Latin America’s Left Remains Split Over Maduro

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We welcome you to the Greater Caribbean Monitor (GCaM). In this issue, you will find:

•Latin America’s Left Remains Split Over Maduro

•Kamala Harris: Hardly an Immigration Czar

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•Latin America’s Left Remains Split Over Maduro
744 words | 4 minutes reading time

The Venezuelan presidential elections produced a result that should, in hindsight, have been obvious: Nicolás Maduro’s regime resorted to undisguised fraud, criticized by even the Venezuelan Communist Party, which has recently distanced itself from the government. 

• The international community’s reaction was also entirely predictable. The United States is “monitoring” the situation, which is to say it has not yet decided what sanctions to impose. The European Union is more lukewarm, calling for “transparency” and considering any talk of sanctions “premature.”

• The region’s displeasure has led Caracas to break off diplomatic relations with seven Latin American countries: Argentina, Chile, Panama, Uruguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica.

• Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia and Honduras have congratulated Maduro on his victory; to the surprise of some, the Colombian Foreign Ministry managed to contain its gaffe-prone president, Gustavo Petro, and issue a condemnation. The São Paulo Forum, which represents the remnants of the region’s pink tide, hailed the opportunity to give “continuity to the Bolivarian Revolution.”
  
  

Between the Lines. The case of the Puebla Group is remarkable. One of the members of its delegation of observers in Caracas, former Dominican President Leonel Fernández, asked—on his own behalf—the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) to “guarantee the transparency of the electoral process by publishing all the tally sheets, broken down by polling station.”

• Only former Colombian President Ernesto Samper joined him. Former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did not sign the letter. Neither did the Puebla Group itself, which congratulated Maduro.

• Fernández and Samper are somewhat outdated figures; at some point, they may have declared themselves social democrats, but they are above all centrists with a certain technocratic inclination. Their association with the Puebla Group is, in a sense, incidental.

• The same can be said of Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president. He has occasionally shown himself to be close to the Puebla Group, but he remains a U.S.-aligned leader and has been one of the Venezuelan regime’s harshest critics. He is an entirely different, and more urbane, kind of leftist.
  
  

Old Guard. Leftist movements in Latin America can be divided into two: the “rancid” ones, heirs to the revolutions of the 20th century and the pink tide of the first decade of this century, and the “Harvard Yard social democrats,” who fancy themselves European-style leftists, but are inextricably linked to leftist movements in the United States.

• No one can be surprised by the fact that Cuba, a dictatorship hanging on by a thread—and saved by the subsidized oil offered by Venezuela—supports Maduro. A change of regime in Caracas would plunge Havana into a “special period” comparable to the one it suffered after the USSR’s collapse.

• The same can be said of Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega, against the counsel of his brother, Humberto, whom he now subjects to house arrest, continues to isolate himself from the United States. He is forging an alliance with Beijing, complete with a free trade agreement and preferential mining concessions for Chinese firms, but this will not suffice. His position would be considerably weakened if Maduro were to leave power.

• Without Venezuela, the remaining remnants of the pink tide would be orphaned, so to speak. Only the most prestigious of pink tide figures, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, has managed to escape this framework; indeed, on election night, there were whispers that only Celso Amorim, Lula’s right-hand man for foreign policy, could convince Maduro to concede. 
  
  

The Future. The Venezuelan opposition had erroneously harbored hopes that this election would play out differently. Demonstrations have ensued since Sunday night, but their chances of success have dwindled, and Caracas is under an informal curfew of sorts. Thus, the opposition will have learned that there is no electoral solution to Venezuela’s current predicament.

• The international community had also wanted to believe that clean elections were possible. Some have tried to identify more cynical causes, like oil, behind the Barbados Agreement, under which the White House agreed to lift certain sanctions on the regime. This is unlikely. At any rate, some sanctions will soon be imposed, but they will not change Maduro’s mind.

• Divisions within the Latin American left are also evident. The remnants of the pink tide, except for Lula de Silva—ever the most moderate and cynical of the bunch—continue to favor Maduro.

