Dressed in white, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, met this Tuesday (1st) in Caracas, crowning the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two neighbors – at a time when the international scenario is in a way favorable to the Chavista regime.
The countries had been formally broken since 2019, when Iván Duque decided to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó as head of state. The last bilateral summit took place in 2016, in Puerto Ordaz, when Juan Manuel Santos received support from Maduro for peace negotiations with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
Reconnecting with Venezuela became a campaign promise for Petro, elected last June as Colombia’s first leftist president. The first step, shortly after taking office, was to reopen the embassy in Caracas and stop recognizing the shadow government. The second is to reactivate the main border posts.
A meeting between the two had been debated for months, but was frustrated on more than one occasion, amidst Maduro’s attempts to get Petro to help him call for an end to international sanctions on the dictatorship and the return of exiled dissidents in Bogotá. Colombian said that the two issues would not be negotiable.
Before leaving for Caracas on Tuesday, Petro said he would “end the years of political void between the two countries”. According to the Presidency, the leaders dealt with human rights and immigration and the resumption of trade relations.
Two days after the confirmation of the electoral victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) in Brazil, Latin American politics was also addressed. “In the face of fascism that is advancing in various parts of the world, which forces the poorest to migrate, to face gunfire and dangers, progressivism is becoming more prevalent,” Petro said in an interview after the meeting.
“It is unnatural and unhistorical for Colombia and Venezuela to separate. Whatever the political forms adopted in one nation or another, friendship must be maintained. Despite our speech of union in Latin America, Europeans have done more.”
Maduro also highlighted the “obligation to return to work for regional integration” and said that the two countries intend to bring a unified position to COP27, the UN climate conference in Egypt, and strengthen a multilateral vision at the UN.
The international scenario favors the regime to some extent. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the United States has signaled that it might be interested in resuming the purchase of oil from Venezuela and, in this context, reducing some of the sanctions against allies of the dictatorship.
While still officially recognizing Guaidó as interim president, realpolitik spoke louder. Western Hemisphere Director and White House Special Adviser Juan González flew to Caracas in March and met with Maduro.
Although they have not yet resulted in business in practice, the conversations continue. On the part of Washington, the signal is that some sanctions will drop, but this would be conditional on Maduro accepting the resumption of negotiations with the opposition in Mexico, presenting a proposal for a date for the elections scheduled for 2024 – the dialogue was interrupted when the Chavista businessman Alex Saab was extradited to the US.
Maduro is also strengthened, compared to previous years, internally. Firstly, because there is no consensus that the nine opposing parties will re-elect Guaidó as leader of the National Assembly on January 5th. The body, elected in 2015 in the last election considered legitimate in the country, continues to act as a parallel force, although its mandate has already officially expired.
Some leaders met with US government officials in Panama recently to call for support for Guaidó’s interim presidency to end. Rumors that he would lose Washington’s support circulated in international media and behind the scenes of Venezuelan politics.
The opposition leader then recorded a video saying that the US support is for one term – that is, that until the 2024 election he will be at the head of the country. Subsequently, in a report, the US State Department stated that Washington “recognises interim President Juan Guaidó and supports, together with opposing parties, a negotiation that leads to a way out of this situation through free elections”.
Among anti-Chavistas, there seems to be a consensus, for now, that the movement should be represented by one name in the dispute. The initiative has attracted several political forces and, last Thursday (27), Guaidó supported the proposal for primaries in a significant march in Caracas.
Lula’s election also gives new impetus to Chavismo, with whom the Brazilian was allied in the past. The PT member criticized more than once the fact that Jair Bolsonaro (PL) supported the self-proclaimed presidency of Guaidó and, criticized by his rival for his proximity to the regimes, stated that the fates of dictatorships such as those in Venezuela and Nicaragua must be decided by the local populations.
On the Colombian side, Petro was the first Latin American leader to congratulate the Brazilian. In a statement to Sheet on the eve of his inauguration, he had already stated that he expected Lula to win. In an interview this Tuesday in Caracas, when talking about protecting the Amazon, he said he hoped Brazil would join efforts to protect the forest — in a thinly veiled criticism of Bolsonaro’s performance in the sector.
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