Latin America

On Sunday, far-right Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro outperformed polls and won roughly 46 percent of the vote in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections, coming close to the 50 percent threshold that would have given him the victory outright. He will now face the second place finisher, Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad, in a run-off in three weeks, one in which Bolsonaro will be heavily favored to win. Without a doubt, autocratic-leaning populism has made enormous strides globally in the past decade, in Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, among other places, and right-leaning populists also have gained power in North America and Western Europe as well. But in many respects Bolsonaro most closely resembles a Southeast Asian populist, Rodrigo Duterte, even though the two men theoretically have different political ideologies. Duterte has always said that he came from a leftist political background—and indeed Duterte has passed some progressive policies in office, albeit while simultaneously undermining democratic institutions and norms—while Bolsonaro is an unabashed political conservative. For one, both men have appealed to citizens with promises of extreme responses to crime and corruption—Duterte’s war on drugs, for instance, which has involved condoning widespread extrajudicial killings of drug traffickers, drug users, and many people additionally who had no links to drugs at all. In Brazil, where the murder rate has reached a new high, Bolsonaro has promised to give the Brazilian police, already some of the most militarized in South America, wider rein to shoot at suspects, and has at least hinted at approving Duterte-style extrajudicial killings. He also has waxed nostalgic about Brazil’s years of dictatorship, and has suggested he would pack his cabinet with military men. Both also have taken advantage of the weaknesses, in-fighting, and graft of existing political parties, positioning themselves as outsiders who can bring radical change in a country where elites have lost the public trust, and where publics have soured on democracy itself, feeling that it has led to a lack of public security, has not addressed inequality, and has offered up politicians largely disconnected from many voters. In the Philippines, despite strong growth during the presidency of Duterte’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, and rising investment in the Philippines, inequality remained high, and Aquino was perceived by many voters as aloof. State institutions remained fragile or nonexistent, infuriating working class and middle class Filipinos. Meanwhile, in the months before Duterte was elected in 2016, other presidential candidates continued to fight each other rather than build an alliance against Duterte, who was elected in a multicandidate race where no one received 50 percent of the popular vote. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, has risen in the wake of massive corruption scandals involving prominent figures from both the Workers Party and other parties, including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was the front-runner in this presidential campaign until he was jailed. Bolsonaro has positioned himself as a scourge of corruption, as a strongman who can solve deep and entrenched problems—though it is unclear whether he himself was totally clean in the past. He also has benefitted from Brazil’s severe economic decline in recent years, which has led to a spike in unemployment and fed a popular desire for any political alternative that can right the Brazilian economy. Like Duterte, Bolsonaro has benefitted from the adept use of social media, which allowed both men, as candidates, to amplify their messages and also sidestep the mainstream media. More than leaders in places like Poland and Hungary, too, Bolsonaro and Duterte thrive on brutal and misogynistic rhetoric, such as jokes about rape. They further utilize outlandish, insulting, crude remarks to shock the political system and political norms—a typical tactic of autocratic-leaning populists—test what actions they can get away with, and, not coincidentally, draw a continuous stream of media attention. A final lesson, too, to take from the Duterte era in the Philippines is that autocratic-leaning populists, such as Duterte, may make seemingly outlandish statements and promises on the campaign trail—but that voters should believe that these populists intend to at least attempt to carry out their plans. As mayor of Davao, Duterte allegedly oversaw widespread extrajudicial killings as a supposed means to combat crime, and on the campaign trail he essentially promised the war on drugs that he has overseen. Yet some analysts—and perhaps some voters too—played down Duterte’s seemingly extreme promises; but, in office, he has followed through on the drug war, and also on other campaign pledges.

U.S. administration is coming out on the wrong side of anti-corruption and migration in the hemisphere, with potentially lasting consequences for U.S.-Latin American relations.

Despite achieving near equal representation in congress, Mexico's new female lawmakers will need to force women's issues onto the legislative agenda. Here are a few reasons why. 

