The Latin American Report # 681

After several days being forcibly unable to produce this report, for good and not-so-good reasons, today I return to the task of scanning the Latin American horizon and selecting the news I consider most relevant about our hemispheric reality. Of course, right now the entire discussion here, and to some extent in the world, is concentrated on the aftermath of the still confusing operation through which a U.S. special commando captured the de facto Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro along with his wife Cilia Flores, and transported them to New York, where they were indicted —there is some talk in the last hours that could explain why Cilia Flores appeared as a new defendant in the superseding, January 3-unsealed indictment, unlike in the original one filed in 2020.

The event was the clearest or most blatant example to date of the establishment of realism as the doctrine shaping international relations right now. Superpowers, and fundamentally the largest one, are not governed by the increasingly watered-down, timid, opportunistic and inoperative "international order", but by national interest in an anarchic battlefield ruled by the principle that "might makes right". As I have commented on several occasions here, everything is related to how much leverage you have or your deterrence power. Thus, it is not worth speaking in any terms other than these crude ones about what we are seeing. "I watched last night one of the most precise [...] attacks on sovereignty," Trump boasted in public broadcast.

Much of what happened in Caracas in the early hours of January 3rd remains in the same darkness in which U.S. forces plunged the city to guarantee the infiltration and exfiltration processes of their operators, whose capability I do not dispute. Did the betrayal against Maduro come only from the referred CIA source inside his inner circle, or did what happened necessarily require a level of coordination with high commands in both the civilian and military/police spheres? Along the same lines, regarding what did not perform adequately concerning the Venezuelan defense system, what part was due to poor operation or readiness, and what part to the effectiveness of the U.S. Cyber and Space Commands? And further, how much of the poor operability on the Venezuelan side was due to deliberate errors? That critical assessment is not yet available, but it could emerge at some point.

In line with these reasonable doubts about those left in charge of Venezuela, Cuba is the actor most interested in finding answers to these and other questions—more related, for example, to what specifically happened in the military compound housing Maduro—, thus honoring in some way the memory of 32 sons of this land who died while performing various security services, including the responsibility of Maduro's most important security ring, while Venezuelans so far speak of 24 dead among their security forces members. Havana not only never acknowledged, but strongly denied the existence of that deployment. In truth, in political communication there are many ways to avoid committing to lies when faced with uncomfortable and sensitive questions, like "neither confirm nor deny," or the very simple "no comments." Even outlandish strategies are possible, like the one Marco Rubio tried when asked about the enormous inconsistency between the aggression against a sovereign state—regardless of its political regime—to extract its accused ruler and pardoning a former president already convicted and serving his time in America—that is: the Honduran Juan Orlando Hernández.

Then, there are things I don't fully understand, or, to be more direct, that I can't reconcile with the statements of Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president. She herself states that Maduro's policy was always to bet on dialogue, but given Washington's attack last Saturday, it seems absurd to me to invite Trump "to collaborate with [them] on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence." There are many ideas circulating about supposed demands on Rodríguez, all very connected to the implementation of the "Don-roe," as White House propaganda now calls its interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine; the intention is to reaffirm dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere, with the historical reinterpretation that now, more than Europe, Asia is the real power to repel and knock. And, of course, much about oil.

The following is a critical read of the new indictment—this one could be helpful too—, with a lot of repercussion, but, after all, the initial situation for Maduro, in judicial terms, is the same anyway. Where they said "Cartel of the Suns" in 2020, now is read, for example, "Venezuelan officials".

This is all for today’s report.