Ex-leaders can play a big role in Venezuela

The recent visit by three former Latin American leaders to Venezuela has not only helped draw attention to their assertion that the region’s democracies have “abandoned” Venezuela, but has shown that former presidents can play a larger-than-expected role in pushing for democracy in Latin America.

Contrary to what one may conclude from just reading the headlines, the most relevant impact of the two-day visit to Venezuela by former presidents Andres Pastrana of Colombia, Sebastian Piñera of Chile and Felipe Calderón of Mexico last weekend wasn’t that they got significant media attention for meeting with oppositionists, and for being denied a visit to jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez.

What was much more significant was that they forced their own countries’ governments to come to their defense. After Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called the three foreign visitors bums, coup-plotters, and claimed that their trip had been paid by drug traffickers, Colombia and Chile came out with statements of support for their former presidents, despite the fact that they are government opponents at home. Colombia went a step further by saying in a Foreign Ministry statement that “we hope that Leopoldo Lopez will recover his freedom as soon as possible.”

I talked with the three former presidents after their trip to Venezuela, and — especially in the case of Pastrana and Piñera — they seemed to agree that their visit helped push their own countries to pay more attention to the violation of political freedoms in Venezuela. So far, most Latin American countries have failed to meet their commitments under regional treaties to defend democratic freedoms in the region, they said.

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