Mexico Takes Lead to Rein in Venezuela - and Sends Message to Voters at Home Whitney Eulich - The Christian Science Monitor
go to original July 2, 2017

At least 80 people have been killed in months of protests against economic chaos (Al Jazeera)

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced last week that if his government’s “Bolivarian Revolution” were ever threatened, his supporters would turn to weapons.

“What we failed to achieve with votes, we would do with weapons,” he said at a rally drumming up support for his plan to rewrite the Constitution.

The statement was a further blow to Venezuela’s struggling democracy. But it also spotlighted the inability of regional neighbors to agree on a resolution condemning the Andean nation’s humanitarian emergency and human rights abuses.

For several years, neighboring countries and international actors, even the pope, have tried to help stem Venezuela’s mounting crises. Most recently, Mexico has taken the reins, standing at the forefront of the Organization of American States (OAS) to call for a resolution.

“Mexico will not stop using all diplomatic channels, including the OAS, in order to have a constructive impact on achieving a peaceful solution to the restoration of democracy” in Venezuela, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said at the University of Miami last month. “We have a country that, in fact, is no longer a functional democracy.”

It’s a somewhat unusual position for Mexico to take on. Geographically closer countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Panama arguably have more at stake, with tens of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing across the border. For decades, the United States – often controversially – has been at the helm when it comes to managing regional unrest. And there’s an irony in Mexico calling out rights abuses elsewhere when its own human rights record is under scrutiny.

Mexico has its reasons, analysts say. They range from the desire to lower the rising levels of government-backed violence in this overwhelmingly democratic region to a hope to position itself as a stronger regional leader, at a moment when many Latin American countries are tied up in their own political and economic crises.

But there’s an added, more local, benefit: Mexico’s 2018 presidential race.

Perennial populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost the 2006 presidential election by a hair and set up his own parallel government in protest, is considered a top contender. By highlighting Venezuela’s woes, and linking them to its leftist leadership, the ruling party in Mexico can send a message that it understands and knows how to fix “leftist errors,” analysts say.

“Mexican government officials have been … forewarning of a López Obrador presidency,” says Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, senior fellow of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They have been blunt enough to say he would be Mexico’s Maduro; that this would be a Venezuela-like scenario unfolding.”

Read the rest at The Christian Science Monitor

Related: Timeline: Key Moments in Venezuela's Crisis (Al Jazeera)

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