Venezuela digs in its heels as US sanctions mount

For years, the United States and Venezuela have been embroiled in negotiations that have, so far, led nowhere. Washington lifted sanctions on the Chavista government on the condition that Venezuela would hold free and fair elections, in which the opposition would have a real chance of electing a president. A year ago, representatives of both administrations met secretly in Qatar and designed a roadmap that was meant to clarify the political panorama in Venezuela. Under this roadmap, both the opposition and the government would recognize the results of the election, and Venezuela would gradually return to a democratic normality, putting an end to the conflict that has been affecting the country since at least since 2017, when President Nicolás Maduro’s suffered a crisis of legitimacy was and protests spread to the streets.

The reality is that the situation has worsened. Maduro is experiencing his greatest crisis of legitimacy yet, which is the exact opposite to what was meant to be achieved by this point. Chavismo accepted the U.S. challenge to hold free elections because it was convinced that no one could beat them at the polls, especially if they managed to get María Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition, out of the game. Since the time of Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian revolution has deployed clientelist networks throughout the nation that mobilize Chavista followers and their families. The Chavistas believed that once the election was over, Joe Biden’s government would be forced to lift sanctions, especially the sanctions on the oil industry, which most affect the Venezuelan economy.

However, Maduro has not been able to prove that he won the July 28 election. Although required by law, the National Electoral Council (CNE) — which is controlled by the ruling party — has not released the voter tally sheets, which reflect the results by voting centers. The opposition has published the tally sheets that its volunteers collected throughout the country, and they show that the diplomat and writer Edmundo González Urrutia — who replaced Machado as the opposition candidate — won the election against Maduro by a large margin. In response to the government’s effort to hide the voting records, almost the entire international community has assumed that the opposition won the vote. Even countries with ideologically similar presidents, such as Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, have openly expressed their doubts about the Chavista victory.

In a diversionary move, the Venezuelan president asked the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) to validate the records and declare a winner. The TSJ — presided over by a Chavista bureaucrat — awarded the victory to Maduro, to no one’s surprise. The court released images in which experts, wearing gloves, masks and plastic coats, were seen inspecting the records with flashlights. It was reminiscent of a scene from the TV show CSI. After the images were analyzed by the Venezuelan media, it was discovered that the experts were actually Chavista officials from the CNE itself. In other words, the people investigating the records were the same ones under investigation.

Far from lifting the sanctions, the U.S. introduced new measures on Thursday. The sanctions now affect officials of the CNE and the TSJ, which are considered accomplices of electoral fraud. They also extend to military, intelligence and government officials responsible for intensifying repression through intimidation, indiscriminate arrests and censorship following Maduro’s defeat at the polls, as announced by the U.S. Treasury Department. Washington feels that Maduro has broken his word by not allowing a peaceful transition of power. Chavismo has responded harshly to the new U.S. sanctions, accusing the country of not complying with what was agreed in Qatar, which in turn led to the Barbados Agreements. The position of the Venezuelan government is that the elections have been transparent, as demanded, despite all the evidence and even common sense, that without the voting records, it is not credible to believe Maduro’s election.

Will the sanctions put Chavismo in a delicate situation? The sanctions will undoubtedly affect governement revenue, pushing Chavismo into absolute precariousness. In recent years, the revenue of Venezuela has fallen by 90%. However, Maduro and his political operators have survived this situation. The people who surround Maduro have proven to be tough as rocks, marathon runners of the conflict, who engage in daily verbal spats with those they see as their enemies. Figures like Diosdado Cabello, considered Maduro’s No. 2, has been firing accusations at everyone who crosses his path since the time of Chávez.

What’s more, Maduro has recruited Cabello to be Interior Minister and has put him in charge of the repressive apparatus. He has also named Delcy Rodríguez, his close confidant, as Minister of Petroleum. In other words he has put her in charge of the state oil company PDVSA, one of the most important positions in the government structure. These movements are seen as signs that the Chavista government — far from opening up, as expected — has closed in on itself, and is digging in it heels. According to presidents in the region, such as Gustavo Petro, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the sanctions do not achieve their purposes and only harm the Venezuelan people, who are already living in poverty.

