If three decades ago, someone had written about the political-social catastrophe that Venezuela and Venezuelans would suffer in the near future, they would have been considered crazy or a fiction novelist. No one could have predicted, or even suspected, that the country dreamed of by so many – Venezuelans and foreigners – would soon be the protagonist of the largest human migration movement and in the shortest time, with the consequent enormous and serious humanitarian crisis that this implies, of which the history of humanity has any record, due to the debacle that the successive Chavista and Maduro governments have meant for the country, for the continent and for the world, for the last five decades.
There are already 7.7 million Venezuelans who have had to emigrate and leave behind their land and their affections in recent years, and not to go on vacation – as cynically suggested by Nicolás Maduro and his courtiers – but to seek better living conditions and hope for a better future. The same living conditions that Venezuela and the foreigners – from all latitudes – who arrived there, seeking a better future, boasted of for decades and who found in Venezuela a promised land, protected by the abundance of wealth and natural resources.
Living conditions that ignorant and inept “politicians” belonging to the corrupt Chavista-Madurista regime that was installed there, snatched from the vast majority of Venezuelans, for the benefit of a minority of “connected” to the government, as they are colloquially called.
A regime that, through the force of arms and the brutal and criminal repressive violence of military and paramilitary bodies, hijacked the institutions of the Venezuelan State, closed the media and free expression and impoverished millions of citizens.
A country that before Chavez was thriving and economically stable with a present and future for its citizens, proud to be Venezuelan, was destroyed in its social and political foundations as well as in its social fabric and productive infrastructure until it became a pariah country, a nation isolated from the international concert, the farm of a handful of abusers of power and human rights, more similar to a mafia cartel than to political leaders of a great, once glorious and sovereign nation.
Venezuela then went from having a consolidated economy based on oil revenues and high foreign investment to the interventionist economy of control and Chavista misgovernment with hyperinflation, shortage of goods and services, capital flight, limitation of private investment and an unsuspected and unprecedented economic crisis. It went from being a representative democratic political system, with free participation of political parties to a totalitarian, autocratic and corrupt regime, with absolute control of the powers of the State (including the electoral one), the limitation of civil rights and liberties and persecution and repression, with imprisonment and torture, through an invented, lying, convenient judicial framework that justifies the brutality and abuses, increasingly atrocious and cruel, against the opposition.
A dictatorial regime that – to receive oxygen and perpetuate itself mercilessly in power – has made alliances and has allowed interference from other similar regimes as undesirable and unpresentable as the Venezuelan one. Venezuela went from being a plural and heterogeneous society, with opportunities for mobility and social progress and with a relevance of the middle class to being a fragmented, polarized society, with an immense gap between the followers of the regime and the rest of the population, in addition to insecurity and the unstoppable and enormous migration phenomenon.
The rapid and violent destruction inflicted on the Venezuelan nation by the atrocious regime presided by Maduro is not and cannot be called “democracy.” Democracy – by definition” is the “government of the people.” It is the form of government that allows sovereignty to reside in the people and never in a handful of cheap politicians, of fierce criminals who turn against their own fellow citizens.
The Bolivarian revolution (or robolution) and the socialism of the 21st century turned out to be a trap, a farce, headlines of a resounding failure.
On July 28, the Venezuelan people had their sovereignty stolen and robbed in the elections in which – clearly and by more than 70% – the opposition candidate, Mr. Edmundo González Urrutia, was elected. He is now the elected and legitimate president in asylum in Spain, together with the powerful and heroic leadership of Mrs. María Corina Machado.
The ruthless Maduro regime allowed, with all the inequities and advantages, elections in Venezuela to disguise itself as democracy, stole the elections, hid non-existent evidence of the dictator’s victory, carried out a continuous coup d’état and – not satisfied with such abuse of power – has increased and radicalized the persecution and repression of the opposition to levels never imagined by the unjust and cruel.
The regime that Maduro presides over clings to power mocking and violating all ethics, crossing all limits of decency and justice and ignoring all types of national or international treaties, conventions or agreements. A murderous regime that persecutes children, young people, the disabled and the elderly. A regime that generates hunger, violence and death against millions of Venezuelans.
Democracy, then, as the best system of government invented by man, is in crisis, under threat in the world and in Latin America, as in Nicaragua. As Venezuelan analyst Moisés Naim recently said in an interview with Infobae: today “democracy is a form of government in danger of extinction,” and this danger concerns us all. We are all called to preserve, defend and build democracy. The Venezuelan case concerns us all. It is urgent to find a solution and to remove from power the criminals who kidnapped the state and the sovereignty of the Venezuelans. A combination of negotiations and factors – internal and external – is urgently needed to produce – forcefully – the end and the exit – better and sooner – of the terrifying Chavista-Madurista regime, entrenched in Venezuela. The restoration and reconstruction of democracy in Venezuela is urgent.
Let us not repeat in our American and Latin American reality the terrible maxim of José Ortega y Gasset: “We do not know what is happening to us and that is precisely what is happening to us.” The bad example of what is happening in Venezuela threatens the stability of the continent. The international community – led by the United States, as the greatest exponent of the democratic system in America – cannot ignore Venezuela and must innovate and impose personalized sanctions and definitive solutions to the Venezuelan crisis.
The defenseless Venezuelan people have done their part and have already paid a high price in suffering and death. Statements are no longer enough. The Venezuelan dictatorship mocks, ignores sanctions and declarations, harasses, besieges, censors, kidnaps, tortures and kills in its dungeons.
Recognition of the results of the last elections and the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people is urgent. The establishment of a government of national unity in Venezuela is urgent, which will produce urgent economic reforms, respect for human rights and the reconstruction of the social fabric.
Today, the Venezuelan despot and populist and his clique of henchmen are hostages of their own invention. They exorcise fear with repression and violence. But every minute that the tyrant remains in Venezuela is a minute of more violence, more hunger, more death, more emigration and more suffering and despair for every Venezuelan, inside and outside the borders of Venezuela.
In a civilized world of globalization, participation and collaboration, human beings, the community of nations and international organizations are not here to put up with abuses against human beings and their dignity such as those that occur daily in Venezuela, or a criminal and terror regime of political hucksters who interpret what “democracy” is at their whim and convenience. The international community has to be stronger than the personalism and brutal and illegitimate authoritarianism of a tyrant, a puppet of a kakistocracy.
Remembering the national anthem of Venezuela, we must all stand in solidarity with this great nation and its citizens, making it possible for “the brave people to soon throw off the yoke, out of respect for the law, virtue and honor,” to rebuild the dreams of sovereignty and freedom of the Venezuelan Liberator Simón Bolívar and so that other peoples and nations can “follow the example that Caracas gave.”
