Sunday, June 15, 2025

Latin American Digest: Bolivia, Argentina, Cuba, Columbia, and Nicaragua

Bolivia: The Bolivian Government has barred the former left-wing authoritarian President from being a presidential candidate in the August 17 Bolivian presidential election. Bolivia is led by the same Socialist party as the former President, who served three five-year terms, despite a constitutional term limit of two terms and was forced from office by a popular uprising in 2019 when he sought a fourth term. After a period in which a center-right leader held power as the constitutional successor, the Socialists were elected in 2020 to lead the South American State, but the current President and the former President had a falling out. The former President, who has been fomenting civil unrest, is being investigated for crimes. Another member of the ruling party will stand as a presidential candidate instead. Argentina: The former leftwing Peronist President last week was sentenced to prison for corruption and barred for life from holding office. She had been elected as President of the South American State in 2007 and served until 2015, succeeding her husband, who had served the previous four years. She was elected Vice President four years later, serving a four-year term and continued to be the leader of the left-wing party that is one of the legacies of Peronism, named for the Argentine fascist leader Juan Peron. Columbia: Some of the offshoots of the Marxist narco-terrorists since who fought a civil war in Columbia from 1964 until a peace deal in 2016 have continued fighting. There was a deadly flare-up of fighting by one group a few months ago in one part of the South American State near the Venezuelan border and another flareup by another group recently in the southeastern part of Columbia. The war killed tens of thousands of people. Cuba: The United Nations issued a report last week on the many Cuban violations of human rights in its prisons. Communist Cuba holds many political prisoners. After a deal reached with the United States, in which Cuba released some of its political prisoners, two prominent ones were returned to prison. Today, all of the Catholic Bishops of the Caribbean Island State called for structural, social, economic and political changes that are urgently needed amidst the suffering of the Cuban people. Nicaragua: Former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro died yesterday in exile in Costa Rica at the age of 94. She was elected President in 1990 and served until 1997. Her election ended the civil war that was caused by oppression by the Marxist Sandinista regime that seized power in 1979 after a guerilla war, led by Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinistas. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union backed the Sandinista regime while the U.S. backed the rebels after it became clear the Sandinistas would not share power. Chamorro, like the Sandinistas, had opposed Nicarabua’s Somoza dictatorship that had murdered her husband, the publisher of La Prensa, the only independent newspaper still published in the Central American State. She had been appointed by the Sandinistas as one of two right-wing representatives to the Ortega-led junta that officially ruled until Ortega’s election as President in 1985, but when it became apparent they had no real power, she and the other conservative resigned in 1980. She is credited as President with maintaining a constitutional republic, reestablishing international banking relationships and ending hyperinflation. Ortega was elected President again in 2007, promising not to rule as a dictator again, but he has instead been tyrannical, as I have posted. Chamorro fled the increasing persecution in Nicaragua in 2023.

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