The solitude of Nicolás Maduro

Delegitimized in the eyes of the majority of the international community by the electoral fraud that many suspect his regime has carried out, and barred from entering the BRICS group of nations due to Brazil’s veto, Nicolás Maduro finds himself in solitude. Since he was given the task by Hugo Chávez to, after his death, guide the destiny of the Bolivarian revolution, he has rarely found himself in such a precarious situation. The outcome of the presidential election on July 28, which Chavismo hoped to win with some ease against the opposition, has provided a significant setback for a president who has not managed to receive even a modicum of the treatment that was afforded to Chávez on the world stage. At times he seemed disoriented in Kazan, Russia, where the summit of the club of countries calling for a less Eurocentric and more multipolar world was being held; he greeted Vladimir Putin and was about to walk behind him, but the Russian president asked him to take another path, away from one that led to the BRICS plenary. For now, that door remains closed to Maduro.

Nothing better reflects Maduro’s isolation than the position of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a historic figure of the Latin American left and a friend of Chávez, who is presumed to harbor a certain affinity with a popular movement like Chavismo, before its authoritarian turn. Lula, who had trusted that the Venezuelan government would be transparent in the electoral process, feels deceived by Maduro and the power center that surrounds him after the refusal to publish the paper tallies from polling stations — the detailed voting results that would prove Maduro really won. The effort to hide these tallies does not leave much room for the imagination.

Maduro has never achieved Lula’s complicity as Chávez did, a fundamental pillar of support in Latin America since Brazil is, together with Mexico, the great regional power. For Lula, Venezuela has always been a friendly country, too friendly even in the eyes of those who criticize the leftist for his benevolence toward ideological allies who do not respect the rules of democracy. But the presidential election of July, in which there was also a veto on candidates, represent a turning point.

The bilateral relationship has been seriously damaged. Lula has run out of patience with Maduro and has expressed this by banging his fist on the table on an international stage — the BRICS+ summit — and before an audience of leaders from half the world, with Xi Jinping and Putin at the head. For this reason, Lula vetoed the entry of Caracas into the BRICS+ as an associate country, while supporting Cuba’s bid to join. Celso Amorim, a Brazilian diplomat, former foreign minister, and presidential advisor, explained that this decision is due to a breakdown of trust and nothing to do with democracy. Maduro broke the promise he had made to Brazil and has not shown the slightest interest in starting negotiations with the opposition.

In the space of a year and a half, the relationship between Lula and Maduro has taken a 180-degree turn. Six months after returning to power, the Brazilian president received the Chavista leader with all honors in Brasília on his first official visit in eight years. Lula organized a summit with all his South American peers that was intended to mark the beginning of the end of diplomatic ostracism toward Venezuela. The Brazilian showed his most conciliatory side — without mentioning the human rights violations committed by the Chavista apparatus — while Chilean President Gabriel Boric and his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou openly expressed their criticism of Maduro and were quick to point out his responsibility in the Venezuelan crisis.

The Venezuelan president has gotten his way in a move that shows Lula’s ability to influence friendly countries is no longer what it once was. His regional leadership is eroded. Barring a surprise, Maduro will take office on January 10 as president, Brazil will not recognize him as such, and relations between Brasília and Caracas will be officially frozen. According to sources consulted, Colombia may take the same path. Added to this is the fact that relations with Nicaragua are at their lowest point in decades after a diplomatic standoff between the Ortega regime and Lula that ended with the expulsion of their respective ambassadors. These are times of global polarization and increasingly complex conflicts. And Lula’s Brazil faces serious challenges in his third term in office in maintaining its traditional diplomacy of friendly relations even with its own neighbors.

Maduro traveled to Kazan, at the invitation of Russia, with a huge entourage: The first lady, Cilia Flores, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, the top brass of ministers and senior officials of state oil company PDVSA filled a long table with Putin and his cabinet and highlighted the evident international solitude of the president. Maduro hoped to enter the BRICS club, without success, and has had to watch as 11 other countries achieved that goal.

Videos have been circulating from the two-day meeting that some analysts interpret as snubs. At the entrance to the convention center where the summit was held, Maduro arrived with Cilia Flores and his team and no one greeted them; the plenary session was in full swing. At another point, Maduro shook hands with Putin, who always moves at a certain distance. They were in the run-up to the bilateral meeting that they would hold minutes later. The Venezuelan president made him wait a few seconds to greet his wife, who was late arriving, and then, when Putin was about to resume his walk and Maduro began to follow him, the Russian told him that he should enter through a different door. A phrase like “You over there and I over here” seems to accompany the hand gesture.

Russia has done what it could for its ally in Latin America, whom before the BRICS it had last received in 2019, amid the political turmoil and the crisis of legitimacy that Maduro was going through at the time. In the farewell handshake from Kazan, Maduro congratulated Putin on the success of the summit and the Russian leader told his Venezuelan counterpart that he had had a “perfect participation.” They then made a gesture to the effect they would call each other later. But Putin had to explain the veto that Brazil imposed on the incorporation of Venezuela. “Our assessments of what is happening in Venezuela do not coincide with those of Brazil,” Putin said during a press conference in which he made sure to stress that he maintains friendly relations with the South American giant. “We believe that President Maduro won the elections fairly,” he added. “I hope that Venezuela and Brazil resolve their bilateral relations.”

Until the BRICS meeting this rift, which has been brewing for months, had not been so evident. Lula, together with Colombian President Gustavo Petro and former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, unsuccessfully tried to mediate in the post-election crisis, to convince Maduro to show the official records that could validate his victory in order to compare them with those of the opposition, which quickly scanned and published the tallies to denounce electoral fraud. Brazil has now said that Venezuela has broken its promise to show these records, thus opening a gap of mistrust that has had its consequences in the BRICS.

In the face of these attempts to negotiate, which were intense during August and then faded away, Maduro’s supporters have not criticized the Brazilian president. They have even intervened in his defense when some spokesmen have gone too far, as when Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil had to publicly disavow Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who had accused Lula of being an agent of the CIA. In this new moment of tension with Brazil over the veto in the BRICS, Gil has pointed to Itamaraty, the headquarters of the Brazilian foreign ministry, and not Lula, as responsible for the veto as an attempt not to destroy all bridges with the president. On the other hand, Saab has intervened again to accuse Lula of having lied about suffering a domestic accident in order not to attend the summit and forge the veto against Venezuela. Saab published a statement on the Public Ministry’s account accompanied by videos that show Lula attending commitments in his country as an attempt to expose him. It is hard to believe that the Attorney General acted behind Maduro’s back.

The world has shrunk for the Venezuelan president after the elections. Turkey — a partner with whom he has strengthened trade — supported dialogue before giving full congratulations to Maduro on his victory. The months ahead are crucial, following the elections in the United States and when it becomes clear how Washington’s pressure lever on Caracas will be applied through sanctions. Maintaining the support of his long-time allies — Russia, China and Cuba — Maduro faces a new period of international isolation that will possibly materialize in the form of diplomatic measures such as freezing or reducing relations as of January 10, when he takes office for a third presidential term tainted by accusations of having committed fraud to stay in power. In Kazan, on the banks of the Volga, his solitude was staged.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition