Andres Oppenheimer: U.S. wins rare diplomatic battle in Latin America

Something very unusual happened at the 34-country Organization of American States (OAS) annual foreign ministers’ meeting last week: the United States and Mexico won a diplomatic victory over authoritarian populist governments that wanted a free hand to suppress human rights monitors and critical media.

It’s a rare occurrence, because Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and other members of their radical-populist ALBA alliance — often backed by bigger countries such as Brazil and Argentina — had been steadily winning ground in recent years in their offensive to weaken OAS human rights and freedom of the press monitoring groups.

But at the OAS annual meeting held Wednesday-Friday in Guatemala, an ALBA-backed Ecuadorean motion to paralyze the OAS’s Inter-American Human Rights Commission was soundly defeated in a secret vote.

Ecuador’s failed offensive against the seven-member Inter-American Human Rights Commission — a semi-independent OAS agency that is highly respected by independent human rights groups — was seeking to paralyze it by electing three new members including an Ecuadorean official and other pro-ALBA candidates.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/08/3439479/andres-oppenheimer-us-wins-rare.html