The leaders of Mexico and Brazil are shamefully soft on Putin. It will haunt them | Opinion

It’s no coincidence that President Biden did not mention one single Latin American country in his State of the Union address when he listed the nations that have taken active steps to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The response from the region’s biggest countries to Russia’s attack has been pitiful.

In his annual address to Congress on Tuesday night, Biden said that “France, Germany, Italy, as well as countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and many others — even Switzerland — are inflicting pain on Russia and supporting the people of Ukraine.”

He added that, “together, along with our allies, we are right now enforcing powerful economic sanctions.”

But, unfortunately, the leaders of Latin America’s two biggest democracies — Brazil and Mexico — not only refused to impose sanctions on Russia for its inexcusable invasion of a sovereign and democratic country, but personally failed to condemn it.

Interestingly, Brazil and Mexico are led by democratically-elected authoritarian populists who come from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Their reaction to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine is further evidence that the new ideological divide in the 21st century is not between left and right, but between democracy and dictatorship.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist who is close to former President Trump and had visited Putin in Moscow last month, said several days after the invasion that he would remain “neutral” in the Ukraine crisis.

At a Feb. 27 press conference, Bolsonaro added that Brazil buys much of its fertilizer from Russia, and that he does not want his country’s economy to be affected by the war.

Bolsonaro also refused to sign an Organization of American States resolution condemning the invasion, which was supported by the United States and 23 countries.

Mexico’s left-of-center populist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said, “We are not going to take any economic reprisal [against Russia] because we want to maintain good relations with all governments in the world.”

While Lopez Obrador criticized “all invasions,” he refused to explicitly condemn Russia’s invasion. Mexico, like Brazil, did not sign the OAS condemnation of Russia.

Likewise, Mexico and Brazil were not among the 94 countries that on March 1 sponsored a non-binding resolution at the 193-country United Nations General Assembly to censure Russia, although they joined the 141 countries that voted for it on Wednesday.

A total of 12 Latin American presidents had failed to explicitly criticize the Russian invasion by Feb. 28, four days after the invasion, according to a chart published by the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas.

They included the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, who openly supported Putin’s invasion, and the democratically-elected presidents of El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia.

Argentina initially refrained from criticizing Russia, but changed course a few days after the invasion.

Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador and other countries in the region criticized Putin’s aggression from the start. Also, Chile’s young president-elect, Gabriel Boric, 36, until recently a far-left student activist, surprised many with a categorical rejection of Putin’s invasion.

There is no excuse for the Brazilian and Mexican presidents’ failure to explicitly condemn Putin. Their “neutrality” statements are being displayed by the Russian media as tacit diplomatic support for Putin.

Brazil and Mexico have much less to lose from condemning Russia, or joining Western democracies in punishing Putin, than Russia’s European neighbors that depend heavily on Russia’s gas supplies.

What’s more, Russia ranks 36th among Mexico’s biggest export markets, way below not only the United States — the destination of about 80% of Mexico’s exports — but also countries such as Honduras and Costa Rica.

What Bolsonaro and Lopez Obrador are saying is not only morally wrong, it is politically dumb.

It is at crucial moments like these that nations, like people, form lasting bonds. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has marked a turning point in post-World War II history, and will redraw the world’s political map.

If Mexico and Brazil want to fully benefit from U.S., European and Japanese preferential trade deals, investments and technological support, and if they want to protect all countries from foreign invasions, their presidents have to rise to the occasion and at least verbally condemn Putin. To their shame, so far they have not.

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