Venezuela: Free Elections Before Reconciliation

Marco Rubio recently gave an interview on Fox News. There's variety of stuff in there (the Cuba report, for example) but one thing in particilar caught my attention about Venezuela:

Ultimately, you have to have transition.  At some point in time there has to be legitimate elections at every level so that people know that the government that’s there is a legitimate government chosen by their people.  Step one towards that is a national reconciliation.  This is a people that have been divided politically for a very long time against each other, and you’re going to have to look at models like what you saw happen in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.  I think the role the U.S. Government can continue to play is as a facilitator of all of this. 

Comparing Venezuela to Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union is the wrong approach. Those were actual nations that were becoming states again.

We should compare Venezuela to other past Latin American countries that underwent political transition. There is no perfect examples because Venezuela's path (invasion and retention of dictatorship) has no twin. It could become a weird category of negotiation with the U.S. more on the side of the dictatorship. But Rubio is talking about reconciliation so we don't need a perfect transition path--we just need to look at politically divided countries.

And the problem we then find is that reconciliation cannot happen under authoritarian rule. It happens after free elections. There might be parameters (e.g. an amnesty) that constrain what elected leaders can do, but only freely acting people can move toward bridging gaps. Right now, many Venezuelans are afraid to speak openly.

The great thing about democracy is that you have to reach out beyond your supporters. You have to show why you're not just a return to what plenty of people thought was a failed political system. The Chilean Christian Democrats successfully did that. So you need elections. But somehow they somehow always come at the end of the list of U.S. priorities.

 

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Mexico Deepening Relationship with China

Look beyond the tariffs Mexico imposed on China (which were accompanied by a meeting to explain them and plan future engagement). Donald Trump's announcement that he doesn't want to automatically renew the USMCA means Mexico is likely to deepen its relationship with China. On this point, check out Evan Ellis' latest policy paper. It outlines the many ways that relationship has spread, even military to a small extent.

One thing I wasn't aware of is how Chinese tourism increased 15% in 2025 over the year prior, with 224,000 Chinese coming by air. That is part of an intentional strategy by the Mexican government. Ellis doesn't mention it specifically, but tourism and various other things he mentions are all about soft power. It means Mexican views of China are more likely to be positive (which we've seen evidence of). It does not mean somehow not aligning with the U.S., though of course Mexico has always adopted a consciously and cautiously independent foreign policy, and so it'll be more amenable to China generally.

Anyway once again we have the irony of the U.S. talking about wanting to reduce China's influence in Latin America and then making decisions that increase that influence.

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Telesur's Head is Spinning

For many years Telesur has been a dependably leftist, anti-U.S. government news source for Latin America. After all, Hugo Chávez himself created it. It's been fascinating to see how it frames the U.S. invasion and financial control of the country. Today there a glowing account of Delcy Rodríguez's first 200 days.

The funniest thing about it is that it talks about how much progress has been made since January, particularly in economic terms. It doesn't mention what was going on before January, it does not mention the United States except for the return of air travel, and it does not refer to Nicolás Maduro. It certainly does not mention all the Venezuelan money being sucked into U.S.-controlled accounts. Just one month prior to the invasion, Telesur wrote a glowing account of the amazing economic growth occurring under Maduro.

That's how state-controlled media works. Telesur avoids whatever truths the Venezuelan government wants to avoid. It covers up whatever the Venezuelan government is covering up. This particular situation is extreme, though, because it's now required to contradict so much of its previous reporting without admitting to doing so. Suddenly the United States isn't an enemy anymore either, which must be a first.

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Is the U.S. Dividing the Venezuelan Opposition?

María Corina Machado says she will not participate in the negotiations between the regime and Dinorah Figuera, which is the U.S.-backed effort. She says she won't be an obstacle, though certainly not participating is an obstacle to eventual success if she doesn't sign on to whatever they agree to. She also mentioned returning to Venezuela but not when.

Henrique Capriles weighed in on the U.S. decision to exclude María Corina Machado from the negotiations with Delcy Rodríguez:

Whilst noting that “any political negotiation effort that delivers results for the people is positive”, Capriles wrote that the “negotiation process cannot be a calculation by someone, or against someone, or to exclude someone”. He said that “talks excluding María Corina Machado and what she represents will be doomed to fail”.

Intentionally or not, the U.S. has tapped into the longstanding lack of unity in the Venezuelan opposition, which posed a serious problem for confronting Chávez and then Maduro. In 2024 MCM became a legitimately unified candidate with mass support and that is now being undermined. Donald Trump just said that "Delcy's been doing a fantastic job," which isn't surprising but also isn't helping. Marco Rubio says MCM could participate in "reconciliation" but that's not the same as negotiation.

