By Luis Nieto,

February 3, 2023.

While here, in our country, we continue to hear the endless dripping of water from the dirty rag, which the opposition takes care of draining for the fed up ears of the citizenry, the Uruguayan government gets into the lion’s den of a regional institution created to image and likeness of Chavismo, Kirchner’s successors and a Lula amid a cloud of accusations.

On January 24, at the recent CELAC session that took place in Buenos Aires, everything was designed so that the Venezuelan regime could get some oxygen in its dying fall. Alberto Fernández, virtual president of the Argentines, had promised Putin to be the gateway to the region, but Fernández, when he proclaimed his high-sounding promise, had not even registered that he does not play alone in Putin’s strategy, and that he himself is put there by a long chain of events that began decades ago, with a specific purpose: to erase the democratic option from the regional agenda. Today, Latin America is no longer the gateway for immigrants harassed by wars and misery. It is barely the gateway for those who come to deprive it of the wealth –intellectual and material– that this immigration created here, in these lands; persons who believed in our incipient democracy.

At the meeting in Buenos Aires, the Argentine government wanted to write down to its credit and for its own benefit, the free vaccination against Covid 19, and the opposition let it know that vaccination had always been free in Argentina, as well as in most of our countries. Of course, the institutional framework is what Kirchnerism, the organizer of the CELAC meeting in Argentina, wants to destroy to hide the volume of corruption and thefts of the Kirchners. Kirchenismo wants to hide it, promoting a political trial against the Supreme Court of Justice, nothing less than one of the three powers of the republican State. You have to cover the sun in any way, even with a finger.

The economic and social situation in Argentina is unsustainable, with an annual inflation of 94.8%, placing it in the penultimate position in Latin America, and who occupies the last place, Venezuela, closes the year with 305.7%, on the brink of the hyperinflation. It is necessary to remember the words of Galeano, of course, referring to imperialism and the deforestation of the Amazon, or the corruption in Odebrecht, The remedy will not come from where the plague comes from . Imperialism, not only that of the United States, sees an enormous opportunity in this situation. Large and small imperialist countries in territory also see it. Dutch economic groups have acquired larger territories in the Amazon than those of their own country, they have helped to make the lungs of the world sick. Artigas, 200 years ago, warned against bad Europeans and worse Americans. This is not new. The CELAC was created as a free port for those spurious interests that use these bad Americans.

Venezuela has a debt that exceeds 60 billion dollars with China, and less, but also an unpayable debt, with the Russian Federation. What source of inspiration can the governments of Venezuela and Argentina be for countries like Uruguay, which has demonstrated, irrefutably, that it better distributes the product of work, is careful with public debt, and has a privileged position among a handful of countries that do not take advantage of state assets for the benefit of their rulers? Uruguay ranks 14th in the world, and 1st in Latin America; Chile follows it in 27th place and, third, Costa Rica, in 48th place in the Global Corruption Perception Index.

The last CELAC meeting was a show put on by the promoting group of this institution (one more), supposedly called to form for the integration of Latin America, and therefore generating the exclusion of Canada and the United States. Mexico is a partner of these two countries, but with more vices and corruption, and yet it is a founding member of CELAC. What future does this young, cracked institution have, which chooses to dig a ditch instead of building a bridge that works to eliminate asymmetries and government malpractice? Isn’t that fomenting the rift across America, or is it a trench? These adventures always end badly. Or is it that the CELAC promoter countries are preparing to help Alberto Fernández to provide more Latin American passports to the Russians for when the war ends, and they can easily find refuge, as the Nazis did?

At that meeting, Uruguay went to wait for a downpour. President Lacalle Pou, representing Uruguay, knew that he would be alone, and that both Argentina and Venezuela would put everything on the grill, hiding behind the figure of Lula, as a great endorsement of the initiative.

Brazil is a complex country, it has endured too many military coups, and a weak institutional framework. Lula remained in jail for almost two years accused of having favored influence peddling during his government, but two technical errors made by prosecutor Moro during the process led to its annulment and, automatically, to the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes. Therefore, by closing the possibility of reopening the case, the rules of the legal game also closed the doors to a subsequent responsibility in the irregularities for which he had been investigated.

That is the legal weakness of most Latin American countries. CELAC’s senior partner had won the elections, and that returned him to power. However, in the elections, he had to measure himself against a character made to measure for Trumpism, who disbelieves in democracy, but who has learned, like Trump, to use it to his advantage. It will be difficult for Lula to obtain majorities to carry out a government plan and maintain institutional stability. Bolsonaro will make it very difficult for him. We have all witnessed the assault on the institutions in Brasilia, and only the naiveté of those who conceive democracy by its forms can dream that this ended there.

However, Lula has shown his political waist by issuing signals in all directions, establishing himself as the exclusive figure, after the absence of Maduro. However, little Uruguay did not go unnoticed when he had gone to a forum that was uncomfortable for him. Lacalle Pou’s speech was focused on proposing the creation of a free trade zone from Mexico to southern South America. When the agenda was oriented towards what is traditional in our countries, the abundance of objectives to be achieved without real proposals to achieve them, Lacalle emphasized avoiding grouping countries by their ideological definitions and walking a path of unity in diversity. Zero rhetoric, specific purposes with the objective of grouping the economies, the engine of well-being, and an equity pact in redistribution

Of course, this seems simple if one avoids seeing the effort of populism in its crude version of easy promises and insults to the political adversary. Economic growth and just redistribution is not ensured by tone of voice. That can only be ensured by democratic institutions, such as freedom of the press, the independence of the powers of the State and the coexistence pact between countries of different ideological orientation, different sizes, and economic capacities.