Last week, after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucus, long time human rights activist Brian Concannon wrote:

The Democratic candidates missed the opportunity last week in Nevada—a state with a 30 percent Latino population—to address the root causes of our immigration crisis. They predictably criticized the worst Trump administration immigration policies, such as families separated at the border and chronic uncertainty for undocumented people in the U.S., many of whom arrived decades ago as children. How we treat people at or inside our border certainly deserves attention, but we cannot ignore that many people come to the United States in the first place because our foreign policies—by both Democrats and Republicans—force them to leave their homes in Latin America and elsewhere.

Concannon is, of course, correct. And how can a politician be honest about addressing migration if they can’t be honest about their country’s role in stoking the migration in the first place? Still, Concannon writes what few politicians are willing to say out loud: that US foreign policy is part of the problem and is not a partisan issue.
 
This was on full display at the last Democratic primary debate, held in South Carolina. The six candidates not named Bernie Sanders all took aim at the front runner of the Democratic primary campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg all laid into Sanders for his acknowledgment that Fidel Castro implemented literacy programs in Cuba after the revolution that toppled the US-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959.
 
Putting aside the fact that these candidates opted to perpetuate right wing red-baiting tactics used against progressives (and even moderate Democrats!) for decades, and that Sanders’ comments echoed those previously made by President Obama, the attack revealed something deeper about the candidates on the debate stage.
 
Pundits often credit Sanders’ appeal with his consistent track record of advocating for progressive policies. Most voters, poll after poll shows, consider Sanders to be an honest politician, even if they don’t agree with all of his policies. But honesty isn’t just a campaign attribute, it is a necessity in accurately diagnosing problems and coming up with solutions. And nowhere is that clearer than with the issue of immigration.
 
“Excuse me,” Sanders said amid the debate-stage attacks, “occasionally it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy.” That includes, he continued, “the fact that America has overthrown governments all over the world in Chile, in Guatemala, in Iran.” The list goes on.
 
Mayor Buttigieg responded by saying these coups of the distant past were irrelevant. “This is not about what coups were happening in the 1970s or ’80s,” he said. “This is about the future. This is about 2020.”
 
Here’s a really crazy idea: maybe being honest about what happened in the 70s and 80s will help you understand the future. Sanders could have – and should have – noted that US support for violent coups is not constrained to ancient history. As Concannon writes:

The U.S. displaces its neighbors by displacing their governments. The Obama administration supported the 2009 coup d’état against Honduras’ elected President Manuel Zelaya by U.S.-trained generals. The Obama and then the Trump administrations supported repressive and corrupt governments that followed Zelaya’s ouster, giving a green light to assassinations of dissidents and journalists, government-linked drug trafficking, and spiraling crime. This repression continues to drive tens of thousands to seek asylum in the U.S. each year, regardless of the legal obstacles we erect. More recently, the Trump administration supported last November’s military coup d’état in Bolivia—with little opposition from Democrats—deepening that country’s political crisis.

While others on the debate stage pandered to South Florida, Sanders did what he has done throughout his career: he made an honest statement that most politicians are too scared to say in public. That honesty is one of the many reasons Sanders is leading the field in the Democratic primary. But that honesty will also be a precondition for any leader serious about addressing the roots causes of migration. And it might help explain why, in Nevada at least, Sanders received more than 50 percent of the Latino vote.   

En français

Juan Guaidó’s high-profile trip to Washington earlier this month seems to be paying off. After receiving a bipartisan standing ovation during Trump’s State of the Union address, attending a joint press conference with Nancy Pelosi, and meeting privately with Vice President Pence in the Oval Office, the Trump administration has just earmarked millions in additional funding to support regime change efforts in Venezuela.

According to the State Department’s recently released Congressional Budget Justification for the 2021 Fiscal Year, spending dedicated to regime change in Venezuela has received a significant boost.

The Trump administration requested $200 million in the FY 2021 Economic Support and Development Fund (ESDF), “to address the crisis in Venezuela,” which includes flexible programming “to support a democratic transition and related needs in Venezuela.” This represents a twenty-two-fold increase from the administration’s FY 2020 request, and about 26 percent of the ESDF’s total funding request for the entire Western Hemisphere.

