Amid the economic and political crisis of capitalism, accelerated by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the Tehran-backed Hamas pogrom against Jews in Israel Oct. 7, conflicts and threats between regimes across Latin America have grown. This was highlighted in an April 11 Financial Times article titled, “Latin America beats the world at trading insults, but not trade.” It argues that if Latin American “leaders” would only bring down a notch the cross-border insults and “all-out personality conflicts” between them, there might be a better chance to bring the region out of the decadelong economic stagnation the competing capitalist regimes there have faced.
“Once elected, they see no reason to ease up on vitriolic abuse of opponents, a tactic that works well on the campaign trail,” the article said, pointing to the increasingly coarse political discourse between them. These disputes “can have ugly consequences” in the region.
The most recent example is the decision of the Ecuadoran government to send police squads into the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas, the former Ecuadoran vice president who had sought asylum there to avoid corruption charges. Mexico’s rulers responded by breaking diplomatic relations with Ecuador. Glas had held government posts under former President Rafael Correa, who sought asylum in Belgium when he also faced allegations of corruption.
Days before the raid there had been an escalation of insults, including Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador questioning the legitimacy of Ecuador President Daniel Noboa’s electoral victory in October.
“This never happened even in the worst times of divisiveness and disagreement between Latin American states,” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said, referring to the police raid on the Mexican Embassy at an April 17 emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac). Celac is a regional political bloc formed in 2010 to counter the Washington-dominated Organization of American States.
The free trade Andean Community (CAN) bloc is fragmenting, said Colombian President Gustavo Petro at the Celac summit, pointing to sharpening conflicts between the bloc’s four members, Bogota and the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. “We are seeing presidents go to prison and exile, and coups d’états, which are now covered up as parliamentary coups, but they are coups,” he said.
While the political polarization and instability might discourage capitalist investment and trade in the region, as the Times article stressed, the deepening crisis in bourgeois politics is a symptom of the economic stagnation, not its cause.
Political crisis, economic slump
The capitalist rulers have proven incapable of turning around the economic slump, or offering any solutions to the devastating consequences for working people of the social and economic crisis. This fuels the fractures in governmental relations and deepens class tensions at home. They accuse each other of corruption, of being controlled by lobbyists, of failing to maintain law and order, and on and on. They resort to anti-immigrant demagogy, vulgar swipes on women’s social gains and reactionary antisemitic attacks.
As they do this they contribute to the erosion of the capitalist “world order” led by Washington and related institutions through which they maintain their rule. Working people should not dismiss this simply as “nasty politics,” since these attacks also undermine political rights and the space we need to practice politics free from harassment by the government, the bosses and thugs unleashed by rightist and leftist forces.
The worldwide capitalist crisis puts additional pressure on trade and political alliances in Latin America. This was reflected when Xiomara Castro, president of Honduras, sent messages as the chair of Celac praising Vladimir Putin’s reelection in Russia and on Israel’s war against Hamas. “I send a message of congratulations to President Vladimir Putin on his convincing victory in the Russian election,” Castro had written.
Representatives of 10 other Celac members publicly disassociated themselves from her message, saying she overstepped her authority in sending it.
Under these pressures, the foreign and trade policies of the four governments with the largest economies in the region — Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina — more openly express the separate interests of their own capitalist rulers and their imperialist allies abroad, including on the conduct of their neighbors.
In late March Presidents Petro and Lula sharply criticized the decision by Venezuelan authorities to bar the main opposition candidate from registering to run in the upcoming presidential elections.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro claimed he was responding to an alleged assassination plot involving opposition figures. They “make attempts on my life” and “the cowardly left is not capable of condemning the coups,” Maduro said, referring to the other governments. “They stay silent in a complicit manner.”
Washington reinstated sanctions on Venezuela’s oil trade April 18. It had suspended them as part of pressing on Maduro to open up the elections.
Petro and Lula have been centrally involved in ongoing negotiations between Washington and Caracas, as well as with opposition capitalist parties in Venezuela, in order to see the coming elections as “fair” enough to allow further steps to move beyond the political impasse Venezuela has been in for years.