Time is the worst enemy of political projects. Successful cycles, as it begins to show its weak flanks. And failures, much more, because he cruelly exposes his decadence. This is what is happening with the summit of regional presidents organized by the Argentinian government this week.

The invitation of the frayed Alberto Fernández, in his frightening fourth year of government, to his colleagues in Latin American power shows a group of presidents overwhelmed by similar economic and social crises where three of them stand out: the Venezuelan Nicola Maduro; Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega and the Cuban Miguel Diaz Canel. In addition to keeping their countries in extreme poverty, their regimes have pushed them underground into authoritarianism.

Cuba had already been one for a long time with Fidel Castro. But Chavismo and Ortega have collapsed Venezuela and Nicaragua to the point of making them dictatorships as well. Electoral fraud, puppet parliaments and modified constitutions. Opposition leaders and dissidents killed or exiled. And the formula of left populism that is repeated in the cosmic belt of the south: rich rulers with poor societies.

Alberto Fernández’s karma as president has always been to want to look a certain way Nestor Kirchner, of who was chief of staff. Sometimes to please Cristina, and sometimes to challenge and irritate her. So far, these are all failed experiments. But he wants to try again with the top of the CELAC, this is what they call the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. And here it is again.

With a candid spirit, he tries to trace a historical parable between this meeting of CELAC with that Summit of the Americas in which Néstor Kirchner played on November 4 and 5, 2005 in Mar del Plata. At that time, with the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez and in Brazilian Lula Da Silvajoined forces to overthrow the FTAA, a free trade initiative led by the United States and its then president: George W. Bush.

Kirchner, Lula and Chávez developed at that time a political and diplomatic strategy to freeze the American project, which was supported by Canada, Colombia (chaired by Alvaro Uribe) and Mexico, ruled by the businessman Vincent Fox. They added Venezuela’s negative vote to the Mercosur four and stopped the initiative, which could only move forward if it had absolute consensus.

Those were very different circumstances than today. Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela were beginning to show the first signs of economic recovery after the collapse at the turn of the century. Kirchner boasted of a budget and trade surplus, and inflation was in the double digits. Chávez inflation did not reach 15% and oil managed to keep poverty below 38%. The symptoms of despotism that have destroyed these economic parameters have still gone unnoticed.

In addition to pooling votes against Bush’s FTAA, Kirchner and Chávez held a parallel summit they called Peoples Summit, and they secretly called “Stop Bush”. Since Fidel Castro’s Cuba was prevented from participating in the meeting of the Americas, the Argentine president has mandated Luis D’Elia serve as a link with the Cuban leader. Fidel was not in Mar del Plata but he was part of the plan to defeat “Yankee imperialism”. Great men, the Latin American heads of state thought they were descended from the Sierra Maestra.

they set up a “Dawn Train”, who traveled from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata with Peronist leaders, piqueteros and celebrities from the Creole left. Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez, Uruguayan Daniel Viglietti and Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica took it slow (Néstor’s high-speed train remained in the project). But the stars were then the candidate for the presidency of Bolivia, Evo Moralesand Argentina Diego Maradona. There was guitar, various drinks and chants from the stands against Bush. Evo and Diego flanked Hugo Chávez as the Venezuelan gave his speech at the World Cup stadium. It was just teenage revelry.

Maradona gave his foot to the Venezuelan. “Argentines have dignity; Let’s kick Bush out,” he shouted, immediately handing the microphone to Chávez. Standing on stage, the phrase echoed throughout the World Cup stadium. And also in Washington, of course.

“FTAA, FTAA, FTAA, to hell with it,” Chávez concluded amid the uproar. If necessary, he repeated the slogan and ended with a question to the crowd. “Who buried the FTAA? The peoples of Latin America”. A few hours later, the five votes against the FTAA consummated the formality and the FTAA came to nothing.

No stadium and no crowds. Without train, without guitar and without Maradona, Alberto Fernández tries to give a little oxygen to his management in agony with this summit in times of economic debacle. He has the relief of the company of Lula, who arrives this Sunday and with whom he will meet on Monday.

The Brazilian president has just started his third term and counts as a political asset the institutional disaster that the former president’s activists have attempted Jair Bolsonaro. They took over the Planalto Palace, the Parliament and the Supreme Court building for a few hours. The outgoing justice minister is imprisoned for collusion and there are legislative demands that Bolsonaro be extradited by the United States and clarify to Brazil what his responsibility is in the institutional coup staged by his supporters. On the left as on the right, populisms only bring misfortunes and setbacks to the democracies of the region.

Of course, the real litmus test for Alberto Fernández will be showing himself in a public and political partnership with Maduro, Ortega and Díaz Canel. They retained none of the economic and social advantages that their predecessors had, and they consolidated and even perfected their worst features.

Venezuela it now has the third highest annual inflation on the planet (it was 156% in 2022), and poverty exceeds 100%. In a process of increasing repression, Cuba Last year, he arrested more than 2,700 people, accused of having organized a demonstration against the dictatorship. And the wedding of Daniel and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua holds the unbeatable record of jailing the seven most competitive opponents in the last election. With no opponents, they ended up with another re-election. And they have already been in power for 21 years.

The two decades that have elapsed between this Summit of the Americas and this meeting of CELAC mark two fundamental certainties. The countries ruled by Néstor Kirchner, Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro continue to deteriorate economically and socially. The deterioration of the variables is a constant in most Latin American countries.

But there is another aspect that is also evident in the comparison. It is the difference in political volume between these leaders and the ineffective leaders of today. Next to Kirchner, Chávez and Castro, the distance that exists with Alberto Fernández, Nicolás Maduro and Miguel Díaz-Canel is notorious. They are the authentic decadents of the populism of the regional left.

In the case of Argentina, in addition to Fernández’s situation of growing weakness, decadence finds Cristina Kirchner in a downward curve of political strength and very complicated with the sentence of six years in prison for fraud against the state in the cause the roadan episode of corruption that demonstrates an advantage for our country: the functioning of Justice retains signs of vitality that Cuba and Venezuela have long since ceased to have.

Cristina’s judicial fragility also triggers symptoms in the Kirchner leaders that sometimes arouse astonishment. This is the case of the ambassador in Santiago de Chile, the lawyer, writer and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Raphael Bielsa. This week he was summoned by the Chilean Foreign Ministry to draw attention to complaints the Argentine diplomat made during a meeting with Chilean lawmakers. The initial reason was the suspension of a mining project between the two countries, but Bielsa went further.

The ambassador reproached the legislators for the treatment that Chilean politicians and the press of this country usually give to the question of the Malvinas (they use the word Falklands refer to and do not add to the Malvinas side, if applicable). And he also complained about the mistreatment of Cristina Kirchner. “I cannot let the vice-president of my country be called ‘chorra'”, explained Bielsa, who was the first chancellor of Néstor Kirchner. It is clear that the defensive discourse of law It does not spread too much on the mainland.

It is not easy to determine the most correct path that the Argentine foreign policy. The regional bravado of eighteen years ago took us through territories where leadership is exercised by countries like China and Russia. None of them is today synonymous with certainty and reliability.

It is true that, as Hugo Chávez shouted then, the FTAA agreement has been buried forever and gone to hell. But when we look at the inflation rates, the budget deficit and above all the poverty in our countries, we realize the extent of the collapse. In those distant days, many things happened. But none of them looked like a victory.

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