Here's to you: Barack Obama shares a toast with his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Peña Nieto, before a working dinner in Mexico City in May 2013. Wikimedia / White House. Public domain.
The US president, Barack Obama, has issued an executive order declaring Venezuela a threat to US national security, sanctioning several officials and publicly accusing them of human-rights violations. The White House spokesperson, Josh Earnest, told reporters that “Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here”. And he said that “we are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents. Venezuela’s problems cannot be solved by criminalising dissent.”
There is little doubt that the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, has been responsible for a crackdown on political opposition and decreeing additional powers that have increased state control of the country. But if the Obama administration is so concerned with violence against political dissent and injustice inflicted on the population by a corrupt government, how is it that Mexico, its neighbour country, does not represent a similar threat?