The United States sanctioned Maduro back in 2017. Since then, U.S. sanctions have been extended to more than 150 individuals and more than 100 entities of the regime, including all its heavyweights, such as the attorney general, Tarek William Saab; Delcy Rodríguez herself; her brother, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and Cabello. Military, intelligence, judicial and electoral authorities have been singled out by Washington, but the Treasury sanctions only affect assets in the United States, so their scope is limited.

Sanctions on the oil and gas sector are what really hurt the Venezuelan regime. The United States tried this route, but it has obvious drawbacks. The impoverishment of Venezuela’s population resulted in an exodus with few precedents. Many of these Venezuelans arrived in the United States, which is already struggling with an immigration crisis. What’s more, by restricting supply, oil became more expensive at a time when the U.S. was being hit by the highest inflation in four decades. At the same time, the Maduro regime was able to skirt the sanctions by exporting to other countries, mainly China.

Washington temporarily lifted sanctions on Venezuelan oil and gas to allow for democratic presidential elections under the Barbados Agreement, which was signed between Chavismo and the opposition. However, the Maduro regime disqualified the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, to the chagrin of U.S. diplomacy, which felt deceived. The Biden administration decided to reactivate these sanctions when the six-month period outlined in the agreement expired. However, Washington avoided returning the maximum-pressure strategy applied during the mandate of Republican Donald Trump, which led to a wave of asylum requests from Venezuelans on the U.S. southern border.

Machado’s disqualification did not stop Maduro from losing the election against the new opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia. Despite this loss, the Chavista regime has not backed down, but instead launched a repressive crackdown on opponents to illegitimately extend Maduro’s mandate.

The Treasury Department on Thursday imposed new sanctions on judicial, electoral, military and intelligence authorities, but when asked whether the United States was considering tightening restrictions on oil licenses that the U.S. company Chevron and other international companies still enjoy in Venezuela, a senior official in the Biden administration preferred to avoid a direct answer: “We are constantly monitoring very closely the political and economic developments in Venezuela and are committed to calibrating our sanctions policy appropriately in response both to events on the ground, as well as broader U.S. national interests,” they said on Thursday.

“In coordination with our partners, we’re also considering a range of options to demonstrate to Maduro and his representatives that their illegitimate and repressive actions in Venezuela will have consequences. We are also very focused on the enforcement of existing sanctions, as well as evaluating how best to calibrate our sanctions policy towards Venezuela in light of overall U.S. interests. Most importantly, we continue to commit to promoting accountability for actors in Venezuela who are undermining democratic process and the will of the Venezuelan people,” the official added.

Like the European Union, the U.S. government has avoided recognizing González Urrutia as president-elect, likely in response to what happened when the international community recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela. This move ultimately proved useless: it divided the opposition and empowered the regime.

When it was suggested that international diplomacy had failed in its efforts to pressure Venezuela into becoming a democratic nation, the official disagreed with this opinion. “I would dispute your assertion that regional diplomacy has failed,” the official said. “In fact, I think that the careful diplomatic work that we have been doing with a range of partners in this region has been extraordinarily important in terms of ensuring that the fraudulent results that the Maduro authorities have published have not been widely accepted.”

“And so while there are some differences and variations in terms of the diplomatic stances that a range of our partners have taken, I think that it has maintained a level of diplomatic pressure on Venezuela that would not have been possible without the very steady work and nearly constant communication that we have with our partners throughout the region, as well as in the European Union and beyond,” they continued. “We stand by our conclusions and the statement made by Secretary Blinken several days after the July 28th election, where we believe that there is clear evidence that Mr. González Urrutia won the most votes in this election, and therefore that fact needs to be respected and validated by Venezuelan authorities.”

Despite the precedents, Washington has not lost hope that sanctions and international pressure will eventually have an effect: “We believe that there is still significant time between today and January for actors in Venezuela, including Nicolás Maduro, to begin to make better decisions than they have made to date,” said the senior official. “And so we see these sanctions as an important step in shaping the overall context of the political trajectory in Venezuela. But you have to remember that these steps are also being taken against the backdrop of a larger effort in which the United States has joined with partners and allies both within this hemisphere and around the world, which includes diplomacy, diplomatic pressure — in this case, specific individually targeted sanctions — and other steps, so that the will of the Venezuelan voters as expressed on July 28 is respected.”

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