At the OAS, 19 member states voted in favor, 4 against, and 11 abstained when the U.S. tried to have Venezuela sanctioned. The U.S. will not hesitate to bear tremendous pressure on member countries to get its way in Latin America.
During the first years of its existence UNASUR took actions with international repercussions that gave it a political presence, stealing the thunder of the Organization of American States in regional conflict resolution and the Interamerican Development Bank in infrastructure integration.
The OAS has no positive role to play in resolving the political crisis in Venezuela, any more than would Senator Marco Rubio or other Florida politicians who seek regime change there. It should be clear that the organization is currently an instrument of those who simply want to use the current crisis to topple the Venezuelan government. People who want to avoid escalating violence or civil war in Venezuela should not pretend otherwise. Differing responses.
What the sanctions made clear is that President Obama’s opening to Cuba represented exactly zero change in Washington’s overall strategy toward the region: The intention of expanding commercial and diplomatic relations with Cuba was mainly to pursue a more effective strategy of undermining the Cuban government--and all of the left governments in the region.
The Obama administration seems surrealistically unaware that this is a very different hemisphere than it was 15 years ago. Governments representing the majority of Latin America are now from the left. These governments emphatically reject Washington’s depiction of the recent events in Venezuela as a government trying to “repress peaceful protesters."
An interview: In his new book, Haiti: Dilemas e Fracassos Internacionais (“International Crossroads and Failures in Haiti,” ), Seitenfus takes a long view of the electoral crisis that he witnessed in 2010. In his account, Haiti’s tragedy began over two centuries ago in 1804, when the country committed what Seitenfus terms its “original sin,” an unpardonable act of lèse-majesté: it became the first (and only) independent nation to emerge from a slave rebellion.
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