Venezuela needs an international intervention. But which one?

At the brink of WWII, in 1939 Franklin Delano Roosevelt explained “Somoza might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”. For the decades to follow, the sentence illustrated USA’s foreign policy towards the Americas. South of the Rio Grande became one of the theaters where the USSR and the USA fought by proxy. Both needed their own… allies. The decades of confrontation left a region deeply scarred by economical and human looses. Whether the reader situates herself at the left or at the right of the political spectrum, it remains true that the coordination of the right wing Paraguayan, Uruguayan, Argentinian and Chilean dictatorships to find, torture, murder and disappear their opponents and the meaningless cruelty and corruption of the left wing Peruvian and Colombian guerrillas, left a legacy of poverty and democratic governments with little capacity for attaining political compromise, not to mention economic development. No wonder that nowadays, every signal of North American interventionism in the region raises all sort of alarms.

During all those troubled years for Latin America, Venezuela was the place to be. After expelling a right wing dictatorship in 1958 and defeating left wing guerrillas in the sixties, which seemed to have been incorporated in the democratic process afterwards, Venezuela was the country to escape the genocidal craziness occurring elsewhere. That is also why my Argentinian parents took me and my sister to Caracas in 1978, were I lived for the next twenty years, eventually becoming politically active in left wing circles.

As any other Venezuelan, I know that our escape from the cold war-fueled regional disaster was made possible by the oil. Ever since it was discovered at the dawn of past century, the Venezuelan oil went to the USA market, which became our main economical partner. It looked like a good deal: The oil motored a modern society, anchored with an impressive public sector. Counting extended social services, we described Venezuela as the country that offered plenty of emancipation chances, by a welfare state created by the social and christian democrat governments that alternated in power. Yet that chance remained elusive for the many. The level of poverty remained above 50% since the seventies. In reality the Venezuelan welfare state failed to reach the majority of its citizens. No wonder then that the rhetorical capacities of Hugo Chavez capitalized the huge inequality, driving his successful election to president in 1999, even after (and perhaps because) he commanded an unsuccessful coup de etat in 1992. Chavez stayed in power with high degree of popularity almost till his death. Yet the twenty years of chavismo have done nothing to correct the inequalities that brought them to power. As a matter of fact, they have become worse: the disastrous economical choices of the administration has brought inflation, to mention one of the many indexes, above 10000%. Just stop reading for a moment to appreciate the number. 10000% of inflation.

Such almost unbelievable governmental incapacity definitively eroded the Chavista political base. After almost 19 electoral wins in so many years, in a crucial election in 2016 the government lost the parliament to the opposition. But this result, instead of bringing a period of political diversity and perhaps dialogue, swiftly unchained the worse chavista impulses. The government appointed a national assembly, with the capacity of reform the whole country law system. Their first decree, transparently enough, was to nullify the opposition dominated parliament. Ever since Venezuelan politics have down-spiraled. Streets protests in 2017 brought hundreds of deaths and more political prisoners. Opposition leaders remained imprisoned and many protesters have been tortured, bringing back the nightmares of the right wing dictators of the seventies. I need not to remind the reader of the extensively media covered Venezuelan emigration from past year. Suddenly Venezuela is not the place to be, but the place to flight from, on foot if nothing else is possible.

Not surprisingly different actors of the opposition have been touring the world, seeking support with, again, different actors in the international community scene. They have meet sympathy and also rejection. The years of chavismo have build international support. You or me might not have said the same, but I am sure that most of us smiled when in the UN Chavez histrionically claimed that the chair used by George Bush still smelled of diabolic sulfur. Theatricals apart, the UK and Spain retain organized support for the Chavist movement. In the Americas most of the governments have soured on the Bolivarian revolution, also due to local political dynamics. To the concern of many, the opposition has recently gained the explicit support of the Trump administration. Even if that support might be balanced by the support that the EU also extended to parliament president Guaido, it is reasonable to have our alarms ringing. Putin has already signaled his support for Maduro. Is Venezuela about to replay the nightmares of the 40 years of cuban supported guerrilla in Colombia, or the CIA supported coup in Chile? Are international actors going to face each other to the cost of Venezuelan lives?

A main goals of these lines is to argue the impossibility of a US-backed coup scenario. If history is to teach us anything at all, is that the US has backed all sort of political and armed interventions indeed, when their oil supply is at risk. But that is simply not the case. Most of the Venezuelan oil, just like in the times before chavist government, still goes to the US. Nobody is expecting the marines any time soon in Caracas, or a serious blockage like the cuban one. Neither CIA funds channeled to disrupt the Venezuelan economy, since it is already as disrupted as possible.

A second goal of these lines is to illustrate the hard dilemma that the not forthcoming US invasion allows us to consider. Precisely because the already disrupted economy plus the credible threat of civil unrest with yet more protesters massacred in the street, there is little doubt that the international community should intervene, whether under the flag of the left’s international solidarity of the right’s aim at replacing tyrannies. The last years have shown that the chavist government is not willing, or capable, of loosing their grip on power. What is to be done to bring Venezuela back to a democratic state? A viable answer needs to deal with the classic dilemmas of foreign involvement in a local crisis. Both the chavistas and the opposition has spared no effort in creating international alliances. Yet the chavista government denounces as imperialist any critical foreign opinion. Similarly, a great deal of the opposition identify as colonialist any caution against North American support. On top of that, the real existing support for the Maduro government is unknown. It dwindles by the day: But would not any foreign intervention invigorate it?

From the historical figures of the South American left, the ex president of Uruguay, Pepe Mujica remains one of the most originals. Personally close to Hugo Chavez, he has allowed himself critical positions towards the Chavez revolution. Recently, and surprisingly for many, he proposed universal elections with strong supervision of the UN as unique solution to the Venezuelan crisis. In the eyes of the writer, this is a proposal with minimal possibilities of success, yet is the best heard so far. The opposition has been asking for elections ever since the national assembly took over the role of the Parliament, and even if the current government refuses to open them, perhaps pressure from its traditional allies will bring the opening to plural politics in Venezuela.

In any case, independently of towards which way will it run down, there is no doubt that the government of Venezuela is in its last throes, due to an unsolvable political and economical crisis. The question is not if the international community will play a role. The question is what role will it be possible, given a political reality in which both sides of an greatly troubled society refuse and ask for international involvement at the same time. Foreign interventions have never been simple and have always had unforeseeable and long ranging consequences. The one that will shape the Venezuelan future is likely to become a model for the ones to follow. The attention of critical analyzers is not only deserved by the suffering people of Venezuela, but needed for the yet to be formed foreign policy of all our countries.