The chronification of any dictatorship generates the dangerous habit of acceptance. The assimilation of the everyday can be poisonous.
President López Obrador visited Havana looking towards the mausoleum of the revolution. Not a single mention of human rights, freedom and democracy.
There was not a slight gesture towards dissidence, much less with those who are in jail after the demonstrations of July 11 last. Shouting “freedom” leads to jail.
The trip was made three years late and with a language whose nature is assimilated to magical realism.
For example: President López Obrador mentions the European Union as a model to be implemented in Latin America.
It would be wonderful to have supranational institutions in the fields of justice, trade and politics.
But the exam would not pass Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, and several other countries, including Mexico, would have problems entering.
To think of a European Union in Latin America is to have statesmen who understand the cession of sovereignty as something positive. Would AMLO be willing to disappear the peso to have a new currency? Some Colombian judges resolving judicial conflicts or sanctioning the Mexican government for impeding free competition?
A second element that draws attention in AMLO’s tour of Central America is his relationship with the United States.
On several occasions, he repeated the necessary support of 4 billion dollars that the government of President Biden must grant to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
During the joint conference with the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, AMLO revealed to her that during the recent phone call with Joe Biden, he confided in her his interest in helping Honduras in particular.
AMLO is inconsistent with his own speech. At various points during the tour he repeated his creed in foreign policy: non-intervention, free self-determination of peoples and non-interference. However, he has already threatened US congressmen if they do not vote on an immigration relief policy.
A third element of concern is the absence of context: Democratic congresswoman Norma Torres, born in Guatemala, has asked Joe Biden not to give money to the presidents of her country, Honduras and El Salvador for reasons of corruption.
He said it when Juan Orlando Hernández ruled in Honduras. Now, apparently, the relationship between the government of Xiomara Castro and the White House is good, but it is not between Biden and presidents Nayib Bukele or Alejandro Giammattei.
Planting trees does not generate the same incentives as trying the American dream. They are not rationally comparable.
Granma qualifies AMLO as a statesman.
In magical realism there are no dictatorships; everyone lives in party.
@faustopretelin
Consultant, academic, editor
Globali… what?
He was a research professor in the Department of International Studies at ITAM, published the book Referendum Twitter and was an editor and collaborator in various newspapers such as 24 Horas, El Universal, Milenio. He has published in magazines such as Foreign Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Life & Style, Chilango and Revuelta. He is currently an editor and columnist at El Economista.