 It's a shocking video. A gun pointed point blank at the face of Cristina Fernandez-Decaster, Argentina's vice president. The assassin pulls the trigger, the gun somehow jams, and one of Argentina's most popular politicians miraculously survives. There has been a wave of international condemnation outrage ever since this shocking incident of an assassination attempt. But this is not just one isolated instance. This is part of a larger campaign that has been taking place against her and also is tied into the politics of Latin America as a whole. We'll be discussing all this in this episode of Mapping Portlines. We are joined by Praveel Prakash. Praveel, so of course the visual, the video itself is like I said really shocking. I mean, it's incredible how close Cristina came to being assassinated and her survival is really, many people have called it miraculous. Leaders across Latin America have expressed outrage, have called for investigations. Many have pointed out the fact that the assassin is clearly a very right-wing person. But this is also like I said in the context of a much more larger campaign that has been going on against her. There's been a lot of hate, a lot of allegation, a lot of media outrage that is being fueled against her right now. So could you maybe take us through the situation generally in Argentina and then we could move on to the larger regional dimension as a whole. Well, you know, Argentina has a long history of right-wing governments. In fact, we had military governments which are right-wing which had assassinated, killed, disappeared a number of activists, particularly of the left. We had children who were taken away from families. There's a whole movement on that against army officers having disposed of the parents quote-unquote adopting for themselves, those who are childless, the children of such families. So that history has been there for Argentina and it's not that it's very different from the histories that have taken place, for instance, of the military regimes in Chile, in Brazil, various other Latin American countries, Colombia, so Mexico for instance. So there is a commonality of right-wing military dictatorships in the 60s, 70s, 80s, democratic pushbacks at certain points of time, reoccurrence of the right and again pushbacks. So what we seem to be seeing at the moment is a pushback by the left and that's what we saw in Argentina. We've seen in Chile. Argentinian politics, of course, is compounded by the fact that it is also undergoing right now an economic crisis and the president and which... Alberto Fernandez. President Alberto Fernandez has taken a huge loan from the IMF which actually Kirchner had opposed, the vice president opposed. The president has led that loan that has been taken and obviously an IMF, as you know, is a stern face of imperialism. So what immediately happens is the workers feel the brunt of it, the prices go up, capital is benefited, it stabilizes, but at the expense of the government. So this is the way it has been done at the moment and that, of course, is one of the reasons the vice president, she has been on the offensive, Kirchner has been on the offensive on this and it is because of that also the left has mobilized with her. She's been a very, shall we say, a radical figure in Argentinian politics. So she's mobilized a lot of the left. The large part of the left would be with her. So I think because of this, she's also the obvious target of the right. The interesting part of this assassination attempt, the person seems to be somebody who is very much a part of a kind of fringe right in Europe because apparently he has the swastika, he has the black sun, essentially Nazi symbols, which are all the symbols of the as of battalion in Ukraine. So kind of right wing forces, which are really white supremacist forces in Europe and it seems there is a resonance between them and of course a certain kind of white supremacist forces in the United States, as well now as you can see in Latin America, this being one of the examples, but a certain part of this is also Brazil and let's not forget this person is also from Brazil. So it seems that there is this fringe right, I'm going to say this is fringe, this is not Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is also writing, but he certainly does not sport officially the swastika. So that would be the difference. But nevertheless, this is certainly a set of forces which have relationship with the larger right, but still are an extreme section, it seems to be. We have to see what further details come out of this, but this is what we are saying is really in the first instance, what is on the face of it, what we can see, his Facebook posts and other things, all of which seem to show this predilection. But nevertheless, I think if we come right down to it, it is a part of the much larger sweep of the right versus left that we see in Latin America and the fact that the needle has swung back again towards the left. And as you can see from Mexico to right down to Argentina and Chile, the left seems to be on a certainly on an upswing. And of course, Brazil would be really the test whether all the big six states in Latin America then would be different shades of left and therefore would certainly make the US attempt to impose again a Monroe doctrine on Latin America much more difficult. But of course, in this context, Argentina also serving as yet another site of lawfare, just as we saw in Brazil, because over the past 10 days or so, massive mobilizations taking place in support of Cristina because the prosecutor has been called sought 12 years in prison for her corruption case. He's also sought that she not be allowed to contest in politics anymore, charges which Cristina and her supporters are very strongly denied, saying that the evidence suspect the judicial system itself is biased in some senses, because if it's closeness to the right. And I think this points to the fact that while Latin America, the political institutions, the political parties and the movements of the left are still strong. Institutionally, the right still holds a lot of power because the decades in which they've been entrenched there. So we're seeing that also being a major risk over there. You know, this is I think also a part of what the US has also learned over the years. You see, US in 60s, 70s, 80s in Latin America, even later, really intervened by the military. So they had very strong links with the military. There was a school in the United States where a lot of the military leaders were trained and they were trained for assassination, mass killings, et cetera, et cetera. A whole record is there. There's nothing which is secret about it. And the School of Americas is famous for this. So all of that did not stop the slow shift of the societies over there, particularly military dictatorships became more and more unpopular. So you've got a democratic upsurge in the 80s particularly, where you get what would be seen