The United States and Latin American countries will blacklist the “senior management” of Nicolás Maduro’s regime under an oft-forgotten treaty that American officials regard as the key to driving the Venezuelan dictator from power.
“It’s so much money that’s been stolen that it doesn’t only benefit eight or 10 or 12 [Maduro loyalists], it’s the next layer underneath,” Carlos Trujillo, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, told the Washington Examiner. “And that’s the layer that could dislodge Maduro, more than anything.”
Maduro has defied U.S. pressure to relinquish power since January, when President Trump and leaders of dozens of other Western democratic governments recognized top opposition lawmaker Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela. But the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York this week has seen high-profile displays of international opposition to the regime.
“This is a critical moment for the world,” Trump said Wednesday alongside two Guaidó envoys. “We must not allow the destructive forces of socialism and communism to repeat the horrors of the last century.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo followed that declaration with an announcement that the United States would provide an additional $118 million to address the crisis, including $36 million for humanitarian aid inside the country.
“The United States is tired of the heartbreaking stories of Venezuelans forced to dig through trash cans for food, of the hospital patients dying unnecessarily, of the millions of innocent children who go to bed hungry every night because 94% of Venezuelan households can’t get their basic necessities,” Pompeo said.
Guaidó’s team welcomed that assistance while calling for additional international pressure on Maduro under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the Rio Treaty and by its Spanish acronym, TIAR. The emergence of the 1947 pact, an agreement binding most of the Western Hemisphere with mutual defense pledges similar to NATO’s Article 5, as a diplomatic weapon in the Venezuela crisis has stoked rumors of war. But Guaidó’s envoys echoed Trujillo’s focus on economic sanctions.
“Every country in the region should move forward, as agreed to in TIAR, to prosecute any regime member involved in drug trafficking, human rights violations, and corruption,” said Julio Borges, Guaidó’s commissioner for foreign affairs. Those sanctions were authorized Monday evening, in a nearly unanimous vote to invoke the Rio Treaty against Maduro. The treaty empowers major Latin American countries to enforce sanctions that they cannot impose under their national laws unless they’re promulgated by an international organization such as the United Nations or the OAS.
“It gives them now the framework in order to impose individual sanctions, restrictions, asset forfeiture, visa cancellations, and all the different things that we’ve done,” Trujillo told the Washington Examiner.
That’s a watershed development, according to Trujillo, who concedes that U.S. sanctions haven’t had a significant effect on many Maduro loyalists. Regime officials might not be able to visit the United States, use American banks, or take international flights that connect through Miami, but “they can party in Panama” and find other routes to Europe and Asia. The resolution that passed Monday deprives them of those safe havens.
“Now your world sucks,” Trujillo said of the senior officials the resolution targets. “Because now your son who lives in Southeast Asia, who is partying in Malaysia — he can no longer come back home.”
Trump yesterday pledged to maintain the pressure. “We will stand with the Venezuelan people every single day until they are finally freed from this horrible and brutal oppression,” he said. “They will be freed. It will happen.”
