The Biden administration last week rewarded the two dictatorial regimes in Latin América most rabidly opposed to American values, Cuba and Venezuela, and punished one of the last regional governments that espouses support for the United States, Guatemala.
By Washington Examiner – Mike González and Mateo Haydar
May 25, 2022
The last part came as no surprise to the two of us. As we both heard from the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, at his presidential palace late last month, the Biden administration has been trying to destabilize his elected government for months. Still, the dramatic moves in Latin América this week were unexpected.
In the space of 24 hours, the Biden administration announced that it was easing economic sanctions on the Marxist dictatorship in Venezuela, increasing consular services with and effectively allowing tourism and increased remittances to communist-run Cuba, but had also decided to bar the new attorney general of Guatemala from visiting the U.S. Biden’s rough treatment of Guatemala’s government, and its coddling of the region’s pro-China and pro-Russia Marxist dictatorships, fly in the face of reason. Giammattei’s government is pro-Taiwan, the last country in Central América to spurn communist China, and it is also pro-Israel. Most importantly, it is pro-American.
Yet at the palace on April 26, Giammattei accused the American ambassador to Guatemala, William Popp, “of meeting with indigenous leaders” to plan to overthrow him. “They want to topple my government,” he told the two of us in Spanish, using the unambiguous verb “derrocar.” Giammattei told us that the Biden administration was trying to introduce in Guatemala a version of the multiculturalism that the administration and its domestic allies push in the U.S.
That is what is known as “indigenism,” a nationalism that prioritizes the tribe over the nation-state the way critical race theory exults the racial category in the U.S. Giammattei told us he has already decided to ask the U.S. Agency for International Development to leave Guatemala because of its promotion of indigenism. A review of USAID programs confirms that the agency is heavily orienting itself to working with indigenous groups and other leftist activist groups and nongovernmental organizations that, business leaders also tell us, do little to promote, if not outright interfere with, growth and foreign direct investment in Guatemala.
While strengthening civil society should be a critical pillar of USAID’s work, the agency should not be in the business of funding an activist agenda. USAID says it wants to “redefine its relationship with the government of Guatemala” by pursuing “substantive partnerships” with stakeholders outside the central government. “They want to do here what they have done in Chile,” Giammattei told us, in a clear reference to the current attempt by the Chilean Left to change Chile’s Constitution and turn the country into a “plurinational state.”
As many critics of the indigenist movement point out, collective rights are deeply anti-democratic. The Chilean political analyst Ricardo Israel warns that Chile’s proposed constitution would be the “first postmodern constitutions, since it is identity rather than citizenship that will define rights.”
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Read More: Washington Examiner – The Biden administration placates Latin American foes while pummeling American friends
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