Oftentimes this funding’s ultimate destination can change, and given the political situation, ends up being spent outside of Venezuelan territory. Last year, Trump diverted more than $40 million of Central American aid directly to the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaidó, paying for, among other things, salaries, airfare, and technical training for Guaidó’s staff — many of whom reside in Washington, DC.

Other line items in the budget include the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which requested a $637 million budget to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy” while prioritizing “regions of strategic importance to United States national security” and “providing comprehensive coverage of Venezuela’s on-going leadership conflict.” This figure is conservative, as the previous two budgets significantly overshot similar requests, spending more than $810 million last year alone. It is unclear, however, how much of this budget will fund USAGM’s various Venezuela-related media campaigns.

Another new development in this year’s budget is the transfer of $25 million from the Diplomatic Progress Fund to “International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement,” citing the “political transition in Venezuela” as one of the policy priorities of the funding. While vague on how the money will be used, it appears consistent with the politically charged rhetoric of “narcoterrorism,” which the Trump administration and their allies in the region have levied against some of the governments that they have sought to overthrow.

While some of the funding in this year’s budget is earmarked for humanitarian assistance to Venezuela, including $5 million to USAID’s Venezuelan Global Health Program, it’s merely a drop in the bucket compared to the devastating impact that US sanctions have had on the country since they were greatly expanded in 2017.

Sanctions on financial transactions with Venezuelan companies and economic sanctions against Venezuela’s national oil company have cost the country billions of dollars it needs to maintain vital health, water, and food security infrastructure, while also preventing imports of life-saving medicine and food. The result has been the death of tens of thousands of Venezuelans, and millions of economically driven refugees. These sanctions are also illegal under treaties that the US has signed, as well as under international law.

Despite Juan Guaidó’s international tour and Trump’s empty promises of support for “the Venezuelan people,” a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the political crisis does not appear any closer. Trump’s new budget, instead of focusing on diplomatic solutions, facilitating depoliticized humanitarian aid, and assisting the recovery of the Venezuelan economy, doubles down on a failed regime change strategy that has only hurt millions of Venezuelans, and costs Americans hundreds of millions in tax dollars.

El Salvador has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Bordering the country are the other two nations in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” region: Honduras, with the world’s fifth-highest homicide rate in 2017, and Guatemala, in sixteenth place. North of Guatemala is Mexico, where a homicide rate quintupling that of the United States puts it in nineteenth. But the United States isn’t just a bystander to this tragic violence; the majority of these homicides are firearm-related, and 70 percent of guns seized from criminals in Mexico traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) come from the US. Almost 41 percent of guns seized in the Northern Triangle originate in the US, including almost half the guns in El Salvador.

The astonishing violence in Central America is a major root cause of forced migration to the US from the region. US guns play a clear role in fueling the crisis. A few of these weapons originated from US military shipments to militaries and paramilitaries in the region during the Cold War. Most modern traffic to cartels and gangs occurs through the black market, with US residents legally purchasing firearms here and then illegally transporting them south. Harry Penate — at the time the only ATF official responsible for US arms tracing in all of Central America — gave one example of a gun bought at a licensed gun store in Baltimore being recovered from criminals in El Salvador less than a week later.

But not all US guns come through the black market. US gun manufacturers regularly export guns to foreign buyers legally through a weak and underenforced regulatory system, often allowing guns to wind up in the hands of organized crime. The Trump administration has recently published regulations that will make the system even weaker. This will not only put profits before lives in Central America, but is likely to worsen the drivers of the very migrant flows Trump viciously opposes.

The current system of arms exports was established by the Arms Export Control Act of 1976 and oversaw $45.4 billion in sales from 2013 to 2017. US gun sellers must register with the State Department and provide detailed information about their sales, including the ultimate recipients (“end users”) of the weapons. The State Department must approve any further transfer of the weapons to new end users, and US Embassies are responsible for ensuring the guns wind up in the correct hands. The State Department notifies Congress of any sales over a million dollars, and Congress has the ability to block deals through an informal process. In recent years, Congress has blocked large weapons sales to state security forces in the Philippines and Turkey over human rights concerns.

Though this system is tough in theory, insufficient enforcement has proven it to be weak in practice. When the State Department’s inspector general audited the process last year, examining 21 approved applications for arms sales, 95 percent were missing required information, including 62 percent that lacked sufficient end-use information.

