<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Buenos Aires<\/strong> | One is a former bus driver and union leader with a soft spot for Cuban-style fatigues and Cuban-style political authoritarianism. The other is a millionaire heir and soccer czar, a onetime business partner of Donald Trump who favors suits from this city\u2019s finest tailors and policies to lift up the country\u2019s once-battered private sector.<\/p>\n And while they may share a title as presidents of their respective nations, the rift between Venezuela\u2019s Nicolas Maduro and Argentina\u2019s Mauricio Macri has never been greater, defining the ideological polarization that increasingly marks South American politics these days. With Brazil and Colombia in political limbo as they await national elections, the rebound of Mr. Macri and a number of center-right governments in South America is posing a direct challenge to the old-line leftism embodied by Mr. Maduro and his late predecessor and charismatic mentor, Hugo Chavez.<\/p>\n The ideological divide is matched by a personal animosity. Mr. Macri\u2019s disdain for the embattled Mr. Maduro was on full display late last month when he all but called for his counterpart\u2019s ouster, telling reporters he wants \u201cwhat\u2019s happening in Venezuela to come to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n His comments came days after Argentina had announced it was joining Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru in pulling out of the Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR \u2014 a brainchild of Chavez.<\/p>\n The final straw \u2014 largely symbolic as the bloc had effectively lain dormant for years \u2014 seems to have been Caracas\u2019 refusal to accept Argentine diplomat Jose Octavio Bordon, a Macri nominee, as its next secretary-general.<\/p>\n The volatile Mr. Maduro, facing a massive economic and demographic crisis at home as Venezuela\u2019s oil-financed social welfare system nears collapse, meanwhile, characterized Mr. Macri and the region\u2019s other center-right presidents as puppets of Washington.<\/p>\n \u201cSome leaders of the right let themselves be pressured by the U.S. government to destroy UNASUR,\u201d he said en route to a meeting with new Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel. \u201c[If] some right-wing government tries to stab it and let it bleed to death, we social movement and revolutionaries of South America will defend it.\u201d<\/p>\n Colorful as they may be, by Mr. Maduro\u2019s standards, the comments were rather tame. In one of his infamous diatribes last year, Venezuela\u2019s head of state had labeled Mr. Macri a \u201csewer rat\u201d espousing to be the \u201cgodfather of the Venezuelan fascist right.\u201d<\/p>\n Imitating Chavez<\/p>\n In lashing out, Mr. Maduro seeks to imitate his mentor Chavez, said veteran Venezuelan diplomat Oscar Hernandez Bernalette, though Mr. Maduro\u2019s approval numbers lag his idol\u2019s maximum popularity by some 40 percentage points.<\/p>\n \u201cMaduro\u2019s attitude is little more than a bad copy of Chavez\u2019s attitude when Chavez had an audience, but he doesn\u2019t have that same audience,\u201d said Mr. Hernandez Bernalette. \u201cHis rhetoric likely reaches \u2014 and pleases the ears of \u2014 his closest collaborators and the few who back him.\u201d<\/p>\n Most Venezuelans, though, are bewildered by the president\u2019s crude rhetoric and intemperate attacks, said Mr. Hernandez Bernalette, now a prominent columnist for the El Nacional newspaper.<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Maduro\u2019s reaction always is to insult, to attack whatever president\u2019s turn it is \u2014 in this case Macri,\u201d he said. \u201cVenezuelans overall are mortified every time the head of state, of whom one expects the highest levels of conduct, [does that].\u201d<\/p>\n But beyond personal grudges, Mr. Macri is carving out a role for himself as champion a more pragmatic, conservative South America that is not instinctively hostile to the private sector, said Gustavo Cardozo, an analyst at the Argentine Center of International Studies in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n \u201cHe [wants to] focus on trade relations untainted by the kind of extremist ideology the Maduro regime has laid out,\u201d he said. \u201cMaduro constantly attacks Europe and the United States, which are very important markets. Logically, you can\u2019t be in sync with a regime that turns its back on international trade.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Macri\u2019s domestic critics, meanwhile, see a conspiracy to reverse South American integration behind the UNASUR exit, as well as behind last year\u2019s suspension of Venezuela from the Mercosur trade bloc.<\/p>\n \u201cAll that was halted to return our country to the great powers\u2019 axis of dependency,\u201d said Alicia Castro, an Argentine ambassador to Venezuela under Mr. Kirchner and Ms. Fernandez. \u201cThe goal is very clear: to destroy our region\u2019s economies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s regrettable that Argentina is aligning itself with Trump to harass and hit Venezuela,\u201d she said. \u201cIn Venezuela, there is no \u2018interruption of the democratic order\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s Washington propaganda Macri repeats like a parrot.\u201d<\/p>\n With the rhetoric showing no signs of cooling, though, the next showdown between South America\u2019s rival presidents is already under way, as Mr. Maduro\u2019s plan to hold early presidential elections on May 20 \u2014 over the objections of the Venezuelan opposition parties \u2014 did not come without commentary from Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n \u201cWe won\u2019t accept the results because that election doesn\u2019t have any validity, however much Mr. Maduro insults me,\u201d Mr. Macri warned last month. \u201cWe won\u2019t recognize [him] as a democratic president because there hasn\u2019t been any democracy in Venezuela for quite a while.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho is Macri to determine what happens in Venezuela?\u201d Mr. Maduro, predictably, shot back. \u201cA dummy of imperialism.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One is a former bus driver and union leader with a soft spot for Cuban-style fatigues and Cuban-style political authoritarianism. The other is a millionaire heir and soccer czar, a onetime business pa Buenos Aires | One is a former bus driver and union leader with a soft spot for Cuban-style fatigues and Cuban-style political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[535,536,321,34,537],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-buenos-aires","tag-mauricio-macri","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-politics","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}