Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein*, Prensa Latina employee
The circus refers to the ridiculousness of negotiating outside Venezuelan territory (in Mexico and Barbados) simply because there is no US embassy in Venezuela and they have to strictly control their local employees who “negotiate” on their behalf. When has it ever happened that two legal parties to a conflict have to negotiate abroad when neither of them is underground or being persecuted and when there is no war going on in the country?
The need for dialogue between Venezuelans in Mexico and Barbados reflects Washington’s deep distrust of its local accomplices, whom it must “tightly control.”
The aim of this “negotiation” was to ratify and create a legal framework for what was agreed in the actual negotiation that the Government of Venezuela conducted discreetly and confidentially with that of the United States. The latter asked to keep it secret while he considered how to “sell” to his public opinion that he was talking to a government that they described as a dictatorship and that they had sworn to defeat in every way, since all options ” were at stake.” Table.” Washington demanded that the agreements be kept confidential pending the “best time” for publication. That moment came, yes, ahead of the timing planned by the Biden administration.
By this time, the United States could already see that the entire arsenal of tools used to overthrow the Bolivarian government had failed miserably. Let’s see:
• They tried to split the armed forces.
• They staged a coup.
• They carried out an invasion by sea.
• Another overland from Colombia.
• They carried out a drone strike to assassinate President Maduro and members of the government and military high command.
• They allied themselves with organized crime and drug trafficking to destabilize the country.
• They carried out several waves of terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage against public services.
• They approved around 930 unilateral coercive measures (falsely called sanctions) against people and institutions in the country.
• They launched a furious campaign of lies in the media to misinform about what was happening in Venezuela.
• They falsified the number of migrants they themselves had produced with their wave of sanctions and attacks in order to maximize the profits generated by “this company” and also constructed a fable about it, without the slightest concern for the suffering of the citizens to shear those who were forced to give up their land.
• They blocked international financial transactions
• They founded the Lima Group, the only international organization in history created to overthrow a government
• They sent their warships to the Caribbean to block trade and prevent the arrival of medicine and food in the country.
• They ordered their satellite states to withdraw their ambassadors from Caracas. They themselves abandoned and closed their embassy, while at the same time ordering groups of criminals to forcibly occupy our embassy in Washington, in violation of the most basic norms of international law.
• They banned Western laboratories from selling COVID vaccines to Venezuela.
• They mobilized neighboring countries to exert military pressure on Venezuela’s borders.
• They artificially manipulated the Venezuelan currency, the Bolívar.
• They indiscriminately sanctioned the national energy industry, particularly PDVSA.
• They sent hundreds of millions of dollars to fund internal subversion that claimed dozens of victims through practices comparable only to those of the Nazis and Zionists in Palestine today.
• They invented an artificial president.
• They stole companies, planes and refineries and other assets from Venezuela with impunity in order to pass them on as loot to their local employees who carried out the task assigned to them by Washington.
…and they failed. All these actions are documented and can be the subject of study for those who want to know what has happened and is happening in Venezuela.
Once all these files have been exhausted, they want to create a new Guaidó, but are now trying to give the process a legal appearance. At the international level, the new progressive governments of Colombia and Brazil, which have refused to participate in the actions against Venezuela, are taking advantage of Guyana’s weak regime, led by an elite with a neo-colonial and vile mentality that has betrayed its greats Founding leaders: Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, to create an international conflict aimed at justifying military actions led by the Southern Command of the United States Armed Forces, thus serving the major Western energy transnationals.
Despite discovering that the Venezuelan opposition is not only an expression of mediocrity and shameful ignorance, but has also lied to them for years by proclaiming “the impending overthrow of Maduro,” the United States is holding out – as in Ukraine and Israel – stuck to interventionist practices Interventionists support forces that represent the most regressive thinking in the country. Their attachment to the outdated logic of the Cold War was stronger than the search for understanding a reality that heralded the birth of a new world.
