Argentina’s pro-Trump leader: Get tougher on Venezuela now
BUENOS AIRES
As Venezuela’s political crisis threatens to unleash a new wave of refugees to other countries across the Americas, Argentina’s right-wing President Javier Milei said it may be time for democratic Latin American nations to impose diplomatic sanctions on Venezuela’s dictatorship.
Milei, who is scheduled to make a three-day visit to Miami starting April 10, told me during a Tuesday interview in his office that he “would be ready” to apply diplomatic sanctions on Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship. Referring to Venezuela’s overall human rights abuses, he said, “the butchery that is going on in Venezuela is unheard of.”
Argentina along with Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Guatemala issued a March 26 statement expressing “serious concern” over Maduro’s ban on virtually all major Venezuelan opposition leaders trying to run for office in that country’s July 28 presidential election. Some of Latin America’s biggest democracies, such as Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, did not sign the statement.
The statement stopped short of threatening to impose concrete measures against the Venezuelan regime. Asked whether he would try to convince friendly countries to apply diplomatic sanctions on Venezuela, Milei indicated he would.
Venezuela’s electoral process is drawing growing U.S. and regional attention because of evidence that Maduro is preparing a Russia-like election in which no serious opposition candidates will be allowed to compete. That would likely result in a Maduro’s re-election and possibly a massive wave of Venezuelan refugees.
Nearly eight million people have fled Venezuela in recent years, and
U.S. polls show that immigration — including an influx of undocumented Venezuelan migrants — has become the No. 1 issue in the November U.S. elections.
Tensions between Venezuela and Argentina increased this week after five Venezuelan opposition activists sought refuge at Argentina’s embassy in Caracas. Argentina accused the Maduro regime of cutting the electricity supply, endangering “the safety of Argentine diplomatic personnel and Venezuelan citizens.”
The Argentine president, who took office in December, characterized Maduro as among “the worst presidents of Latin America by far,” alongside the rulers of Colombia, Nicaragua and Cuba.
He didn’t spare Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, either. Responding to Lopez Obrador, who recently described Milei as a “conservative fascist,” Milei told me it was “an honor that an ignorant [person] like Lopez Obrador talks badly about me.”
During the one-hour interview, I also asked Milei if he’d made a diplomatic mistake when he told former President Trump during a recent meeting of the Conservative CPAC conference in Washington that he had been “a great president,” adding, “I hope you will be one again.” Milei’s statement in the midst of the U.S. election year did not sit well with Biden administration officials, diplomatic sources tell me.
Milei rejected that it had been a mistake, calling the meeting “a private thing.” He added, “It’s well known that my ideas are closer to the Republican Party, but my priority is to be a U.S. ally, and that’s why we have excellent relations with the Biden administration.”
Milei and his sister Karina are scheduled to receive an “international ambassador of light” award for their support for Israel from the ChabadLubavitch community in Miami during the planned visit to South Florida.
On foreign affairs, Milei has clearly become Latin America’s most vocal leader when it comes to criticizing leftist governments in the region.
While Milei should judge Trump by the same standards with which he measures some democratically-elected left-of-center leaders — and take into account that Trump is a coup plotter who tried to overturn the results of an election he had lost — Argentina’s new president deserves credit for saying loudly what many other Latin American presidents don’t dare say publicly: Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are ruthless dictatorships, and deserve to be called that way.
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