Snowden and Latin Americans

Stephen Kinzer, who has written some really interesting stuff on Latin America, goes off the deep end here. He argues that Latin American people love Edward Snowden so much that they will protect him.

In fact, not just a handful of leaders but huge populations in Latin America have decided that they wish for more independence from Washington. 

This is vital for Snowden because it reduces the chances that a sudden change of government could mean his extradition. If he can make it to Latin America, he will never lack for friends or supporters.

I'm not so sure this is true, or at the very least we (and certainly Snowden!) should not assume it to be true. It is hard for me to imagine that more than a tiny handful of people truly care about Snowden. If he goes to Ecuador, and at some point a conservative candidate wins the presidency, he or she will certainly calculate what extraditing him might get in return from the United States. Indeed, Anya Landau French hypothesizes that Cuba told Snowden not to stop there. For any president, Snowden is mostly just a piece of a strategic puzzle, and extradition would not be too politically costly at home.

Then things get flowery.

From Ecuador, Snowden could travel widely. Everything from the splendor of Bolivia's Lake Titicaca to the vibrancy of teeming Caracas awaits him. With luck, he might even be able to visit Guatemala in September to attend the grand festival being planned for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jacobo Arbenz, the reformist president who the United States deposed in 1954.

I also cannot see Otto Pérez Molina embracing Snowden and resisting U.S. pressure to detain him. Snowden means nothing to Guatemala. And I know that Kinzer wrote about Arbenz, but come on. Guatemala--along with all of Latin America--means nothing to Snowden. If he ever gets to Ecuador, he will probably be too terrified and prudent to start traveling around.