While the day shone on other leaders, April was twilight for some leaders who had shone in Latin America. The region focused its attention on Lula’s pretentious attempt to self-postulate as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
Regional attention was also on the presidential election that took place in Paraguay. The protagonists of these events are in the political day, while night falls for other leaders. Darkness seems final about the former Peruvian president Alexander Toledoand it is possible that it also fell on the Venezuelan dissident Juan Guaido.
Alejandro Toledo, entering the same prison in handcuffs where he is Alberto Fujimori, in addition to Pedro Castillo, shows a country in which the political leadership piles up in the field of crime. The exception is the interim presidents Valentín Paniagua and Francisco Sagasti, for having passed through the presidency without stains of corruption or other illegal acts. But the case of Toledo, who was a fugitive in the United States and was extradited on charges of having collected 35 million dollars in bribes, is particularly disturbing due to his personal history and his contribution to the politics and economy of Peru. .
Of indigenous blood and humble origins, he was discovered by a foundation that gave him a scholarship. Thus he arrived at Stanford University. Back in Peru he became the main adversary of the Fujimori regime, whom he faced at the polls. Mass protests over an attempted fraud they put Fujimori to flight and the following election was won by Toledo, with the image of the architect of the despot’s fall.
In the five years he held the presidency, Toledo recomposed the democratic institutionality and consolidated the market economic model that Fujimori had imposed. That first five-year period of the 21st century gave stability to the Peruvian economy, beginning a long period of growth. But, apparently, while he was doing all that, he was also collecting million-dollar bribes. See Toledo enter jail handcuffed further weakened confidence in democracy from a country where society saw too many presidents parade through courts and end up in prison.
The latest images of Juan Guaidó. Running from his country like he was an outlaw and entering Colombia irregularly, like a shadow of the thousands that cross borders escaping from hunger or violence. This is how Guaidó entered the neighboring country, where they pushed him towards the United States.
With no one by his side, the man who had led the Venezuelan opposition crossed the hall of the Miami airport, where no one was waiting for him. This is how the man who the polls went from granting 80 percent popularity to the current four percent who seems to mark the end of him arrived in the United States. Guaidó’s loneliness denounces the pettiness of the opposition leadership. And his troubled passage through Colombia leaves doubts about Gustavo Petro’s relationship with Nicolás Maduro.
The international conference on Venezuela that the Colombian president had organized did not include representatives of the opposing Venezuelan factions. But having turned his back on Guaidó when he arrived fleeing from imminent danger to his life or his freedom, is a bad sign from the Colombian president.
The last time Guaidó had been in the neighboring country, he was treated as head of state and supported in his attempt to bring trucks with humanitarian aid into Venezuela from Cúcuta. At the same time, from Brazilian territory, convoys with food and medicine tried to reach Santa Elena de Uairén. But Chavista repression managed to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.
Guaidó directed that operation and had the Colombian support, where now they turned their backs on him. The regional and world press paid little attention to the solitary journey of someone who, until recently, was central to the Latin American political scene.
What happened to Juan Guaidó? because that star is extinguished whose brilliance dazzled? Who had been the youngest incumbent that the National Assembly of Venezuela had, seemed to possess the vigor and mettle that would overthrow the rogue Maduro regime.
The number of countries that recognized him as “interim president” grew rapidly in the world after his proclamation. extinguished the star of Henrique CaprilesMaría Corina Machado, Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledesma, the opposition muscle was concentrated in Guaidó.
His Obama-like and his energetic and at the same time serene speech generated a widespread sensation that the leader who would overthrow the Venezuelan dictatorship had appeared. His popularity was growing and no opposition leader would have dared to challenge him for a presidential candidacy if free elections had been held at that time. But each attack against the regime that ended in failure was undermining the leadership of the “president in charge.”
The “mother of all battles” raised by Guaidó was the entry of trucks with humanitarian aid from Brazil and Colombia. Like a Bolívar directing the battle, he had personally traveled to Cúcuta to direct the operation. When it comes to food and medicine, calculated that the military would split and that supporters of the entry of humanitarian aid for so many people who needed it would be imposed. But once again, the military front held together. And the repression left the trucks on the other side of the borders.
From then on, Guaidó’s leadership declined. During 2022, the other opposition leaders ignored him. And now, threatened by the regime and with María Corina Machado politically resurrected and leading the polls, the dissident leadership once again turned its back on him. That he has slipped away like a shadow across the border into Colombia and that Gustavo Petro will destroy himseems to mark the end of a leadership bowed down by the brutality of the regime and also by the pettiness and misery of its own comrades.
But not all the twilights of leadership these days had bleak scenes like those of Toledo and Guaidó. TO Cristina Kirchner She was applauded by a packed theater. However, after clapping and cheering, realizing that she had heard no crucial announcements and no ideas for reversing the unbearable decline of the governmentmany left feeling that they had actually witnessed the twilight act of leadership.
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