by the El Reportero’s news services
Arturo Valenzuela
Today, June 15, is Arturo Valenzuela’s last day as the US’s chief policymaker for Latin America. President Barack Obama has yet to indicate who might succeed Valenzuela, who has, in Latin American eyes at least, been a success.
He has been a much steadier policymaker than many of his predecessors, refusing to rise to taunts from anti-Americans such as President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela or President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. Valenzuela’s biggest success is to have changed Latin American perceptions about ‘Los Gringos’.
This was built on a Valenzuela’s clear-sighted choices about where US interests lay over issues such as the coup in Honduras; whether former president Alvaro Uribe of Colombia should be encouraged to flout the constitution and run for re-election; and preventing the WikiLeaks scandal from poisoning relations with the region.
Peculiar f a mily piles pressure on Peru’s president-elect
When Ollanta Humala won election on June 5 what tipped the balance was a frank acknowledgement that while there might be “doubts” about him, there was “proof” that his rival Keiko Fujimori was a danger. Humala said it was not necessary to look beyond the rampant corruption of her father, Alberto Fujimori’s authoritarian government in the 1990s.
Three weeks before he takes office on July 28 Humala has been caught up in a media storm over a trip to Russia by his brother Alexis to discuss business contracts. Alexis might have travelled in a personal capacity, as he claims, but his visit was sufficiently opaque for the largely hostile domestic media to raise the fear that the “doubts” about Humala were legitimate; that the nepotism and corruption he promised to root out might in fact thrive under him.
The link between Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala
All three countries are dealing with political problems caused by the constrictions imposed by their constitutions.
In this edition of the Caribbean & Central America Report we analyse what has happened (see p2 to7) and here we attempt to draw some conclusions. We argue that the coup in Honduras was the consequence of brinkmanship and miscalculations on both sides. El Salvador and Guatemala, and perhaps, the international community as well, have learned from what went wrong in Honduras and so a repeat of the coup there in either of its neighbors is unlikely.
