The American pressure unleashed about Maduro | Mik …

Page12 in Venezuela

From Caracas

Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, former director of the CIA, was yesterday afternoon in Cucuta, Colombia, on the border with Venezuela. He was accompanied by President Iván Duque, Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes and Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez. They visited the humanitarian aid collection center and the Simón Bolívar International Bridge, stressing that on February 23, the attention of the media had been in the center of attention, when, as they l & # 39; They had announced that they were entering trucks with aid to Venezuela.

Pompeo and Duke gave a joint press conference after their meeting. "The United States will continue to use all the economic and political means at our disposal to help Venezuelans through sanctions, the cancellation of visas, among other means," said Pompeo, who ended the trip. that he performed between Friday and Friday. Sunday in Chile, Paraguay, Peru and finally Cúcuta, where the main point of each meeting was Venezuela.

Duque, for his part, spoke of the commitment to maintain his support for the "unrestricted defense of democratic principles in Venezuela," stressing the importance of obtaining recognition of the "principle of democracy". sent by the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó to the Organization of American States, and the Lima group gathered today in Chile. "We are with you to defeat the dictatorship and regain freedom," he concluded.

Pompeo returns to the United States after his tour and meeting with the presidents of each country, in a context marked by the need to reorganize the strategies concerning Venezuela, after a series of actions that have not achieved their goal of forcing the departure of Nicolás Maduro. Elliot Abrams, Venezuela's special director for North America, went with his tour to Spain and Portugal.

The main thrusts addressed in each case and country were the need to strengthen macroeconomic sanctions – as in the case of Repsol which could take action – as well as for the Chavismo leaders, the humanitarian dimension and the highlighting of the situation. geopolitical dimension. in the threat posed by Venezuela to the United States, their alliances with Russia, Cuba, China and Iran are, they stress.

The question of military intervention was less pronounced. Pompeo and Abrams have once again ratified the fact that all the options were on the table, although they have not yet clarified it in a context where their allies, the Lima group and the United States, are all in the mix. European Union, insisted that any resolution be peaceful. and democratic.

As part of the Pompeo tour, bilateral issues were also discussed with each country, as well as a cross-cutting dimension that was repeated at each press conference: the threat posed by Chinese investments on the continent. The paradigmatic case was in Chile, where the Secretary of State stated that "when China operates in countries like Latin America, it often injects corrosive capital into the economic circuit, thus giving life to corruption and eroding good governance. " At the same time, he threatened to "make decisions about the location of our information", in case the Chilean government becomes a possible alliance with Huawei. Xu Bu, China's ambbadador to Chile, said: "Mr. Mike Pompeo lost his mind and went too far."

The tension around this point has confirmed the imbalance between the political dimension of the links between governments aligned with the North American strategy and the economic dimension. This is not the first time that this is seen, this is part of the tensions that were part of the central agenda at a time marked by the dispute between the United States. and China, which is the epicenter of technology and innovation.

The Pompeo tour was closely followed by Venezuela, at a time when the political agenda counted twice. On the one hand, Chavismo recalled the days of April 2002 during which the coup against Hugo Chávez could have been defeated. Three days of mobilization activity had taken place. April 13 ended with a large demonstration of the strength of the Bolivarian militia which, according to Nicolás Maduro, has reached 2 million 200,000 militia and militia.

The right side has maintained its program of activities centered on the areas of Caracas, and then the weekend in the state of Zulia, on the border with Colombia. There, Guaidó has made tours, speeches, mobilization in the city of Maracaibo, in a roadmap that continues without proposing horizons and objectives that seem close to being made, which partly explains the difficulty of not having a decrease in expectations.

The meeting of the Lima group will take place today more than a month compared to the previous one. There will be results of the agreements made in the Pompeo tour, especially in the economic and diplomatic fields. The military hypothesis remains outside the public agenda, although it is in private areas: it was learned that last Wednesday a meeting had been organized by the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS ), in Washington. where were sent envoys from Guaidó to the United States, former Southern Command chief, officials and former officials of the USAID State Department, as well as advisors to Donald Trump, among others, to deal with this problem.