As long-suffering Venezuelans take to the streets and the government itself executes its most audacious seizure of a private business, a General Motors plant, it’s worth looking at precisely how we got here.
It will doubtlessly come as a great relief for the reader to know that on September 11, 2001( yes, that September 11), the Organization of American States adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter, whose first article contains the assertion that “The peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend it.” Moreover, this declaration is backed by Article 45 of the OAS Charter which guarantees that all persons have a right to “liberty, dignity, equality of opportunity, and economic security.” Today those noble words are being put to the test. Venezuela, whose government now styles itself the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” has fallen completely under the control of dictator Nicolas Maduro. Successor to Hugo Chavez, Maduro has suborned the Venezuelan Supreme Court, and with its help he has kept the Venezuelan Congress in check.
Readers will recall that Maduro has used the backing of a craven court system to imprison some political opponents, to overturn the elections of others, and progressively to confiscate most of the dwindling cohort of business enterprises that through sheer ingenuity and hard work have managed to remain solvent. In a short march of years Chavez and Maduro have taken Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC, from prosperity to desperate poverty. Rather than the usual problems facing petroleum exporters–how to cope with an appreciating exchange rate, and what to do with all the revenue–through a cascade of expropriation and mismanagement Maduro has crippled the state run oil company, and created a humanitarian crisis.
Disgusted with Maduro’s political thuggery and political incompetence, Venezuelans are now demonstrating in the streets, where government goons have beaten and shot protesters. But by far, Maduro’s most effective means of crowd control has been hunger–increasing numbers of food-strapped Venezuelans are too malnourished to protests. The toll exacted by food deprivation today is immense, the long-term cost in terms of childhood malnutrition is staggering, Venezuelans born during Maduro’s reign of error will face the effects of stunted growth, cognitive impairment, and premature aging for the rest of their lives. Venezuela will be paying the costs of Maduro’s dictatorial rule for the rest of the century,and if he remains in power, the costs will persist even longer.
Thus far the most serious external challenge to Maduro’s despotism has come from OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro. Last May Almagro publicly recognized that Nicolas Maduro had become a “petty dictator,” who was only interested in staying in power.” Maduro’s characteristically
churlish response was “You can shove that democratic charter wheresoever it should fit.”
Maduro was able narrowly to block Almagro’s first effort at censure, with the help of his shameless apologists in the OAS, including the governments of Bolivia and Nicaragua. But the OAS general secretary persisted. Last month Almagro released another report detailing the suppression of democracy in Venezuela at the hands of Maduro and his lackeys. On March 28 and 29 as the OAS discussed the grave situation in the South American republic, the Venezuelan Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings that effectively allowed Maduro to execute his parliamentary critics for treason, while usurping legislative powers for the Supreme Court. The streets erupted in protest, and with a nudge from Maduro, the “court” backed down, for now.
Subsequently the Mercosur countries, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, declared that there has been a “democratic rupture” in Venezuela, while on April 3, and despite attempts by Bolivia to block it, the OAS permanent council adopted a resolution asserting that the Venezuelan Supreme Court has created “an alteration of the constitutional order” in Venezuela, and declared itself “ready to support measures to return to democratic order.”
Not inclined to leave well enough alone, the Venezuelan judiciary ordered the seizure on Wednesday of General Motors’ Chevrolet Plant in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, acting on a lawsuit by a dealer whose contract GM canceled back in 2000.
The courts awarded the litigious dealer an amount equivalent to more than $100 hundred million U.S. dollars. General Motors, protesting the lack of due process and the absurdly stratospheric court award, has announced it is suspending production in Venezuela, leaving 2,678 workers unemployed. GM joins a queue of other litigants in arbitration against Venzuelan expropriations.
Faced with public protest, a shriveled economy, and an international consensus that Venezuela is no longer a free country, one might have expected Maduro to slink out of Venezuela under an assumed name, disguised as the overfed carnival barker he so closely resembles.
Instead, he headed off to Cuba to deliver a 90-minute harangue at a meeting of “ALBA” (an acronym for the “Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America” that spells out “dawn” in Spanish) whose member governments, including Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and of course, Venezuela, are even now ready to support this pathetic Bashar al-Assad of the Western Hemisphere.
Whether Maduro succeeds in turning Venezuela into Latin America’s largest open air prison, or allows Cuba to retain that title, now depends on the continued fortitude of Venezuela’s people, and on the willingness to act of the rest of the hemisphere and of the world. Alas, no one appears to be in the mood for the inconvenience of having to deal with yet another rogue regime. It is all well and good to profess one’s commitment to democracy and human rights throughout the world; it is quite another to take the time and trouble to root out the likes of Maduro and his band of grubbers, thugs, and lackeys. Are we up to the task?
John Londregan is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.
