In Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro has called on his followers to march to the drums of war against a political plot, allegedly backed by the United States, to provoke the overthrow of his increasingly unpopular authoritarian regime. In Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos is cautiously testing a partial cease-fire in the conflict with leftist FARC guerrillas in the hopes of clinching a peace deal ending five decades of warfare that has cost 220,000 lives. The contrast could not be greater, and the different ways Venezuela and Colombia view the options of war and peace reveal a deep contradiction in Latin America over how to respond to violations of basic human rights and democratic political guarantees.
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