International
Latin American leaders hold summit with Brazil back in the fold
January 24 | By AFP | Philippe Bernes-Lasserre / Mauricio Rabuffetti |
Fifteen Latin American heads of state and government meet Tuesday in Buenos Aires for a regional summit welcoming back Brazil as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva looks to rebuild bridges after his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro pulled out of the grouping.
The 77-year-old Lula, in Argentina for the first international trip of his third term, will participate in the seventh Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit, bringing together 33 states from the region.
Lula was one of the founders of CELAC, during the first “pink wave” on the continent in the first decade of the century.
And now he brings Brazil back into the fold after Bolsonaro had suspended the country’s participation in the grouping.
Host Argentina this week hailed a “new climate in Latin America”, with the region ushering in a new wave of left or center-left governments since 2018, including Mexico, Argentina, Honduras, Chile, Colombia and Brazil.
A forum for consultation and cooperation, CELAC is not a regional integration mechanism with binding opinions.
And for all the importance underlined on Monday by Argentine President Alberto Fernandez and Lula of “the need to integrate Latin America,” CELAC is struggling to unite members over successive regional crises, like Peru.
“Latin America is bankrupt from the institutional point of view (…) it has not succeeded in integrating collectively into the world,” Ignacio Bartesaghi, an expert in international relations at the Catholic University of Uruguay, told AFP.
At the very least, CELAC “remains a vast and diverse space of Latin American countries from which minimal agendas or common interests for the region can be established”, agreed Bernabe Malacalza, researcher in international relations at the Argentine national research center CONICET.
“There is not even certain basic consensus in Latin America, as on the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship,” Bartesaghi stressed.
“There are (at CELAC) presidents who do not even recognize each other,” he noted.
Like Paraguay’s Mario Abdo Benitez, whose country broke diplomatic relations with Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela in 2019.
Lula meanwhile has pledged to reopen the embassies.
‘Rebuild Mercosur!’
Maduro at last minute called off his trip, citing “a risk of aggression” from “the neo-fascist right,” a possible reference to some Argentine opposition politicians calling for him to be arrested on arrival.
Other significant absentees in Buenos Aires include Mexico’s leftwing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leader of the second largest economy in Latin America and host in 2021 of the last CELAC summit.
CELAC however remains the interlocutor of choice for China, or the EU to negotiate cooperation agendas with the region.
But even here, “The impossibility of holding an EU-CELAC summit since the last one in 2015 (in Brussels) illustrates (…), the absence of a solid biregional political dialogue,” Malacalza said.
In this sense, the return of Lula could give a boost to certain sub-regional issues, such as the free-trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur group which comprises Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.
The deal was finalized in 2019 but never ratified, due in particular to concerns about Bolsonaro’s environmental policy.
Lula has indicated a willingness to resume contacts.
“We are going to rebuild Mercosur!” Lula said Monday evening, referring to the customs union which has been torn in recent months over a free trade treaty with China.
“We will recreate Unasur!” he continued, referring to the moribund Union of South American Nations created in 2008 on the initiative of himself and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Latin America is only the initial phase of the Brazilian president’s international push, with Lula heading to Washington in February and to China “after March.”
International
Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal
On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.
“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.
“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.
Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
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