"The reactionary international"the latest book by Donato Di Santo

There are “true international networks that from the American subcontinent have intertwined not only with each other, but with MAGA Trumpism in the North, with Eurasianism in the East, with Netanyahu’s Israeli right and with European black extremism”. He writes it Donato Di Santoin his well-documented book “The reactionary International. From Latin America to Europe the networks of the new right” (Castelvecchi publisher, 306 pages, 25 euros).

Di Santo, former DS undersecretary for Foreign Affairs in the Prodi II government, continues: “In the aftermath of the illegitimate military intervention and kidnapping of the Venezuelan dictator Maduro by the autocrat Trump, who with this act has put international law under his feet, among those who rejoiced, together with the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who defined it as a ‘legitimate and defensive action’, and his neo-Francoist friend Santiago Abascal, in the front row there were many Latin American presidents from the Argentinian Javier Milei to the Ecuadorian Daniel Noboa, from the Paraguayan Santiago Pena to the Salvadoran Nayib Bukele, from the Peruvian Jose’ Jeri’ to the Costa Rican Rodrigo Chaves, from the Honduran Nasry Asfura to the Chilean Jose’ Antonio Kast. Tones were slightly more moderate from the Bolivian Rodrigo Paz and the Panamanian José Raul Mulino”.

Maga sovereignism and the new enemies of the Latin American right

It is singular and paradoxical, continues Di Santo, to note how Latin American political personalities imbued with nationalism and pseudo-patriotic militarism, from Milei to Bolsonaro, from Bukele to Kast and many others, today prostrate themselves at the feet of Maga sovereignism. “The leaders of the new Latin American right today supinely rely on the self-proclaimed monarch of Mar-a-Lago. In the absence of the communists, the dear old enemies who for a long period excellently represented the alibi for the worst hemispheric atrocities, now the enemies of the new national-patriotic Latin American right have become others. They are the feminists, the residual original peoples, gender politics, the environmentalists, the Afro-descendants, the LGBT world, migrants and, in general, the poor”.

The keys to reading the book, from Trump to other leaders

Di Santo’s book provides, country by country, the keys to understanding the connections “of the opaque alliance that intertwines reactionary nationalisms and populisms of Latin America with the neo-imperialism of Trump and Rubio up to Netanyahu and the Europe of Meloni, Abascal and the ‘remigrationists’. A political, ideological and financial bloc that feeds on religious obscurantism, unbridled neoliberalism and digital squadrism”.

The dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua

The author is not lenient with “the state authoritarianism of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua”. For Venezuela and Nicaragua, Di Santo writes, “the two dictatorships were the result not of a coup but of an authoritarian manipulation of the initial democratic and electoral path”.

In Cuba Di Santo was declared “persona non grata” and expelled. It was an act of retaliation for the meetings and activities that, in all the previous years, he had held with Cuban democratic opponents in Havana. “It was December 6, 2001 and the then Italian ambassador to Cuba, Elio Menzione, who I still remember with unchanged esteem and personal gratitude, wanted me to move to the diplomatic residence citing non-peregrine security reasons”.

The “two embargoes” and the risk of the Trumpian mafia

Di Santo writes: “In Cuba, even just mentioning a criticism of the dictator means isolation, ostracism, repression, prison, death. A further decline from illiberal autocracy to reactionary totalitarianism. All democratic socialist dissidents and opponents have always affirmed the need to overcome ‘the two embargoes’: the economic embargo of the United States against the Cuban government and the democratic embargo of the Castro regime against the Cuban people. Unfortunately, the two embargoes remain intact, with the risk that they will be defeated, in the worst possible way, by the Trumpian mafia, as the total blockade of oil supplies implemented since March 2026 seems to predict. ‘Godfather’ of Mar-a-Lago. And they will be able to find power alliances with the other oligarchs, those of Miami.”

Lula’s Brazil

Finally a mention of Brazil of Lula, where we will vote on October 4th. “The assault on Capitol Hill in January 2021 and the one on the institutions of Brasilia in January 2023, says Di Santo in a presentation of the book, are very similar. Brazilian resilience gives rise to hope. Unlike the USA, those responsible for the attempted Brazilian coup are still in prison…”.