“The OAS is at its worst; it could be on the verge of collapse”

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In Guatemalan politics, some fog never quite clears to reveal the hidden and often sordid underbelly of crisis. Two years ago, in the midst of an election, the country seemed to be teetering on the brink of a coup: Every month, every week, brought a new judicial attack on the process, only to be overtaken by the next. Among the protagonists were judges and prosecutors who took it upon themselves to annul candidacies and parties or kidnap entire boxes of votes, determined to construct a narrative of fraud that was not supported by international observers.

Dominican Ambassador Josué Fiallo, stationed in Washington at the time before the Organization of American States, saw firsthand and in private meetings the government’s juggling act before the international community. While President Alejandro Giammattei placed his hand on his heart to swear before foreign envoys that everything was in order, a magistrate accused his other hand of trying to buy the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, in a crude plot in which she accused Giammattei’s closest operator of literally placing money on the court’s table. Guatemala in 2023 could have been a success story in defending democracy, but “Guatemalan society has to have a conversation with itself about the institutional future of this country,” he argues. “So far, the patterns that brought them here have not changed. It is clear that something is not right.”

Fiallo gave this interview while visiting the Guatemalan capital in early July to present his new book in Spanish, “Crisis Diplomacy: Guatemala, the OAS, and Democratic Hope in 2023”, at Filgua. Not without irony, because the bulk of what he had to say is a harsh assessment of an increasingly authoritarian region: He believes that a pressure strategy that ostracizes Nicaragua and Venezuela is ineffective. Now free of his diplomatic posts, he says the regime of Nayib Bukele “is not leading anything. El Salvador is a media and digital powerhouse driven by the ego of one person who overshadows everything else,” he asserts. “In the medium and long term, it has no chance of prospering. That is going to end very badly.”

The winds blowing from the North do not strike Fiallo, who served in 2021 as president of the OAS Permanent Council, as any more encouraging: The United States, under Donald Trump, is twisting arms while threatening to withdraw from multilateral forums that his own country promoted. “It is a sign of extraordinary political immaturity,” he says. This, he adds, has only exacerbated a slowly simmering political and financial crisis in the OAS, this side of the world’s emblematic diplomatic arena. The Organization, he warns, “could be on the verge of complete collapse.”

Tell us why you are publishing this book on “crisis diplomacy” now, two years after the elections in Guatemala.

I left Washington in January 2024 and was ambassador to Costa Rica until this January. I first gathered all the official documentation before returning to Santo Domingo and devoting myself to writing. I finished in March and sent the draft to my colleagues who were at the OAS at the time, because I value their opinions. By May, it was ready. It’s almost 600 pages long; it’s a very detailed chronicle of 200 interventions. It’s not only the story of the defense of democracy in Guatemala, but also of how the region competes for attention in different crises, why certain countries are very active at one moment and not at others, how missions inform each other and reach an opposition, the different tracks of negotiation at the level of presidents, ministers, and ambassadors. All of that machinery.

It is very difficult and slow, which is why people conclude that diplomacy is a waste of time. It has a comparative disadvantage with other professions: Much of what diplomats do is prevent things from happening. There are no tangible results for the outside world to see. But for countries —especially small ones, lacking powerful economies or armies to impose their will— the only thing protecting us from arbitrariness is the rules-based international order.

The OAS has had serious problems and failures in recent years. It seemed that Guatemala was its first achievement in years in actually preserving a democratic system. Is there a manual here that can be replicated?

I don’t share your assessment. In the Peruvian crisis of 2022, too, behind the scenes, the OAS played an important role in maintaining constitutional order when President Castillo attempted what he attempted. I can go back further. What happens is what I was explaining to you: what you see from the outside. Yes, Guatemala may be an example of how to deal with crises that disrupt the democratic order. However, there were signs long before the crisis reached its peak in 2023. We need early warning systems. The OAS could implement a kind of traffic-light system to prevent things from reaching boiling point. Here, there is also a strong likelihood that Guatemala will return to its 2023 course. Guatemalan society needs to have a conversation with itself about the institutional future of this country. So far, the patterns that led them here have not changed. It is clear that something is not right.

In 2023, one of the first breaking points you identify is when Bernardo Arévalo arrived at the OAS and denounced an attempt to remove him from the process. But we are talking about a process in which other candidates had already been excluded and with shadows of possible bribery of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. It was a year of crises, plural.

That’s right. The first session was just after the first round [which took place in June 2023]. At the OAS, our collective radar was on Bogotá, adding to the security crisis in Ecuador, where the state was under siege by criminal groups. Then there was Haiti... After the first round of voting, the electoral observation mission presented its first report warning that the process had been complicated from the outset. In the Dominican Republic, we decided to pay closer attention because, for us, OAS election observation missions have been essential: Over the last decades, in 1978, in 1994, in 2020, they were instrumental in helping us avoid situations similar to these, such as electoral fraud.

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In the second session, the president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal [of Guatemala] explained the harassment they were receiving, with attempts to invalidate the political party Movimiento Semilla. She explained that electoral law establishes that parties cannot be brought to court while the process is ongoing. That was the wake-up call for most states that this is a situation we cannot ignore. That’s when we ambassadors who shared the same concern began to get together. And then many more joined us. From that critical mass of states, condemnatory resolutions emerged and negotiations began with all the other countries, including Guatemala.