Latin America’s judiciaries are engulfed in corruption scandals. In Colombia a former Supreme Court member was arrested on charges of corruption and bribery. In Peru multiple judges stand accused of trading favorable rulings and shortened sentences for money and perks. In Guatemala, lawyers and justices face charges of rigging Supreme Court appointments. And in Mexico the attorney general's office fired one of its own for delving too deep into alleged bribes to the former head of the national oil company Pemex, a close confidant of President Enrique Pena Nieto. These acts, more than similar crimes by dirty politicians, undermine the region’s fragile rule of law, revealing deep-seated corruption among those responsible for holding others to account. They show that the widespread legal reforms of the last two decades, while necessary, weren’t enough. The next essential step is professionalizing the judiciary itself. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and others have overhauled their legal systems, introducing oral trials, arbitration, and mediation alternatives, and strengthening due process and the presumption of innocence. As part of larger shifts from inquisitorial to adversarial systems, these efforts have begun to make justice more transparent, effective, and fair. Many Latin American countries have also passed specific anticorruption measures. Brazil criminalized bid-rigging, bribery, and fraud in public procurement. Argentina outlawed nepotism, and along with Peru and Colombia upped the penalties for corporate bribery. Mexico created a new national anti-corruption system, explicitly outlawing bribes, embezzlement, and the failure to disclose conflicts of interest, and creating a dedicated prosecutor to go after perpetrators. Legislators also gave prosecutors new corruption-fighting tools. Brazil’s successful Lava Jato (Carwash) investigations, leading to more than 200 convictions of politicians and business leaders for bribery and kickbacks, including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have hinged on plea bargaining, introduced to the fight against organized crime by a 2013 law. Nearly a dozen nations in the region claim similar statutes that enable court officials to ease sentences in exchange for information on accomplices and higher-ups. Yet as the ongoing wave of scandals attests, beyond new laws Latin American nations need judges and lawyers able and willing to wield them. This in turn requires a professional legal bureaucracy. Although harder to conjure than legislation, a qualified civil service is possible to build. Look, for instance, at Chile and Brazil. Chile has a long history of meritocratic public hiring, drawing on credentials and examinations rather than party links. Attesting to the respect afforded their profession, judges, like other bureaucrats, often come from well-heeled families and elite schools. In the wake of Chile's own corruption scandals, one involving former president Michelle Bachelet's son and daughter-in-law, the government expanded efforts to inculcate legal impartiality and professionalism beyond just the courtroom, introducing civic and ethics education to elementary schools nationally. Brazil’s merit-based system for choosing most judges and prosecutors was inscribed in its 1988 Constitution. Over the last 30 years its judicial core has evolved, the politically appointed judges of the past retiring and their replacements rising up through the new technocratic process. Judge Sergio Moro of Lava Jato fame is but one of these new professionals, respected and well remunerated for their technical acumen and political autonomy. Throughout the region citizen anger over corruption is growing. Promises to take on widespread graft helped to catapult Mexico’s president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to a historic victory. Corruption preoccupied Colombians heading to polls last spring, and ranks high among voter concerns in Brazil’s upcoming presidential race. In Peru it brought down the previous president and threatens the current head of state, Martin Vizcarra, if he can’t harness the momentum to his cause through a pending referendum. Yet what Latin American leaders must now do is to change career incentives, ensuring that judicial robes aren’t bought but earned, and that merit trumps connections. They need to create respected and rewarding professional paths, enticing the talented and ambitious to the fight against corruption rather than succumb to its temptations. Brazil and Chile show that changing the makeup of the justice system is possible. But a process that takes a generation will surely test the patience of Latin America's voters. View article originally published on Bloomberg.

