Morales, along with eight other unidentified Bolivians, follows weeks of deadly protests in Peru targeting President Dina Boluarte following last month's swift removal of former President Pedro Castillo, with some demonstrations held near the border with Bolivia. (Reuters)

🇵🇷 Puerto Rico

House Democrats on Thursday will call up legislation aimed at ending Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory and giving Puerto Rican voters a say in whether the island becomes a U.S. state, an independent country, or some other form of non-territory status. (Fox)

🇻🇪 Venezuela

Maduro’s newest foe: an in-home caregiver who fled Venezuela. (AP)
Chevron's first cargo of Venezuelan oil after the license departs for the United States. Chevron received authorization last year from the U.S. Treasury Department to revive oil output and expand operations in Venezuela as part of Washington's efforts to encourage political dialogue towards a presidential election in the South American nation. (Reuters)

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