Two of the top leaders of the Latin American left are currently under the whipping of a storm. They are Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Cristina Kirchner. The roots of the drama that each of them is involved in cannot be found in the camp of their right-wing adversaries. The fire is friendly fire. The shots come from within.
Lula began to experience how treacherous the quicksand of Venezuelan politics can be. He entered into that quagmire from which he now finds it very difficult to escape. Nothing he could not have foreseen.
Before the controversial elections of July 28, the Brazilian president demanded transparency in the procedures. He agreed on this position with his Colombian colleague, Gustavo Petro. Both have always been allies of Nicolás Maduro. Both feel they are victims of an authoritarian radicalization of Chavismo, which would push more migrants towards the border with Brazil or Colombia. That is why they defended a fairly basic criterion: that whoever loses should accept defeat. If it is Chavismo, let them hand over power.
Neither Lula nor Petro can claim that they had not been warned about the problem they were getting into. Because Maduro responded to that warning by saying that if they did not win the election, there would be a bloodbath. The Brazilian confessed that this threat made him nervous. Then his (ex) friend recommended that he calm down by drinking some tea.
When the signs of fraud became evident, Lula began to falter. First he said that the process had been normal, sparking controversy in his country. Then he asked the regime to show the minutes with the official results. If you look closely, he was quite critical. Because his political force, the Workers’ Party (PT), ruled in a statement that Maduro had been reelected in a democratic and sovereign process. Did he do this without consulting his undisputed leader?
Lula, who was already associated with Petro, added Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador to his strategy. The three refused to recognize the victory of the opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, differentiating themselves from the position of Argentina, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Costa Rica. And, above all, differentiating themselves from the position of the United States. The trio demanded that the documentation with the results of each electoral table be published. At the same time, they advised an agreement between the two forces in dispute, to begin a democratic transition.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and candidate Gonzalez Urrutia welcomed the proposal for this understanding. Lula went a little further, suggesting some recipes for carrying it out. One was to hold new elections, intended to replace those that were held with complete transparency according to the PT statement. Another was to form a coalition government between Chavismo and its rivals. Both “solutions” would have come from the mind of Lula’s main diplomatic advisor, Celso Amorim, who has been in Caracas since the elections were held.
The suggestions of the Brazilian president, who once again had Petro’s support, were unusual. Above all, the second one: why would the opposition agree to share a government with a political force that defrauded it? That this initiative seems delirious does not mean that the other one was very sensible. Maria Corina Machado herself asked how many times we would have to go back to the polls. Until Maduro wins? The anti-Chavez strategy is to maintain street mobilization to corner a government that has been corroded in its legitimacy. Nor did the regime accept the formulas with which Amorim entangled Lula and, by transitive character, Petro.
The bad moment of Brazilian diplomacy was completed when López Obrador abandoned it to its fate. The Mexican president returned to a position full of cynicism that he had adopted, for a moment, at the beginning of the controversy: he recommended abiding by what the National Electoral Council dictates. It was unrestricted support for the pretensions of Maduro, who is the one who controls that Council.
To add surreal touches to the scene, Lula, who lost López Obrador as a partner, brought in Joe Biden for a couple of hours. When the US president was asked if he supported the Brazilian’s proposal to repeat the elections, he replied with a laconic “I do.” A little later, an unofficial spokesperson for the National Security Council clarified that Biden had referred to how absurd it is that Maduro does not admit that González Urrutia won. A new demonstration that Biden was right to give up the electoral race.
Lula and his advisor Amorim made an elementary mistake in their attempt to negotiate. They forgot that Maduro’s government is a dictatorship, and that, therefore, it neither hands over nor shares power. The two Brazilians should remember that, when Maduro’s son announced that his father would step down from the government if he was defeated, Diosdado Cabello dedicated a tirade to him, without mentioning him. Diosdado, the most merciless voice of Chavismo, clarified that the regime was a revolution and that revolutions do not hand over power.
Unfortunately for Lula, the regional panorama offers an inconvenient comparison. It is Chilean President Gabriel Boric, whose progressive credentials no one can cast a drop of doubt on. Boric maintained a very severe position against the Bolivarian electoral manipulation from the first minute. This policy prevented him from signing a joint statement with his Brazilian colleague when the latter visited Santiago de Chile two weeks ago.
