Intervention (English version)

Latin America is definitely going through a tough time, as we have observed with Chile’s social riots that resulted in a unique leftist Assembly to rewrite the Constitution; Colombia’s massive protests as well; Peru and Bolivia’s institutional breakdowns last year, which very much account for the result of the Pedro Castillo’s victory in Peru, and the return of Evo Morales’ political party to the Bolivian government. Similarly, the recent reinforcements of Venezuela and Nicaragua’s dictatorships, by attempting to kidnap Guaidó, and the increasing repression held by Daniel Ortega, respectively, can also explain this latinamerican picture. The image attached to this newsletter illustrates the longstanding social unrest of workers in Argentina featured this week in train station Constitución. 

Bearing this panorama in mind, we can now analyze what has recently happened in Cuba and Haití, which are non-isolated episodes in Latin America, but, rather, are the tip of the Caribbean iceberg.

Both Haití and Cuba present similar features that can account for our theory. In the first place, both countries are islands and both exclusively placed in the US’ backyard. Moreover, they both have authoritarian governments: a Communist system in Cuba, and an illegitimate President when speaking of Moïse, who took office amidst fraudulent elections, and has ruled by decree since 2019, when he dissolved the Parliament after banning the elections that were to be held. Having said this, it is clear that both of the countries feature alarming non-democratic governments.

What is more, Cuba and Haití have both flourished with Chavez’ oil diplomacy through PetroCaribe aiding program, and have both failed alongside Chavez' downfall. Since then, they haven’t been able to recover, and their governments have faced corruption charges for the management of the Venezuelan aiding funds. It is also worth highlighting that the recurrent oil shortcuts –together with longstanding claims– have triggered the social protests in Cuba this week, and also the ones in Haití in 2019 –six-week long protests– that weakened President Moïse’s figure since then: Moïse’s downfall has been a longer process, starting with the electoral fraud, following up with social unrest due to the failure of his administration, and ending up with his assassination, which is much related to the unleashing of his desire of keeping himself in power despite the fact that his legal mandate was already completed. 

Therefore, we can state that both episodes are strikingly similar, not only for Cuba and Haiti, but also Nicaragua and Venezuela that feature these aspects as well. This is how Ortega, Maduro, the Castro and Moïse have been now the main targets of Joe Biden’s government, that, while withdrawing from Afghanistan and Germany, and having put together the NATO and G-7 towards his global action plan, he can now focus in what has been left aside by the US diplomacy in the last decades: Latin America. 

And last but not least, the US must be also keeping an eye on President of El Salvador, Naybi Bukele, who is showing alarming signs of authoritarianism, as he has proven to do with the removal of Supreme Court Ministers, along with many other risky moves. He can be the next in the line to be intervened.

THE PERSON OF THE WEEK

The person of the week is Major Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, who now seems to have succeeded in achieving the leading spaces in the ballot for his candidates, Santilli and Vidal, after hard negotiations within his party. But the highlight is that either his success or failure in the upcoming elections this year will determine his political aspirations for 2023. Both PRO and Radical Party will get tested in the primaries in September, an instance that will definitely pave the way for presidential candidatures for 2023. 

The public release of this photo featuring Rodriguez Larreta together with Major Jorge Macri of Vicente Lopez County this week, reflects the agreement they reached, despite the fact that it has forced Jorge Macri to step down. His facial gesture in the picture might suggest his resignation.

THE QUOTE