The Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela Mess or Let's Place Bets on How Long Before the U.S. Backs a Colombian War With Venezuela

Oh nothing, just Juan Guaidó and friends attempting to appropriate $40bn of Venezuelan state money from foreign banks in return for kick-backs down the road. https://t.co/mfqUv4uGbx

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) January 3, 2021

Ecuador's govt are trying to ban leftist @ecuarauz from standing in the 2nd round, even though he WON the 1st round. In Bolivia too, the coup tried to ban the largest party from standing. Its a deseperate measure taken by US-backed tyrants who've lost the consent of the governed.

— Ollie Vargas (@OVargas52) February 13, 2021

The latest round of protests against Colombia's right-wing government have seen a brutal crackdown, leading to at least 43 deaths – but the mass movement for social change is only growing stronger. https://t.co/0IWKqGMpoo

— Tribune (@tribunemagazine) May 23, 2021

Colombia, Celag poll:

Presidential election

Petro (PH, left): 38%
Fajardo (CC, centre): 18%
J.M. Galán (PLC, centre-left): 9%
De la Calle (PLC, centre-left): 8%
...

Fieldwork: 13 May-8 June '21
Sample size: 1,945#Colombia pic.twitter.com/Vxl87gvz6W

— America Elects (@AmericaElige) June 11, 2021

Bolivia’s recent interim government led by Jeanine Áñez persecuted opponents with “systematic torture” and “summary executions” by security forces following ex Pres. Evo Morales’s resignation in 2019, according to a new report by OAS human rights experts. https://t.co/Gatf5cPbGO pic.twitter.com/kfsR6gA8ji

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 20, 2021

quiet thread these days

it seems this Roth fellow called the fascist coup a “transitional moment” at the time, so much for watching human rights.

I see the OAS is suddenly trustworthy.

do you care about this

fucking lol

By the way, I don’t see a problem with what happened in Bolivia

IIRC

“Compared to that other person on a messageboard whose views I disagree with, I am on the right side of history and he is not”

It is going to take a lot of imagination for an ideologue of Milo’s or Left’s kind to understand this but one can believe that Morales ‘president forever’ approach to politics is extremely bad all the while not supporting Añez human rights abuses at all. Or are we a little too attached to the schtick of making wild assumptions about someone we disagree with in order to show the world how virtuous we are? In any case I hope this sort of behavior is exclusive to the internet, because geez, must be tough to make friends irl with that sort of intransigeance.

lol, you didn't "see a problem" with the fascist coup last month

I am not going to spend hours trying to explain the vast complexity of politics in a country of 12 millions citizens and how not everyone will subscribe to your us against them/black and white narratives. Mainly because I know your raison d’être is to chastise anyone contradicting or stepping out of your one viewpoint and to get as many ‘gotchas’ as you can to pat yourself on the back and ultimately it’s just very very sad to witness.

I’ve never expressed support for any politician but I’m clearly a massive evo for life stan because I implied the coup is bad or something, wild assumptions indeed. to the charge of ideology check out this mirror

and to get as many ‘gotchas’ as you can to pat yourself on the back and ultimately it’s just very very sad to witness.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, 28 August 2021 bookmarkflaglink

As if you don't do this.

VHS, from what I could tell, your nuanced view of the situation was that it was all basically fine because it worked out in the end with a transfer of power to a legitimately elected leader who wasn't Morales. You treated the year of Anez's rule like a speed bump that was necessary because Morales had to step down, even if he won the election and the reports of fraud were false and dozens of protestors were killed by Anez's forces. Maybe this is the mature, realpolitik way of looking at things, but it's also completely devoid of any context of the history of leftist leaders in South America and the right-wing response to them.

VHS do you work for Canada’s version of the Brookings Institute or what

Ideally the Ecuadorians should be allowed to sort this out internally without interference, but reflexive US interventionism is so deeply entrenched in our foreign policy that such an ideal will not be achievable any time soon. We will always throw our weight behind some faction in every contest for power in Latin America and even our rare, well-intentioned efforts seldom produce happy results and they have already caused so much disruption of the internal politics in Ecuador and other Latin nations that merely ceasing to interfere is insufficient to remedy the problems caused by our past intervention.

I don't particularly care whether the observation above is 'mature' or a sound reflection of realpolitik, or wide open to criticism that I am not doing enough to assist the Ecuadorian people in their struggle, mainly because no position I have ever adopted toward Latin American foreign policy has ever made any substantive difference in that policy. All I know is that the Monroe Doctrine has wrought much more evil than good in the world.

