“There cannot be a club of ideological friends here. In the variety will be the strength of this organization. We do wrong to put an ideological tint to Celac. Beware of ideological temptation in international forums”.
The words of the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou, resounded strongly on January 24 at the Sheraton hotel in Buenos Aires, where the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) summit was held.
It was part of a speech focused on integration, but it also became a warning.
The event, intended as another chapter destined to continue advancing in the integration and collaboration between the member states, was marred by the initial controversy over the participation –which ultimately did not fully materialize– of the presidents of three countries on the that weigh serious denunciations of human rights violations that Argentina refuses to condemn.
These are Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, suspended his participation at the last minute, alleging “permanent persecution and ambushes”, and attributed responsibility “to the right”.
Although it is true that a principle of the foreign policy of any country is – in general – that of non-intervention in the internal affairs of another, the Argentine Government does not measure everyone with the same yardstick.
The passive attitude towards international reports on human rights violations in the three mentioned states contrasts with what followed, for example, with the Brazil of Jair Bolsonaro.
Although Bolsonaro’s management was characterized by his lack of democratic vocation, for example, the diplomatic treatment accorded to him bears no relation to what is preached towards Maduro, towards Miguel Díaz Canel, the president of Cuba (who did reach the summit from Buenos Aires) or to Daniel Ortega, from Nicaragua.
Brazil is Argentina’s best trading partner. And on its website, the Argentine Foreign Ministry establishes as an objective that “foreign policy must contribute directly to the economic and social growth of the country.”
Not to mention that, in the same forum, the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, treated Uruguay as a “little brother”. Or what happened in February 2022, when President Alberto Fernández visited his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to say that “Argentina has to stop having that great dependence that it has on the Fund (International Monetary) and the United States (. ..)”, in addition to offering our country as “Russia’s gateway to Latin America”.
Russia has a dismal human rights record. In addition, 20 days later the bloody war against Ukraine began, which was already foreshadowed at the time of the Argentine president’s visit to Moscow.
A coherent foreign policy is needed, one that responds to the interests of the whole of society and that is not governed by ideological sympathy.
When responding more to personal whims than to those principles, the result is not innocuous: it affects the building of trust with the world and has an impact on citizen well-being. The comparison with other countries, such as Uruguay, is obvious.