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

"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

The name Otto Sonnenholzner kinda sets off alarm bells.

Feels like not a day goes by here without friends from Ecuador talking about the violence there.

Colombian nationals. This was make for very interesting discussions tonight.

Cofan Indigenous activist Eduardo Mendúa has been assassinated in his village, Dureno, The Amazon, Ecuador. Eduardo fought oil companies like Chevron, which extract from and destroy their water & land. pic.twitter.com/PGotXdwl8D

— Scream of The Butterfly (@odetomedusa) August 11, 2023

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/colombians-held-over-ecuador-presidential-candidates-murder-slain-in-jail

So about this Esequiba referendum on Sunday

Do you agree to reject by all means in accordance with the law, the line fraudulently interposed by the 1899 Paris Arbitration Award, which seeks to deprive us of our Guayana Esequiba?

Choice Votes %
Referendum passed Yes ' 97.83
No 2.17

Do you agree with the creation of the Guayana Esequiba state and the development of an accelerated plan for comprehensive care for the current and future population of that territory, which includes, among others, the granting of citizenship and identity card? Venezuela, in accordance with the Geneva Agreement and International Law, consequently incorporating said state on the map of Venezuelan territory?
Choice Votes %
Referendum passed Yes ' 95.93
No 4.07

There were some weird wikipedia screenshots earlier today on twitter which showed similar numbers but with exact totals the same for every question. But on wikipedia itself no such results were present, in fact no results were present at all

But now results are on wikipedia for real

Don't know anything about this referendum tbh but you've got to be suspicious of any vote that ends up with percentages like that

Essequibo is larger than Greece and rich in minerals. It also gives access to an area of the Atlantic where energy giant ExxonMobil discovered oil in commercial quantities in 2015, drawing the attention of Maduro’s government.

well there we go.

Love the wording on those questions, especially the first: Do you agree to reject by all means in accordance with the law, the line fraudulently interposed by the 1899 Paris Arbitration Award, which seeks to deprive us of our Guayana Esequiba?…or are you some kind of sissy?

So what does this actually mean? What happens next? I still don't really understand the purpose of this referendum

Brazil seem to be taking it seriously enough to send troops to the border region, as presumably any operation would have to traverse Brazilian territory given the terrain. Or is all just bluster ahead of next years election? But what does a referendum with no subsequent action achieve

Ordené de manera inmediata publicar y a llevar a todas las escuelas, liceos, Consejos Comunales, establecimientos públicos, universidades y en todos los hogares del país el nuevo Mapa de Venezuela con nuestra Guayana Esequiba. ¡Este es nuestro mapa amado! pic.twitter.com/qliW31Lyb9

— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) December 6, 2023

New Venezuela map just dropped

I realize there's a lot of focus on this at the moment, but I remembered this from a few years ago about the upcoming situation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCLZMW6gbAY

3 different perspectives on the situation, including a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower

After a lot of attention on this earlier, now seems to have gone quiet. I'm not sure what happens next, Venezuelan elections aren't until the second half of 2024

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-guyana-presidents-meet-amid-territorial-dispute-2023-12-14/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-09/ecuador-under-emergency-as-drug-lord-fito-escapes-jail/103298002

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/ecuador-gangs-wave-terror-state-of-emergency

Insane situation.