Neighboring Venezuela continues to be in the news. And it’s usually bad news. Created, almost always, by the enthronement of a government for which elections and democracy are a caricature that can be mocked with the greatest impudence. If millions of Venezuelans leave the country, they will cynically justify it. On the first occasion he denied that it was true against the evidence of all Latin American countries, the United States and Europe, which received them by the thousands and in the circumstances of Colombia by millions.
All paths lead to the dictatorship, not only because it ignores free elections or because it eliminated the separation of powers, will consolidate in power. Whether it is legitimate is another thing. But when shame does not exist, and the army does not guarantee democracy, nothing can be done.
As had been warned, the United States government, as of today, has reactivated the sanctions, since the Chavo-Madurista regime has not fulfilled its commitments to hold free elections. The license for a semester has allowed Caracas to sell its gas and oil in international markets. The companies will have a long month to finish their operations.
Agreements were signed in Barbados, in the development of which the parties agreed to make mutual concessions. One of them, on the part of the United States, was to drop the charges against Alex Saab, a Colombian authorized by Maduro as a ‘Venezuelan diplomat’. He was released from prison in the northern country and Maduro gained the greatest success from him. However, he did not facilitate the electoral participation in the July presidential elections of María Corina Machado, since if she were a candidate she would give ‘a panga’ to the candidate Maduro.
“…They have not fulfilled one of the most fundamental commitments”: allowing the opposition to present their preferred candidates, as declared by a senior official in President Joe Biden’s Administration,” says the Spanish newspaper El País.
“…US officials have tried to combine two objectives. On the one hand, intensify pressure on Caracas to hold free elections. On the other hand, prevent the punishment from destabilizing the delicate global energy market and causing fuel prices to skyrocket (…). Washington also does not want to risk unleashing an avalanche of Venezuelan migrants towards the southern border of the United States, another hot potato for Biden and his team in the very close battle for re-election next November.
The gringo movement “should not be perceived as a final decision that we have stopped believing that Venezuela can hold inclusive and competitive elections (…).”
The decision is going to produce a new and serious setback for the Venezuelan economy and contrary to what was expected, we anticipate that it will produce a large wave of migration, to Colombia first, stimulated by popular frustration at the impossibility of the opposition being able to access power. political. An alert for our border region. The planned gas imports that the Petro government had defended have also been called into question. The only winner – because it wins head or tail – will continue to be the civic-military government of Nicolás Maduro.