What we have, then, is a negotiation process led by someone who is far less known, with the highest profile opposition leaders criticizing the way it's being done. They aren't opposing talks but there's a lot less oomph with Figuera. It seems to strengthen Delcy Rodríguez's hand, as any split would, though maybe her hand is mostly whatever the U.S. wants to allow her to have.

These things are changing practically daily, but I keep wondering what an eventual ballot would look like. Can anyone run in an eventual election? If not, would the Venezuelan electorate be upset or just relieved their votes finally might actually matter? Is it thinkable that the opposite would remain split enough to give Delcy Rodríguez a chance?

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US Defense Policy in Latin America

Jorge Heine critically analyzes the speech given by Under Secretary of Defense/War for Policy Elbridge Colby at the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas in Cusco. Heine's basic take is that the Latin American audience wasn't buying it. I read the speech and it's logically incoherent and often untrue.

Hard-left regimes that enable narco-terrorists multiplied across our Hemisphere from Maduro's Venezuela to Ortega's Nicaragua to Evo's Bolivia.  These same governments and their allies in the region enabled unchecked mass migration by failing in their own countries and then exporting that failure to our country. 

Neither Ortega or Evo have had anything to do with mass migration. Maduro certainly did but the effects were felt primarily in neighboring countries, not the U.S. There is much more migration from Mexico and other parts of Central America, none of which are "hard left."

We will not treat the ISIS, the al Qaeda of this Hemisphere, who menaces American lives with kid gloves rather than the forcefulness the threat requires simply because they are in the Western Hemisphere rather than the Eastern.

This is what Heine focused on in his essay. Latin American official don't view drug traffickers like Middle Eastern terrorist groups. They're different animals with different goals and tactics.

As an aside, the grammarian in me couldn't stand that sentence, which makes it sound like terrorists "menace American lives with kid gloves." Those kid gloves are scary.

This is why, historically, Latin countries frequently understood America's role to be the enabler not the suppressor of their independence. 

This is nuts. The Cuban and Nicaraguan revolutions happened only--only--because the U.S. made it clear that it suppressed independence.

Well, to be very candid, the fact is that America doesn't need your assets or your dependency.

This even more nuts. The Financial Times, which is no liberal mouthpiece, had a headline just yesterday that read "The US Has Collected About $13bn of Venezuela's Oil Money. Where Is It?" Trump talks endlessly about Venezuela's oil. It's not even hidden.

Our people are dying in large numbers because of the drugs that come into our country and the crime that accompanies them.

As is often the case, he looks only at supply and not demand. This is a fundamental disconnect. Latin Americans see a huge rich country with an insatiable appetite for illegal drugs. Stop buying the drugs and the problem goes away.

Third and finally, it is critical that you invest more in your own defense.  There is no reason why any country, particularly those facing significant narco-terrorist threats, should spend so little on defense...This is possible here, too. Take Peru, for example, which just made one of the largest purchases of F-16's in the world. 

Also nutty. After strongly emphasizing that Latin America's primary defense challenge is drug trafficking, he says the way to solve it is by buying F-16s. He does not explain how F-16s address drug trafficking. If you read all the press releases about the purchase it's clear that the main goal is to remain close to the U.S. military. Having F-16s is both symbolic (hey, we're a prosperious and strong country with new military gadgets!) and practical (we will be sending soldiers to the U.S. and buying U.S. parts).

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Daniel Ortega: No Elections For You!

I am reading Fabrice Lehoucq's book The Coup Trap in Latin America for a journal and it immediately came to mind when I saw that Daniel Ortega announced the end of elections in Nicaragua. Among other things (you'll have to wait for the review for more), Lehoucq argues that one way out of the coup trap is for a dictatorship to sever any ties between the military and potential civilian coup plotters. That is relatively rare and requires a lot of violence--you have to crush the disloyal. You have to be in power for about 20 years before the chances of a coup go from positive to negative. Ortega has been in office for 19.

That said, Nicaragua is a weird case because Ortega has not been a dictator for that whole time. Like with other cases of electoral authoritarianism, his crackdowns emerged gradually, becoming increasingly violent. But it does seem a case of successful killing, imprisoning, and exiling your way to political stability. Ortega is looking ahead to the 2027 elections, a time when according to Lehoucq we would expect an increased chance of a coup, and like so many other dictators is getting his affairs in order to avoid any real political challenge.

It's also a weird case because it's a co-presidency where octogenarian Ortega barely ever shows his face. This doesn't necessarily change the coup calculus because he has a co-president wife and an entire repressive apparatus to keep things humming along. It just makes the whole situation more sad and pathetic, the worst possible conclusion to a political career that began by trying to overthrow a dictator. He actually said he had to abolish elections to make sure Somocistas could never return to power.

