From My Arena #19: Seven Years Since Santiago Burned

Friends,

Yesterday Paris and Milan looked like Santiago in 2019 and Bogotá in 2021. I have seen this movie before, and I know how it ends.

THE STREET PLAYBOOK

Seven years ago today, on October 18, 2019, Santiago exploded over a 30-peso subway fare hike. Within weeks the fare was forgotten and the country was rewriting its constitution. Two years later Gabriel Boric, a former student-protest leader, was president, with the Communist Party sitting inside his governing coalition.

Yesterday more than half a million people filled the streets of France. It started on September 18 with high school students blockading their schools over education funding. A month later it is teachers, unions, farmers, and the old "yellow vests," with Prime Minister Lecornu promising answers by the end of October and a presidential election months away. In Milan, a march against "wars and the cost of living" began peacefully and ended with the Duomo square emptied, barricades burning, shops shuttered, and about fifty people detained, many of them minors. Giorgia Meloni said it in one sentence: demonstrating is a right; turning our cities into battlegrounds is not. Does any of this sound familiar?

Here is the pattern, and I say this as an American who was born in Colombia and watched it happen there. The anger is always real at the start. A subway fare. A tax reform. The price of bread. That is precisely why the organized left shows up: a legitimate grievance is the best possible cover. They bring the hoods, the paving stones, and the flags that have nothing to do with the original complaint. In Milan and Paris that includes Palestinian flags carried by people who could not tell you what they are defending. Chaos is not a side effect of the strategy. Chaos is the strategy. Remember the summer of 2020 here at home, when protests over George Floyd's death became months of riots in American cities? Same script. And when the country is exhausted enough, the left offers itself as the only way to make it stop.

Watch how Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France's far left and already a candidate for president in 2027, has handled this month. He did not start the student movement; he insists on that. But on October 3 he called the first big march "a general rallying point, a starting point" that would surely "open a series." On October 8 he declared "the Bastille retaken." Yesterday, as cars burned, he posted that most protesters had made their point peacefully: "two worlds, two realities." He doesn't throw the stones. He just makes sure nobody stops the ones who do, and then shows up to collect. That is the Boric playbook, word for word: the street does the work, the politician inherits the result.

Chile got Boric. Colombia got Petro. Then came the second half of the movie, the part the street never advertises: those governments could not govern. Chileans elected José Antonio Kast, who took office this March. Colombians elected Abelardo De la Espriella in June. What came in through broken windows went out through the ballot box. Let's not forget that.

But the street does not retire. This Wednesday Colombia held its first national strike against De la Espriella, two months into his term, with Gustavo Petro himself (can you believe that?) marching to Plaza de Bolívar, one day after the government signed a decree regulating how police respond to violence during protests. The opposition announced two months of mobilizations (their polite word for chaos). And this morning, in Mérida, Yucatán, a “Palestine solidarity committee” is marching under the banner “Israel out of Yucatán,” a protest nominally about local water and farmland, wrapped in a flag from the other side of the world. The playbook is open again, in my country of origin, in Mexico, and in Europe, all at the same time. Am I wrong?

Why it matters to America

This has never been a fight between right and left. It is a fight between Western civilization, with its freedom, its property, its rule of law, and those who oppose those values and have learned to use a naive left as their instrument. The alarms are already ringing here: the Democratic Socialists of America keep growing inside one of our two major parties, and the midterms are sixteen days away. Conservatives are not winning the hemisphere by default; the pendulum swung our way because radical ideas failed in power. Our task now is to prove that freedom, order, and sound policy deliver more than the left’s promise of control. That is why I fight this battle in Spanish. In most Spanish-language media, if not all, this story is told from one angle only: the protesters as victims and Western civilization as the villain. I said the opposite on a Mexican TV show this week, and the clip drew hundreds of thousands of views and more than a few threats (see the clip below, in FROM THE ARENA THIS WEEK). Changing that is our daily battle at Red Latina Network Foundation.

BRAZIL, ONE WEEK OUT

Brazil votes next Sunday, October 25. Here is where it stands: Flávio Bolsonaro, the candidate most aligned with individual freedom and with Washington's security agenda for the hemisphere, leads President Lula in nearly every poll since the first round, but by one to three points, inside the margin of error. Datafolha had him at 49 percent a week ago and 47 this week; Quaest has it 46 to 44. Lula's campaign has turned harder and more personal, which is what a campaign does when the numbers are not moving on their own. Next Sunday is election day, and I will give you the full picture, whichever way it goes.

VENEZUELA: THE PRICE OF A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Two things happened this week, and I'm not going to pretend they fit together. On Wednesday the Treasury Department removed Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela's National Assembly and brother of Delcy Rodríguez, from the sanctions list; he leads the regime's team in the U.S.-backed talks. On Thursday, in a Manhattan courtroom, Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to a new indictment for conspiracy to commit torture, including the torture of three American citizens, as part of a system of repression prosecutors say ran for more than two decades.

I believe the plan is the right one. A stable Venezuela, with its oil flowing to its natural partner and its people no longer fleeing, is good for the entire hemisphere, and the three phases, stabilization, recovery, transition, are the only serious path there. I have defended it in this newsletter and on the air. But I will not pretend the Rodríguez delisting goes down easily. Jorge and Delcy Rodríguez sat at the top of that regime for years. I find it impossible to believe they did not know what was happening in its prisons. Sitting across the table from them while Maduro answers for those cells in New York is a bitter pill, and I'm not going to swallow it quietly.

Why it matters to America

This line has to be walked with care, for two reasons. First, the strategy has to keep the support of Venezuelans themselves, who are watching whether the men who ran the country into the ground walk away clean. Second, every tyranny in the hemisphere is watching too, hoping for the same kind of deal, and the radicals I described above are collecting every concession as proof for their "Yankee imperialism" story. America's leverage has always been that it does not tolerate criminals or human rights abusers. The way to protect that leverage is simple: an election date. Pragmatism with a regime is a tool, not a destination.

FROM THE ARENA THIS WEEK

La Saga (Adela Micha): This one went viral: more than 358,000 views on Instagram, and on Facebook, where the real fight happened, more than 14,000 likes, nearly 1,500 comments (several of them threats), shared 4,900 times, and saved by more than 600 people. I told Adela that certain groups on the left, including some LGBTQ+ activists, who wave the Palestinian flag while condemning Israel’s right to exist end up as useful idiots for the Iranian regime. The irony is brutal: Hamas would hang them for exercising the very freedoms they enjoy in the West. Watch the clip

La Saga (Adela Micha): A security partnership with the United States serves the ordinary Mexican more than anyone, because Mexico's justice system does not work: cartels still control states, cities, and towns, and nobody faces a real trial. However Congress is configured after November 3, foreign policy is run by the Executive, and the Shield of the Americas is not going anywhere. If something positive comes from this moment, it is finally putting order in a hemisphere where crime has ruled. Watch the clip

Línea de Fuego (Univision): Debating President Trump's crackdown on the Tren de Aragua, a designated terrorist organization, my opponent argued that some arrests and deportations violated human rights. My answer was a phrase of my own: "Los derechos humanos son para los humanos derechos." It rhymes in Spanish; in English the point is simple. Human rights are for people who do right. Victims first, then criminals. Watch the clip

ONE FINAL REQUEST

Forward this to one person who should be reading it.

Now it's your turn: What are you watching in the Americas right now? Hit reply, I read every response.

Until next Sunday,

Cesar Grajales
President & Founder | Red Latina Network Foundation
+1 (786) 260-9283

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