The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, emerged reinforced in the face of Washington’s policy of diplomatic isolation and sanctions by receiving support from Lula in Brazil, but the deadlock in negotiations with the opposition towards the 2024 elections maintains uncertainty, according to analysts.
Maduro has been favored by the turn to the left of countries such as Argentina, Colombia and ultimately Brazil with the return to the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, while his rivals lost strength as their offensive to remove him from power foundered. .
“I think the political isolation is behind us. Even governments that have wide differences with the Maduro government have chosen to maintain or resume diplomatic relations,” Mariano de Alba, a senior advisor to the International Crisis Group, told AFP after the president’s visit. Venezuelan to Brasilia for a meeting of South American presidents.
There are, however, obstacles: the paralysis since November of the negotiating table between Maduro and the opposition to agree on the conditions of the next presidential elections and the denunciations of human rights violations in Venezuela generate confrontation.
The meeting in Brasilia reflected these differences. Lula called the accusations of authoritarianism against Maduro a “constructed narrative”, drawing harsh reactions from his peers in Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and Chile, Gabriel Boric.
“The worst thing we can do is cover the sun with one finger,” said Lacalle Pou. “The human rights situation in Venezuela is not a narrative construction, it is a reality,” Boric said.
Political scientist Pablo Andrés Quintero thinks that “Lula’s image strengthens Maduro’s political narrative,” which can help him in an international “reintegration agenda” to “press” for the lifting of sanctions.
According to a note from the political risk firm Eurasia Group, the progressive change in the “regional position” on Venezuela makes the isolationist policies “uncomfortable” that Washington maintains despite rapprochement with Caracas due to the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the market. oil.
correct address
“Getting Maduro out of isolation” is not “so easy,” says a diplomatic source from Brazil. “Economic integration is difficult with sanctions,” an issue that depends on the United States, she adds.
Upon his return to Caracas, Maduro celebrated the summit as “a certain step in the right direction” for a reunion between the South American governments.
This meeting came just over a month after the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, organized a meeting of foreign ministers and diplomatic representatives in Bogotá to try to “unlock” the negotiations between Maduro and the opposition.
Mariano de Alba stresses that negotiation is key: Lula and Petro, he says, “buy Maduro’s arguments, but at the same time they recognize that the current situation is not sustainable”, since the lack of agreements would lead Venezuela “to an economic crisis deeper” with migratory impact.
More than 7 million Venezuelans have migrated due to the crisis, the vast majority to other Latin American countries.
Joe Biden’s administration has declared itself willing to make financial arrangements more flexible if there are agreements, but Maduro, publicly, does not give in.
“We don’t care if they say something or not,” said the Socialist ruler in March.
Maduro made his first official trip to Brazil since November, when he went to Egypt for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, where he met the president of France, Manuel Macron, who has advocated “diversifying” sources of supply of crude, with opening to Venezuela and Iran.
move the board
Weakened and fractured, the opposition is trying to rebuild itself after the symbolic “interim government” of opposition leader Juan Guaidó – recognized by the United States and fifty other countries in 2019 – was eliminated by its own allies in January.
“There are no guarantees that we will have a competitive election next year; that is, we have to move the board and the United States government has to help,” presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who faced at the polls, said in a forum. the late Hugo Chávez, in 2012, and Maduro, in 2013.
The opponent Henrique Capriles believes that the isolation of Venezuela, “far from recovering democracy”, led to the “stabilization” of Maduro. Other opposition leaders such as Guaidó, consider that abandoning that line is a mistake. “It is not narrative, they are crimes without justice,” he posted on Twitter, accusing Lula of “trying to whitewash a dictatorship.”