Frida Ghitis
Last Sunday, masked men intercepted a white van carrying Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido to a political meeting outside Caracas. They shoved Guaido into an SUV and sped away, taking into custody the man spearheading a bold and risky new strategy to try and reverse the country’s calamitous decline under President Nicolas Maduro.
Authorities freed Guaido after a short detention, perhaps because the incident was only meant to intimidate him, or maybe because the government is still unsure about how to deal with Guaido, who is raising the stakes in a way Maduro has not seen until now.
A week ago, the Venezuelan leader was sworn in for a new six-year term. The ceremony might have seemed like a pro-forma event in a presidency that began in 2013, continuing the country’s sharp left turn taken two decades ago by Maduro’s mentor, the late President Hugo Chavez. But Maduro’s second inauguration marks the beginning of a new phase of conflict in Venezuela, with the opposition launching a bold campaign whose international support is without precedent since the rise of Chavismo.
Venezuela’s political and economic crises have reached such enormous proportions that they have become a source of profound concern for the rest of the region. The economy has unraveled, with crime, scarcity and poverty escalating beyond anything the country has seen. Inflation, headed to an unbelievable 10 million percent, according to the International Monetary Fund, is by far the world’s highest. Once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, conditions are worsening by the day. Almost 80 percent of adult Venezuelans say they are eating less today than they were three months ago because they don’t have enough money to buy food. A raise in the minimum wage that Maduro recently announced only takes it to $6.70 per month. The crisis has spawned an exodus of more than 3 million Venezuelans scattering across Latin America, a region with limited resources and conflicts of its own. It’s not only Venezuelans who are eager for change.
A few days before Maduro’s inauguration, Venezuela’s elected National Assembly, dominated by the opposition but stripped of all power by Maduro, launched its new session by naming the 35-year-old Guaido as its president, effectively bestowing on him the mantle of bringing an end to the Maduro regime.
Guaido has minimal political experience, but he has enough to know how risky his position is. An engineer by training, he cut his political teeth at the side of Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuela’s most popular politician, who is now under house arrest. In accepting the position, Guaido spoke of the misery that afflicts the country, listing the names of imprisoned government opponents and noting that Venezuela is living a “dark but transitional moment.” He promised to restore constitutional order, but without much explanation.
The details started coming later, after Maduro was sworn in at the Supreme Court, in violation of a constitutional requirement that he take the oath before the National Assembly. The next day, the new opposition strategy came into full view, with startling declarations from Guaido, Canada’s foreign minister, and a host of Latin American countries.
Guaido came tantalizingly close to declaring a separate government, arguing that the constitution provided him with “the legitimacy to carry out the charges of the presidency.” But he stopped short, calling on citizens to take to the streets as a necessary step to remove Maduro and hold new elections.
A decision by the U.S. to recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s president would tilt the balance of power dramatically.
“We’re entering the most dangerous stage of our history,” he told Venezuelans, without hyperbole. “We will oust Maduro and his gang from power,” he vowed.
The move was echoed abroad. More than a dozen countries called on Maduro to step down and hand power to Congress until a fair election is carried out and a new president is elected. Ominously for the government, a group of foreign bondholders announced that it would not negotiate with the Maduro government because it is “illegitimate.”
Maduro’s legitimacy was sharply called into question when he won an election last year that much of the international community deemed fraudulent. On Jan. 4, the Lima Group of 13 Latin American countries rejected his impending second term and announced it would not recognize him as president. Instead, it declared, it would recognize the National Assembly as the country’s democratically elected body.
The statement, notably, was not signed by Mexico, whose new leftist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, claims he wants a noninterventionist foreign policy. Still, the near-unanimity among Venezuela’s neighbors is in sharp contrast with Maduro’s 2013 inauguration, when regional support for him was evident with the presidents of Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, among others, on hand for the ceremony in Caracas.
This time, Paraguay announced it was severing diplomatic relations with Venezuela. Brazil went even further, announcing it recognizedGuaido as president. And Canada joined with the Lima Group, downgrading diplomatic relations, calling the Maduro regime a “fully entrenched dictatorship” and urging him to cede power to the legislature until new elections are held.
The United States made sure not to steal the regional spotlight but still threw its support behind the orchestrated anti-Maduro campaign. The U.S. role may yet prove pivotal.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly formally launched the constitutional process to remove Maduro, declaring his presidency illegitimate. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly congratulated them for their courage. But Washington is considering more than symbolic action.
The Trump administration is reportedly weighing the option of severely tightening sanctions, even considering the possibility of limiting imports of Venezuelan oil. Slashing oil imports could create problems for both countries, including American firms that refine Venezuela’s notoriously sludgy crude oil.
The U.S. may also recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s president, a decision that would tilt the balance of power dramatically, empowering the opposition to negotiate on behalf of his country, and might trigger an international domino effect.
For now, however, even Guaido is not formally establishing a parallel government. He has to weigh the reaction of the regime and Maduro’s guarantor, the military. After all, previous efforts to unseat Maduro and Chavez, however spirited, all failed. If there is one thing Venezuela’s opposition leaders have learned about this battle, it is not to take victory for granted.
Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is a regular contributor to CNN and The Washington Post. Her WPR column appears every Thursday. Follow her on Twitter at @fridaghitis.
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