CELAC in Buenos Aires, the sounds of silence

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

 George Orwell.

Almost a decade ago, in January 2014, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, created in Mexico in 2010 but forged by the Bolivarian axis, held its second summit in Havana.

The final document, without embarrassment from those present, made a firm call

.

That paper was signed by 29 regional leaders, among them the Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro, the Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, the Argentine Cristina Kirchner, the Ecuadorian Rafael Correa, the Bolivian Evo Morales and of course the Cubans.

It is possible to assume that the levity to proclaim those crucial principles of the system, blatantly ignoring them in practice, has gradually

Now they are trying to refound it in an effort that does not seem destined to resolve the

Silence is usually noisy and the VII CELAC summit on Tuesday of next week in Buenos Aires possibly confirms that notion.

Lula da Silva will be the most relevant figure

This is so for various and objective reasons.

He has been crowned president for the third time in the second hemispheric economy, and exposes the intention -it would be necessary to see if the possibilities exist- to lead to order a region that is experiencing a stage of

, notably extended from one country to another .

The attempted coup

The Brazilian president also arrives with a unique experience on these damages.

He has just suffered a brutal coup attempt

from a fundamentalist sector linked with his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro who understands, as that president postulated, that the Constitution or institutional limits are malleable issues and that true power lies elsewhere.

That leadership fueled an

, with a public contempt of the Executive towards justice and with the attempt to dominate it by adding at least five of its own judges to the Supreme Court to guarantee an automatic majority.

Coup supporters of Jair Bolsonaro storm the presidential palace of Planalto, in Brasilia, on January 8.

Photo: AFP

The fanatical followers of that former president have raised this contempt for the magistrates and the story of a

to demand that the military take power and overthrow Lula because they disagree with the result of the October elections.

Anarchy in its most excessive expression.

But one more for our territories.

There should be no greater lesson to defend institutions than the danger of losing them.

But that experience can be a factor of discomfort.

The Brazilian president will meet in Buenos Aires with Maduro, a veteran autocrat in those same anti-republican practices with the addition

The Chavista leader has allies in the CELAC structure that

at the same time that, without prejudice, they censor Bolsonaro, demanding from Caracas or Managua the "unrestricted defense of democracy."

The Buenos Aires summit will have some important absences.

Ortega or the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who travels alone to the US, will not come. But Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel will, another challenge that will persuade them to insist on

The Cuban leader has just struck down the little that remained of the symbolic value of the Revolution in that country with a prison sentence for years against a large group of young people who protested, as in Chile, Colombia or Ecuador, against

that amplified the poverty of the people.

To solve this mess they demanded democracy.

The hand of imperialism, denounced the regime.

The Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega does not participate in the meeting in Buenos Aires, his Cuban colleague Miguel Diaz Canel would, EFE

The debate is good but it is not clear how Lula or his democratic colleagues in the region will stand up to these leaders and their methods.

If they defend the independence of justice, they could confuse their Argentine colleague, Alberto Fernández, who is attempting the same

with the highest Court of his country and for similar reasons for rejecting the rulings. 

In case there was a lack of evidence, a draft decree that proposed

and thus annul the elections was recently discovered at the home of an important ally of the former Brazilian president, Anderson Torres.

ignorance or stupidity

"Ignorance or stupidity" high-ranking sources in the Brazilian government have told this chronicler when they try to translate the movements of their Argentine neighbors, especially because of the

of meddling in the politics of other countries as happened with Pedro Castillo, proclaimed president by Buenos Aires before the Peruvian justice did.

A highly cited case in those Brazilian vertices, as well as the

, Andrés Arauz, blessed by the controversial Rafael Correa.

In Lula's opinion, and this was confirmed by his foreign minister Mauro Vieira in a long interview with this newspaper,

They would not be the only ones.

The characterization originates from the notion that democracy requires alternation and more than two successive periods "builds a dictatorship."

Far from ideological conditioning, the Brazilian came to raise this vision also to the Colombian right-winger Alvaro Uribe when he also sought to force justice to

.

Complex issue in the Buenos Aires meeting with the assistance of Evo Morales, the aforementioned Cuban leader and his Venezuelan partner who will possibly dissolve in another convenient silence.

Alberto Fernández after his assumption with Cuban leader Díaz-Canel in November 2019. Photo: EFE

The problem is that the Chilean Gabriel Boric or the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou, to cite a couple of examples, are not the same as many of the authoritarian countrymen of the Bolivarian axis convinced that the law and rights come from voting and

.

By equating them all as if they were equals, the debate dissolves.

In the midst of its opacities, it is clear that CELAC, which includes 33 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, is a maze of intertwined opinions and positions.

This tangled reality comes from the growing crisis of the republican system and of representativeness in the region, which has become

Along this path, the area has

that democracy would require to survive.

Lula has just drastically experienced the danger of this defect.

The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Photo: Reuters

A no lesser example of the absence of an initial principled agreement, such as that implied, for example, by the OAS Democratic Charter, an organization highly despised by many of the guests next week, is provided

In that country, the controversial President Castillo announced last December the closure of Congress, the establishment of a government by decree and a State of Emergency that limits individual liberties.

like the ephemeral one carried out against Hugo Chávez in April 2002 or the one detailed in the paper found in the house of Bolsonaro's ally.

Nobody accompanied the

of the Peruvian president, and in the following two hours he was dismissed and arrested.

Lula da Silva was one of the few leaders who reacted clearly to that episode, stating that Castillo

.

Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia and Argentina, on the other hand, have defended the troubled ex-president, suggesting that if Congress besieges you as happened to this fragile president, then it closes it down, just like Justice

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