Everyday the news from Venezuela seems to get worse. The images that mainly foreign journalists have managed to capture of the state of affairs is truly shocking. Government forces are wantonly killing protestors and many more are dying and suffering from the lack of medicines, basic resources such as drinking water and food, and are having to deal with regular power cuts. The chronic exponential inflation means that the Venezuelan Bolívar is now almost worthless. Scenes taken straight from Dante’s inferno are coming to light as people are starving to death and having their basic rights, like to security and education, taken away from them. This comes in stark contrast to its neighbour Colombia who has experienced a boom in recent times due to the ceasefire of the FARC rebels; peacetime has brought prosperity and stability to the country that was ravaged for so long by an internecine civil war. It is now rebuilding its nation with a sense of optimism for the future.
Colombia has however become the principal destination for the refugees that have fled the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, being the natural choice for many due to its proximity and lack of a language barrier. Many others have chanced their luck in Chile, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. In the latter case, many refugees had to return to Venezuela because of the hostile reception they faced in the Northern State of Roraima, as the region simply did not have the infrastructure to receive such a large influx of desperate people. Of course there have been many who have taken the riskier route of trying to get into the United States along the long and dangerous well-trodden path through Central America and Mexico. Here they join the hundreds of thousands of people leaving counties like Nicaragua and Guatemala in their pursuit of the American dream, who also face crises of instability. The politics the way it is in 2019 in the United States means that refugees face an ever increasingly difficult job to enter the country and remain there legally, especially those coming from the southern border. Indeed President Trump turned this theme into a mantra for his election campaign in 2016. Also many Venezuelans do not own, and cannot obtain, passports and therefore do not have the necessary documents to apply for asylum in other countries that are further afield. Despite all this it is estimated that at least 3 million Venezuelans have already fled their homeland in the last few years.
Nicolas Maduro’s reign in power since 2013 has moved from the position of president to dictator, due to the questionable validity of the elections that have taken place in the country. Many Western national and international bodies including the UN have questioned the validity of the results. Maduro won his first election in 2013 by as small margin, gaining just over half of the ballots cast. However in the 2018 election he won a landslide victory with 67% of votes. Many commentators have pointed out the ironic disparity between the ever decreasing quality of life faced by Venezuelans in Maduro’s first mandate and the massive increase in the vote for the president in his second election victory.
Maduro primarily inherited a large and loyal following from president Hugo Chávez who died of cancer at the age of 58 in 2013. This charismatic leader was the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (the ruling party’s) founder and spearheaded the socialist revolution that was based on jingoism and opposition to the United States’ hegemony in the region. It is in large part the doings of Chávez that has brought Venezuela to its knees today, such as the nationalisation of the oil companies and the reduction in international trade. However he had just enough momentum and charisma to keep his popularity high before his early death in office turned him into a martyr for the far left. His portrait is now adorned on T-shirts and murals much in the same way as Che Guevara’s, often with the same beret, representing a form of military communism.
Whilst Chávez may have got away with promoting a sense of nationalism in the face of the imposing superpowers, Maduro has run out of cards to play. His country struggles on from one day to the next and if it were not for the support of the military he would surely have been ousted from his position by now. He does have some international support, notably from China, Cuba, Turkey and Russia, the latter of which has sent in war planes and troops to help support the government. This has been greeted with much alarm by the neighbouring nations especially Brazil and the United States who see this as another example of the Russians interfering in international affairs where they are not wanted, the other salient example being in Syria. Quite what the Russian military is doing in Venezuela is hard to tell, but it is likely to have something to do with the extensive oil reserves.
The proclamation of Juan Guaidó as the acting President of Venezuela in January of 2019 has been a welcome and bold step by a man who has clearly risked his life for his country. He has taken the extremely courageous move of announcing his presidency in a country that has an active militia. But now at least foreign powers have someone to coalesce around and support. There is now someone who can start the rebuilding process of a nation that has been truly broken, once Maduro has moved aside.
Such are the wealth of natural resources in Venezuela, it seems even more hard to understand how the successive governments have squandered the potential of this gifted nation. An aggressive foreign policy with vitriolic rhetoric against the United States and its South American neighbours, plus a cosiness with Cuba has lead to a state of isolation in the region. But there has also been mismanagement of public funds and corruption on an industrial scale that has brought this country down.
Ever since Neville Chamberlin’s campaign of appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930’s, Western powers have been nervous about the rise of dictators and the manipulation of democracy, and rightly so. However the failures of foreign military interventions, the most clear cut examples being Vietnam, Iraq and Libya, mean that governments are now less likely to commit to full scale invasions. These three countries suffered enormous hardship as the result of war from foreign invasions that left protracted periods of upheaval. Such is the natural wealth of the oil that Venezuela possesses comparisons are already being made with Iraq.
The Venezuelan situation looks bleak at the moment. And Nicolas Maduro is unlikely to give up his power easily. The option of applying sanctions on the country by many western powers has really become the only amount of leverage that is available to put pressure on the president. However this has likely affected the poorest and most vulnerable people in society the most. Juan Guaidó and his supporters have a difficult job on their hands to regain power from the tyrant who currently occupies the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, but he should be commended for making a stand. The next presidential elections are due in 2024 and they will be hoping to find an new means of ousting the president before then. However Western powers should not follow Russia’s lead and send in foreign military machines or send troops. The crisis in Venezuela should be resolved by its own citizens.
WilliamGAFrost 