On the eve of Mexico’s election, even before the National Electoral Institute called the results, President Donald Trump tweeted congratulations to the presumptive victor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The two leaders followed up the next day with a congenial phone call. The following week three U.S. cabinet secretaries, along with senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, headed to Mexico City to meet their counterparts and the president-elect. The press and markets have taken these gestures as signs of more positive relations ahead. Don’t be too sure. These initial niceties paper over deep chasms in priorities, positions, and domestic politics. A blow-up may not be far away. Lopez Obrador’s recent letter to Trump shows how different his take is on what a promising bilateral relationship entails. The seven-page missive lays out his economic development plans for Mexico, in minute detail, and reflects his view that the solutions to bilateral challenges of migration, security, and commerce depend on Mexico’s economic advancement. It is safe to say President Trump has little interest in ambitious plans to plant 1 million hectares of trees in Mexico’s most poverty-ridden states, much less any inclination to help finance this venture. The same goes for Lopez Obrador’s infrastructure goals: refineries in Tabasco and Campeche, a bullet train from Cancun to Palenque, or a rail corridor connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic across the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec in a bid to rival the Panama Canal. This U.S. administration isn’t big on partnering on economic development. Look for Lopez Obrador to be turned down or ignored on the economic issues that matter most to him. Likewise, he is unlikely to be the NAFTA partner Trump is looking for. The incoming president supports keeping the 25-year-old free trade agreement, recognizing the benefits for investment. His designated trade lead, Jesus Seade, is working with the current Mexican negotiating team to prepare to pick up the mantle, joining them in Washington talks. Despite Trump’s demand and veiled threats to quickly reach an agreement, Lopez Obrador and his team aren’t deviating from Mexico’s current redlines — including the sunset clause, dispute settlement mechanisms, and auto content rules — or showing any interest in bilateral talks, something Trump has also been encouraging. There is also little common ground on Central American migration. Led by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, the U.S. has pushed for a safe third-country agreement, which would force Central Americans passing through Mexico to apply there for asylum. While this would largely solve the U.S. problem — border agents could turn back every man, woman, and child seeking refuge — there is less than nothing in it for Mexico. The new government would struggle to process tens if not hundreds of thousands of refugee applications and to build the infrastructure and camps required to house desperate Central Americans — a crisis potentially overwhelming Lopez Obrador’s young presidency. And the Trump administration looks unwilling to provide the billions of dollars Europe has used to gain Turkey’s acquiescence to a similar deal. Instead, it is still fighting Congress for billions for a border wall. The two leaders are equally at odds about how to lessen these migration flows over time. Lopez Obrador calls for a comprehensive regional economic development plan to attack the root causes of migration. Trump has proposed cutting such aid to Central America by nearly $200 million, or 30 percent each of the last two years. Security cooperation, too, looks to be interrupted. Every change in administration brings something of a pause. Yet this halt will be prolonged by Mexico’s plans to create a new Public Security Secretariat, National Guard, and intelligence agency; setting up these new bureaucracies will delay the start of a yet to be defined domestic security strategy. And even once it is up and running, it won’t be headed in the same direction as the U.S. Lopez Obrador’s ministerial appointees are talking about legalizing marijuana, providing amnesty for illicit crop farmers and expanding scholarships as ways to reduce violence. This doesn’t jibe with the Trump administration’s hard-line approach to regional security. Diplomatically, cooperation on an imploding Venezuela (let alone Nicaragua or Cuba) is also about to fade, as Mexico’s new leadership reverts to a more traditional hands-off international approach. Washington won’t be pleased. Of course, few traditional allies have remained in the U.S. president’s good graces. Just ask Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and France’s Emmanuel Macron. As the 2020 elections approach, Trump will be tempted once again to demonize Mexico. With his own base to feed, Lopez Obrador will be hard pressed not to respond in kind. Lopez Obrador closes his letter to Trump by talking about how they both overthrew the “establishment” in their rise to office. What he misses is that this establishment actually cared about NAFTA, the Dreamers, and Mexico more broadly. True, the deepening partnership of the last 25 years has been more an anomaly than a norm. Yet even during past disagreements, despite mutual suspicions and distrust, the two nations found ways to work together. If a standoff between presidents leads back to a more institutional relationship, away from the personalization of the last year and a half between Jared Kushner and outgoing foreign minister Luis Videgaray, that, too, may set the relationship on a steadier path. Just don’t expect it to be better. View article originally published on Bloomberg.

