How does a trial for a political prisoner in Venezuela turnout? The fourteen year sentence issued to the popular Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez on September 10th, 2015, surely gives away that the outcome is not favorable. But forget the outcome, what about the process? Given Lopez’s commitment to democracy, this question of “procedure” may be self explanatory…
One of the legacies President Barack Obama will leave to his successor is increased foreign policy leverage in Latin America. Nowhere is this more evident than in U.S. policy toward Cuba and Venezuela—and because of those two countries with the rest of the hemisphere.
La crisis institucional atravesada por Venezuela invita al ejercicio borgeano de imaginar cómo sería la democracia sin Estado de Derecho.
Sometimes the statements at the UNHRC make the UN human rights body sound more like a comedy club than a serious forum dedicated to human life, security and dignity.
La democracia tiene un solo camino: el compromiso con los derechos garantizados a todos los ciudadanos del país. Su esencia es proteger los derechos y las decisiones del pueblo respecto a un gobierno que podría abusar de su poder, ignorando o rechazando los resultados de la elección. Esto es de extrema seriedad porque constituiría la violación de principios fundamentales.
Any numerical representation of people has institutional and moral consequences. This is especially so in Venezuela where Chavistas consistently had a monopoly on being the majority and used it to discount opposition as los escualidos (the few, rotten elites), a characterization that is now less credible with the recent elections.
If the absence of protests or conflict on an election day is an indicator of success, then the success of the Union of South American Nations’ (UNASUR’s) election “accompaniment” of Venezuela’s December 6th legislative elections was smashing.
Even in Latin America, a region often thought to share the same democratic orientation and values of the U.S. and Europe, there are some striking differences among groups of countries regarding supporting norms and practices on human rights internationally, with some countries lining up more with autocratic countries of the Global South.
For the first time in the 17 years since the late Hugo Chávez swept into power, the opposition has firm control of one of the branches of government. This proved too much for the chavista legislators to handle, and their walkout foreshadows the tensions ahead.
Despite legal setbacks in Peru and El Salvador and retrograde rhetoric from the newly-elected President of Guatemala and the Catholic cardinal of the Dominican Republic, overall LGBT civil, human and political rights continued to make gains across the region.