"merely ceasing to interfere is insufficient to remedy the problems caused by our past intervention."

Just don't interfere ffs.

I promise not to.

As a 'mature' citizen that's what you should do.

Maybe this is the mature, realpolitik way of looking at things, but it's also completely devoid of any context of the history of leftist leaders in South America and the right-wing response to them.

As of yet, Luis Arce has had very little resistance from US foreign policy, the imprisonement of Añez being really the only voiced criticism so far, same for Diego Castillo who is part of a self described Marxist party, same for Fernández in Argentina, and seemingly (I might be wrong there!) same for AMLO. I’m not denying that there has been resistance to left wing politics by American’s FP in Latin American history, I just don’t think it’s the case for the Morales situation. I would rather see what happened and see if it fits the narrative than start from the narrative and make assumptions.

And one the biggest assumption is that the OAS report was an element of American interventionism to displace Morales. I don’t see it that way. Morales asked for that audit because he trusted the organisation, Diego Castillo trusted the OAS enough to audit the Peruvian elections too and it certified his victory, all the while knowing of what happened in Bolivia in 2019. Cuba is a full contributing member of the organisation, and the OAS also just released a full report on Añez human right crimes, this is not exactly the behavior of an organisation hell bent on the destruction of left wing politics and the promotion of right wing autocrats. Really, no one has full proof that there was ill intent, mistakes can happen, we see them all the time, the political situation was jumpy to begin with, a lot of people were done with Morales before the elections. Anti-Morales protests can happen without foreign intervention, Añez can be an interim despot without the help of Americans, you see similar situations all the time outside of the Western Hemisphere, but when it happens in Latin American it is obviously an extension of the Monroe doctrine? Bolivians have enough agency that it would more precise to see their actions first rather than just assume ‘it’s all America’.

Good piece.

https://www.apollo-magazine.com/colombia-statues-conquistadores-toppling/

Bulletin #12 (5:05PM) with 97.06% of tables counted: pic.twitter.com/FVAcWYoy8l

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) June 19, 2022

love to see it

Venezuela and Colombia have left-wing leadership, and Ecuador has had a week's worth of strikes ✅✅✅

Felcitades Senor President, socialista!

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) June 19, 2022

I kept hearing earlier how the fascist guy was a "political outsider" from bbc coverage - that old chestnut. With this result and Macron losing his parliamentary majority it's not a bad night at all. Time to savour some sour grapes.

The Colombian embassy is on the same street as my local bookstore; the streets have closed for every primary or whatever in the last year. They hate the left wing guy.

I wouldn't doubt that the privileged diplomatic ranks were all rooting for the Trump guy, even if it was *reluctantly* as the lesser evil etc etc

Colombia seems to be embroiled in a war right now between parents and children. 64 percent of the population is under 40; half is under 30. All the old fucks voted for Hernández. And to some degree I get it; Petro is ex-FARC. He's killed people. But ultimately this is about young people being pissed off that old people have bankrupted their future.

that seems a very simplistic take - within all age demographics there will also be significant ethnic minority and class groups of voters who have no self interest in voting right.

did he actually kill people?

Petro isn't ex-FARC.

My mistake; he was part of a smaller guerrilla group, M-19.

While the M-19 was less brutal than other rebel groups, it did orchestrate what is considered one of the bloodiest acts in the country’s recent history: the 1985 siege of Colombia’s national judicial building that led to a battle with the police and the military, leaving 94 people dead.

I think he could be very good for Colombia. Certainly better than Hernández, who's a complete fucking asshole.

but he was in prison when that event happened, according to the article you're quoting: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/world/americas/who-is-gustavo-petro.html

Don't care what he did then, it's what he does now that counts.

It wouldn't even get mentioned if he was Irish and an ex-IRA man.

Good thread here.

In victory speech, Petro said that the opposition didn’t have to worry about them eliminating capitalism because Colombia still needs to eliminate feudalism. He also reimagined left-wing Latin American developmentalism and regional integration in ecological/anti-extractive terms.

— Daniel Denvir (@DanielDenvir) June 20, 2022

Francia Márquez has survived an assassination attempt, fled her home twice, and been subjected to countless death threats for her activism. Now @FranciaMarquezM will be the first Black vice president of Colombia. https://t.co/N9KESUUW0Q

— The Nation (@thenation) June 19, 2022

People in Ecuador have been protesting inflation and rising fuel costs for 10 days.

