Opinion: Argentina drifts further away from U.S. by hosting the dictators of Cuba and Venezuela
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez plans to host the dictators of Venezuela and Cuba at the Jan. 24 summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Buenos Aires. By doing that, he not only will help legitimize two major human-rights abusers, but also will also stray farther away from the United States and other Western democracies.
As crazy as it sounds. Fernandez’s populist government, which routinely asks Washington for help with international financial institutions to help Argentina get out of its self-inflicted economic disaster, is defending its invitations to the Venezuelan and Cuban dictators, claiming they are democratically “elected” leaders.
In a Jan. 20 interview with El Destape Radio, Argentina’s presidential spokeswoman Gabriela Cerruti referred to Venezuela’s tyrant Nicolás Maduro as “the democratically elected president of Venezuela.” She added, that all presidents expected to attend the meeting are heads of state “that each country elects democratically.”
As for Venezuela’s human-rights abuses, Cerruti added, “It’s not that we think that everything that is going on (in Venezuela) is good, but much less do we think that everything is bad.”
This is nonsense. Maduro re-elected himself in fraudulent 2018 elections, from which he had banned or forced into exile the top opposition candidates, closed down all independent media and did not allow credible international observers.
Maduro’s re-election was such a joke that the United States, Germany, Great Britain, France and virtually all Western democracies declared Maduro an illegitimate president. More than 50 nations recognized thenopposition National Assembly leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s only legitimate leader.
Between 2016 and 2018, Maduro’s death squads killed more than 19,000 people, according to the Human Rights Watch advocacy group. The United Nations has reported that thousands of them were “extrajudicial executions.”
As for Cuba’s dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel, his country’s communist regime has not allowed one single free election, nor independent media, nor opposition political parties for the past 64 years. Cuba has more than 250 political prisoners, according to HRW.
What’s most amazing, as I witnessed myself when I interviewed Argentina’s Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero in Buenos Aires last year, is that the government thinks it can simultaneously have great relations with China, Russia and the United States. It doesn’t work that way.
Facing criticism for hosting the dictators of Venezuela and Cuba, Fernandez has countered that he has also invited President Biden. U.S. presidents are not usually invited to summits of CELAC, an organization founded by Venezuela and Brazil in 2010 precisely to exclude the United States and Canada, and forge regional ties with China.
But the Fernandez government made a major gaffe: It sent its formal invitation letter to Biden three weeks after it had officially invited China’s dictator Xi Jing Ping and, presumably, only after the Chinese leader had declined to attend.
Copies of the two invitation letters published in Argentine media confirm that Fernandez’s invitation letter to Xi was dated on Dec. 2, while his invitation letter to Biden was dated Dec. 26. It’s a detail that probably didn’t go unnoticed at the State Department.
In a televised Jan. 12 address to the nation, Maduro said that he had just talked with his counterparts from Brazil, Argentina and Colombia about “joining forces” to “advance on the conformation of a powerful bloc of political forces” allied with China and Russia.
Among other scheduled participants at the summit will be Brazil’s new President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Bolivia’s President Luis Arce, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro and Chile’s president Gabriel Boric. All of them are elected leaders who represent various factions of Latin America’s left.
The United States will be represented by U.S. Special Presidential Advisor for the Americas Chris Dodd. One can only wonder what will happen if Dodd runs into Maduro, who has an outstanding U.S. warrant for his arrest with a $15 million reward for his capture for drugtrafficking charges.
Most likely, Maduro won’t get anywhere with his plan to re-create a powerful leftist bloc, because Venezuela is bankrupt, and both China and Russia have too many economic troubles at home to embark on expensive political adventures abroad.
But Argentina’s government will go down in history as an accomplice of some of the world’s worst dictatorships, without any tangible economic benefit for its country for rubbing elbows with them. On the contrary, this will only further spook investors and create more poverty.
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