In spite of this, the gun industry has long pushed for a further loosening of the system. Even the Obama administration (which itself sold twice as many arms to foreign governments as the Bush administration) bragged that they made steps toward deregulating private arms exports, but then abandoned plans for a full overhaul in the wake of the Sandy Hook mass shooting. The pressure to weaken the system likely grew under President Trump, as domestic gun sales have dropped significantly during his tenure due to collectors’ and enthusiasts’ reduced expectations of gun control laws. Thus, the Trump administration has decided to make up for gun companies’ losses at home through greater exports, issuing a rule in late January similar to the Obama administration’s original proposal to overhaul the current system for the worse.

Under the new rule, the regulatory system will be transferred from the State Department to Commerce with the aim of “reducing the procedural burdens and costs of export compliance on the U.S. firearms industry…” Under this system, US arms sellers will face far less scrutiny during the licensing process for most weapons, especially since the Commerce Department does not have access to the State Department lists of which arms dealers have been involved in suspicious or criminal transactions before. Worse, the number of countries with license exceptions for arms exports will expand from three close allies to 37 nations. Congress’s ability to review and block certain arms sales will also be eliminated.

Arms exports recipients will no longer be required to issue written certification that they won’t give the weapons to someone else without authorization, and the system for end-user verification will be gutted: rather than embassy staff, this will be export control officers’ (ECOs) responsibility. Despite that over 40 percent of all checks by the State Department are in the Western Hemisphere, there is not a single ECO responsible for verifying arms sales recipients in this half of the world, and there don’t appear to be any plans to hire any.

In other words, the new rules make it substantially easier to export arms abroad, and in Latin American countries where US guns already contribute to some of the highest murder rates in the world, there appear to be no US government staffers responsible for verifying weapons wind up in the right hands.

The consequences could be enormous. It would still be concerning if all private weapons sales went to state security forces in the region, seeing as such sales have already enabled human rights abuses: US gun companies have sold weapons to Mexico and Honduras that went on to be used in police massacres of civilians. But these new rules won’t just facilitate weapons sales to violent governments; they will make it much easier for cartels and gangs to get their hands on US guns as well.

Though weapons are sometimes stolen, the most common way that criminal organizations acquire legally exported weapons is more straightforward: they buy them from corrupt military or police officials. Salvadoran soldiers have been caught selling rocket launchers to the Milenio Cartel, and in a separate incident trying to sell off over 1,800 hand grenades. An illegal weapons cache en route to Colombia that was seized in Honduras in 2004 included rifles, grenade launchers, and anti-tank rocket launchers “as fresh as if they just left the factory, all US-made,” according to Honduras’ minister of security. The Honduran attorney general’s office estimates that 20 percent of the arms it seized from the Valle Valle criminal organization in 2014 were purchased from the military’s armory. From 2006 to 2017, more than 20,000 weapons belonging to the Mexican police were stolen or went missing. In Guerrero, the Mexican state estimated to have the second-highest number of “organized-crime-style homicides” in 2018, almost a fifth of the weapons acquired by state police from 2010 to 2016 vanished.

Some experts have alleged that Mexican state security forces intentionally fail to keep an accurate weapons inventory so that corrupt soldiers and officials can sell them off. In Honduras, the ATF has noted that Honduran law “is silent on pertinent inventory control provisions for the public security forces.” A former Honduran military official commented that stealing military ammunition at training sessions or shooting ranges for resale is easy: “You sign out with 10,000 rounds and use 5,000. Who is going to know what you do with the other 5,000?” Under a new regulatory regime in which end-use verification is even less viable, the amount of US arms and munitions going to organized crime could rise dramatically.

By making it easier for the gun industry to export arms, the US government is expanding access to those arms for both violent state security forces and criminal organizations in Mexico and Central America. In doing so, it will worsen violence in the region and contribute to the deteriorating humanitarian situation driving forced migration to the United States — the same refugee and migrant flows that Donald Trump has positioned his entire presidency around stopping. Alejandra Martínez, an activist in her early twenties who was shot at by police using American M4 rifles during a 2017 protest in Honduras, told the Miami Herald at the time: “We know that the guns come from the United States. These guns have no business in Honduras. They should stay in the United States. They are sending them to Honduras to kill us.” The next year, she joined a migrant caravan heading north toward the United States, saying, “If I return to Honduras they’ll kill me.”