This should be much bigger news. pic.twitter.com/0vRYUG1UPf

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 23, 2022

This is one of the shittiest, most cynical pieces I've read in quite a while. Even for Politico, it's something special.

In the past 14 national elections in Latin America, the government-backed candidate has lost 13 times. The sole exception is Nicaragua’s artlessly rigged vote in favor of re-installing its dictator. In no competitive electoral system has the government won. The wave has swept away criminally corrupt governments and adequately competent ones alike. Remember, government performance has little to do with voting choices when the lean cow years come.

And the problem is not simply that incumbents and incumbent-backed candidates always lose, the issue is who they lose to.

The generation of leaders finding their ways to the second round of Latin American presidential elections in the 2020s is a sorry cast. It includes the hard-right populist daughter of Peru’s multi-decade dictator, a small-town TikTok obsessed Colombian millionaire mayor with a long record of abusing his staff, a former Brazilian air force colonel who has spent decades arguing for a return to military dictatorship, a hard-left former guerrilla cadre whose nom de guerre, “Aureliano,” was cribbed from the fiction of Gabriel García Márquez, the hard-right brother of a Pinochet Cabinet minister, and a son of a rural schoolteacher turned hard-left party leader. Some of them won, some lost, but none bear any resemblance to the sober men-in-gray-suits who took care of party politics a generation or two ago (and often failed to deliver as well).

The common thread is not that all these new contenders are Marxists or communists, nor is it that they’re all Trumpists or authoritarians. It’s that they’re all far, far outside what would have been considered mainstream even five or six years ago. They all pitch themselves as radical outsiders with determined proposals to shake up the country. Few have any government experience at all, and many espouse ideas that could kindly be described as “unorthodox.”

More and more often, elections in the region consist of a choice between these kinds of contrasting extremists of highly dubious allegiance to democracy. Some will use the tactics of populism, polarization and post-truth to try to establish themselves in power as elected autocrats. Others will try to work within existing channels, but they will most often fail, because of those lean cows.

Either way, the success or failure of these newcomers in office will have little to do with their own skill, and much to do with what happens to next year’s price of soybeans. Or sardines. Or lithium. Or oil. Or cotton. Or copper — or whichever commodity your particular country specializes in.

For their part, many Latin Americans voters have indeed noticed that whom they vote for doesn’t much seem to matter for how their lives progress. This has turned a shocking number of them against the whole concept of democracy. In its 2020 report — i.e., pre-pandemic — the respected consultancy Latinbarómetro found 10 countries in the region where democracy no longer enjoyed majority support. Heartbreakingly, among the countries where support for democracy is highest is my own Venezuela, where it has been wholly extinguished.

Few of the newcomers seem up to the monumental tasks that await them. When they fail — and most of them will fail — voters will be tempted to back even more extreme candidates. Some will fall to outright authoritarians, as Nicaragua and Venezuela already have, while others will continue to cycle through disposable presidents at breathtaking speed, an art perfected by the Peruvians.

For their part, many Latin Americans voters have indeed noticed that whom they vote for doesn’t much seem to matter for how their lives progress. This has turned a shocking number of them against the whole concept of democracy.

Fixed it.

Seriously.

It's not only boring Politicos, it's the concern trolling over killers and terrorists who are politicians (Petro), which unperson also engaged in further up the thread, that is part of the problematic response.

Ah. Here's the follow up. Good on Tapper. I saw some mention he's probably talking about Haiti for one https://t.co/tvBJaferb2

— Sarah Horrocks🎪 (@mercurialblonde) July 12, 2022

Just got round to this piece on Petro and the gigantic task that faces his government.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/petros-premonition?pc=1454

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/10/ecuador-presidential-candidate-fernando-villavicencio-killed

Horrible.

From this tweet he wasn't going to win.

🇪🇨 Ecuador voter intention averages (@CELAGeopolitica's compilation of recent polls)

1. Luisa Gonzalez 39.4%
2. Otto Sonnenholzner 14.5%
3. Yaku Perez 14.1%
4. Fernando Villavicencio 11.7%
5. Jan Topic 7.9% pic.twitter.com/JQDwfNYBqy

— Camila (@camilapress) August 10, 2023