The emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which was convened this Sunday by the bloc’s pro tempore leader, Gustavo Petro, ended without a joint declaration Sentencing to arrest Nicolas Maduro on the part of the United States, due to Argentina’s express rejection and from nine other countries in the region.
The aim of the meeting, held via video conference and involving foreign ministers and diplomatic representatives of the 33 member countries, was to establish a critical position on the US military intervention in Venezuela. However, that is deep differences between Latin American governments They destroyed all consensus.
Argentina played a central role in this result. The Chancellor Pablo Quirno was one of the strongest voices within the group, opposing a statement of condemnation also made up of members Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago. As a political signal, several of these countries – including Argentina – sent low-level diplomatic delegations to answer the call promoted by Petro and supported by ALBA-aligned governments such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Honduras.
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Trump issued a harsh warning to Delcy Rodríguez and conditioned the transition in Venezuela
Before the meeting, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain and Uruguay They had publicly expressed their opposition to military operations ordered by US President Donald Trump that led to the arrest of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who are currently imprisoned in New York on drug trafficking and other federal crimes.
In contrast, the Argentine-led bloc began work on one alternative statement in support of Washington’s actionsconsidering that Maduro’s arrest represents a turning point in the face of a system of power that international organizations – such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court – have blamed for serious and persistent human rights violations.
What happened at CELAC revealed a regional break This affects both the multilateral blocs and the domestic politics of several countries. In Chile, for example, the president Gabriel Boric joined the criticism of the USAbut his chosen successor, José Antonio Kast celebrated Maduro’s arrest as “great news for the region” and blamed his stay in power for the migration crisis and the rise of organized crime.
A similar scenario can be observed in Honduraswhere President Xiomara Castro sharply questioned the arrest, while the party of her successor, Nasry “Tito” Asfura, issued a statement supporting the U.S. operation, highlighting it as a step forward in the defense of freedom and human dignity.
Relaxed and surrounded by DEA agents, Maduro even posed “Milei style” with a thumbs up
The split had already been revealed in the EU days ago last Mercosur summit. There, the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rejected any hypothesis of foreign military intervention in Venezuela, while the Argentine President Javier Milei expressed a full support for Donald Trump and his strategy to remove the Venezuelan leadership from power.
During the CELAC meeting, foreign ministers and diplomats met from Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela and Colombia They gave energetic speeches against the US military invasion. But they faced opposition from a third of the countries in the forum, who question the legitimacy of the Venezuelan government and highlight the Caribbean country’s institutional and humanitarian decline over the last decade. The position taken by Argentina consolidates its alignment with Washington in one of the most sensitive episodes of the regional agenda.
DG/ML
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