Running a quick mental estimate, there were at least a dozen statements from the Permanent Council against the attacks on the process. There has been blatant electoral fraud in the region, but here there seemed to be a crisis —and a consensus— of a different nature.

By December, there was an overwhelming majority of 29 countries. But in the first vote, if you remember, we didn’t even reach 20. Here I have to mention the Caribbean countries: In CARICOM there are 14 small countries that can swing a vote either way. Most of their ambassadors are envoys to both the OAS and the White House. If you have three roles, following an issue in Guatemala, where you don’t even understand the language, and you don’t have an embassy... According to them, their democracies don’t have the same weaknesses as ours. They prefer to prioritize development, cooperation, security. It takes them a while to follow the pack. What made Guatemala special? Ignoring the will of the people was a no-go.

Secondly, the Guatemalan government demonstrated a profound inability to recognize the possibility that they could do something better. There was arrogance, a lack of humility. In closed meetings, there was never any acknowledgment that they could have intervened to prevent some of the situations that were unfolding. And that was irritating. In private, we asked them about the attempt to undermine Semilla’s registration: If the problem is the signatures, they were allowed to operate and are currently in a process. If the state makes a mistake and lets you continue and you acquire rights or obligations, then the state cannot say, “I was wrong, everything you have done is invalid.” And secondly, why pick on one party when there are surely other parties where —among thousands of signatures in an inexplicably pixelated digital verification system— we would find similar situations? Their argument was that the attorney general was independent, that they could not influence that. And we said to them: Why is there not even a public statement? You are within your right to say: This is my opinion.

Do you think Alejandro Giammattei’s government was playing two hands?

Of course. They expected the Public Prosecutor’s Office to succeed in invalidating Semilla and to obtain a court ruling that Semilla could not compete, and that the third candidate could be promoted as an option. And the second was that, if they couldn’t invalidate Semilla, they could remove the preliminary hearing against him and the vice-presidential candidate and throw them in jail. We believed that wholeheartedly.

…that, in reality, they were pulling for the Public Prosecutor’s Office with all their weight, but they maintained a public illusion that, no, everything is in order here.

Of course — and that it was an internal matter that no one should get involved in. It’s an argument we all used at some point, but no-one forced Guatemala to request an observation mission or to sign the Inter-American Democratic Charter, in which the state committed to defending democracy. All this talk of “they want to impose themselves on us from outside, interference, sovereignty” is just fantastic. That repetition was for their own domestic audience, which they seemed to have to appease. It didn’t work out well for them.

How do you conduct diplomacy with a government with huge shadows of corruption? Since 2021, with the U.S. “Engel list,” there have been debates about the criteria for sanctions, and Central American states have appealed to sovereignty.

These arguments are the result of internal dynamics. States have to be very careful with sanctions because bilateral relations are above many political considerations: When there is a problem, you have to call them to talk. There is significant migration and trade that warrants fluid conversation. Third, we act in common diplomatic forums, where decisions require consensus. If country X points the finger and says, “Country Y is ruled by a bunch of charlatans,” then the bilateral relationship is not going to thrive. You’re going to have serious problems.

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Did the Biden administration go too far with its sanctions policy?

I don’t know, because we are not involved in that process; we are not informed.

But you observed it in the community of nations. What impact did it have?

It carries weight coming from the United States, which is the regional leader. It’s simply a sign of the existing power. We know how the gringos operate, too. For the gringos, as you explained just now, what are the criteria for establishing certain things, what are the right moments to do so? We have also had people who we were eager to get our hands on, some who are facing legal proceedings, some who have since been let off with nothing. Excuse me, but the gringos do not carry the word of God. They have their interests and they defend them very well.

Politics is the exchange of interests.

Yes, but it is also about principles. Let’s make that clear. Certainly, interests weigh heavily and are decisive, but there are countries that want to live according to their principles.

Here in Guatemala, a few weeks ago, the European Union sanctioned members of the Foundation Against Terrorism. This drew threats against the ambassador, including imprisonment. Sanctions policy was important in the international strategy to prevent a coup. How would you assess its effect in this country?

If an individual is sanctioned, it’s symbolic: They come and go. If the constitutional order is disrupted, in that process we leave you without rights. But to apply pressure, we go from 0 to 100 in no time. That’s part of what I criticize. We need gradual scales where the intensity of the pressure is increased to try to get the actor to change: to stop doing it completely or be definitively invalidated. Those actors and shell organizations, which are very loud, which go to extremes in search of conflict and polarization, are puppets moved by the big interests that converge in each country.

If we look at the cases of Nicaragua, Venezuela, or Cuba, what fruits have the sanctions strategies borne?

In the case of the Venezuelan regime, what is happening inside is unjustifiable, and we have to look to history: Venezuela was never a democracy. In Venezuela, there has been a process of confrontation between classes and groups. Chávez died; Maduro continues with his madness. Seven million Venezuelans have left. Who encouraged them to leave? The U.S. sanctions. Colombia, the Darién, and the United States opened the door for them. If there were elections in Venezuela today, who would they vote for? Those who are there. There are now fewer people in Venezuela. To divvy up what is left.

