By GILBERTO LOPES
Washington's excessive interference thins the political air in Latin America
Expectations were enormous. It appeared that the Venezuelan opposition, organized around María Corina Machado, now represented a real threat to President Nicolás Maduro.
The opposition believed that its advantage in the July 28 elections was so great that Nicolás Maduro could not falsify the results, especially in front of the White House, which was closely following the process and with whom the opposition was negotiating the eventual renewal of the economic sanctions applied to the country. country for more than a decade, and international pressure, if his victory was not confirmed.
For correspondents of the Spanish daily El País in Bogotá and Caracas, Nicolás Maduro arrived at the elections very worn out by the economic crisis. The Mexican diary The Journey, in an editorial the day after the elections, referred to these Washington sanctions against Venezuela. But he did it in a different tone. He called on the opposition to align itself with national interests to “demand from Washington the immediate and unconditional lifting of the commercial and financial blockade” which, in his opinion, was “the main cause of the needs suffered by the population”.
One of the consequences of this is the forced migration of around seven million Venezuelans, who head to neighboring countries in search of better living conditions. “No government measure will resolve the difficulties of millions of Venezuelans as long as US imperialism prevents Caracas from obtaining currency and acquiring all types of goods, including food and medicine,” stated the editorial of the The day
A week after the elections, when the United States had already recognized the victory of oppositionist Edmundo González, Manuel Domingos Neto, former president of the Brazilian Defense Studies Association (ABED), Roberto Amaral, former minister of Science and Technology, and former deputy and former president of the PT, José Genoíno, recalled the scenario of the dispute: “a country that holds the largest oil reserves in the world, which projects over the Atlantic and the Pacific, and is the gateway to the Amazon.”
Unmeasured arrogance
Assigning the powers of the electoral board, Secretary of State Antonhy Blinken declared “the elections in Venezuela have concluded and proclaimed Edmundo González elected”. For the three Brazilian politicians, this “unmeasured arrogance” ends up warning Latin Americans against the “democratic profession of faith of the candidates who are the masters of the world”. They were talking, naturally, about the United States.
Washington has been an important actor in the Venezuelan political scene, a country on which it has imposed the most varied economic sanctions. The devastating effects of these sanctions have been the subject of several studies, including that by Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Jeffrey Sachs, director of Center for Sustainable Development from Columbia University, published in May 2019 (the study can be consulted here).
The study analyzes some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the United States government from August 2017 to 2019. The sanctions, say Weisbrot and Sachs, “reduced the population's caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (both for adults and children) and displaced millions of Venezuelans, who fled the country due to economic depression and hyperinflation.” These sanctions “inflicted very serious damage to human life and health, including more than 40 deaths between 2017 and 2018”, they add.
In January 2019, Washington and its allies recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela and renewed sanctions against the country, confiscating Venezuelan oil resources abroad and gold deposited in the Bank of England.
Sanctions that have been common in United States policy towards Venezuela in the last three North American administrations. The first, imposed by Barack Obama, intensified under the administration of Donald Trump, which imposed restrictions on commercial operations between North American companies and citizens and the Venezuelan government. In 2019, the purchase of oil was suspended, increasing sanctions on third-country institutions that provide financial support to Venezuela.
Subjected to such pressures, which were renewed under Joe Biden's administration, Venezuela's economy continues to face severe restrictions. Joe Biden, who had lifted some of these sanctions, renewed them on the eve of the elections. As of May 31, all foreign companies must cease producing and exporting Venezuelan oil and gas. In order to do business with the state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), they had to request individual authorizations from the US Treasury, which are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
How to hold free elections under sanctions?
Can free elections be held under these conditions? As Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state during the second Clinton administration (1997-2001), explained to her students in her book on fascism, “the main goal of foreign policy is to convince other countries to do what we want them to do.” they do. To achieve this,” she added, “we have several means available, from a polite request to sending the marines.”
Sending the Marines has become unfeasible, as General Laura Richardson, head of the United States Southern Command, acknowledged this week. But sanctions have never been so popular in Washington and the United Nations, as Foreign Policy magazine stated in a series of articles on the subject, published in December 2021. Transformed into a “diplomatic and economic stranglehold vital to bringing recalcitrant governments to their senses” , the United States doubled down, multiplying the use of sanctions as a political weapon.
In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, to sanction anyone Washington deems to be a human rights violator or corrupt. Four years later, it extended the law's reach to the entire world, passing the Global Magnitsky Act. The aim of the law, say Foreign Policy commentators, was not to change the behavior of those sanctioned, but to dismantle the financial network that supports them. Naturally, the definition of enemies responds to Washington's political criteria.
The case of Cuba is the oldest and most dramatic example of the effects of these measures. This does not mean that the government does not make mistakes, but its room for maneuver is practically nil, given the severity of the sanctions, imposed more than 60 years ago and which, currently, have almost unanimous opposition from the UN General Assembly. The United States never paid any attention to these votes. They are not part of the rules of your world.
Subjected to devastating sanctions, this political life becomes impossible in the “backyard” of the United States, supported by local representatives of these interests. Any attempt to tear down the “backyard” fences has been met with the array of weapons described by Albright.
What is the result of this policy?
