By Luis Nieto
«We have to see how Argentina becomes in some way a gateway for Latin America so that Russia enters the region in a more decisive way,» the Argentine president offered Putin, a few days after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and when the Russian troops were on maneuvers, a few steps from the border. Alberto Fernández was «deeply grateful» to Russia for the supply of coronavirus vaccines, at a time when they were in short supply, and told Putin that his country was already sending Sputnik vaccines to other Latin American countries.
At each step that President Alberto Fernández takes, there is automatically a second reading that questions the validity of his actions, and even of his statements. The shadow of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner follows him, wherever he goes and whenever he says. Grand phrases, such as the one quoted before Putin, a few days after starting an unjustified war, have more to do with the voice of the shadow that follows him everywhere than with the apathy of the Argentine president, who seems to fill his working hours with sambas and chacareras.
Cristina Fernández is tried and lost. When all this is over, and the doors of America shut with the last bomb that falls on the Ukrainians, another world will emerge from this unjustified hecatomb. But in that world it will be impossible to enter through the Door that Fernández offered Putin. The charlatans will continue to exist, but those who supported Putin in the most dangerous madness since World War II will leave without glory and without what they stole, that is already happening to them. For them there will be no «Gate of Mercy», which our compatriot, writter Tomás de Mattos, masterfully described.
Just as the emerging circumstances will make it impossible for those who looted Argentina to return, the talent of those who make calculations about the political heritage of Peronism in its update in Kirchner mode will also have ended. Argentines, within a year, will have the opportunity to put themselves in line with the countries that are risking the consequences of a war with a nuclear bomb on their heads, or those that have acted with the same cruelty as the Nazis, even those that have been defined as neutral. There can be no neutrality when a country is invaded, all civil infrastructure, light, water, food is destroyed at the beginning of a harsh winter, like all Ukrainian winters. You cannot be neutral when you send wave after wave of «kamikaze» drones to demolish whatever is in front of you, whether it is a school, an apartment building, or a cancer research laboratory. Neutrality has its limits, Argentina cannot apply it, because a large part of its citizens have arrived from the country of the current victims.
America is a land of opportunity, as it always has been, even in spite of those that the only opportunity they seek is their own. There were almost no territorial changes after the geographics limits that we inherited from the beginning of the independence wars. That is our strength. Europe cannot boast of the same. It is true that we have problems, and many signs of discrimination and marginalization can be found throughout the region, but there is no shortage of progress either. How can there not be differences in Latin America if this process takes place simultaneously in republican and democratic societies?
Our compatriot, the Uruguayan Héctor Gros Espiell, being Secretary General for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America, promoted the signing of the documents concerning the prohibition of the possession and use of nuclear weapons, which were expressed in the Treaty of Tlatelolco and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Latin America is legally protected by the obligations accepted in this regard by all the states possessing nuclear weapons that are Parties to Additional Protocol 11 (China, the United States, France, Great Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, of which Russia claims to be heir). This Protocol is the only international treaty currently in force on disarmament to which the five states possessing nuclear weapons are Parties.
The mere mention of a possible nuclear war should move Latin American citizens to force their parliamentary parties and governments to have a clear and binding initiative. Latin America decided to legally shield itself from an event of this nature. The doors cannot be opened to those who have threatened, over and over again, to use their nuclear arsenal if their integrity were at risk. And who would fix that eventual risk, which would imply, according to Putin, dropping the first atomic bomb?
President Alberto Fernández cannot add another anguish to his already tormented citizens, he should not waste time and speak loud and clear to demand an express refusal from his friend Putin, to remind him that his promise to open the doors of America for him, that America is subject to the approval of the rest of the sovereign countries, and that, in any case, it must leave its weapons outside. There is no way Putin can cross the gates of a continent that Alberto Fernández tries to ignore, judging by the lousy administration that has achieved the embarrassing first place in terms of inflation, and sinking its people into a misery that is leaving behind the 40% to approach 50%, a threshold that it will cross, on its own merits, sometime next year.