Latin America Politics General Thread

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I believe its the latter. Those three countries have aligned behind the idea of having a do-over election in December (but this time with observers). Lula yesterday said that or a coalition government.
 
www.nytimes.com

No Evidence That Maduro Won, a Top Venezuelan Election Official Says

In an interview with The New York Times, an electoral council official expressed grave doubts about claims to victory by the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

No Evidence That Maduro Won, a Top Venezuelan Election Official Says​

In an interview with The New York Times, an electoral council official expressed grave doubts about claims to victory by the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.

"... Speaking on the record to a reporter for the first time since the vote, Mr. Delpino said he “had not received any evidence” that Mr. Maduro actually won a majority of the vote.

Neither the electoral body nor Mr. Maduro has released tallies to support assertions that the president won re-election, while the opposition has published receipts from thousands of voting machines that show its candidate, Edmundo González, won an overwhelming majority.

In declaring Mr. Maduro the winner without evidence, the country’s election body “failed the country,” Mr. Delpino said. “I am ashamed, and I ask the Venezuelan people for forgiveness. Because the entire plan that was woven — to hold elections accepted by all — was not achieved.”

Mr. Delpino, a lawyer and one of two opposition-aligned members of Venezuela’s electoral council, spoke from hiding, afraid of government backlash. In recent weeks Mr. Maduro’s security forces have rounded up anyone who appears to doubt his claim to another six years in power, and many Venezuelans are fearful that his forces are crossing borders to go after enemies. ..."
 
nycfan said:
www.nytimes.com

No Evidence That Maduro Won, a Top Venezuelan Election Official Says

In an interview with The New York Times, an electoral council official expressed grave doubts about claims to victory by the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

No Evidence That Maduro Won, a Top Venezuelan Election Official Says​

In an interview with The New York Times, an electoral council official expressed grave doubts about claims to victory by the authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro.

"... Speaking on the record to a reporter for the first time since the vote, Mr. Delpino said he “had not received any evidence” that Mr. Maduro actually won a majority of the vote.

Neither the electoral body nor Mr. Maduro has released tallies to support assertions that the president won re-election, while the opposition has published receipts from thousands of voting machines that show its candidate, Edmundo González, won an overwhelming majority.

In declaring Mr. Maduro the winner without evidence, the country’s election body “failed the country,” Mr. Delpino said. “I am ashamed, and I ask the Venezuelan people for forgiveness. Because the entire plan that was woven — to hold elections accepted by all — was not achieved.”

Mr. Delpino, a lawyer and one of two opposition-aligned members of Venezuela’s electoral council, spoke from hiding, afraid of government backlash. In recent weeks Mr. Maduro’s security forces have rounded up anyone who appears to doubt his claim to another six years in power, and many Venezuelans are fearful that his forces are crossing borders to go after enemies. ..."
Click to expand...
Because that’s what you do when you win fair and square.
 
politicalwire.com

Maduro Orders Arrest of Rival

“Venezuela ordered the arrest of presidential candidate Edmundo González, an escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent in the wake of a disputed election,” Bloomberg reports.“The move is likely to draw further outcry from the US and other countries that have concluded Gonzále
politicalwire.com politicalwire.com

Venezuela ordered the arrest of presidential candidate Edmundo González, an escalation of the government’s crackdown on dissent in the wake of a disputed election,” Bloomberg reports
 
Venezuelan law enforcement authorities detained a U.S. Navy sailor last week while the service member was on personal travel, U.S. and defense officials said Wednesday.
“We are aware of reports that U.S. Navy sailor was detained on or about August 30, 2024, by Venezuelan law enforcement authorities,” a U.S. defense official said in a statement, which did not name the service member. “The U.S. Navy is looking into this and working closely with the State Department.”


The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incident occurred amid an increasingly adversarial relationship between Washington and Caracas. This week, a Venezuelan judge ordered the arrest of Edmundo González, who the United States and other allies said clearly defeated authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro in the presidential election this summer.


“González … won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election, and this arbitrary and politically motivated action is a low point in Nicolás Maduro’s ruthless pursuit of his political opponents following his attempts to steal the July 28 presidential election,” the State Department said in a statement, protesting the warrant for González’s arrest.

CNN first reported the sailor was detained.
The State Department for years has advised U.S. citizens not to travel to Venezuela, due to the prevalence of violence and complicated diplomatic relationship. “Security forces have detained U.S. citizens for up to five years,” the agency said in its travel advisory. “The U.S. government is not generally notified of the detention of U.S. citizens in Venezuela or granted access to U.S. citizen prisoners there.”
 
Edmundo Gonzalez has fled to Spain


The Venezuelan equivalent of the black shirts have surrounded the Argetnitian embassy, where several opposition leaders have taken shelter. Brasil is currently the protector of that embassy since Argentina was declared non grata. Maduro and Lula had a confrontation yesterday, with Maduro threatening to expel the Brazilians (that would be a shocker).
 
