Latin American failures: the case of Venezuela

The international community is still discussing the regional and global implications of the US’s illegal operation to arrest Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. In the short term, the debate will likely remain a moot point, joining the list of episodes of President Donald Trump’s weaponisation of his foreign policy, as seen in threats to intervene in Iran and towards Mexico, Canada, Greenland, and Colombia. Yet, observers have paid little attention to the fact that the events in Venezuela are a corollary of Latin America’s incapacity to address humanitarian and democratic crises across the subcontinent.

The US intervention in Venezuela finds Latin America profoundly divided. On the one hand, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, and even Chile — whose president, Gabriel Boric, has been an outspoken critic of Maduro’s regime — have condemned the intervention, appealing to principles of international law, state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the illegal use of force. In contrast, Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Paraguay celebrated the removal of Maduro and the “liberation of Venezuela.”

This deepening ideological divide and the trend of polarisation in the region underscore the impossibility of fostering a shared Latin American response through existing institutions and shared understandings of democracy, sovereignty, and human rights. Ultimately, Trump’s intervention in Venezuela epitomises the failure of the ‘Latin American solutions to Latin American problems’ motto that has long underpinned the region’s efforts to distance itself from the US-led Pan-Americanism represented by the Organization of American States (OAS).

Building Latin American unity: norms and institutions

During the Cold War, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, Latin America was in permanent turmoil, and democracy floundered as military coups became part and parcel of politics and leftist guerrillas emerged in all countries. The region became engulfed by violence, human rights violations, and armed conflicts.

Accordingly, the democratisation process during the 1980s and 1990s combined Latin American peace plans to find a negotiated resolution to the armed conflicts in Central America —such as the Contadora Group initiative, organised by Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, and its corresponding Support Group, comprising Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay— with discourses, policies, and institutions grounded in democracy and human rights. There was a consensus among countries in the region, including the US, to support and develop democratic regimes from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. This ideal was at the core of the creation of the Americas Summits, whose first meeting in Miami in 1994 underscored that representative democracy “is the sole political system which guarantees respect for human rights and the rule of law.”

In turn, advancements in human rights protection have been realised through the empowerment of the Inter-American system of human rights. This system includes the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, both of which have since played a prominent role in Latin American countries through their impact on policy, jurisprudence, and accountability. Moreover, Latin American countries were at the forefront of developing and adopting the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998. These countries, along with African and European countries, have been a building block of the ICC since it entered into force in 2002.

The commitment to democracy and human rights in the region was further promoted by the adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter in 2001. Finally, the creation of UNASUR, a South American institution aimed at promoting economic development and democratic consolidation, in 2008 and of the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños-CELAC, aimed at fostering intergovernmental political dialogue, in 2011 further consolidated the institutional framework of Latin American unity (The US was not included in either of the latter two initiatives.)

The Venezuelan test

Over two decades, Venezuela’s situation put these narrative and institutional developments to the test. Different conceptions of sovereignty, democracy, and human rights have shaped how the region responded first to Hugo Chávez’s policies and later to Nicolás Maduro’s, particularly vis-à-vis free speech, democratic accountability, transparent and fair elections, freedom of association, and private property.

Since the 2010s, Latin American countries have navigated democratic and human rights principles in Venezuela through the lens of ideological tides and political alliances. Leaders of the so-called “pink tide” of left-leaning governments — including Lula da Silva in Brazil, Cristina Fernández in Argentina, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Evo Morales in Bolivia — have tolerated the human rights abuses and undemocratic policies of the Chávez and Maduro governments in Caracas. In contrast, figures such as Álvaro Uribe, Juan Manuel Santos, and Iván Duque in Colombia, as well as Sebastián Piñera and Gabriel Boric in Chile and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, have criticised the Venezuelan regime’s authoritarian drift, often despite their own governments’ tensions with democratic principles and rules.

This division paralysed any meaningful initiative from the region to address Venezuela’s gradual autocratisation. In 2012, Chávez withdrew Venezuela from the Inter-American system of human rights amid rising criticism. UNASUR and CELAC could not agree on a pragmatic and effective course of action. The situation deteriorated further after Maduro took power in 2013. Democracy and human rights, once central to the Latin American project, became contentious issues in Venezuela and were often ignored along ideological lines. The ideals upheld in the 1990s and 2000s clashed with the political realities of the 2010s.

Under Maduro, the humanitarian situation in Venezuela worsened and human rights violations mounted, including the displacement of millions of refugees and migrants, arbitrary detentions, torture, and thousands of killings.

Consequently, the ICC and the UN began to intervene in the country. In 2018, the Prosecutor of the ICC placed the situation in Venezuela under “preliminary investigation” and opened an investigation for crimes against humanity committed by the Venezuelan government in 2021. Additionally, the 2019 ‘Bachelet Report,’ named after the former socialist Chilean President and then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, documented thousands of deaths and detainees. Similarly, the UN Human Rights Council established the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 2019. Over the last seven years, the Mission has accused the Venezuelan security forces of systematic violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.

Quo vadis, Latin America?

The US intervention in Venezuela has put the final nail in the coffin of the search for Latin American unity.

The autonomy, empowerment, and consolidation that the region had envisaged since the 1980s, built on the principles of democracy, rule of law, social justice, and human rights, failed to materialise in Venezuela. Indeed, while extra-regional actors (first Russia, China, and Iran, and now the US) have been shaping Venezuela’s politics through military cooperation, security assistance, and the management of its resources (particularly oil), the region itself has had no say.

Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelans struggle against economic hardship, insecurity, and xenophobia across Latin America. The only positive outcome of the US intervention has been the release of around one hundred political prisoners, promises of amnesties, and the closure of the infamous El Helicoide detention centre.

Nonetheless, uncertainty persists. The regime’s political structure in Caracas continues intact, and US policies remain unpredictable. Can a divided region play an active and productive role in a potential upcoming transition? In the short- to mid-term, the answer is no. While the OAS system lingers in crisis, UNASUR has not survived the end of the “pink tide,” as it is functionally powerless in its current form.

Current trends in Latin America indicate that a regional response grounded in democracy and human rights is unlikely to emerge. The election and consolidation of right-wing leaders across the region — Javier Milei in Argentina, Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, president-elect José Antonio Kast in Chile, Rodrigo Paz in Bolivia, and Santiago Peña in Paraguay — stands in sharp contrast to the democratisation processes of the 1980s and 1990s and the resulting human rights norms and institutions. Indeed, these leaders have enthusiastically welcomed the US intervention in Venezuela, undermining any possible unified Latin American response.

Conversely, Brazil and Mexico continue to maintain their staunch stance on sovereignty, taking no clear steps toward implementing a transition to democratic rule or demanding protection of human rights in Venezuela.

Moreover, present Latin American leaders prefer like-minded counterparts to multilateral fora, as their declarations after the US attack on Venezuela have made clear. As the Argentine epic poem Martin Fierro warns, “When a family fights among themselves, they’re soon eaten up by strangers.” Accordingly, recent events in Venezuela have shown that the hope of Latin American solutions to Latin American problems has become more far-fetched than ever.

Tags: Latin America, Venezuela, International Relations