Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures next to Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel during their meeting at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, May 2018. Marco Bello / REUTERS
Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro, Foreign Policy: Venezuela’s Suicide
Lessons From a Failed State
Consider two Latin American countries. The first is one of the region’s oldest and strongest democracies. It boasts a stronger social safety net than any of its neighbors and is making progress on its promise to deliver free health care and higher education to all its citizens. It is a model of social mobility and a magnet for immigrants from across Latin America and Europe. The press is free, and the political system is open; opposing parties compete fiercely in elections and regularly alternate power peacefully. It sidestepped the wave of military juntas that mired some Latin American countries in dictatorship. Thanks to a long political alliance and deep trade and investment ties with the United States, it serves as the Latin American headquarters for a slew of multinational corporations. It has the best infrastructure in South America. It is still unmistakably a developing country, with its share of corruption, injustice, and dysfunction, but it is well ahead of other poor countries by almost any measure.
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Update: ‘I’ll walk in my broken shoes’: Mom, daughter flee Venezuela (AP)
WNU Editor: My must read commentary/analysis for today.
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