Mexico wants a hard-left fan of Chavez, Castro, and China to run the Inter-American Development Bank.
With a Mexican diplomat who has a record of praising the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships seeking the top job at a quietly influential multilateral development bank, a Republican lawmaker is sounding the alarm. In a letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday afternoon, Representative Maria Salazar urged the Biden administration to act swiftly.
“We cannot allow a communist sympathizer to lead the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB),” she wrote in the letter, obtained exclusively by National Review, adding that Yellen has “a pivotal role in stopping this.” Salazar is worried that Mexico’s candidate, former U.N. official Alicia Bárcena, could succeed in her bid to run the bank.
Most Americans — and most members of Congress, for that matter — have likely never heard of the international development organization. But with the ability to make loans in the tens of billions of dollars annually, the IADB plays a pivotal role in funding infrastructure projects throughout the region.
The bank was thrown into crisis late last month when its then-president, Mauricio Claver-Carone, was ousted without explanation from the organization’s board of directors. Multiple reports, however, said that Claver-Carone, who was nominated to the post by the Trump administration, lost out following the results of an internal inquiry finding that he had an improper relationship with a subordinate.
Claver-Carone said after the vote that China would benefit from his removal; the bank has funded Beijing-pushed Belt and Road Initiative projects throughout Latin America. For its part, the Biden administration welcomed his ouster, with the Treasury Department telling the Washington Post that the U.S. “supports the dismissal,” given Claver-Carone’s “refusal to cooperate fully with the investigation.”
Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador hopes to seize on the opportunity to install a figure aligned with his government, naming Bárcena as Mexico’s nominee in September. The election is scheduled for November 20.
Bárcena is an experienced diplomat, currently serving as Mexico’s envoy to Chile. Until March of this year, she led the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
It’s in that role that she made several questionable comments about the regimes in Caracas and Havana. Salazar condemns these comments in her letter to Yellen, alleging that the Mexican official “celebrates oppression in Cuba and Venezuela”:
As Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), Bárcena had kind words for the dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela. After the death of mass murderer Fidel Castro, she lamented the passing of a “giant” who spent his life “fighting for equality.” Fidel Castro, in fact, dedicated his life to creating one of the most unequal and totalitarian states ever known to mankind. Similarly, she claimed to have been witness to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s “indestructible commitment to the dispossessed, the most humble” and stated he made equality both his “lodestar” and the “permanent doctrine” of his country. Hugo Chavez oversaw the impoverishment and starvation of millions while enriching a small clique of corrupt government insiders.
Some experts also warn that Bárcena’s election could stunt U.S. efforts to counter China’s success in cultivating closer ties with developing countries, in light of the fact that she used her U.N. post to advance Chinese interests.
In one 2018 speech at a meeting with Chinese officials, she said, “We maintain an unshakable commitment to strengthening ties between our region and China in all dimensions.” Bárcena’s praise of Chinese development projects veered into hagiography of general secretary Xi Jinping, when she quoted his remarks on the necessity of Belt and Road. That stance prompted Center for Strategic and International Studies scholar Daniel Runde to question in a recent opinion essay whether Bárcena would support a Taiwanese push to buy into the bank.
Bárcena is not the only candidate in contention for the role of IADB head. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has put forward former Brazilian central bank director Ilan Goldfajn as his country’s candidate. With Bolsonaro facing stiff competition from opposition leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the race for his second term, it’s possible that the staunch leftist, were he to unseat Bolsonaro, would put forward a different candidate and request that the selection process be postponed, Reuters reported. Even if Lula wins the presidency during Brazil’s second-round vote this Sunday, he won’t take office in time to revoke Goldfajn’s candidacy.
With the field slowly taking shape, Salazar isn’t taking any chances, and she demanded that Yellen work to block Bárcena’s route to the top post. “I ask you please to instruct the U.S. representative to the Inter-American Development Bank to vote AGAINST Ms. Bárcena,” she wrote in Tuesday’s letter.
Neither the Treasury Department nor Mexico’s foreign ministry has responded to NR’s request for comment.