• On the other hand, a “newer”, U.S.-aligned left no longer feels the need to defend the Venezuelan regime. This should not be surprising: Venezuela is filled with exchavistas, many of whom voted for Edmundo González, the opposition’s candidate due to its true leader, María Corina Machado, being barred from running.
  
  
  

•Kamala Harris: Hardly an Immigration Czar
709 words | 3 minutes reading time

Vice President Kamala Harris is now held up by many as President Joe Biden’s “border czar,” but the reality reflects otherwise. 

Overview. Within a matter of weeks, Harris is expected to be enthroned as the Democrats’ official nominee. In light of this, her Republican opponents have been hard at work highlighting her weaknesses on immigration, perhaps the defining issue of this year’s election. Republicans have taken to calling her the administration “border czar,” implying she has been the go-to figure for immigration enforcement actions.

• This may be a slightly imprecise characterization, yet the Biden Administration is noted for recording the highest number of migrant encounters in U.S. history. ⁠

• Since Biden took office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has recorded more than 10 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

• Given the White House poor performance on immigration, it is hardly surprising that Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, seeks to distance herself from the title of border czar.
  
  

Between the Lines. In 2021, President Biden tasked his vice president with addressing the “root causes” of immigration in the Northern Triangle, comprised of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. The stated goal was to foster development in these countries, thus lessening the appeal of emigrating. This was always a fanciful goal; wealth differences between the United States and Central America are enormous, meaning that any U.S. effort to reduce immigration must rely on heightened border control.

• It should be noted that the Democrats came to power as the pandemic, which had lowered immigration, was waning. Thus, there was a “backlog” of individuals seeking to immigrate, legally or not, to the United States.

• Harris’ work in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador was, from the White House’s perspective, crucial to stemming the influx of migrants entering through the country’s southern border.

• ⁠In a meeting with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in April 2021, the president commented that she would do a “hell of a job” with immigration. 
  
  

Voices. Recently, U.S.-based Guatemalan billionaire Luis von Ahn, best known as the founder of Duolingo, posted a tweet saying, “I am from Guatemala, a country responsible for a large part of illegal immigration to the U.S. Kamala Harris has helped strengthen the rule of law and the economy in my country, which has led to fewer people wanting to emigrate. I am confident she is the best choice to solve the U.S. border crisis.” 

• A year earlier, he issued a statement expressing his “deep concern over threats to democracy and the constitutional order” due to the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office targeting now-President Bernardo Arévalo and his party, Semilla. 

• On September 20, 2021, he also called on Guatemala’s attorney general, Consuelo Porrass, to resign. It can be surmised that if von Ahn considers Harris to have strengthened Guatemala’s rule of law, she must have done so very recently.
  
  

In Perspective. Von Ahn’s statements contradict his opinion about the rule of law in his country. The claims about Harris’ work on immigration are not entirely truthful. While the number of encounters with Guatemalan migrants has decreased over the years—284,291 in 2021; 233,061 in 2022; and 221,849 in 2023—little is attributable to the vice president’s work. 

• According to USAID and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the first year of Biden’s administration saw the biggest surge in U.S.-bound Guatemalan migrants.

• The IOM points out that the decrease in encounters with Guatemalans in the United States is due to the increase in detentions in Mexico, not necessarily a reduction in migratory flows from Guatemala. 

• But the drop in the number of Guatemalan migrants is primarily due to the pandemic fading out of sight, somewhat alleviating the aforementioned “backlog” and bringing total figures to more normal, albeit extraordinarily high, levels.
  
  

In Conclusion. Kamala Harris has done very little, if anything at all, for the U.S. migration crisis. As said in Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns’ This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, published in the early days of the Biden presidency: “She [Kamala Harris] would take on the Northern Triangle, traveling to Central America and negotiating with governments there, but under no circumstances did she want to be branded Biden’s border ‘czar.’”

• From a preventive standpoint, however, it is also unclear whether the vice president can be held responsible, or praised, for the recent reduction in immigration from the Northern Triangle.