Jaime Gazmuri in a file image. With kind approval
Gabriel Boric’s government has appointed socialist Jaime Gazmuri (Chillán, 79 years old) as Chile’s new ambassador to Venezuela, where Chile has had no ambassador since 2018, only a chargé d’affaires. A member of the Socialist Party and a Senator for 20 years between 1990 and 2010, he is a veteran politician with highly regarded diplomatic experience. Between 2014 and 2018 he was Chile’s Ambassador to Brazil, in the second term of Michelle Bachelet, with Lula da Silva as President. As Santiago’s representative in Caracas, it will be in Gazmuri’s hand to normalize diplomatic relations, which have been hampered by President Boric’s open criticism of human rights abuses in Venezuela and previously by the role played by Sebastián Piñera (2018-2022) as President. burdened with open support for the opposition and in particular for then-opposition leader Juan Guaidó.
“Although we always maintain diplomatic relations with Venezuela, we believe that it is an opportune time to normalize relations at the highest level, that is, by appointing an ambassador to that country. This is with the aim of strengthening the bilateral work that we have continued during this period,” Chilean Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren told EL PAIS.
Gazmuri is one of the most experienced figures of Chilean progressivism, with deep ties to the Latin American left. One of the founders of the Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria, MAPU, born in the late 1960s, was so relevant that in the split in this political force after the coup, one of the factions bore his name, Mapu-Gazmuri (the more moderate). Wing). Some of the militants of other forces who ended up in the Socialist Party in the 1980s, in the last phase of the dictatorship, were a key figure in the Senate in the transition to democracy, where he chaired the Foreign Relations Commission. With excellent management ratings at the Brazilian embassy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he will come to Venezuela with extensive political leadership and an in-depth knowledge of the left in the region to try to normalize diplomatic relations between the two countries after five complex years.
Boric is the Latin American leader of the left who distanced himself furthest from Caracas during the campaign that propelled him to the presidency in March 2022. His position has brought him into conflict with the most extreme sections of his governing coalition, such as the Partido Communist. Last September, the Chilean president upped the ante on Venezuela. While attending Columbia University in New York, the Chilean President stressed his criticism of the human rights violations committed by Nicolás Maduro’s government and also in Nicaragua. The fact that he is on the left should not prevent him from expressing his opinion, although many in Chile tell him that one should “not speak ill of friends”. “It angers me when you’re on the left and you can condemn the human rights abuses in Yemen or El Salvador, but you can’t talk about Venezuela or Nicaragua…or Chile.” Grave human rights violations occurred in Chile during the social outburst [de 2019]”We cannot have double standards,” he said in September 2022. On the same tour before the UN General Assembly, Boric had accused Venezuela of putting “tremendous pressure” on Chile because thousands of Venezuelans entered the country fleeing the humanitarian crisis .
Boric’s statements before the meeting had already had an impact in Caracas. Deputy Diosdado Cabello, the second strongman in government, accused the Chilean president of talking “nonsense” before the gathering of world leaders in New York. “If they think that we will capitulate because an idiot like Boric came out to talk nonsense about Venezuela, then they are wrong, they are a curse, they go off to talk bad about Venezuela because there are so many problems, a historic debt to the Mapuche people, and what he’s doing is persecuting them,” Cabello said. For the Venezuelan MP, Boric spoke ill of Venezuela “doing well with the gringos.” “Well, it’s ridiculous,” he said.
Foreign Minister van Klaveren, who took office at the beginning of March last year and succeeded Antonia Urrejola at the Foreign Ministry, has opened dialogue with Venezuela on issues of the highest sensitivity for the region and for Chile, such as the migration problem. The prevailing belief in Santiago is that the Venezuelan diaspora and the tensions it has created in other countries cannot be resolved without active dialogue with Venezuela. Early in his tenure, Van Klaveren recognized “difficulties” for Venezuela in hosting people displaced from Chile in the context of the migration crisis on Chile’s northern border. However, in early May, the State Department confirmed that Venezuela had sent a private vehicle to repatriate migrants stranded at the border with Peru.
In mid-April, the Chilean Foreign Minister assured in an interview with EFE: “There is a migration crisis that affects different countries and of course a much stronger cooperation is needed than there is at the moment.” We know that it is a very complex issue. Also in Europe, but the truth is that we have few tools to deal with it together. One of our efforts at the moment is to be able to strengthen these cooperation mechanisms at regional level. There is talk of reviving Unasur, whatever project we want to be involved in.” For Boric’s foreign minister, it is “necessary to talk to Venezuela and Bolivia, absolutely necessary.” “Venezuela is interested in the repatriation of its citizens. He had a repatriation program that was disrupted. “We are interested in this program being able to resume,” said Van Klaveren, who, like Gazmuri himself, is part of the Permanent Forum on Foreign Policy, “which was established in March 2019 to ensure the broadest possible approximation of the basic principles of foreign policy.” promote.” State that saves the tradition of democratic Chile.”
In the previous government, President Piñera took a leading role at the regional level in supporting Venezuelan dissidence, adding complexity to Chile-Venezuela relations. The last ambassador was actually Pedro Felipe Ramirez, who resigned on March 31, 2018. In February 2019, Piñera arrived in Cúcuta, a Colombian community bordering Venezuela, to lead the entry of a humanitarian aid operation designed by Iván Duque, the President of Colombia. Aimed at promoting the overthrow of the Nicolás Maduro regime, the visit eventually ended in a fiasco that shaped not only the Piñera government but also relations between Chile and Venezuela.
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