MAY
16, 2019
American media still refer to
Juan Guaidó, America’s hand-picked “legitimate leader” or “legitimate
president” of Venezuela, as having an “administration.”
The truth is that his
“administration” — consisting of advisors and other opposition leaders — are all
either arrested and being held by the government, hiding, seeking asylum in
various foreign embassies (Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Argentinian) in the
capital of Caracas, or have fled to other countries like Brazil and Colombia.
Guaidó, apparently a
government of one, has so far avoided arrest probably because the elected
Venezuelan President Maduro doesn’t want to give the US an excuse to try and
rescue him, or to launch military actions of some kind against Venezuela as the
White House keeps threatening to do.
Clearly, in calling for US
military intervention, Guaidó has both demonstrated almost his total
lack of backing among the masses of Venezuelan people, as well as his
desperation, given most Latin Americans’ visceral resentment of US interventions
in their country, all of which have been designed to put autocrats or even
military juntas in power, and many of which have openly overthrown popularly
elected governments, as in Guatemala, Chile, Brazil, Nicaragua, Haiti,
Dominican Republic, and elsewhere.
None of this gets reported in
the US. Only recently has the New York Times, always a reliable backer of
US imperial policy in Latin America, at least hinted at the possibility that
the reason Maduro remains president and that Guaidó’s efforts to oust him
are failing for abysmally could be that the Venezuelan people want him to stay
president, and do not want a US-backed coup or a US military intervention to
replace him.
At this point the huffing and
puffing coming from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and especially from the
White House National Security Advisor and chief militarist blowhard John
Bolton, are looking pretty pathetic, with Bolton trying to
sow dissension and distrust by hinting that Maduro “better not trust”
his own generals’ loyalty, and by offering rewards to those generals willing to
abandon Maduro.
It is an indication of the
United States’ declining power and influence in Latin America that few outside
the US with its insular mass media believe that the US would or even could
successfully invade Venezuela and impose a government on that country of 32
million (a number that keeps declining as the upper middle class and rich
flee).
If anything, US sabotage and
threats and US backing for a government of the wealthy are probably galvanizing
support for Maduro. While people in the US, if they are paying any attention at
all to events in Venezuela, may believe that Maduro is a corrupt thug, people
in Venezuela itself, and in most of Latin America know full well that the main
problems in that oil-rich country have to do with the collapse in oil prices
since the heady days of Hugo Chavez when it was going for $100 a barrel, to
American efforts to block Venezuela from exporting its oil now, and to freeze
or even seize Venezuelan assets and oil receipts from the oil it does manage to
export, and to other forms of economic warfare engaged in by the United States.
As in Cuba, this kind of strategy by the US only works to build support for the
country’s existing government.
At some point Guaidó is
going to go. He will either be written off by the US media — his main backer —
or will be arrested. Probably the latter will follow the former since once he’s
recognized as an impotent charlatan, his arrest will not make him a martyr for
the opposition. Already he has lost what public support he had as Venezuela’s
wealthy abandon the country for Florida. As well, the “50 countries” that we in
the US keep hearing which supposedly back Guaidó as Venezuela’s “legitimate
leader” are realizing that they were hoodwinked by the US, and are mostly
calling for a calmer response to the crisis in Venezuela, refusing to buy into
US military threats against the Maduro government. Nobody mentions that over
140 countries in the world support Maduro as the leader of Venezuela.
In truth it’s impossible to
find that list of “more than 50 countries” backing a self-proclaimed and
unelected Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. The closest I could find by working
google searches was a map produced by Bloomberg News listing 13 countries besides
the US as supporting Guaidó. These included Canada, the UK, Guatemala,
Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina,
Paraguay and Brazil. That is 13 plus the United States. Listed as supporting
Maduro as elected President are Russia, China, Turkey, Bolivia, and Cuba,
though I believe Bloomberg neglected to mention Nicaragua, a strong Maduro
backer, which would make it six.
For a time, most of the
countries of Europe were lining up behind Guaidó, particularly after Germany
announced that it was recognizing him as the new interim leader of Venezuela in
late January, and ousted the country’s ambassador, but then by late March
Germany was having second thoughts, and rejected the person sent there by
Guaidó to assume the position of Venezuelan ambassador. At this point
except for the UK, the countries of Europe, along with Mexico and Uruguay are
simply calling for a dialogue and a negotiated solution to the Venezuela
political crisis, and in addition to opposing any talk of military action or a
coup, are seeking nothing more than a new election (which Maduro would probably
win, given the alternative of the return of a government of the rich). They’re
no longer really backing Guaidó.
The reporters who continue to
refer to “more than 50 countries” calling for Maduro’s ouster all must be using
the same wrong news clip or some dated State Department press release. (I
asked the State Department for an updated list today but so far none has been
sent to me, though it would appear it shouldn’t take long to compile.)
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