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Bloomberg
Until recently, it would have been unthinkable for a majority of Latin American countries to rally around US President Donald Trump’s push for regime change in Caracas.
In a quick succession of statements, eleven Latin countries followed Trump’s lead to recognize Juan Guaido, the leader of Venezuela’s national assembly, as the country’s interim president. That’s a far cry from the traditional support for non-intervention and the suspicion with which Washington has been greeted in a region with a long history of US intervention.
The shift stems in part from the receding “pink tide” of left-leaning governments which has given way to administrations eager for closer ties with the US, and also from the sheer scale of the tragedy in Venezuela, said Benjamin Gedan, a former South America director at the White House’s National Security Council during the Obama administration.
“This is an extraordinary development. Non-interventionism is almost an article of religious faith for Latin American governments,” Gedan said. “This isn’t merely a question of applying democratic principles, this is a question of countries bearing the brunt of the negative
consequences.”
Around 1.6 million Venezuelans have fled their country since 2015, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, mainly to neighboring Latin American countries.