The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last week and accomplished little. While the organization is not meaningfully addressing the hemisphere’s problems, let alone solving them, small improvements could lead it to a place where it might be able to in the future.
Brazil and Argentina recently announced their plan to create a common currency, starting with their two countries and inviting other South American countries to join. The idea is that it would help the region ease its trade relations, making it better able to control inflation. It’s a heady notion whose time has not come.
Latin America should be watching the current protests in Peru and Venezuela nervously. The two crises have long and deep roots in local dynamics, but the anger seen in both countries over the past month is a reaction to causal factors that aren’t exclusive to them. Protesters are angry at political systems that are failing them.
Uruguay is known for boasting a squeaky-clean democracy that tops indices measuring government transparency in South America. Now a corruption scandal with mafia-esque overtones has severely damaged President Luis Lacalle Pou, potentially hampering his reform agenda and sidelining him ahead of elections in October 2024.
After just under four years in office, Juan Guaido is no longer the de jure president of Venezuela. Once recognized by almost 60 countries around the world—including the United States, Canada and most of Europe and South America—he saw that number dwindle to fewer than a dozen countries by late 2022.
The arrest of Luis Camacho, a prominent opposition leader, for his role in the alleged coup following Bolivia’s contested 2019 presidential election has aggravated political polarization. Government supporters view it as belated justice, while the opposition says it is a sign of the country’s slide toward authoritarianism.
Last September, the hacktivist group Guacamaya launched its largest cyberattack yet, targeting Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense, as well as government agencies in El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and Chile. But while the group seeks accountability, they’ve also brought to light massive vulnerabilities in state institutions.
Nowhere is the challenge of recovering from the pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine more pressing than in Latin America, the region that was arguably the world’s hardest-hit during the “polycrisis.” For governments hoping they will be able to retake the ground lost in the past three years, the task looks gargantuan.