The consequences of the new policy don’t seem to matter to the Trump administration (which did not consult arms trade experts about it), nor to American gun makers. The firearms industry lobby, which has estimated that the new system could increase their foreign gun sales by up to 20 percent, bragged that the Trump administration began moving on the rules the same day they flew in to Washington to meet with more than 70 members of Congress. When the new rules were posted, the group’s senior VP for government relations and public affairs said, “This is a tremendous achievement for the firearms and ammunition industry. We salute the Trump administration…” Likewise, the NRA complained that the old system involved “national and international security considerations trumping all other factors,” while the new one would give “American businesses who manufacture consumer products a larger footprint in international markets,” supposedly without harming national security. The US government seems to tacitly acknowledge the violence it is enabling abroad, however. It is notable that all of the weapons that the Trump administration is making easier to export will still remain on strict import control lists, meaning that the US considers the weapons dangerous when they’re coming here, but not when they’re going elsewhere.

The Trump administration’s new rules on arms exports are aimed at enriching the firearms industry at the expense of human lives around the world, especially in Mexico and Central America, where the likely absence of enforcement will put more weapons into the hands of both state security forces and criminal organizations known for massacring civilians. Congress should pass Rep. Norma Torres’ proposed Prevent Crime and Terrorism Act of 2019 to reverse the new deregulatory scheme before it takes effect on March 9, and indeed should take steps to strengthen the existing arms export control system to ensure that US guns don’t further destabilize what is already one of the most violent regions on Earth.

Foreign policy, an area very much in the hands of the executive branch, has afforded Bolivia´s de facto president Jeanine Añez, who does not behold a parliamentary majority, an ideal outlet for her radical program. Within days of taking power, the Añez government had cut off relations with Venezuela, expelled its diplomatic staff, recognized instead the self-proclaimed government of Juan Guaidó, and swiftly abandoned the ALBA group of states to join its right-wing counterweight, the Group of Lima. Bolivia soon reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel and rekindled close ties with the United States that had been seriously eroded since the US ambassador to Bolivia had been caught having secret meetings with key opposition figures in the midst of a violent separatist movement aimed at ousting Morales’s government in 2008.

Añez, a little-known senator whose party obtained a mere 4 percent of the vote in the last legislative elections, was ushered in after a coup toppled democratically elected president Evo Morales on November 10. It was soon clear that her lack of democratic legitimacy would not stop her from behaving as if she had a popular mandate to lead the country into a new era. She refused to personify the role of the prudent caretaker (as pro-coup spin termed it) seeking to guarantee the functioning of institutions required for the holding of elections in the shortest delay possible; and chose instead to rule.

After repeatedly pledging not to run in the elections, Añez finally announced her candidacy on January 24. Presidential candidates Carlos Mesa and Jorge Quiroga, among others in the Bolivian elite establishment, have expressed their disgruntlement with Añez’s change of heart. Her presence on the ballot will further divide the right in the context of an overcrowded race in which the candidates of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Morales’s political party, are front-runners. Supporters of the November coup, both inside and outside Bolivia, are concerned that Añez’s political ambitions discredit the argument that the coup plotters were selfless political actors, dedicated to the cause of “democratization” and not their own aggrandizement.

The Internationalization of Domestic Politics

In Bolivia’s conservative restoration, there is an inseparable connection between foreign policy and the domestic persecution of the MAS and its leadership. The coup government seeks to arrest Morales on charges of “terrorism” and “sedition.” Dozens of Morales government officials and MAS leaders have either fled the country, sought asylum in diplomatic missions, or have been arrested. Within 24 hours of the MAS announcing that its presidential candidate would be former finance minister Luis Arce, the de facto government announced “corruption” charges against Arce, and when he returned to Bolivia last week he was subpoenaed before even getting through airport immigration. A former minister and vice minister, to whom the Bolivian Foreign Ministry had granted safe passage so they could leave the Mexican embassy, proceed to the airport, and leave the country, were detained and manhandled. Only an international outcry denouncing this extraordinary violation of international law ― and the astonishing duplicity of granting asylees safe passage before detaining them once out of their diplomatic sanctuary ― finally led the Bolivian government to let them go.

The man in charge of this resurgence of the “internal war” ― Latin America’s infamous national security doctrine of the military dictatorships of the 1960s and ‘70s ― is Interior Minister Arturo Murillo. Murillo makes no secret of his international alliances to root out subversives and terrorists: “We have invited [the Israelis] to help us. They are used to dealing with terrorists. They know how to handle them.”

