UNITED NATIONS: A deepening political realignment Latin America came into focus this weekend during a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, and was further refined on Monday at the United Nations Security Councilwhere governments were publicly divided over the US role in the arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
At CELAC, several left-wing governments tried to push through a joint statement condemning Maduro’s detention. The effort failed after a bloc of countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago blocked the consensus, preventing the regional body from issuing a unified defense of the Venezuelan leader. This is reported by the Merco news agency.
The collapse exposed growing fractures within what has long been a left-leaning regional forum and underlined the erosion of automatic solidarity with Caracas.
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President Donald Trump greets Argentina’s President Javier Milei at the White House in Washington DC, October 14, 2025. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, said the rifts reflect a broader regional reckoning with the consequences of socialist and narco-authoritarian rule.
The shift is becoming increasingly visible at the ballot box, where voters in several countries – last month in Chile and Honduras alone – have turned away from entrenched left-wing governments and towards right-wing leaders campaigning on issues of security, sovereignty, border control and law and order – messages that reflect aspects of President Donald Trump’s political approach in the United States.
Colombian UN Ambassador Leonor Zalabata Torres attends a UN Security Council meeting on US attacks and the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, at United Nations Headquarters in New York, US, January 5, 2026. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
“The developments at CELAC this weekend reflect that reality,” Maldonado said. “The fact that several governments blocked a collective defense of Nicolás Maduro shows how divided the authoritarian left has become. Venezuela has become a cautionary tale.”
That division spilled over into the Security Council on Monday, where Latin American and Caribbean states took sharply different positions, with some openly supporting Washington and others denouncing the US action as a violation of international law.
Argentina emerged as the United States’ strongest regional supporter and praised the president Donald Trump and to view Maduro’s arrest as a decisive blow against organized crime.
“The Government of the Argentine Republic appreciates the decision and determination of the President of the United States of America and his government, and the recent actions in Venezuela that resulted in the arrest of dictator Nicolás Maduro, leader of the Solar Cartel,” Argentine Representative Francisco Fabián Tropepi told the council. to the entire region by directing and operating its drug trafficking and organized crime networks.”
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UN Security Council Meeting. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Paraguay echoed this framing, claiming that Maduro’s continued presence “posed a threat to the region,” adding that “the removal of the leader of a terrorist organization should immediately lead to the restoration of democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela, making it possible for the will of the people, expressed at the ballot box, to become the basis for the reconstruction of the country,” its representative Marcelo Eliseo Scappini Ricciardi said.
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Nicolas Maduro is seen in handcuffs after landing on a helipad in Manhattan, escorted by heavily armed federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026 in New York City. (XNY/Star Max/GC Images)
Other CELAC members took the opposite view, condemning the US action and warning that it set a dangerous precedent.
Brazil “categorically and decisively” rejected what it called armed intervention on Venezuelan territory the conquest of Maduro as “a very serious insult to Venezuela’s sovereignty and an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.”
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Venezuelans living in Argentina celebrate at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires on January 3, 2026, after US forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. (Tomas Cuesta/AFP via Getty Images)
Mexico denounced the operation as a violation of the UN Charter, arguing that external efforts to impose political change have historically exacerbated conflicts and destabilized societies. Chile also condemned what it called unilateral military action and warned against foreign interference, while Cuba and Nicaragua issued blistering denunciations against Washington, accusing the United States of imperial aggression and calling for Maduro’s immediate release.
The divisions at the UN mirrored the collapse at CELAC, where governments appear increasingly unwilling to speak with one voice on Venezuela even as they stop supporting US military force.
According to Maldonado, “governments are increasingly forced to choose between defending failed autocracies, corruption and repression, or responding to their own citizens,” she said. “More and more governments are unwilling to bear that burden.”
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro delivers a speech during a troop recognition ceremony at the Jose Maria Cordova Military Cadet School in Bogota on March 11, 2025. At the United Nations, countries are sharply divided following the capture of Nicolás Maduro, with some supporting the US-led move while others warned it set “an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.” (Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty Images)
Maldonado described Maduro’s capture as a break with decades of American restraint in the region: “It shows that the United States is deadly serious about defending itself and the hemisphere, about stopping the flow of drugs, dismantling alliances between cartel states and about fighting back against the influence of China, Russia and Iran in our neighborhood.”
She argued that the regional response, however divisive, reflects a broader one ideological shift.
“There is a clear shift to the right in the region, and it is healthy,” Maldonado said. “It reflects a growing alignment around the core principles of freedom, liberty, personal responsibility, national sovereignty and prosperity.”
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Security personnel guard the Unasur building during the IV Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, January 27, 2016. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)
While critics at the UN warned that US action risks undermining international law, supporters argue that the status quo had already collapsed under the weight of Venezuela’s humanitarian and security crisis.
“Venezuela’s collapse has taught the region what happens when the state becomes your everything,” Maldonado said. “When the state controls your job, your housing, your health care, your education, your courts and your information, freedom becomes conditional.”