Lula and, dragged along by him, Petro, are now victims of the same traps that the United States, Norway and even Pope Francis himself, among many others, fell into when they tried to mediate between Chavismo and its victims. In the case of the Brazilian, what is surprising is that he divulged recommendations that were later rejected. An unforgivable professional error by Amorim. The Baron of Rio Branco, founder of the brilliant diplomatic genealogy of Itamaraty, is turning in his grave. The opposition to Lula, which is preparing for the municipal elections in October, is celebrating.
Maduro’s method is always the same: he offers as interlocutors the dialoguers Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, knowing that Diosdado has designed the course of the dictatorship. This duplicity is quite logical: Diosdado, who has enormous influence over the various armed organizations with which Chavismo has been shielded, knows very well that there is no agreement that can provide him with a single gram of impunity. That is why he blocks any conversation. He does so in self-defense.
As the weeks go by, it becomes increasingly clear that, for the Venezuelan leaders, the only way to retain power is to encourage the emigration of dissidents and reinforce the subjugation of those who remain. This equation should not be surprising: it is the one adopted by the Cubans a long time ago. Lula and Petro will have to work hard to equal the influence that these eternal advisers exert over Maduro.
Lula is trapped in Venezuela. Perhaps the most experienced leader in the region, he is the victim of the manipulations of a mediocre leader, like Maduro, who got to where he got to as a legatee of Hugo Chávez. The differences and misunderstandings offer a material advantage to Chavismo, which still has not settled a debt of 682 million dollars with the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES). Cristina Kirchner, the other star of the firmament of the populist left, also suffers the behavior of a grey puppet, Alberto Fernández, who is consumed in a very sad soap opera of attacks on his ex-wife, Fabiola Yáñez, and sordid business with insurance companies, managed by his private secretary.
The revelations about the former president’s private, or secret, life have shaken Peronism. His ex-wife took him to court with documented accusations of beatings and physical and psychological abuse. Fernández boasted of being the president who would end patriarchy in Argentina, as befitted a Kirchnerist leader, a movement that promoted policies in favor of gender equality.
Yanez’s accusations are a brushstroke of tar on that flag, perhaps the last one that remained to be tarnished. The flag of human rights deteriorated during the administration of Mrs. Kirchner, the day that Hebe de Bonafini, the leader of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, appeared involved in the misappropriation of funds from a housing program for people submerged in poverty. And the flag of social justice was also tarnished: a delirious economic management, which led to inflation of more than 200% annually, expanded poverty beyond 40% of the population. These blunders determined the great defeat of Peronism in the presidential elections last year. Significant because of the poor number of votes. And even more so because of the quality of the result: it opened the way for the consecration of the ultra-right of Javier Milei.
This decline, the most recent of which is the scandal over the violence to which Mrs. Yáñez was subjected, was led by Cristina Kirchner. She makes touching efforts to distance herself from the problem. When the nightmare that Fernández’s wife was living in the presidential residence was brought to court, the former vice president of the abuser issued a statement stating what was already known: that Fernández had led a bad government. She immediately confirmed the beatings reported by the victim.
La Cámpora, the organization led by his son, Máximo Kirchner, also released a statement. There is an unexpected development: it is claimed that Alberto Fernández also exercised gender violence against Cristina Kirchner. The only imaginable reason seems unusual: the President did not obey his vice president in every way she wanted. However, for an ultra-verticalist culture, such as that of Peronism, this argument seems reasonable.
Like Lula, Mrs. Kirchner was also mortified by the aggression that Maduro, with his tyrannical radicalization, exerts on his former allies. Perhaps they are the main victim of his authoritarianism, after the Venezuelan people. Alberto Fernández made her forget that torture to impose a much more severe one. Above all, because Cristina Kirchner, who led Peronism for the last three decades, cannot hide the fact that Fernández was, like Maduro with Chávez, her front man. To prove it, it is enough to remember the way in which she nominated him for the Presidency: one Saturday morning, still wrapped in a nightdress, with a few lines in a tweet.
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