The Washington Post & the OAS Secretary General
The OAS needs to be reformed, but the changes need to emerge from accurate analysis of the problems confronting both Latin America and the OAS.
Over the next 12 months, almost two in three Latin Americans will go to the polls to choose a new president. National elections will take place in Latin America’s heavyweights, Brazil and Mexico, and also in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Paraguay – not counting Venezuela’s apparent electoral fraud-in-waiting.
This electoral supercycle comes amid a significant – and historically unusual – leadership vacuum in the region. The United States is increasingly unpopular in its erstwhile sphere of influence, its comparatively weak footing in the Americas attributable to long-term trends as well as the Trump Administration’s missteps, from trade to immigration to loose threats of military intervention.
What’s surprising, though, is that no other country is even attempting to fill the void.
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The OAS needs to be reformed, but the changes need to emerge from accurate analysis of the problems confronting both Latin America and the OAS.
What should we expect from a newly powerful Brazil? Does the country have the capacity and leadership to be a central actor in addressing critical global and regional problems?
Although politics has cyclical features, and ideology is sometimes a factor in choices made by Latin American voters, the left-right labels obscure more than they illuminate.