This weekend a beleaguered Argentina hosted the G-20 finance ministers to work out the agenda for their leaders’ December conclave in Buenos Aires. While officially focused on infrastructure and the future of work, these more technical discussions were overshadowed by U.S. tariff threats and President Donald Trump’s belligerence toward allies and the World Trade Organization. The U.S. attack on the global trading system comes as Latin America is finally embracing free trade. In a resurgence of market-friendly leaders, politicians from the left and right are seeking to expand their nations’ global commercial footprint through a flurry of free-trade and investment agreements. In normal times, they might have turned to the U.S., a top investor and trading partner for most every nation. Yet Trump’s obstinacy throughout the NAFTA negotiations suggests few deals are to be had to the north. As a result, a marked shift is now underway. The European Union (EU) has become a favored partner: Mexico advanced the renegotiation of its 2000 agreement in April, opening up the agricultural, services, and digital goods sectors, simplifying customs and harmonizing regulations to make it easier to sell across borders. Mercosur, the trading bloc founded by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, is pushing to complete an EU agreement that has been marinating for almost two decades. Latin American free traders are also taking their cause to Asia. Mexico, Peru, and Chile were founding partners of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership after the U.S. withdrawal, and neighboring Colombia is among the nations clamoring to join. Mercosur is eyeing negotiations with South Korea, following a path laid out by Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama, which all signed bilateral deals this year. Panama has begun negotiations with China, while Colombia and Mercosur are flirting with the idea. And the South American trading bloc has started talks with Canada and reached out to New Zealand and Australia to gauge interest in boosting trade ties. The main Latin American economies are also moving to make real the long elusive dream of regional economic integration — in which it lags every region but Africa. This week, leaders of the Pacific Alliance, a comprehensive free-trade agreement begun by Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, will meet their Mercosur counterparts in Puerto Vallarta to discuss collaboration and even a potential merger. An agreement would bring together 80 percent of the region’s gross domestic product, creating a $4.3 trillion dollar market. While not as large a prize as the EU or China, this preferential agreement could be more important for Latin America’s future prosperity. Intra-regional trade and investment lean toward medium to higher technology sectors — including chemicals, cars, and pharmaceuticals — and higher value-added industries that bring in technology, enhance productivity, and create better jobs. If Latin American nations want to prosper from global supply chains, they must develop regional production to the point where they can compete with the integrated enterprises of Asia, Europe, and North America. Of course, Latin America’s current free-trade fervor could wane. After Argentine president Mauricio Macri plays host at the end of the year, the G-20 mantle will move on to Japan. Mexico’s president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s NAFTA-friendly comments sit uneasily with his more protectionist calls for self-sufficiency in food and energy. And in Brazil, the next president, who will take the helm in January, could reaffirm or discard the nation’s newfound trade enthusiasm. In that respect, the concrete results of the agreements now on the verge of completion will be critical. Yet even if there is an ebb and flow in sentiment, Latin America’s trade horizons have broadened. While geography remains in large part destiny, Latin America for now is moving on without the United States. After the NATO summit, Germany’s foreign minister proclaimed that the European Union can “no longer completely rely on the White House.” At least on trade, that lesson is one Latin America has already learned. View article originally published on Bloomberg.

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) — an organization that once aspired to become South America’s answer to the European Union — quietly faded away last month. Deep divisions over Venezuela’s turmoil and internal leadership battles precipitated its demise. Yet its real vulnerability stemmed from something deeper: the economic isolation of its members. Unlike the European Union, Latin America’s multilateral bodies haven’t ignited commercial ties between their participants. This economic detachment not only doomed UNASUR, but has held the region back, and may keep it on the margins in the decades to come. UNASUR wasn’t the first attempt to integrate Latin America. In the 1960s the six-country Latin American Free Trade Association fell victim to protectionism. In the 1980s, a dozen nations tried again with the Latin American Integration Association, largely to no avail. In the 1990s Mercosur took center stage as a vehicle to knit South America together: Its common currency never materialized, and trade between the partners peaked shortly afterward, then again declined. Despite more than a dozen different multilateral organizations, Latin American nations remain commercial strangers. Sure, Argentina and Brazil exchange some auto parts, Colombia and Ecuador do a decent trade in paper and plastics, and Chilenos watch Mexican soap operas. But overall, less than 20 cents of every export dollar goes to one of its neighbors. Compare that with well over half of international sales in Europe or Asia. More broadly, Latin America’s regional agreements have done little to boost their members’ share of world manufacturing exports and their participation in global markets. Importantly, Latin American nations tend not to make things together. Today the vast majority of goods circling the earth are intermediary goods — parts and components being sent elsewhere to be sewn, welded, stamped, and otherwise assembled into clothes, cars, computers and thousands of other products. This shift in trade reflects the rise of global supply chains, as everyday products are increasingly made across numerous factories and even countries. These supply chains have bolstered