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New State Department Report on Cuba

The State Department released a report on how Cuba has infiltrated the United States. I assume the authors see this as a transformational document. I also assume it will be cited in the case of a U.S. invasion. To give you sense, it uses the word "reportedly" 20 times. It purports to situate Cuba within every protest movement in the U.S. Jumping back and forth chronologically, it basically says there are few original protest ideas in the U.S.--they all come from Cuba. Fringe Cuba-linked groups control anti-ICE protests, that sort of thing. Overall, it's regurgitated McCarthyism.

Who's implicated?

--Professors (naturally!)

--Barack Obama (they had to get him in there somehow)

--Zohran Mamdani (ditto)

--anyone who doesn't approve of ICE tactics

--Black Lives Matter

--George Floy protests (which are labeled "uprisings")

--any kind of university protest (labeled "pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses")

With all the chronology jumping, it fails to show how support for the Cuban model is greatly reduced. In the past, yes, it was real and widespread, but that's not the case now. It also fails to acknowledge how you can simultaneously oppose the U.S. embargo and the dictatorship.

There are very, very few Communists anymore, but this report seeks to make it seem like there are. How much traction that gets remains to be seen. That may not matter anyway if the purpose is to justify foreign policy.

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Latin American Views of the US and China

The Pew Research Center has a new poll on Latin American views of the United States and China. Views of the U.S. have worsened while China's have remained more or less the same. Results vary depending on the country, but it's obvious the Trump administration is needlessly squandering goodwill. The thing is, Latin Americans don't love Xi Jinping at all. China's advantage is mostly just not being overtly intrusive.

This just repeats what we know: Latin Americans play the field. They work strategically with different countries, without necessarily aligning with any of them. You don't have to love a leader to do business with their country, but the less confidence Latin Americans have in the U.S., the more they will seek alternatives.

Probably the saddest indicator is that fewer Latin Americans believe the U.S. respects personal freedoms. Mexicans believe China respects them far more than the U.S. 

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Freedom of Expression in Venezuela

Luz Mely Reyes, Co-founder and editor of Efecto Cocuyo, submitted testimony on freedom of expression in Venezuela to the House Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission Hearing on "Human Rights in Venezuela: Status and Opportunity." As you might guess, freedom of expression is most definitely not respected.

In particular, the Hate Law is still on the books and it can encompass pretty much anything the government wants it to, even on WhatsApp. Further, at least 43 media outlets, both national and international, are blocked in the country. Some journalists have been freed from prison but others remain. Journalists have been harassed trying to report on the earthquake. "Official rhetoric not only revictimizes them but also encourages further attacks against those who remain in the field of journalism."

It's clearly not something the Trump administration cares about.

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Is Latin America Caught Between Rebalancing and Hegemonic Erosion?

Andres Malamud and Luis Schenoni recently published an article about Latin America being caught between strategic rebalancing and hegemonic transition:

The current international landscape lends itself to two competing interpretations. One understands it as a process of strategic rebalancing: a temporary hardening of U.S. leadership aimed at managing the decoupling from China in a bipolar world. The other conceives it as a hegemonic transition, in which U.S. primacy is being structurally eroded by China’s rise.

I find this binary approach a bit frustrating. As I've argued, Latin America has increasingly played the field and does not have to choose between alignment or non-alignment. Javier Milei loves Trump and also works closely with China. I guess it depends on what we mean by "alignment." No matter how much Trump (or Marco Rubio) talk about China, we are not in another Cold War. It's not all or nothing. 

I don't think it's useful to view hemispheric relations in terms of a U.S.-China rivalry. Autonomy doesn't mean choosing sides--it means diversifying. As they write:

As one Latin American foreign minister confided to us, “active non-alignment or strategic autonomy sound very appealing and entertain academics, but the truth is that these concepts are beyond our grasp. We are vulnerable, and all we can do is try to play the game of political maneuvering”.

This nails it perfectly. There is no alignment or non-alignment. There is strategizing for your country's interests. Now more than ever, even with Trump, there is more room to do that. 

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Postponing Venezuelan Elections

To the surprise of no one, the Venezuelan regime says it can't even discuss elections anymore. It would distract from saving Venezuelans from the earthquake and would even be downright disrespectful.

In the short term, the earthquake works well politically for Delcy and Jorge Rodriguez precisely because they can wrap themselves in a cynical show of concern for the Venezuelans they've long neglected and postpone giving up power. But there are already complaints about corruption in the form of stealing goods meant for the victims (a la Anastasio Somoza). Unless the situation changes drastically, Venezuelan support for the regime--which is already deeply unpopular--will worsen.

The Trump administration seems totally uninterested in elections so this works just fine for them too. This all boils down to the Venezuelan people themselves. At what point do they get fed up and test the repressive institutions of the regime? It's also not at all clear how Maria Corina Machado will fit into this. At a certain point, which is impossible to determine ahead of time, Marco Rubio will have to either allow elections or actively go against the Venezuelan people. He's getting closer and closer to the latter.

