[News] Venezuela Faces a Test This Sunday

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/venezuela-faces-a-test-this-sunday/>
Venezuela Faces a Test This Sunday
Vijay Prashad
July 26, 2024
------------------------------

Photograph Source: Eneas De Troya – CC BY 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/>

*Caracas*.

On 28 July, the people of Venezeula will go to the polls to conduct the
sixth presidential election since the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution. The two
previous elections (2013 and 2018) were won by Nicolás Maduro Moros, the
incumbent president. Maduro is running for a third term that will begin in
2025 and run for six years. He is leading a vast alliance of left and
democratic parties that have united to defend the Bolivarian revolution,
which has been ongoing for almost twenty-five years. Maduro has had to lead
both Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolutionary process since the death of
Hugo Chávez, the legendary figure who broke the oligarchy’s stranglehold on
Venezuela’s politics, and since the collapse of oil prices in 2015 as well
as the increased suffocation by the United States to destroy the Bolivarian
agenda. No doubt, Maduro has one of the toughtest jobs on the planet,
having to succeed the charismatic Chávez and to steer the ship in the
turbulent waters created by the United States. By all accounts, Maduro will
prevail on Sunday, largely because of the abominable character of the
opposition.

*The Far-Right’s Terrible Candidate*

Maduro faces Edmundo González Urrutia, the candidate of the far-right.
González is being portrayed as a grandfatherly figure, although he is only
thirteen years older than Maduro (born in 1962, while González was born in
1949). This image of González as an *abuela* (grandfather) masks his more
ferocious political project and his background. González leads the Unity
Platform, which had been created in 2021 by Juan Guaidó; it is worth
recalling that Guaidó was the politician plucked from obscurity by the
United States to become a pretender president in 2019 (following a
blueprint that had succeeded for the United States in Ukraine when the
United States government places Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk into the prime
minister’s office in Ukraine). The Unity Platform, or PU in its Spanish
acronym, brings together the politicians of the far-right of a special kind
that had been funded and trained by the United States (such as María Corina
Machado and Leopoldo López). Privately, members of the PU say that they
cannot win an election in Venezuela; despite the privations caused by the
US-imposed sanctions, the grip of Chavismo on the masses is indelible. That
is why people like Corina Machado and López lean on the United States to
bring its arsenal to bear against Venezuela, a treasonous position that has
them barred from the electoral process.

That is why PU has selected González to be its candidate, but during the
campaign there has been no real alternative project to Chavismo put forward
by González or by his surrogates. Indeed, their only claim is that they are
not Maduro and that they would be able to improve the economy by
surrendering to the US demands. González has largely obscured his own past,
which has been buried behind claims that he was merely a diplomat. Those
who remember his tenure as an embassy official in El Salvador have
different things to say about this grandfatherly figure. In July 1981,
González was dispatched to the Venezuelan embassy in El Salvador, where he
worked directly under Ambassador Leopoldo Castillo. During his time, there
– Colombian diplomat María Catalina Restrepo Pinzón Londoño reports – he
worked with the death squads against the Sandinista guerrillas (FSLN). One
of these guerrilla leaders, Nadia Díaz, recalls in her autobiography (*Nunca
estuve sola*, 1988) that when she was in prison there were Venezuelan men
amongst her torturers. Díaz does not say that González directly tortured
her, but certainly he was amongst those who participated in the campaign
against the FSLN. Such is the character of the ‘grandfatherly’ figure who
is the candidate of the far-right against Maduro.

*The Weight of the Sanctions*

A study
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2024/us-sanction-countries-work/>
in the *Washington Post* finds that the United States government is
currently enforcing illegal, unilateral sanctions against a third of the
countries in the world, with 60% of the poorer nations under sanction.
These US sanctions, first applied in 2005 to overthrow the government of
Hugo Chávez, define the Venezuelan economy. At one time, the Venezuelan
state relied upon the oil revenues for 90% of its own finances. In
mid-2014, the oil boom ended with the collapse of oil prices, which was
amplified by the increased US sanctions and threats of armed attack against
Venezuela. The impact of secondary sanctions against financial institutions
and shipping companies dried up Venezuela’s revenues and pushed the state
to emergency measures in order to maintain the basic requirements of the
Bolivarian project.

During several visits between 2014 and 2024, I have been struck both by the
vicious impact of the sanctions and by the political mobilisation of the
Maduro government to explain the situation to the people. The privations
caused enormous distress, which led to decreased nutritional intake and to
mass migration. I was in Caracas in February 2021 when UN Special
Rapporteur Alena Douhan gave a press conference on the impact of the
sanctions. Her findings in a press conference were plainly stated: ‘Lack of
necessary machinery, spare parts, electricity, water, fuel, gas, food and
medicine, growing insufficiency of qualified workers many of whom have left
the country for better economic opportunities, in particular medical
personnel, engineers, teachers, professors, judges and policemen, has
enormous impact over all categories of human rights, including the rights
to life, to food, to health and to development’. The situation since 2021
has improved, largely due to the October 2023 Barbados Agreement signed
between the Venezuelan government and the opposition, and by the entry of
other countries (such as China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey) to trade with
Venezuela. But the road ahead is difficult and long.

The sanctions define this election. If they are seen as fair, then the
Barbados Agreement might lead to the loosening of the sanctions by the US.
The United States would like more Venezuelan oil to get into the market not
to help the Venezuelan people, but to provide energy to Europe given the
sanctions on Russia. There are far too many contradictions in play here.
The US will certainly deny the legitimacy of the elections if Maduro wins,
and allow the sanctions to prevent Venezuelan oil to provide relief to the
Europeans. During the 2020 presidential elections, sanctions played the
leading role. They continue to be the main issue on the ballot.

Maduro’s campaign rallies have been effusive. The Chavistas cheer him,
their red shirts sparkling with sweat under the warm Venezuelan skies. We
will prevail, says the former bus driver, whose humourous speeches are
defiant. There is no evasion here. Maduro is clear: Venezuela is being put
to the test. Will the Venezuelan people continue the Bolivarian process or
will they u-turn to the terrible past of the oligarchy?

*Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal:
Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August
2022).*
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