the fortunes of many emerging markets — mostly when they worked with their neighbors. Asia’s big four newly industrialized economies — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore — jump-started their decades of near double-digit growth with Japanese outsourcing and investment. They later benefited from China’s rise. Many Eastern European nations saw their industrial base and larger economies blossom when their Western European brethren poured in after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And Mexico’s successes in cars, planes, medical equipment, and other manufacturing has been due mostly to the commercial ties born of NAFTA. Latin American nations are instead largely focused on mining the iron ore, lithium, copper and other raw materials that go into the making of steel, batteries, and electronics; or growing the soybeans, fruit, and coffee processed and consumed oceans away. Excluded from the most dynamic parts of international manufacturing chains, Latin American companies and workers are less likely to gain access to new technologies, to develop new skills and to move up the value-added ladder to higher-margin products and better-paying jobs. This isolation leaves the region less able to compete vis-a-vis other parts of the world in the making of things — not least because of the rise of other more successful regional hubs — and less able to attract global consumers to its homegrown brands. It helps confine so many nations to the middle-income trap. Without the commercial ties to keep the politics on track, diplomatic conflicts often lead either to neutered talk shops unable to resolve pressing issues — the Organization of American States’ response to Venezuela comes to mind — or to full-on institutional suspensions, a la UNASUR. Given the distances involved, South America is unlikely to be drawn into Asia’s, Europe’s or North America’s manufacturing orbits. Its nations instead should turn to their neighbors to nurture industry and boost economic growth. The legal mechanisms are there: More than two dozen regional agreements cover some 80 percent of trade. These could be expanded to include the thornier sectors that remain, and could and should be consolidated into a few broad agreements — for instance, expanding the Pacific Alliance to streamline the current thicket of rules and regulations. Governments could also make it easier for international companies to invest through tax and investment treaties with neighbors. They could tackle the outsized transaction costs shippers face from woeful infrastructure between countries. And they could reduce excessive red tape and strengthen the rule of law, enticing to any foreign investor or multinational. If Latin American entrepreneurs and businesses looked next door more often, they would finally provide a stronger economic foundation for the wider integration politicians have long discussed but never realized. View article originally published on Bloomberg. 

This post is co-written by David R. Mares, the Institute of the Americas chair for Inter-American Affairs and professor for political science at the University of California San Diego and the Baker Institute scholar for Latin American energy studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. Venezuelans are due to go to the polls on May 20, in an election that is seen as problematical for the largest members of the Organization of American States (OAS). Last month’s OAS summit was inconclusive on how to respond to the deepening humanitarian crisis inside Venezuela that has spurred 230,000 refugees to cross the border to Colombia and oil workers to abandon their posts. This week’s news included an announcement that Chevron was withdrawing executives in light of the arrest of two company employees who were arrested for refusing to participate in official corruption. Chevron’s announcement follows the exit of major U.S. oil drilling service companies. Oil production from areas such as Chevron’s operations were a bright light in a rapidly declining sector. As the Venezuelan oil industry collapse accelerates under the rule of Major General Manuel Quevedo, oil production is likely to continue to crater, perhaps at a faster rate. Eventually, the industry’s performance will be so debilitated that it will render the option of U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan oil exports less relevant.   The prospects that General Quevedo will run Venezuela’s oil industry into the ground raises the specter that the ranks of the country’s military could consider a coup against President Nicolas Maduro. That will present a different kind of challenge for the United States and the OAS.  Opening Pandora’s Box – Again? The U.S. government’s response to Venezuela’s situation will complicate a broader Latin American response. Former President Barack Obama’s designation of Venezuela as a threat to U.S. national security alienated most of Latin America with its harkening back to Cold War unilateralism. The recent thinly veiled calls by high U.S. officials including Senator Marco Rubio—chairman of the subcommittee on the Western hemisphere—for a military coup to oust President Maduro raises fears of a return to Latin American militaries as the arbiters of politics. The fact that some members of the Venezuelan political opposition also support the call for the country’s military to intervene is also troubling, as significant minority opinions in Latin America’s past supported military coups that were followed by severe repression and suspended democracy for years. A Checkered History of Efforts to Defend Democracy in Latin America  Latin America has committed itself in multiple international fora to defending democracy. In the twenty-first century they have acted in concert multiple times to isolate governments that came to power through irregular or highly questionable means (e.g., Venezuela 2002 and Honduras 2009) or to effectively mediate government-opposition conflicts (e.g., Bolivia 2007-2008). But today Latin America is divided regarding how to respond to the political, economic, and humanitarian crisis engulfing Venezuela. The Lima Group of fourteen countries (including Canada, Guyana, and Saint Lucia as non-Latin American members) is pressuring the government of Nicolás Maduro for credible commitments to free elections and reforms, but several members of the OAS call for a hands off approach. Even the Lima Group is divided regarding how much