The Chávez-sponsored group of countries known by its Spanish acronym ALBA (Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador), for its part, has been losing ascendancy in the realm of diplomacy, too. The phenomenon became evident at the recent session of the Latin American Commission on Human Rights, during which the Chavista club -- led on that occasion by Ecuador -- failed to mobilize support for an initiative aimed at restricting the Commission's capacity to seek extra-governmental financing. The purpose of that move was to make the Commission fully dependent on state funding and thereby undermine the autonomy thereof.
The setback of ALBA was qualified as "a major success for the region's democracies" by José Miguel Vivanco, head of the Latin America office of the NGO Human Rights Watch, who further noted that the group remained "fully isolated" in that attempt.
Adding shame to injury, in the session of the Geneva-based UN Council on Human Rights, held in March this year, Venezuela had the loathsome privilege of being the only country that voted -- unsuccessfully -- against renewing the mandate of the commission that carries out an investigation into the atrocities perpetrated by the Syrian regime. Venezuela also dissociated itself from a resolution -- adopted by consensus -- that created a commission charged with probing human rights violations in North Korea. Venezuela was, moreover, one of two countries that voted against prolonging the mandate of the independent expert charged with enquiring into human rights abuses in Iran.
True, if Venezuela suffered isolation in the Human Rights Council, the reason was that because of the rotation mechanism under which that UN body operates, other conspicuous human rights bashers (Russia, China, Iran, Cuba) didn't have a seat at that session. All the same, Venezuela stood out for being, on that occasion, what the Geneva newspaper Le Temps characterized as a "hindrance" in the work of the UN Human Rights Council.
The waning ascendancy of the Bolivarian model, however, goes unnoticed to Chávez-designated successor and current president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who has shown a tendency to pay little heed to facts and rational analysis.
Thus, after attributing the election of Pope Francis to Chávez's intercession vis-à-vis Jesus Christ in the other world, after recurrently denouncing conspiracies orchestrated by the opposition and the "Empire" (i.e. the U.S.) without submitting any evidence whatsoever, after promising to embalm Hugo Chávez's body while ignoring the technical impossibility of doing so, President Maduro indulged in wishful thinking and vaunted what he claimed to be Chávez's undented international prestige. "I am," Maduro said, "in a position to give testimony of the passion and love that [Chávez] used to generate wherever he went."
Given such a chasm between alleged certitudes and ostensible realities, the deterioration of the Venezuelan economy and political life may still have some way to go before the Chavista leadership recognizes the need to radically change course.
