Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Published by Council on Foreign Relations

Moving fast in his waning months, President Obama concluded he had not done enough to overturn U.S. policy toward Cuba and ensure that his new policies will survive. So he has issued a new “Presidential Policy Directive” that goes even further.

Two things are striking about it. First, what the United States gets in return from the Castro regime is exactly and precisely nothing. This is not a bargained-for exchange; Castro makes no promises, allows no one to get out of prison, does not even make a vague allusion to reform. Nothing. This is because Cuba policy is, for the President, less an exercise in statesmanship than the true product of ideological politics. This policy is a remedy, a medicine, an apology, to make up for what he sees as decades of American sin toward Cuba.

Of course, in Mr. Obama’s imagination “Cuba” means “Castro;” the Cuban people are really not an actor here. The benefits of all the commerce that will now grow go directly to the regime. For example, the hotels that Mr. Obama wishes to fill with American tourists are owned by the Cuban military. No matter, it seems.

One can see glimpses of all this in the actual text of the Directive. For example, take these lines: “we are not seeking to impose regime change on Cuba; we are, instead, promoting values that we support around the world while respecting that it is up to the Cuban people to make their own choices about their future.”

Brazilians Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff could end up in prison for corruption. Especially Lula. Also the Spaniard Mariano Rajoy and the Argentine Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, if prosecutors prove the charges that hang over their heads.

Why go on? At this moment, there are more than 30 European and Latin American heads or former heads of state in prison, expatriated, or suspected of embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and other coarser ways to steal the resources of society for personal benefit or to foment political patronage. I’m not even including the Africans and many Asians, because the list would be too long.

The usual scheme consists of a criminal triangle. There are some politicians or functionaries who have the authority to grant juicy state contracts and there are some businessmen who are willing to undertake those projects but not to win them in open, clean and truly competitive bids but through tricks and deals. Between them there’s usually a “bagman” who negotiates with the businessmen in the name of the politicians, receives the bribe, splits it, and keeps a slice.

Last August, the Secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Emilio Alvarez Icaza, criticized the state of democracy in Ecuador. Alvarez pointed out that Ecuador’s democracy enjoys electoral democracy but as a whole, democracy is weakened by repression of freedom of expression and freedom of association. Alvarez condemned in strong terms, the fact that cartoonists and other media outlets are outlawed if they criticize the president.

Of course Alvarez’s declarations were only the tip of the iceberg in a country where formal democracy works as a façade better than in any other country in the region. However, Ecuador has been under the radar, hardly detected by the international community. Furthermore, the regional anti-democratic environment that has prevailed in the last two decades has sustained this abysmal state of democracy in Ecuador.

Last December the officially controlled National Assembly approved fifteen constitutional amendments that established that all public offices could be reelected indefinitely. This applies also to the president but only after May, 2017, which effectively excludes Rafael Correa from running in the next presidential elections. However, Correa could run indefinitely after 2021.

Diarios de referencia de diferentes países reflexionan sobre el valor de la verdad a raíz del éxito de campañas políticas basadas –por lo menos, en parte– en mentiras flagrantes. De esta forma, los medios profundizan en su propia crisis más allá de la disrupción tecnológica y de los cambios en los modelos de negocio. Lo que está en juego no es la forma sino el fondo: la misma sustancia de las sociedades democráticas. 

En los últimos meses, el mundo occidental ha asistido a dos hechos políticos de gran impacto: el Brexit y la nominación de Trump como candidato republicano a la Casa Blanca. Por lo que respecta al Brexit, las declaraciones de Nigel Farage en sus primeras reacciones al resultado podrían haber causado un gran escándalo. Sin embargo, el reconocimiento de que, una vez fuera de la Unión Europea, Gran Bretaña no dispondría de los millones de libras prometidos para su sistema sanitario no parece que haya tenido mayores consecuencias. Y si Trump insiste en que Obama es uno de los fundadores del Estado Islámico tampoco parece que genere un revuelo especial. Episodios como estos han suscitado un debate en los medios de comunicación, una discusión que en buena parte trata sobre el papel de los mismos medios. ¿Cómo ha podido suceder?, se preguntan los periodistas. ¿Hasta dónde llega nuestra responsabilidad? ¿Somos culpables?

En esta discusión tiene un lugar importante el artículo en el que la directora de The Guardian, Katharine Viner, rescata el concepto de post-truth politics. Si bien la mentira ha existido siempre y los políticos la han utilizado, Viner señala que la novedad ahora consiste en que ha desaparecido la tensión: se reconoce que se ha mentido como si tal cosa y, además, el público lo acepta sin mayores problemas. El artículo de Viner, “How technology disrupted the truth”, ha tenido un cierto eco y, de hecho, el debate sobre la posverdad ha encontrado un hueco en otros medios de referencia (The Economist, Le Monde, Slate, Washington Post...). Este debate –que ya es relevante que se produzca– pone sobre la mesa la estructura básica de nuestras democracias e invita a considerar los cambios que ha sufrido en los últimos años.

Discurso emocional