With other characteristics, this policy is repeated in Venezuela, with the effects described by Weisbrot and Sachs. Unless the government is aligned with Washington's interests, North American intervention, carried out by the government or its NGOs, unbalances the scenario, tilts the scales towards a certain sector of society, making it impossible for the weight of each one to be reflected freely in the electoral results.
Look at the situation in Nicaragua. Let's go to the 1990 elections. I was there. It was imposed after a war organized and financed by Washington that made any effort to administer the country impossible, which, in the midst of the conflict, had no possibility of guaranteeing the lives of its citizens. Even less the prospect of economic and social development. Nothing! The war was all-consuming. As if that were not enough, with the threat that, in the event of an eventual Sandinista victory, Washington would continue to promote this war.
It is in this context that the elections were held. Was it possible, therefore, to hold free elections? Could Nicaraguans freely express their will?
The opposition won, but the country's political life could not return to a “normal” course, in which different points of view were expressed on equal terms. There was a succession of governments supported by Washington: Violeta Chamorro, Bolaños, Alemán; the aberrant Ortega-Alemán pact, while the political system dissolved, until it reached its current extremes.
The attempt at a “color revolution” in April 2018, confronted with weapons by the government, extracted all the oxygen from the political bubble, and today nothing survives in it. There is no life in Nicaragua's political landscape.
In January 2018, USAID contractors presented the final report of a five-year (April 2013 to February 2018) project on “Civil Society Defense Capacity Building.” One of the project objectives was “to build USAID/Nicaragua capabilities so that key/target organizations, many of which receive support through other USAID-funded democracy and governance activities, can better achieve mutually agreed upon program objectives.” .
They also aimed to “strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations and individuals to increasingly coordinate and establish networks among themselves, with the private sector and with the media, to promote awareness, advocacy and activism”, initiatives that “directly affected more than 3.599 Nicaraguans” (the report can be consulted here).
Have we learned nothing from all these experiences?
Is it possible to explain these scenarios without Washington's intervention? It is easy to imagine the effects that projects of this nature have on a small and poor country like Nicaragua and how they affect its political development. And it is difficult to imagine that the attempted “color rebellion” in April had nothing to do with these projects.
What oxygen can there be to feed life in the political bubble subjected to these instruments? What space does it leave for the free development of national politics? It is the instrument with which all the oxygen is extracted from this political bubble in Latin American countries when transformative forces, not aligned with Washington's interests, aspire to guide the destinies of a nation.
Latin America produces more than a third of the world's lithium and has important deposits of cobalt, manganese, nickel, rare earths and other minerals, recalled Shannon K. O'Neil, vice president of studies and senior fellow for Latin American studies of Council on Foreign Relations, in an article about “great opportunities in Latin America”. In Venezuela, enormous oil and mineral resources are at stake. The electoral dispute also occurs in the context of an important reaccommodation of world powers.
“If the idea that geopolitics is becoming a contest between authoritarianism and democracy is true, Latin America is clearly on the side of the United States and the West. Despite poverty, inequality, violence and the weakening of the rule of law, more people choose to live under democratic government than in European and North American societies,” added Shannon K.O'Neil.
Thus, on Monday, less than 24 hours after the polls closed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed, in Tokyo, where he was, “serious concerns” regarding the results announced in Venezuela.
In turn, Chilean President Gabriel Boric stated that the results published by the Venezuelan electoral authority “are difficult to believe”. The case of the Chilean president is particularly notable. Its foreign policy often coincides, as in the case of Venezuela, with that of representatives of right-wing governments historically responsible for the greatest violations of human rights in the region. He does this, naturally, in the name of the unrestricted defense of human rights.
The former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, called for a coup d'état. On the same Sunday, July 28, he published on Facebook: “Mr. Vladimir Padrino, Minister of Defense of Venezuela, as a citizen of a democratic country, I respectfully ask you, appealing to your patriotism, to defend the will of the Venezuelan people expressed today in the ballot boxes.”
And what was that desire? How did Óscar Arias know her? He didn't know her. It didn't even matter. As he added in the same note, the result should reflect “what was expressed by the different surveys carried out with voters after they had voted. A different result only has one name: electoral fraud.”
But the opposition did not present any proof of this fraud. It was only the polls that Machado referred to on the Monday after the elections: “Throughout the day, with quick counts, we monitored the turnout to the polls hour by hour.” “Four quick, autonomous and independent counts gave the same results as the surveys.” And that was all.
Can you imagine a military coup d'état in Venezuela? Does anyone think it would be very different from what happened in Chile in 1973? A betrayal by the military, like Pinochet, of institutions and their oaths? Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González governing Venezuela? Is the whole story that links González, then a Venezuelan diplomat in El Salvador, to some of the most cruel crimes of the war years in that country false?
Is the world in which Óscar Arias dreams of a coup d'état the same world as in 1973, when Pinochet overthrew Allende, with the support of Hayek, Friedman or Kissinger? Or the world that Albright dreamed of?
The liberal right can be extremist when necessary. Or democratic, when that suits them. For now, the electoral process in Venezuela is in full swing, and should culminate in official verification and definitive results, to be released by the Supreme Court of Justice.
But Latin America needs to be able to enjoy a political life free from Washington's excessive interference, which is making the region's political air more rarefied.
*Gilberto Lopes is a journalist, PhD in Society and Cultural Studies from the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR). Author, among other books, of Political crisis of the modern world (uruk).
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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