As for the widespread denunciations of human rights abuses that have resulted from such an approach, they are, for Jaime Aparicio, Añez’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, simply “lies and falsehoods.” Aparicio labeled the report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and its denunciation of the Senkata massacre, merely the result of the workings of “consultants and operators from a certain type of international leftism, implanted in many inter-American institutions, who are not interested in the truth.”

In line with denying human rights violations, the Añez government has lashed out at governments taking a proactive stance to protect Bolivian victims of abuses. Jorge Quiroga, Añez’s “international representative” ― who finally resigned in January to launch his own presidential bid ― called Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador a “coward,” a “thug” and a “scoundrel” for having granted Morales asylum. Far from disavowing her representative’s frankness, within a week of Quiroga’s flowery insults, Añez expelled the Mexican ambassador as well as the Spanish chargé d’affaires and consul for their governments’ roles in protecting former Bolivian officials from persecution.

Añez’s next dispute was with the new left-leaning government of Argentina, where Morales currently lives in exile. There was more than a touch of irony when Añez, a president ushered in through a coup, publicly decried that Alberto Fernández, the democratically elected president of Argentina, “has no respect for democracy” on the day he took the oath of office.

A friendly neighbor

The international context has played a decisive role in bolstering Añez’s crusade against the Left. The Brazilian government, for one, has provided much support and encouragement. The Israeli foreign minister confirmed Brazil’s influence when he acknowledged “the help of the Brazilian president [Jair Bolsonaro] and [his] minister of foreign affairs” in the reestablishment of Israel’s relations with Bolivia, and, naturally, the importance of the coup: “The departure of President Morales, who was hostile to Israel, and his replacement by a government friendly to Israel, allows the fruition of the process.”

Notwithstanding the issue of Israel, it is clear that the Brazilian president is delighted with developments in neighboring Bolivia. Whereas Bolsonaro is a Catholic who was supported by Brazil’s many conservative evangelical churches in the 2018 elections, Añez is, in fact, the real thing: a devout hard-right evangelist with no love for progressive issues or for Latin America’s historic separation of church and state.

Bolsonaro has tried to help Añez in a number of ways, including easing rules for Brazilian imports of Bolivian natural gas. In December 2019, Petrobras’s 20-year-old contract with YPFB, Bolivia’s state-owned oil and gas company, expired. The negotiations taking place in the context of fast-declining Brazilian demand for Bolivian gas had been at a standstill before the coup. By December, however, Petrobras had made a temporary deal with YPFB, which gave the Bolivian government some much-needed slack until a more long-term contract is finalized. In January, the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy went further; granting the YPFB affiliate in Brazil the right to import and sell gas on the Brazilian market, in line with Bolsonaro’s broader effort to put an end to Petrobras’s monopoly over gas imports in Brazil. While caps on the quantity of freely traded Bolivian gas will remain, the ceiling is to grow steadily on a yearly basis.

The Break with Cuba

Brazil has also led by example. By breaking foreign policy taboos, by using provocative language, and by going against the mainstream liberal consensus and denouncing multilateralism as “cultural Marxism,” Bolsonaro, like Trump, makes it easier for smaller states to emulate his extreme behavior and policies. Brazil’s bombastic, rhetorically charged deterioration of relations with Cuba is a good example. When Bolsonaro attacked Cuba’s “More Doctors” program and claimed there were “a lot of terrorists among them” ― resulting in Cuba withdrawing over 8,000 medical doctors from Brazil ― he paved the way for other countries to take similar actions. In November 2019, both Ecuador and Bolivia put an end to their health cooperation with the island and Cuban doctors were repatriated from both Andean countries by year’s end.

In 2019, Brazil was one of three countries to side in favor of the US embargo on Cuba at the annual UN General Assembly vote. In doing so, the Bolsonaro government broke with Brazil’s historic multilateralist tradition and long-held opposition to US economic coercion against the island. Añez, however, took matters one step further: on January 24, 2020, the Bolivian government announced that it was cutting off diplomatic relations. Bolivia is now the only country in the Western Hemisphere that does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba, and one of only three in the world (along with South Korea and Israel).

