Following the ‘Barbados agreement’ struck between Venezuela’s Socialist Party (PSUV) government and the US-backed opposition, Unitary Platform, the US has temporarily eased sanctions. The deal is conditional on Venezuela meeting ever-changing US goal-posts for elections in 2024. As the US Treasury has made clear, it is ‘prepared to amend or revoke authorisations at any time… All other restrictions imposed by the United States on Venezuela remain in place’.
Since the election of the late Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution has fought to build ‘socialism of the 21st century’, ploughing its oil wealth into social wellbeing. As with any movement for socialism and economic sovereignty, this threatens imperialist interests. Since Chavez’s death in 2013 and the election of former vice president Nicolas Maduro, 928 unilateral coercive measures have been imposed on Venezuela, carefully designed to create social unrest to remove the PSUV government. Sanctions block oil exports, freeze international loans and credit and prevent imports of crucial food and medicines. Approximately $24bn of Venezuelan assets are frozen in overseas accounts whilst Venezuela’s entire CITGO USA petrol station network, including three oil refineries (valued at $32-40bn ahead of auction), has been confiscated to be sold. This economic war intensified in 2019 as former US President Trump imposed a total oil blockade and backed imperialist puppet Juan Guaido, who opposition groups swore in as ‘interim President’, Guaido then launched a string of failed attempts to remove the PSUV government.
After two years of intermittent negotiations, the Barbados agreement was signed on 17 October in Bridgetown with Norwegian mediation, drawing the right wing back into the electoral process after years of abstention from elections. US imperialism derailed previous talks in 2021, by seizing Venezuelan financial expert and diplomat Alex Saab from a flight stopover in Cape Verde before extraditing him to Florida where he remains imprisoned. This time the US has given its conditional support to the talks, aiming to re-establish a legal opposition pliant to their interests, after the farce of Guaido’s ‘interim presidency’. The deal gives the US access to cheap Venezuelan oil amidst shortages and forces Caracas to accept US deportations of rejected Venezuelan emigrants, allowing the Democrats to appeal for racist votes ahead of their own presidential elections in 2024.
The Barbados agreement sets out 12 points for elections in the second half of 2024 including provisions to invite international electoral observers, update the electoral register, and provide ‘balanced’ media coverage. Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution has always invited electoral observers and the majority of media remains in private hands, so here the wording was simply for internal US political consumption. Both parties pledged to recognise the results and renounce electoral violence. In previous elections the opposition have cried fraud, calling on supporters to ‘drain their rage’ when the ballots have not been in their favour.
The US treasury has calculatingly issued four licences allowing Venezuela to export limited gold, oil and gas without the threat of secondary sanctions and assets seizures. The licenses allow some debt repayments and swaps of fuels and diluents for the Chevron-PDVSA joint ventures for Venezuelan gas and oil shipments. However, Venezuela is still banned from renegotiating debts and selling sovereign bonds and its bank accounts abroad remain frozen. These chinks in the sanctions, as US secretary of State Antony Blinken has declared, can be ‘snapped back’ any time the US sees fit. The sanctions regime remains intact: In November the European Union extended its own coercive economic measures for an additional six months, $1.4bn of gold remains frozen in the Bank of England and as the auction of CITGO progresses, the imperialists are determined to portion out Venezuela’s stolen assets. Nevertheless, any easing of sanctions, the product of persistent negotiations on Venezuela’s part, provides much needed relief.
Venezuela’s nationalised oil company PDVSA is lining up deals, prioritising hiring services and equipment to reactivate oil wells and rigs, importing diluents and fuels to reactivate refineries aiming to increase oil production from 750,000 bpd to 1.7m bpd by the end of 2024. Spot deals with Sweden’s Maha Energy and France’s Maurel & Prom have been signed while longer joint ventures with Italy’s ENI, Spain’s Repsol and China’s PetroChina are being resuscitated. The US’s Chevron has expanded its activities and the world’s largest independent oil trader, Vitol, has hired a two-million-barrel super tanker to load Venezuelan crude before the end of 2023. Despite the activity, it will take some time for this to impact the country’s social spending.
Nevertheless, the ground is already being prepared for a resumption of opposition violence and destabilisation. Having spectacularly flopped three years ago in his putsch attempt, Guaido has been pushed out of the opposition, and is currently gracing the corridors of Florida University as a ‘visiting professor’ on a scheme run by the ‘Adam Smith Centre for Economic Freedom’. He faces Venezuelan arrest warrants for charges including usurpation of functions, money laundering and arms trafficking.
Substituting for Guaido is the new US favourite, the notorious Maria Corina Machado. She was a signatory of the ‘Carmona decree’ during the short-lived 48-hour coup of 2002, dissolving Venezuela’s elected parliament. Machado’s ‘civil organisation’ Sumate has received millions of US dollars from Washington-based Endowment for Democracy (NED) and led 2004’s failed presidential recall referendum against Hugo Chavez. Her signature also appears on 2013’s leaked ‘Strategic Venezuelan Plan’ which planned to create situations of crisis in the streets including deaths and injuries, facilitating US and NATO intervention. Rejecting the results of the 2014 municipal elections, she led the la salida street violence campaign, demanding an ‘exit’ of the elected PSUV government. In 2015 Machado was barred from office for 15 years for failing to disclose funding whilst holding office and acting as the opposition’s ‘alternate ambassador’ of Panama to the Organisation of American States (OAS) to whip up intervention against Venezuela.
Nevertheless, Machado stood as a candidate in October’s opposition primary elections, reportedly winning 90% of opposition candidate votes. Rival candidate Jose Brito denounced irregularities in the Sumate-run ballot, which rejected oversight by Venezuela’s official National Electoral Council. After Sumate failed to submit results for inspection, the Supreme Court nullified the vote. Hosting a meeting of diplomats, including those from Britain, the EU and US, Machado restated her intention to run as the opposition’s only candidate, pledging a return to abstentionism and destabilisation ‘until the end’ if she remains barred. For this she is counting on US money and the stick of sanctions.
Once again, US imperialism, backed to the hilt by Britain and the EU, is holding Venezuela to ransom, turning oil exports on and off , adjusting the sanctions noose accordingly. These imperialists remain committed to destroying any struggle to build socialism, ensuring Venezuela’s economy is kept under-developed, starved of investment and dependent on its oil sales, so always open to US manipulation.
Sam McGill
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 297 December 2023/January 2024
