Venezuela’s Political Crisis Is Coming to a Head

[amw]

This Sunday, Venezuelans will vote to elect a constituent assembly that will be charged with rewriting the country’s constitution, which President Nicolás Maduro claims is the only way to restore stability to the troubled country after months - well, years - of unrest. The Venezuelan opposition, however, and much of the international community have

Comments

[icetypejim]

Trying to stay abreast of the Venezuelan situation really just feels like a crapshoot of whose obvious self-serving propaganda I'm supposed to believe this week: Maduro's or the US-back right wing opposition's.

[ishumy]

Oh please, there's nothing that annoys me more when non-Venezuelans try to call out our opposition for being "US-backed" and "right-wing." It is insulting to our automony as people and as a country, and it is inaccurate, since most of the prominent opposition leaders, barring Lilian Tintori, haven't done anything to approach the US government for actual help. And calling them right wing is a slap to the face to the big political minds like Teodoro Petkoff and the late Pompeyo Márquez, who founded the Venezuelan Communist Party and have being against Chávez from day one.

[icetypejim]

How is it inaccurate when the US is openly discussing the fact that it funnels money to forces opposing Maduro in Venezuela and deliberately trying to undermine its economy, just like it's done to Latin American countries for years? I would think the consistent self-serving involvement of the US in Venezuela specifically and Latin American politics generally for decades upon decades through similar tactics would be more offensive and insulting to a Venezuelan sense of autonomy than me pointing that fact out? Like, is your argument that the US is not an imperialist country with a history of interfering in Latin America, that they're not financing the opposition because it suits their interests, or that said financing and other meddling has had no impact at all on the opposition

[ishumy]

You are doing what every US-centrist person who has some sympathy for the Venezuelan government does: go to the simplistic explanation of pushing the narrative that US interventionism is the main player in the Venezuelan crisis. It IS dismissing our autonomy and it is a huge contradiction, considering how US intervention was probably at its lowest during the Chávez government past the failed coup d'etat. You are ignoring the political corruption, the effects of the currency control and the governmental disinterest in investing in any industry other than the oil sector - because as far as I know, the US wasn't to blame for that mess. Blaming the formely overt US interventionism in the continent for every current problem is myopic and infantilizing

[icetypejim]

Hi, sorry for the late response. You say I'm ignoring several things and overstating US intervention, but then neglect to mention the US' deliberate sabotaging of the Venezuelan economy by having Saudi Arabia flood oil markets? I don't disagree with the need to diversify, but that presumes that it would be possible to respond in a way that wouldn't be met with further attempts at sabotage. The US' efforts becoming less overtly aggressively militaristic doesn't mean their investment in manipulating the region has stopped and again, I don't understand how it undermines the autonomy of the Venezuelan people to state that this has happened and is still happening? They are not the source of every problem and I never said anything to that effect. I'm not arguing that the US is singularly responsible for every bad thing in Venezuela and that they've succeeded in stealing away the will of every person there, I'm arguing that a powerful empire is doing what it has done for decades: try to manipulate state politics in a foreign country to its