Any chance we can get this thread converted into a "Catch All for Latin American Politics and Economics?"

Guatemala’s ‘Coalition of the Corrupt’ Is Derailing Arevalo’s Agenda

Ten months into his term, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo has faced 13 impeachment requests and six attempts to strip his immunity from prosecution. His congressional coalition has crumbled, holding back his economic agenda that includes spending on infrastructure and social welfare programs. Last week, that same obstructionist Congress selected 13 new justices to a five-year term on the Supreme Court, choosing from a list of relatively unknown candidates that observers of the process believe have ties to corrupt economic and political sectors that work against Arevalo’s government.

That Arevalo is in office at all remains an enormous political victory for the population of Guatemala, its Indigenous communities and the international actors who pushed for better governance in the country. His predecessor, former President Alejandro Giammattei, attempted to rig the 2024 elections, banning most of the candidates who appeared to threaten the country’s corrupt entrenched elites and power structures. When Arevalo slipped through that process and then surprisingly took enough votes out of a divided field to make it to the second round, an enormous domestic and international battle began.

On one side, the Giammattei government and Attorney General Consuelo Porras made numerous attempts to disband Arevalo’s party and block his candidacy, amid other efforts to prevent the second-round election from being held fairly. On the other side, the international community—including the U.S., the European Union, the Organization of American States and numerous outside nongovernmental organizations—successfully pressured Guatemala’s business community to allow the runoff round to be held. When it was, Guatemalan voters gave Arevalo a strong mandate.

Even then, until the final hours of his term, Giammattei and his allies tried to prevent Arevalo’s inauguration. But local protesters led by Indigenous organizations and backed by the international community made sure the democratic transfer of power took place.

In a hemisphere where authoritarians and populists too often succeed at consolidating control, the moment when democracy triumphed in Guatemala, ensuring the transition to an anti-corruption president, felt good and was rightfully celebrated.

Unfortunately, a single election is not enough to reform an entire system. As Arevalo stated in an interview last week with Bloomberg, Guatemala’s “coalition of the corrupt” has not stopped trying to undermine his presidency and return to power. It’s difficult for a president acting honestly to succeed in a country where the still-entrenched powerbrokers use undemocratic means to pressure and bribe members of Congress and the judiciary into backing their agenda.

Perhaps the hardest challenge facing Arevalo is that he is stuck with Porras, the corrupt and vindictive attorney general appointed by Giammattei. While Porras’ attempts to remove Arevalo from the ballot and overturn the election results in 2024 failed, she continues to plot to remove Arevalo from power, using false and unjustified accusations about bureaucratic technicalities that pale in comparison to the obvious corruption in the system that Arevalo was elected to fight. She has undermined any attempt to reform the political system, which the country’s citizens and the international community want, holding Arevalo back from any significant successes.
Click to expand...

Much more at the link...
 
Your wish is my command.

I think we've run into a structural problem with elections in Latin America that have second rounds, particularly when there's numerous parties that take part in the election. The Presidents that get elected in second rounds lack the legislative muscle to really do anything. Their party, in the best of scenarios, will have plurality in Congress....its way too easy for the opposing parties to block anything significant (double hard if its a new party). We've seen this happen in a few spots now.
 
Thanks CR...is it the rounds or that no one can take a majority in a first round, i.e., party stability is so lacking. In Guatemala they hardly endure from one election to the next.
 
An example of what the "Coalition of the Corrupt" has the power to do in today's Guatemala.

The link below is to an Amnesty International petition demanding the immediate release from prison of Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora— imprisoned for more than two years now on spurious charges by Guatemala’s notoriously corrupted justice system in reprisal for his years of courageous investigative journalism and outspoken opposition to the country’s anti-democratic and corrupt political and economic establishment.

join.amnesty.org

#Guatemala Exige la liberación inmediata de José Rubén Zamora

Firma la petición y exige la liberación inmediata e incondicional de José Rubén Zamora, y que el Ministerio Público retire todos los cargos en su contra.
join.amnesty.org join.amnesty.org
 
donbosco said:
Thanks CR...is it the rounds or that no one can take a majority in a first round, i.e., party stability is so lacking. In Guatemala they hardly endure from one election to the next.
Click to expand...

Its one of those unintended consequences of promoting democracy; in many LatAm countries its now very easy to create a new political party. It use to be that candidates needed the political machine that parties provided to win elections. That is no longer case...parties sprout overnight behind single issues or personalities. In elections with six to seven parties participating, the vote becomes much more fragmented.

In Costa Rica, our current President reached the second round with only 17% of the vote; the other candidate in the second round received 28% of the vote (but lost in the second round by five points). More than 10 candidates participated in that first round. The two traditional parties received about 40% of the vote (the ruling party got less than 1% of the vote).