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Historical U.S. Policy and Current Realities

On his blog Henry Ziemer makes what he calls his most controversial opinions. One is "It's all the United States' Fault, That Matters Less Than You'd Think." In sum:

Everywhere you look in the region, the scars of past U.S. interventions and policy failures are painfully obvious. Still, I don’t think it follows that U.S. engagement today is by necessity pernicious or counterproductive. Nevertheless, I often find myself encountering a certain type of commentary that substitutes historical grievances for an actual understanding of current events.

My controversial take is that I don't find this very controversial. I think it would have been much more controversial to say in the past. When I started my dissertation research, Augusto Pinochet was still Commander in Chief so the 1973 coup remained very present. And don't get me started on how U.S. influence in that coup was actually much lower than is often assumed anyway. But it's not so present 30 years later.

Additionally, it's clear that especially in the post-Cold War era, sometimes U.S. policy is a positive force. The U.S. engineered the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 but also was a driving force (starting under George W. Bush) behind CICIG, an anti-corruption effort that was bearing fruit until another U.S. president, Donald Trump, looked the other way when corrupt Guatemalan officials got rid of it. In other words, the fact of the 1954 coup isn't related to policy decisions today, even though we may say it contributed to (but did not create) a long-term culture of authoritarianism and impunity.

My sense is that we see fewer op-eds these days that start by using the examples of 1954 Guatemala and 1973 Chile, which were often staples. U.S. policy toward Venezuela has no particular historical referent at all. Cuba policy may be an exception because the embargo actually started in the early Cold War and never stopped. There is more acknowledgment of Latin American agency, which is a welcome change.

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The U.S. and Maria Corina Machado

María Corina Machado wants to come back to Venezuela even more badly now because of the earthquake, which also largely coincides with the Trump administration trying to shove her to the side. The administration is not happy.

U.S. officials say they are frustrated with María Corina Machado, the exiled Venezuelan opposition leader, for requesting help facilitating her return to Venezuela in the aftermath of two devastating earthquakes, according to two White House officials.

They said Ms. Machado’s multiple requests were ill-timed, and one official called them a “political stunt.” The United States, as well as dozens of other countries, has been focused on giving aid to Venezuela on Saturday.

There are several things to untangle here.

First, I hate, and I mean hate, when politicians accuse other politicians of politicizing something. This earthquake is extremely political and deserves to be politicized. Usually this is meant to stop debate or change. In any event, she's been wanting to go back for months--it's not as if this is the first time she's pushed to do so.

Second, MCM is the most popular politician in Venezuela and so it is entirely reasonable for her to return as soon as possible. The U.S. wants long-term authoritarianism to give space to reap benefits from the oil industry while not having to worry about the messiness of democracy.

Third, giving her strong signals not to return is entirely imperialist. I am curious about what precisely U.S. officials have told her beyond vague discussions of waiting for more stability. That's been working up to this point but it's starting to show signs of strain. At a minimum, her return entails figuring out a passport because hers is expired and also having private security.

Fourth, if the Venezuelan regime response continues to be a problem, such as blocking private aid and preventing journalists and others from traveling freely, MCM's arrival could be hastened. Indeed, a transition could be hastened.

As always, things can change quickly.

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Political Fallout of the Venezuelan Earthquake

The huge earthquakes that hit Venezuela would be devastating under any circumstances, but they come in a country whose leadership has dismantled infrastructure while the U.S. had also been dismantling its own systems of humanitarian aid. The political fallout will be unpredictable and ongoing, but Marco Rubio has already said something concerning:

Mr. Rubio said that the earthquakes, which have killed at least 164 and destroyed hundreds of buildings, represented a “setback” for Washington’s multiphase plan to recover Venezuela’s moribund economy and ensure democratic elections.

Don't be surprised if Delcy Rodríguez latches onto this argument, namely that the already vague last part of the "plan" (which must be put in quotations to indicate that it is not exactly a plan) can be postponed in the name of rebuilding. You can't have elections until we get things back up to speed, that sort of thing. 

Both the U.S. and the Venezuelan regime have been cagey about elections because neither want them very much. Both are getting what they want--oil, money, and power. Having elections means giving up some or all of the three.

It is impossible not to think of the 1972 Nicaragua earthquake, which helped spark rebellion because of the Somozas' naked corruption. Venezuelans were already wondering when they were going to benefit from the U.S. invasion and they're now going to need rapid and effective (and even mostly corruption free!) response, which Maduro/Rodríguez are definitely not known for.

All of this is so awful for the Venezuelan people, who are getting hit from all sides.

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