Nicolás Maduro has decided not to travel to Brasilia on January 1st, after various efforts by the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. That decision went under the carpet at the inauguration of the seventy-year-old standard of the Latin American left. The Venezuelan ruler’s decision not to come to Buenos Aires on January 24 is new.
The government of Venezuela announced that Maduro would not travel to Argentina for security reasons. The Venezuelan President declined at the last minute the invitation of the Argentine government to attend the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) this Tuesday, the 24th, a space for regional integration that Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador , trying to revive him, and from Argentina, Alberto Fernández.
In an official statement The Venezuelan regime claimed that “extravagant plans by far-right extremists” were afoot to attack it and jeopardizing the regional event, in a discourse that for many resembles that of the Cuban dictatorship decades ago when Fidel Castro was still alive. Venezuela is represented at the CELAC summit by the foreign ministerYván Gil, who was appointed to this position a few days ago.
Maduro’s decision followed protests led by Venezuelan, Cuban and Nicaraguan citizens. in Buenos Aires to express their opposition to the presence in Argentina of representatives of three Latin American authoritarianisms: Maduro (Venezuela), Miguel Díaz-Canel (Cuba) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua).
Unlike Maduro, Díaz-Canel arrived in the Argentine capital this Monday and was received at Ezeiza Airport on the outskirts of Buenos Aires by Argentine Deputy Foreign Minister Pablo Tettamant.
Daniel Ortega will also not be present at the CELAC meeting. According to former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Arturo McFields, the Nicaraguan ruler is “terribly afraid to leave his cell” and therefore travels only from Managua, where he lives in a kind of bunker, to either Caracas or Havana .
“In the last few hours we have been irrefutably informed of a plan drawn up within the neo-fascist right, the aim of which is to carry out a series of attacks against our delegation,” the Venezuelan government said.
Venezuelan social and political activist residing in Argentina claimed Maduro’s absence as a triumph of the protest wave and the possibility that criminal proceedings would be instituted against the ruler of Venezuela for crimes against humanity, related to complaints filed by Venezuelan victims before the judiciary of Argentina.
“This is a victory for civil society, but also a sign that Argentina still has judicial independence. Nicolás Maduro is not coming to the CELAC summit for fear of being arrested,” Jesús Delgado Valery told DIARIO DE CUBA from Buenos Aires. Delgado Valery is Venezuelan and coordinator of the DemoAmLat initiative dedicated to promoting democratic principles in Latin America.
Indira Urbaneja, a Venezuelan political scientist, told DIARIO DE CUBA that holding the CELAC summit represented a crucial space for the Venezuelan government’s strategy to reintegrate into the region.
“The framework of the celebration of CELAC was the perfect place for Nicolás Maduro to break through the restrictionsthe regional siege that has been ongoing since mid-2018,” Urbaneja said. In 2018, Maduro was re-elected in elections unrecognized by dozens of countries in Latin America, North America and Western Europe.
According to Urbaneja within the framework of this summit For Maduro, the reunion with Lula da Silva and with Alberto Fernández himself was crucial. (President of Argentina) who are trying to promote a new strategy, a kind of reorganization in the region in relation to Venezuela”.
According to this normally informed political analyst Maduro and his entourage had their suitcases ready to travel to Buenos Airesbut the security issue was predominant in the end to preclude the trip.
“The main problem is security. A fully guaranteed level of safety has not been achieved in Buenos Aires,” Indira Urbaneja claimed.
In the analysis that the analyst shares with DIARIO DE CUBA, he not only weighs the risk of an arrest warrant being issued for Maduroas emphasized by Venezuelan opposition actors, but rather, for example, action could be taken on the President’s plane or on members of the entourage.
Urbaneja coincides with Delgado Valery Recognition of the independence of the powers in Argentina. In your opinion, this creates a situation of uncertainty because the government of Alberto Fernández could not guarantee Maduro that the judiciary would not take any action.
Besides not knowing as legitimate his re-election in 2018, A $15 million reward suspended by the US in 2020 weighs heavily on Maduro. Maduro and his security collaborators, on the other hand, are the subject of a preliminary investigation by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity after opposition protests were quashed in 2014.