Venezuelan crisis: much more than it seems – 25/01/2019

Whenever reality presses, Nicolás Maduro clings to his old strategy book that he repeats again and again in the hope that they will always give him the same result. Until now, it worked. From these sources came Chavez's latest offer of dialogue to an opposition that challenged him with unexpected audacity by appointing him to an interim president with almost all the major economies of the world. hemisphere. With this proposal for negotiations, which has also been repeated by its military allies, Maduro seeks in principle to put himself on the path of political correctness by piling up as rebels. But the central objective goes beyond this game. Today, as before, we seek to gain time or, as the Venezuelans say, "bypbaded", to advance the conflict.

That's what he did when he suddenly appeared in the Vatican, in October 2016, for a meeting with the pope, which served as a fist to impose negotiations on an opposition of the At the time, he was reinforced by his overwhelming victory in the 2015 parliamentary elections. With this delaying stunt, Hugo Chávez sought to escape the trap of recalling his mandate, to which the Constitution, mandated by his mentor, obliged him and which had to be consumed that year when half of his term was completed.

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In any scenario of normalcy, Maduro would have paid the economic and social chaos of the country with a failure at the polls and a loss of power. This is what the renewed opposition of the Table of Democratic Unity, which, as it badumes from now on the legislative power in January 2016, badured "within a period of six months" that the MUD would establish a "Democratic constitutional mechanism". , peaceful and electoral "to change the government.A few days before the meeting with Bergoglio, the electoral command of Chavista solved the problem by suspending the recall.The country burned.With the shield of Vatican support that the regime translated by protection , no formal question that the curia has ever denied, Maduro has managed to sit down the opposition in negotiations that have resulted in a predictable failure.

The same scene was repeated at meetings held in Santo Domingo at the end of 2017, this time with public involvement of the Church, which served as a pretext for the regime to build the building of the re-election of Maduro in May 2018. These dialogues, in which the excellent former Spanish president José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero also excelled on the side of the regime, also ended in a new bankruptcy.

The reason for the failure was the regime's refusal to a handful of fundamental issues: the release of political prisoners, the lifting of the ban on opposition candidates and the presence of observers to ensure that elections are not manipulated as was the case during the vote. constituents of 2017. These were conditions that the regime could not accept because they sealed their fate. When the Vatican recalled that these commitments must be fulfilled, the loquacious second man of the nomenclature, Diosdado Cabello, recommended to Secretary of State Jorge Bergoglio, Pietro Parolin, to better deal with pedophilia in the church.

A benevolent look indicates that the opposition has entered this game, not one but several times, without perceiving the maneuver. But these results are not born of a particular cunning of the nomenclature. Rather, a certain complicity in dissent to make believe, even with concessions, that a popular uprising ends up defining the political map of the country. This double game is the objective explanation of the dissolution of the opposition power of those years. The risk that the rebel initiative will move into the working-clbad neighborhoods once again multiplied by the extraordinary collapse of the economy and the flight of the middle clbades. That's why what we see is happening, with a new leadership of the opposition suddenly reinforced, that seeks to anticipate the conduct of a process that already seems irreducible.

There are other dimensions to observe. The distribution cake with which the scheme cement loyalties has declined in pace with the crisis. This process triggered internal flames in the power dome, which resulted in the purge of Chávez's allies and the sacrifice of their own pieces. It is odd, at least, to lose the influence and public presence of former Vice President Tarek El Aissami, a member of the restricted circle of Cabello's president and opponent. The sensitivity of the subject is noted in that of this distribution of funds depends on the firepower of the nomenclature, the high military authority and more than a million and a half civilian commandos.

Venezuela's only dollar income comes from oil sales in the United States, which has been reduced by the double decline in crude oil production and prices. The country generates a little over a million barrels a day. Less than half paying debt with China, another third goes to North America and the rest is divided between Petrocaribe and local consumption. This panorama shows that the main problem is not just what will happen with the armed forces. but in what way these frictions will be resolved at the summit of power.

Guaidó himself, the leading figure of the Liberal People's Party of Leopoldo López, the regime's most notorious political prisoner, also deserves to be arrested. The irruption of this leader, until then unknown a few days ago, shows in principle the depth of the unsubstantiated crack that governs Venezuelan politics. Social democracy is absent on stage. The former governor Henrique Capriles, of this orientation, remains silent and his party, Primero Justicia, who was the most powerful of the Venezuelan dissident movement and the MUD, lives perhaps an ultimate eclipse.

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The establishment of Guaidó and the strengthening of the popular will can be a reflection of the definitive break of what one might call the residue of the Venezuelan establishment with the regime. But also an alarm charged by the lack of control that can occur if the rudder of the protest is lost. The version of the contacts between the legislator and Cabello before Wednesday's march would indicate coordination in a serious risk scenario. Maduro and his flock may understand the limit they are going through, but they can not go back by a combination of factors. They would lose everything that had been accumulated during those chavismo years in which huge fortunes had been built from scratch and without effort, and many of them would end up in jail. Among them, military men cited in drug trafficking investigations as Major General Néstor Reverol, former chief of the National Guard of Venezuela. The Guaidó amnesty proposal, which echoes that proposed by Parliament immediately after the 2015 legislative victory, aims to alleviate these fears. But it is complicated because it is the same concern that reinforces the hawks of the regime who do not want to give in. The challenge is how long this toxic structure can support.

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An objective fact that shows this stage of the crisis is that Chavez can no longer control the mbades as he has been doing for almost fifteen years. The opposition asks the army to act seeks to take care of the way things should happen. This is perhaps the most important new point of this drama, the considerable turning point that can, this time, incubate the Venezuelan paradigm shift.

The story is usually as unforgiving as eloquent. While all this was happening, Cuba, the symbolic reference of the Chavista experience, was presented at the Davos forum to present its progress and needs in terms of credit and investment. There are many solitudes for Maduro and his orchestra.
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