This scenario has played out in other countries with a similar second round structure (Peru, Ecuador, Chile, etc). One of the big problems is that there is little incentive for parties to form coalitions; they get more election funds if they see the process the whole way through.
 
IMG_5436.jpeg


From Latin America Risk Report

"Is this the official positions of governments? No. Smart governments know it's generally good diplomatic practice to stay neutral and not play favorites in US elections. Most governments do not have an official position on the US election. Some might be willing to offer a cryptic comment you can decode to suggest they prefer one side or another.

So where did the data for this map come from? It's arbitrary and made up by me using my best guess as an analyst of the region's politics.

Why did you classify x country this way when I'm certain they support the other side? Ok, I've gotten plenty of this type of feedback already with certainly more to come. Once again, it's my analysis. As with all of my maps, feel free to make your own map if you think you can do it better.

Mexico - Claudia Sheinbaum is a leftist who would prefer a center-left woman in the White House to Donald Trump. AMLO got along well with Trump and was able to negotiate and manipulate him at times, but the risks with Trump are bigger than the risks with Harris. Trump’s threats to bomb cartel sites in Mexico or close the border are not empty. The renegotiation of USMCA, which will be difficult for Mexico under either potential US president, would be far more chaotic under Trump.

While she probably prefers Harris, Sheinbaum is quite well-positioned for a potential Trump administration. Morena has dealt with him before and could manage it again.

Guatemala - No president in this hemisphere needs Harris to win as much as Arevalo. A Harris administration will support Arevalo. A Trump administration will back the opponents who are trying to remove Guatemala’s president from office.

Venezuela, Cuba - I explained Venezuela’s preference for Trump in yesterday's newsletter. Cuba, in contrast, can rightfully expect that a Harris administration would return to an Obama-like policy that helps resume relations and trade between the two countries (I always expected that Biden, like Obama, would make that push in a second term). It’s an interesting split between the two countries that are allies and often lumped together.

Nicaragua - I'm less sure how to classify Nicaragua on this map. Then again, so is Daniel Ortega, who is probably too drunk to realize a US election is occurring. Nicaragua's fear should be that, unlike Venezuela and Maduro, they don't have oil deals to trade with Trump in exchange for better relations. If Trump is going to cut a deal with Maduro, as I wrote yesterday that he would likely do, then he might balance that with hitting Nicaragua harder to try to keep some Florida voters content. Meanwhile, a Harris policy towards Nicaragua is not going to normalize relations the way it might with Cuba. They will continue being quite critical of the regime in Managua.

Guyana - If Venezuela leans one way, Guyana should probably lean the other.

Brazil, Chile, Colombia - Latin America's democratically elected ideological left prefers Harris to Trump. This seems too obvious to explain any further.

Honduras, Bolivia - Neither country gets along great with Biden and neither would be best friends with Harris (even though Harris attended the inauguration of President Xiomara Castro). But they would both be the targets of far more negative policies under a hypothetical Trump administration and have little to offer in return for better relations.

Paraguay, Peru - The pair that sits opposite of Honduras and Bolivia, these two countries also struggle with diplomatic relations under either presidency due to some democracy and corruption concerns (worse in Peru than in Paraguay). However, they can probably cut deals with Trump that they cannot with Harris and are ideologically closer to Trump and his team.

Argentina - No president on the planet has a better win-win scenario in the 2024 US election than Javier Milei. Argentina's president has positioned the country well to have a friendly relationship with Biden and work with US foreign policy on a number of critical issues, including China, Venezuela, Ukraine, and Israel. That would continue under Harris. At the same time, Milei is a CPAC speaker and a Trump fan who would be among the top allies if the GOP wins the US election. Milei very clearly prefers Trump, but he'll be just fine under a Harris presidency.

El Salvador - Like Milei, Bukele has positioned himself as a Trump ally who would benefit greatly from a Republican win. Unlike Milei, Bukele is barely tolerated by Biden administration officials who work with him because they have to. El Salvador, unlike Argentina, has had some top officials sanctioned due to corruption and human rights concerns and those sanctions would likely continue and expand under a Harris administration. Bukele has bet hard on a Trump victory.

Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Panama, Ecuador - A group of countries governed by center-right presidents are essentially coinflips on this question. They probably get along ideologically with Trump slightly better but would also welcome the greater professionalism that a Harris administration will bring. I tried to guess which side they prefer, but I could have just as easily had them lean to the other side or left them neutral. Uruguay probably also fits in this category but it's always funnier to put the country in its own category."
 
From donbosco’s map:

Uruguay: “Taking its own election seriously and can’t be bothered by the clown show in the US.”

:LOL:
 
That’s an interesting stab. Think Ortega is a Trump lean beach ase of their recent coziness with Russia.
 
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