Latin America Gathers to Gripe About U.S.
Latin America Gathers to Gripe About U.S.
COA’s Eric Farnsworth comments on Venezuelan issues in the lead up to the Summit of the Americas.
Journalists are being silenced in Mexico, Venezuela and Ecuador. Corruption has seeped into the highest offices in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Thanks to gerrymandering, elections are the Latin autocrats' to lose, and simply standing up to Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro can earn you a go-to-jail card or worse.
So when leaders of the 35 nations of the Western Hemisphere gather in Panama City for the seventh Summit of the Americas on April 10 and 11, they will have plenty to talk about. Whether Luis Almagro, the new secretary general of the parley's sponsor, the Organization of the American States, can turn the talk to the region's real problems is doubtful....
....But what of Venezuela, where the Maduro government has crushed street protestors and jailed political opponents such as Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, snatched from his desk last month by intelligence police? "That was nothing if not a sub-national coup d'etat," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas....