For decades, Cuba has sought to steer away from old Cold War diplomatic rifts. Not one to shy away from speaking out when it feels wronged or when close allies are threatened or overthrown, the Cuban government has nevertheless cultivated a cautious approach to potential detractors. Bolivia’s breaking off relations with Cuba seems to have resurfaced from another age.

Even the Trump administration, which has resuscitated Title III of the Helms Burton Law to pile more economic pressure on the island, has not yet swept aside the diplomatic relations with Cuba established under its predecessor. This is not to say, however, that Bolivia’s maverick approach to the Left in Latin America is not heartily encouraged in Washington. The influence of Marco Rubio on all things Latin American and the calculations ― or miscalculations ― of Trump’s presidential campaign keep fueling the US administration’s ever more aggressive stance toward the region. Ultimately, Bolivia’s Cold War-era politics is a leap back into a dark, undemocratic past which fits snuggly with Trump’s Monroeist vision of Latin America’s “backyard” role in the international system.

In recent days, Añez’s foreign minister, Karen Longaric, was warmly received by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro followed suit, and Longaric celebrated his “crucial role in the defense of democracy and the rule of law” and formally offered him Bolivia’s backing in his reelection bid at the head of the organization. The OAS was key in undermining the October 2019 elections and in bolstering a flawed narrative of fraudulent elections that greatly contributed to Morales’s overthrow. Longaric then gave a presentation at the Inter-American Dialogue on the importance of espousing a nonideological foreign policy. That afternoon, relations with Cuba were broken. At the event, Longaric was not confronted with uncomfortable questions.

From unlikely caretaker emerging from obscurity, to presidential candidate with a growing set of international allies, Añez has successfully made her zealous foreign policy a stalwart of her political strategy. In a regional and international context in which far-right extremism, far from being isolated, has become politically profitable, it is no wonder that Jeanine Añez should feel so emboldened.

In this November 12 video — excerpted from Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s morning press conference — Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard describes how Bolivian president Evo Morales was transported to Mexico aboard a Mexican Air Force plane.  

The plane landed at Chimoré airport, located in the department of Cochabamba and controlled, at the time, by the Bolivian military. It was from here that Morales was eventually flown to safety.

Ebrard describes the tense negotiations that took place between the governments of Mexico and Bolivia, and the challenges posed by the vacuum of power in the hours following Morales’s forced resignation, when the military were visibly in command. Though his presentation is sober and diplomatic, Mexico’s top diplomat makes it clear that Evo Morales’s life was in danger, and that the attempt to rescue him almost ended in disaster.

Ebrard describes how other South American countries responded to Mexico’s attempt to retrieve Evo Morales. He recalls how several governments that had initially authorized the Mexican aircraft to transit through their airspace or refuel, including Peru and Ecuador, suddenly reneged on their word.

Ebrard makes clear that the decision to revoke permissions to land or use airspace were made at the highest level of government in each of these countries. The Mexican foreign minister’s assertions raise serious questions: Why did these governments change their mind? And were these countries under international pressure to prevent Morales from flying to safety?

Two further elements emerge from this important presentation, which received little attention in the media: first, the role played by the president-elect of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, who appears to have persuaded Paraguayan president Mario Abdo Benítez to allow the aircraft to land in Asunción. Fernández’s role in this story reinforces the hypothesis that a Mexican–Argentine axis is emerging. There has been much speculation regarding this possibility, especially since Fernández’s November 4 visit to Mexico, when he met President López Obrador. Fernández is also an active member of the Puebla Group, a Latin American coalition of progressive leaders in which the Mexican government has been playing an important role. Both Fernández and Mexican officials attended the group’s recent meeting in Buenos Aires.

The second element concerns Mexico’s reemergence as a Latin American middle power. This is evident in the manner in which Mexico is now venturing beyond its traditional political and commercial ties with its northern neighbors. Significantly, this reemergence of Mexico’s engagement with the rest of Latin America has coincided with a return to its erstwhile tradition of protecting the victims of political persecution throughout the region, when the region was dominated by military dictatorships. Unfortunately, the rekindling of Mexico’s tradition of protecting political refugees is also indicative of a new wave of authoritarianism, which has steadily been gaining pace across Latin America during the last few years.

For all these reasons, and in view of the historical importance of Ebrard’s disclosures, CEPR is posting this video with English subtitles so that it is accessible to English-speaking viewers.