What if the OAS doesn’t need to shout, but to think?

By Josué Fiallo, former ambassador to the OAS

There is much insistence that the OAS must “speak clearly.” That its legitimacy depends on a resounding condemnation of authoritarianism, without detours or nuances. That remaining silent in the face of certain abuses is betraying its own Democratic Charter. The argument sounds fair, even necessary. But it’s worth stopping for a moment and looking more carefully.

Since when does the volume of discourse guarantee results? How many times has the OAS raised its voice… and nothing has happened? In my years as ambassador to the organization, I witnessed debates where all the right words were said, but countries left more distant than when they arrived. Nobody changed their position, nobody gave an inch. The OAS didn’t fail due to timidity; it failed due to lack of imagination.

There is a tendency to view silence as suspicious. But not all silence is capitulation. Sometimes, what is needed is not more condemnation, but more listening. Not a solemn declaration, but a door left ajar. Not a label, but a question.

The “maximum pressure” strategies that have dominated the organization’s recent actions have not managed to reverse any of the hemisphere’s deep crises. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti… which of those scenarios changed substantially due to the OAS’s harsh gestures? If anything, those cases show that isolating is not synonymous with transforming.

Instead, there is a diplomacy that doesn’t generate headlines, but that can alter the conditions of stagnation: one that seeks entry points when everything seems closed. That works with what there is, not with what there should be. That recognizes that, on this continent, leaderships are chosen — well or poorly — and that the OAS’s mandate is not to supplant them, but to accompany processes that allow sustaining the institutional fabric, not dynamiting it.

That requires another attitude. Not softer, but more strategic. One that takes seriously the fragility of the inter-American system and avoids using the OAS as a battle tribune. One that recognizes that rebuilding trust — between countries, between governments and civil society, between the region and its history — is today a more urgent task than drafting a new resolution.

The OAS needs to reform itself, without doubt. To return to being a useful actor and not a shadow of itself. But that is not achieved by adding adjectives, but by adding capacities. It’s not about renouncing principles, but about preventing principles from becoming empty dogmas.

Perhaps the time has come to accept that shouting is not enough. That sometimes, the most courageous diplomacy is the one that remains silent to find a space, the one that takes half a step back to open a path. That speaking clearly is not repeating what everyone already knows, but building with others — even with those we don’t like — viable solutions.

If the OAS wants to recover its place, it will have to stop acting as a mirror of the continent’s divisions and start being something more difficult: a table where one can return to talking, without needing to agree. Because if it doesn’t achieve that, then it will be neither guarantor, nor arbiter, nor even witness. It will be, simply, irrelevant.