But that’s not why they negotiated with Venezuela. They have no qualms about wasting American taxpayers’ money in uncontrolled bloodshed to stop the march of history. This apparent approach to Venezuela has two aspects. First, the deep economic crisis, particularly in the energy sector, that is afflicting the United States.
It is worth remembering that just two weeks after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, a US delegation, the highest delegation in more than a decade, arrived in Caracas, chaired by Juan González, the White House national security adviser. Behind the ostensible interest in the release of some Americans imprisoned in Venezuela, the real aim of the visit was to open the country’s doors to establish a line of communication at a time of uncertainty about the extent of the conflict in Ukraine.
But what they could have predicted fell short of expectations: the sanctions against Russia have been lifted and are affecting the perpetrators more than the victims. A report last week found that the United States’ strategic oil reserves are at their lowest level since 1983. The truth is that today they have less than half the crude oil reserves they had in reserve ten years ago. They currently amount to 350 million barrels. To give you an idea of what this means, it’s worth noting that Biden has released 270 million barrels of his reserves over the past two years to bring prices down.
They couldn’t do that today. That’s why they need Venezuela’s oil to flow freely through the market. This is the first reason that explains why the negotiations took place.
The second logic by which the United States government operates has to do with the way it sells to public opinion that, as I said, it is negotiating with the “dictatorship” it has sworn to destroy. As is well known, public opinion in the United States is ignorant, controllable and manipulated and counts only as a voting machine. However, when it does not serve this goal, it can also be manipulated to accept fraud, as was the case in the 2000 presidential election when the election was stolen from Al Gore following an agreement between the elites and the institutions of power.
In a way aided by the organic stupidity of this public opinion, this situation, which is political in nature, can be transformed into a situation of electoral nature, and that is a problem for the US government. These two factors accelerated the development of the negotiation process in Venezuela.
So they forced the Venezuelan opposition to go to Barbados and accept everything that the government proposed, since everything that was put forward had already been previously agreed between the governments of Venezuela and the United States. The opposition was not given the opportunity to express their opinion, only to comply. For this reason, the issue of disqualification was not discussed. As usual, the United States has once again taken advantage of its lackeys – be they people, organizations or countries – when they no longer serve it. Ask Guaido.
Now Washington is selling it in such a way that it appears that there is no point in maintaining the sanctions as far as the Venezuelan government and the opposition have agreed, because they have achieved their goal of forcing Maduro to give in. Everything is wrong, it’s the other way around. Washington reached an agreement with Caracas and ordered the opposition to abide by it.
The statement that Maduro has given in makes it clear that politics, if it is to be carried out within the framework of the representative democracy that prevails in Venezuela, forces the parties to give in to some extent. What has not been negotiated, however, is sovereignty, territorial integrity and the will of the people to defend their future, and in this Venezuela has a staunch defender in President Maduro. You can’t talk about giving in in a derogatory way. On the contrary, giving in is a symbol of greatness… and power. You give in tactically, but remain steadfast and unshakable in defending strategic goals. This is the essence of the successful realization of the long-term goals that lead to the revolutionary transformation of society.
To achieve this, we must know how to build the balance of power needed to bring about change, and in the midst of brutal imperialist aggression, this process is slow and difficult. The government has given in to negotiations with the democratic opposition because it is a constitutional mandate.
There is nothing negative about making agreements for the benefit of the country and the people. On the contrary, it is what all Venezuelans want. But of course the terrorist opposition, which is now trying to create an artificial leader by deceiving the people, and which is also questioning Venezuela’s sovereign interests in Essequibo, has no ability to debate, but only to stick to what it says The north is dictated.
The Venezuelan people resisted and triumphed, making it clear once again that victory is the price of those who fight and do not kneel. This is what we learned from Bolívar and Chávez and will help us face and win the battles of the future, wherever they are fought: at the negotiating table or on the battlefield.
rmh/srg
*Bachelor in International Studies, Master in International and Global Relations. Doctor of Political Science
(Taken from selected signatures)