to be third world politics that pushback against the IMF, pushback against what kind of financial rules are being imposed in the world, pushback against the United States particularly. All of this took place. And in the global trade organization, intellectual property organization, et cetera, at the beginning of WTO, there was a strong connection with, for instance, the Brazilians and Indians pushing back the intellectual property rights regime which was being sought to be put, patents being, of course, what is the more public part of it. Now this failed, the right failed, if you see, being able to push back the democratic aspirations of the people and the larger left movements which are growing. It's both. It was not simply the left alone, but it is also what would be called progressive democratic forces in Latin America coming up. Now that has, because of the weakness or the inability to contest that, of course, Columbia was the last bastion of the right. Left never won there except when this time, Petro has won. And Brazil swinging back some coups here and there. But all of that have been accompanied by what you call this lawfare. So the lawfare part of it, how to try and twist the constitution, how to twist or influence the judiciary, how to use the laws, this seems to be the aggression, the very aggressive moves that the United States has now taken in Americas. But the one part of it is also it's a weakness. The fact that they're no longer able to control the control over the media, the control over really information, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, a lot of this, as you know, plays a huge part in the elections, Google, YouTube, all of it. Then you also have the church section of the evangelical church, which we know is actually run from the United States and has very close links with the right in the United States. But all of that is not working. So therefore, the use of law, lawfare, and you're trying to talk about financial crimes and talking about, you know, it started in 2000, 2003 or so, when this, what would be called the money laundering process, acts where you impose, US actually pushed for it across the world. And they said it's all related to Al Qaeda and so on. But all of it has meant that they have got their tentacles, so to say, in most of these institutions. And therefore, with the judiciary, and as you know, in Latin America, a lot of the judiciary plays what is a conventional police role in the, in, in UK and its ex-colonies. So the investigation starting from the investigation to filing of cases is done by investigating armed of the judiciary. And there is of course also the judicial arm, which then gives the verdict. Now, this is the Judge Moro, that was the role he played in Brazil. And it seems that this model is something that they were trying also against Christina Kershna. So this is, this seems to be the new model that they are perfecting, that how to use the judiciary, because otherwise, that they have very little at the moment hope in popular politics, which is what they could influence. And the ability of the military to stand against popular politics does not seem to be working also. So I think military realizes that if they try to intervene in politics, which they do occasionally, but there is a huge risk to it. And therefore, the downside of the, of intervention would hurt them in the long run. So the institution of military, if it has to be saved, it should not really do what it did in 60s, 70s and so on. So I think that part of it is why you see the growth of lawfare. And therefore, lawfare on one hand, then of course, you have the financial institutions, the IMF, the World Bank and other instruments that are there. And then you have the also, that they have the records to US courts, because a lot of these deals for national governments are being struck in the US, what would be called the private funds, the bonds, the sovereign bonds. And therefore, the US courts claim jurisdiction, as you know, they have claimed jurisdiction over Argentina and Argentinian bonds, etc. as well. So this, this is the, at one level, the tentacles of the United States still is there. But it is also the political weakness that they are no longer able to do it through other means as they could earlier. Coming back to Brazil, which you talked about, which is seeing elections in less than a month now, and all polls indicate that former President Lula is in a commanding position, he is in the lead, whether he will win in the first round is a bit uncertain, but it does look likely as of now that he might win in the elections next month. So why is Brazil's election, you already hinted a bit about this, but why is Brazil's election so important, both for Latin America and the entire world? Well, you know, Brazil is the biggest state, it is the biggest economy in Latin America. So if Brazil goes on one side, equilibrium shifts in Latin America. But the bigger shift is, if you start from, as I said, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, this is a sweep across Latin America, you see the map. These are the biggest economies, the biggest populations in Latin America. See, if all of them align and if Brazil is there, then it is, then it provides a counterweight to U.S. in the Americas. So I think that's very important. That was the major role that actually Lula played. If you remember, when Brazil won the elections, that was a role Brazil could play. Earlier, Brazil had played a role even in WTO and intellectual property rights issues, the GATT negotiations. But the Brazil's Lula coming into power really changed the politics of Latin America. The question of American, you know, who represents Latin America? Who represents the Americas? That became more and more clear that it was really Latin America which represents Americas. The outposts are the United States, Canada, you know, and that they don't really, they're written no longer runs over the Americas. That was what really happened. Of course Hugo Chavez also played a very, very important role in this. But it was really the combination of Brazil's weight and Hugo Chavez's sharpness that combined really to build a certain role in Latin America by which coups became almost illegitimate. And that's what really I was talking about. That politics that was being tried earlier no longer was working. It still worked in places like Haiti or smaller states, you know, Honduras. Those possibilities still existed. But by and large, these interventions became much weaker. Thank you so much for being here. So we do see that we have a lot of mobilizations taking place in Latin America. The people of Chile were mobilized for years going to the polls on Sunday. Argentinians of course also mobilizing strongly in defense of the vice president and progressive causes. And we have Brazil elections coming up soon. We'll be taking a look at all of these in Mapping Fault Lines. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.