Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is taking pages from Vladimir Putin’s book by doubling down on repression to secure a victory in upcoming elections. Some of his persecuted opponents are taking refuge in the Argentine embassy that is under siege by his Cuban trained security services in an evolving crisis that could turn into another serious foreign policy embarrassment for Biden, who recently eased economic sanctions on Venezuela on the advice of his NSC officials believing he could trust Maduro.
Before the ink was dry on a U.S. brokered agreement signed with much pomp and circumstance in Barbados last October, pledging all kinds of electoral guarantees to Venezuela’s opposition, an elaborate legalistic process was underway to prevent the main opposition presidential candidate, María Corina Machado, from getting on the ballot following the authoritarian template being applied by leftist governments globally. (READ MORE: Iran Makes Inroads in Latin America)
Last week, Venezuela’s regime filed unspecified “conspiracy” charges against all her senior staff, two of whom got snatched by Maduro’s goon squads while six of them made it to Argentina’s diplomatic mission. Electricity to the embassy has since been cut and Argentine President Javier Milei is struggling to get a military team into Venezuela to protect the grounds surrounded by Maduro’s security unit SEBIN who are also cutting the water supply intermittently. “When it does come out it’s dirty” an Argentine security official told The American Spectator.
“It’s heartening to see Argentina taking a principled stand to protect those Maduro and his regime have targeted in its multifront attack on the opposition’s increasingly futile efforts to give Venezuelans real choice in the July elections,” says Dr. Evan Ellis, Latin America specialist at the U.S. Army War College. Machado was trying to arrange for a prominent academic to replace her on the ticket when Maduro decapitated her political organization to pressure the opposition into accepting a quiet, little known ex-ambassador as the rival candidate.
Maduro Should Be Held Accountable
Milei has been accusing Venezuela of being a “communist” and “terrorist” state since his inauguration last year. But other governments are being “timid” and “soft” in criticizing Venezuela’s “criminal violation of international agreements,” said ex-Colombian president Ivan Duque on CNN. The U.S. State Department has expressed “concerns” over the regime’s election interference while President Lula da Silva of Brazil and current Colombian President Gustavo Petro echo American platitudes.
“Maduro should be condemned by the Organization of American States and the United Nations,” says Duque, who fears that the lack of international reaction to his brutal fix on Venezuela’s elections renders Machado vulnerable to “extra official capture” or even “assassination.”
The Barbados agreements by which Maduro was supposed to allow competitive elections under international supervision, were largely negotiated by NSC Latin America officer Juan Gonzales, who quietly resigned from the White House a month ago, after it had become apparent that Maduro had no intention of honoring the agreement, which had allowed his regime to vastly increase its oil revenues in recent months.
“Gonzales was much taken in by the Venezuelans … getting flown around in private jets,” a U.S. State Department source told The American Spectator. “He made it clear from the start that the administration wanted to scuttle maximum pressure sanctions [imposed by former President Donald Trump].”
His replacement, Dan Erikson, is expected to recommend “some degree of policy change” when the Barbados agreements officially come up for review on April 18. But Maduro has already doubled his oil profits which rose from $12 billion to $20 billion in 2023. The easing of sanctions that were supposedly tailored to allow Chevron to purchase Venezuelan oil for U.S. refineries in a “debt repayment” scheme, ended up being negotiated in ways that also permitted European and Indian oil companies to load up on Venezuelan crude oil in straight dollar transactions that had been banned by Trump. (READ MORE from Arostegui: The Venezuela Template Against Democracy)
Similar to how the Biden administration’s roll back of sanctions on Iran has allowed the radical Islamic regime to strengthen itself politically and militarily in the Middle East, the easing of Venezuelan sanctions is helping Maduro expand his influence in Latin America, where he keeps Cuba’s dictatorship afloat with free oil shipments supplying 30 percent of the island’s energy needs. Bolivian international lawyer Christian Barrientos also sees a link between the recent repression unleashed in Venezuela and efforts by Bolivia’s socialist government to dismantle election integrity safeguards.
Maduro Pressures Guyana
In recent days, Bolivia’s MAS party government of President Luis Arce Gómez filed unspecified criminal charges against an engineer of the cyber security firm Ethical Hackers, Edgar Villegas, who uncovered an attempt by previous MAS President Evo Morales to manipulate the vote in 2019 elections. An audit he conducted for the Organization of American States presented clear evidence that results were being electronically altered through outside servers connected to Bolivia’s electoral system while the votes were counted, leading Bolivia’s supreme court to denounce “election fraud” and oust Morales.
Last week, Villegas was suddenly charged with “instigation to commit a crime” without the government saying what the intended crime was. “We see a clear pattern by repressive leftist governments to perpetuate themselves in power through the pre-emptive elimination of any possible election challenge” says Barrientos.
Maduro’s growing regional influence may also give him leverage on neighboring Guyana where he is pushing territorial claims on the country’s oil producing region of Essequibo where Exxon Mobil is currently undertaking a major exploration project to tap its vast energy reserves. About 6000 Venezuelan troops were mobilized to the border with Guyana last December following a propaganda blitz by Maduro asserting historical rights on the territory based on a border dispute dating back to when Guyana was a British colony. (READ MORE: Disintegration: King of the Jungle, Episode 9)
Recent satellite imagery indicates that his military remain deployed along the border where they appear to be building bases. Venezuela’s armed forces equipped with sophisticated Russian hardware including S-300 missiles, Su-25 fighter aircraft, T-72 tanks as well as Iranian made Peykaap missile boats, dwarf Guyana’s small army. Britain has sent a frigate to the area and high-level Pentagon officials have visited to discuss a buildup of Guyana’s armed forces.
It’s doubtful that Venezuela would launch an all-out invasion, but its Russian and Iranian supported military could mount low-intensity insurgent operations in Essequibo threatening oil production in the area, according to former Navy SEAL Officer Erik Prince who heads the private security firm Academi, (formerly Blackwater). He said in recent TV interview that Venezuela is infiltrating undercover teams possibly including Colombian FARC guerrilla veterans. Ellis says that Maduro could be aiming at extorting protection money from oil operators going into the region.
Intelligence analysts also say that Venezuela is collaborating with Iran to set up terrorist cells throughout the hemisphere. Argentine security officials worry about possible retaliation against Milei for his support to the Venezuela’s opposition and ongoing investigations into Hezbollah’s local network.
An Iranian Boeing 707 linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which had been flying regularly between Venezuela and Argentina, was grounded in Argentina at the request of the FBI in 2022. Argentine authorities resisted handing the plane over the U.S. authorities until Milei complied with the requisition order upon taking office.