January: The résumé
January is over now, the first month of the year and the longest — didn’t you think that this month felt eternal? If you were pondering what happened to you in 2018 that you missed the first month of 2019, here is a brief and not at all formal summary of the events that definitely made this eternal January the best (or worst) month of the year:
(Hello, you can read the 2018 summary here)
New year, new president
Brazil was throwing a good party on the last day of 2018 but they still had to say “Hello” to a new head of Government: Jair Messias Bolsonaro is from January 1 at the head of the Executive of the country of samba, garotas and a football not so well played. Bolsonaro was not a good boy during campaign and for that reason he was not so loved by many: while some saw in him a ‘Messiah’ who would come to save Brazil from the quagmire of corruption left by his predecessors; others see in him an authoritarian being “the South American Hitler” and a true pal for Donald Trump: a misogynistic, ultraconservative, macho and even terrifying profile.
The fight against the ever’s ghosts
Latin America is a well-known space on this planet because here converges a ghost whose inhabitants have not managed to escape easily: corruption; And beginning this year we realized what corruption and interests are capable of doing. In Peru during the first days of 2019, the then fiscal Pedro Chavarry gave a tremendous gift to two of his workers who were investigating the dense web of corruption in the Andean country; the investigator fired Rafael Vela and José Domingo Pérez because they were supposedly disrespecting institutional hierarchies.
The event brought with it an avalanche of reactions and demonstrations that ended up linking Chavarry with the Fujimori dynasty. Amid the pressure of public opinion that demanded answers, the prosecutor reinstated Vela and Pérez to their positions and finally resigned.
I wish the same could be said of the Colombian prosecutor, Néstor Humberto Martínez, who, although apparently covered in corruption until the occiput, continues to insist that this is not the case and that the evidence showing his links with Odebrecht, the Aval Group, the ad hoc prosecutor and the dead with cyanide are part of a matter of mere ‘political persecution’. Here the many marches that have been made to ask for his resignation have not been as effective as those of Peru, so this intense corrupt melodrama in Colombia has not yet closed its first act.
Violence is back to the coffee country’s streets
Following in Colombia, the country lived in January what it feels like to return to urban violence after a car with 80 kilos of pentolite detonated in the General Santander’s cadet school. The bombing left a balance of 22 dead — including the actual material author — and at least 60 people injured.
The government of Iván Duque attributed the fact to the guerrilla of the ELN who then gave the reason to the results of the investigation and in a very arrogant way made known to the public opinion that “the dead looked for it”; Duque, neither short nor lazy asked that the guerrilla delegates that belonged to the negotiating team that were looking for peace deals since the past Government in Cuba, to return to Colombian territory and pay for the fact.
The country of the two presidents
In this summary it was a fact to highlight the work of a country that has been battling at least 20 years to return to democracy: Venezuela, which felt January as a crucial month for its recent history. This story is curious to tell:
After some questioned elections in May 2018, Nicolás Maduro was about to assume again and for another six years as president of the Venezuelans. Before that happened, a block of countries of the American continent known as the ‘Lima Group’ sought to reverse that investiture as it should and ended up recognizing the Venezuelan National Assembly as the only legitimate power in the Caribbean country. The same happened in the OAS.
Until then, it was not clear who the demand was: whether from the Lima Group for not allowing Maduro to take over as president, or from Maduro himself, despite the intense crisis his country is experiencing thanks to his rapturous and “mature” management he was going to be president again because he wanted it; and so it was, he arrived on January 10 and Maduro “renewed” his mandate. However, the legitimate Venezuelan Parliament said “no sir”, and the leader of the AN, Juan Guaidó, spoke and called for the support of all in Venezuela to get back to democracy in the most peaceful and collective way possible.
In marches called by the opposition — in which at least 40 people died and another 900 were arrested — ,on January 23 Guaidó backed his constitutional powers as leader of the Venezuelan Congress and was sworn in as interim president of the oil nation. The fact was applauded by everyone that the world was fragmented in two: those who were with Guiadó and his plan of return to democracy and those who were with Maduro and his eternal and not at all calm regime; The United States spoke as never before and supported the president in charge and began to actively corral the regime.
An authentic tantrum in the USA
About the United States there is someone there expert in the subject of tantrums, someone ready to give us a chair on the subject: Donald Trump; that maintains its threat in declaring a state of emergency so that finally funds are destined to build its border wall with Mexico — be it steel, be it wood, whatever it may be, but he wants its wall. People began to believe in their desire when a new caravan of migrants left Honduras during the first weeks of 2019, although this did not work because of the tension in the United States. it keeps.
Despite the tantrums and caravans, Trump does not have it easy because he is constantly faced with the Democrats in Parliament who are not giving in at any point; thanks to both parties the closure of the Administration remained 35 days without agreements; and in fact, the federal apparatus was temporarily reopened to see if this would lead to negotiations and Trump showed his triumphalist attitude as only he knows during the State of the Union speech on February 5.
What if he (Trump) can not reach an agreement with the Democrats? Well, that would be a low blow for Trump and a great and long breathe for his opponents in the US Parliament in the face of the 2020 presidential elections. As part of the public opinion blamed the leader of the American Union for the shutdown and applauded the work of Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. But, I think we have not seen everything about Trump yet. Will he declare the emergency to build the wall?
THANK YOU FOR READING.
You can also read the original story in my blog. Here.
