The evolution of the situation in Venezuela has raised concern for this newspaper. Their news, their crises, migration, the problems of our border.
Always with Vallenata nostalgia we remember the splendor and progress of Venezuela in the 20th century, how Venevisión television arrived first than the national channels, how thousands of compatriots went to the neighborhood to have a better opportunity in life and how its market was the best of the products of our region, to the point that the department was created to a certain extent due to the boost that cotton and the proximity to Venezuela gave to the economy.
This year 2024 becomes decisive because in the institutional calendar, presidential elections must be held in the second half of the year and the Maduro government has once again shown signs of tightening its hold on power, amid dissatisfaction, the departure of millions of Venezuelans to the abroad and the widespread poverty of a country that in the past was one of the richest.
Countries outside the US orbit in the Middle East or Asia such as Iran, Iraq, the Arabs, Russia or Kazakhstan; or countries governed by left-wing leaders in Latin America such as Brazil, Mexico or Argentina (until a few weeks) have grown their oil revenues, marking the wealth of those nations, business and world events. While the neighbor with the largest hydrocarbon reserves in the world barely produces slightly less than Colombia.
That is to say, the United States has not defined its economy: it is not because of the so-called sanctions of the northern country that Venezuela is as it is before them and in the last period of the presidency of Hugo Chávez, the incompetence in economic management was had been evidenced by death rattles of general impoverishment.
Within the framework of the Valledupar Book Fair, which this publishing house organized in June 2023, we addressed the problem with senior experts on that country and the border, from their research and books. Catalina Lobo-Guerrero, journalist and author of ‘The remains of the revolution’, National Journalism Award; María Ángela Holguín, former Foreign Minister of Colombia, former ambassador to Venezuela, author of the book ‘La Venezuela que viví’, and José Jorge Dangond, former presidential commissioner of Border Affairs, former consul general of Colombia in Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia, author of the book ‘Tierra ours: frontier chronicles’. An unavoidable event remained in memory from that conversation: the presidential elections in 2024. Along this route, agreements have been developed between the opposition and the government, which have been sponsored by governments such as Norway and the United States. President Gustavo Petro has set his quota. Although the Biden government has made notable concessions and lifted sanctions, the decision of the Venezuelan electoral court to maintain the disqualification of María Corina Machado, the favorite to win the presidency if there were free elections, puts Venezuela in the spotlight of the rabbit hunter. giant. Maduro has failed to comply and tensions are about to explode.