to pressure Maduro: Peru told Maduro that he was not invited to the 2018 Summit of the Americas, but Chile publicly stated that all governments were invited to the inauguration of President Sebastián Piñera. The reasons for this disunity are not simply ideological disagreements, dependence on Venezuelan oil, or kowtowing to Washington. Rather, they are rooted in the region’s history of political instability, frustrated social change, and experience with the heavy and clumsy hand of the United States, all of which have led to the region prizing sovereignty and generally opposing interference by other nations in domestic affairs. Drawing the Line - Where? OAS leadership, both the current Secretary General Luis Almagro and the former Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza, have sought to make the organization live up to its responsibilities under the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter, and to critique the intransigence of the Maduro government. The United States, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina all supported this approach at the OAS summit last month in Lima.  But the OAS has not been effective in delivering a clear and consistent pro-democratic message for complex reasons. First, there is no agreement in Latin America beyond periodic elections on what constitutes “democracy,” and therefore it is diplomatically difficult to get agreement on where the Maduro government sits on the spectrum where beyond which politics is no longer democratic. Second, the great discrepancies in political and social inclusion that remain in Latin America reproduce the domestic political polarization and instability at the regional level. Populist governments in Ecuador and Nicaragua still support the Venezuelan government.  Worse still, Latin American governments agree that if the military participates in an overthrow—even if asked by governing institutions to do so (e.g., Honduras)—that it is a coup against democracy. But if riots in the street seek to force a president to resign and thus impose the vocal minority’s will over the results of elections, Latin American consensus breaks down with governments that favor the opposition calling for mediation and those sympathetic to the government supporting the electoral calendar. Similar divisions reveal themselves when one branch of government uses its constitutional powers to remove the leadership of another branch or stop a proposed policy (e.g., Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela in 2015). This pattern suggests that Latin America’s defense of democracy is not a mature process tied to law and institutions, but still rooted in individuals, ideology, and politics. Looking for Clean Hands Who has the standing to critique Venezuela? Maduro’s popularity in Venezuela is far greater than President Michel Temer’s in Brazil where few voters likely believe that Temer and his administration are more honest than Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Dilma Rousseff who are under investigation. Among the mediators selected by the opposition is Mexico—a country with the highest murder rate for journalists, where the government is suspected by international NGOs of being involved in much of the violence against citizens and wallowing in corruption. Colombia is one of the leading voices for sanctioning Venezuela’s government, but Colombia’s bona fides are compromised by the fraying of the peace agreement and the lack of security for FARC candidates in elections. Peru’s President just resigned in the face of serious financial and political corruption scandals.  All this makes the U.S. decision making about Venezuela extremely difficult. If the goal of U.S. intervention is to restore democracy to Venezuela, imposing U.S. sanctions against the country’s oil exports could be overkill, given the decline coming to the country’s oil sector in any case. Targeted sanctions against the Venezuelan military would have limited real effects given Russia and China’s commitment to the current regime and would only reinforce officers who hold anti-U.S. nationalist views. The U.S. government should consider two major points in preparing for the next stages in the evolution of the Venezuelan crisis. First, if the United States is seen as taking the lead in bringing about the collapse of the Maduro government, it will discredit the democratic transition in the eyes of significant segments of Venezuelan and Latin American public opinion. Secondly, United States credibility for providing reconstruction aid and supporting an open and non-discriminatory transition process is low in the region.  With these points in mind, there are some efforts the United States could make in a supporting role to the Lima Group. Colombia has called for a reconstruction plan for Venezuela; the United States should encourage a Latin American conference to develop that plan with clear U.S. commitments. The United States also needs to adopt an active and visible role assisting Brazil and Colombia to deal with the refugees. This would not only be in line with U.S. disaster relief efforts in the past but could constitute a way of getting humanitarian aid to Venezuela, bypassing the government, if enough aid is provided by the United States, the Lima Group, and the EU to enable people to bring some back into Venezuela. While not the ideal means to provide humanitarian aid inside Venezuela, smuggling is a well-established activity and effectively closing the border to the influx of such aid would significantly add to the discredit of the Maduro government. The United States also needs to consider how it would respond to a sudden military take-over and change of leadership. In this case, the United States should coordinate with Latin American governments in an immediate call for a firm date for the restoration of freely organized elections and in which chavismo, minus government officials implicated in corruption and abuse of power, would be free to compete. Only a stable democratic Venezuela will be able to utilize its vast oil and gas resources for the benefit of its people and global energy markets.

Miguel Diaz-Canel, set to replace Raul Castro as president of Cuba after sixty years of Castro rule, will be faced with the challenges of implementing economic reform and sidestepping regional isolation.

President Trump's no-show means less drama and more space at Summit of the Americas for the main theme of corruption.