It is much more complex than saying “tyranny must be removed.” Cuba has been resisting sanctions for 60 years or more. What has changed? The worst thing is that turning them into enemies, with whom there is no dialogue whatsoever, does not allow for reaching minimum agreements in a transition process that will happen at some point — generationally, whatever you want. The gringos are wrong and it hasn’t worked for them, but they have a political base that they have to feed, and it’s in South Florida.

Let’s go to El Salvador. Last year, a constitutional breakdown culminated in the unconstitutional inauguration of Bukele on June 1. The entire international community has remained silent. Why?

I wrote about El Salvador in my book. It’s quite simple: The president’s popularity is his shield. There isn’t enough discontent or concern to generate critical mass. That’s it.

But you told me that politics isn’t just about interests, but also about principles.

There is concern, there are comments. They could be more relevant, more vocal, of course.

How does the international community feel behind the scenes toward Bukele?

I can tell you about the perception I had at the time. El Salvador is not an example of anything. It is not leading anything. El Salvador is a media and digital powerhouse driven by the ego of one person who overshadows everything else. There are groups within society who are willing to give up some of their rights in exchange for a promise to satisfy a historical need: security. And that works very well up to a certain point. Historically, it has been proven that once the undesirable evil that we are going to eradicate is identified, it mutates and attacks other areas. And that authoritarian tendency only seeks to grow. In the short term, it may seem very satisfying; in the medium and long term, it has no chance of succeeding. It will end very badly.

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If you and other diplomats in your circle are clear about this, why has the international community not taken a firm stance?

I think it is an experiment to see how seriously the issue of security is taken. Now, the human cost takes time to accumulate and have an impact. It will generate hatred, resentment, more violence, and it will not end there. It has never ended well. Humanity’s successes come when we care for people and protect rights.

In your book, you criticize Luis Almagro, former secretary of the OAS, between the lines: At one point, you allude to his possible “regrets.” How do you assess his leadership?

Throughout the crisis in Guatemala, it became clear that his leadership was not very positive: He is not the organization. On many occasions, he assumed the power to advance positions without consulting the member states that gave him his mandate. The most prominent case is Venezuela: He was extremely vocal and confrontational, when there was no consensus within the Organization. He stepped out of line; you don’t see that at the United Nations. Second, his managerial skills were particularly poor. The OAS is in a financial crisis that was not addressed in the slightest during Almagro’s tenure, and his personalistic approach to assigning high-level positions created friction with member states. He appointed officials without consulting their country; sometimes they held positions contrary to those of their president.

Now, I also want to acknowledge his ability to act. In other words, he was at least a secretary-general who knew how to take up arms. There was no situation that Almagro could not handle. He had the ability to think abstractly and analyze problems. It is still too early to take stock. History will be his judge. I believe that the OAS is at its worst moment in history. It could be on the verge of total collapse, and not because of him. There is the political landscape: the recession in the United States as a leader, the absence of high-level participants such as Canada and Brazil willing to fill that void.

What are the focal points of this crisis in the OAS?

First, legitimacy. The fact that two countries —Venezuela and Nicaragua— have left in the last five years undermines the capacity for consensus. Second is the financial perspective: This year’s budget is around $94 million to serve 32 countries. Third is the fragmentation of the mandate: security, human rights, democracy, and development. It is not operationally or technically capable of addressing all of these issues. Over the past 30 years, the OAS General Assembly has given the Organization more than 800 mandates, and it cannot fulfill them. These people make commitments, they have obligations, and they cannot fulfill them. The last aspect is a disconnect between the organization and the daily lives of the citizens of the Americas.

You mentioned the United States’ withdrawal from multilateral forums. Could you elaborate on the current role of the second Trump administration?

At the OAS General Assembly in Antigua and Barbuda in June, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau made a veiled threat that if the OAS was not able to stand up on issues such as Venezuela or Haiti, then why are we here? We can leave. And that struck you as a very clear signal that it is a possibility. That is outrageous. I mean, you don’t go around bullying people like that. If you want to go, leave. Leave.

There is a community of nations here that have sovereign equality. The gringos contribute almost 50 percent of the budget, but that’s their decision. The United States in this period, as in others, is playing arm-twisting to get artificial majorities. They will probably succeed, because they have the capacity to do so. But along the way, they will mortally wound multilateralism. When there is a crisis in the region, the natural instrument for trying to defuse it is the organization. If you kill it and think you can solve everything, you are going to wear yourself out putting out fires on your own. But they don’t have that vocation. It goes against their own policy, because they were the ones who promoted and maintained the organization. If it doesn’t serve their interests now, they leave. Well, immaturity. It is a sign of extraordinary political immaturity. It is unfortunate, irresponsible, unnecessary.

There are common problems that we cannot solve individually. And not just the cliché of climate change... security, the regulation of artificial intelligence. We can only work on all of that by sitting down together at the same table. It is something that is built together.