On Thursday, Feb. 27, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute and the Bloomberg Center hosted a discussion titled “What Venezuela’s Transition Means for Security and Democracy in the Hemisphere” at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue. At the event, Venezuelan president-elect Edmundo González Urrutia; Venezuelan political leader of the opposition María Corina Machado; and SNF Agora Dissident in Residence and former Venezuelan leader David Smolansky spoke about the country’s democratic struggles.
The conversation takes place in the aftermath of political turmoil over the past several months in Venezuela. On July 29 2024, Venezuela’s electoral body announced that President Nicolás Maduro had won, defeating González by seven percentage points with 80% of the votes counted. The election was riddled with abnormalities, and the opposition party supplied evidence that González had actually won the election, having received nearly 70% of the votes. However, Maduro did not step down and was sworn in on Jan. 10, while Gonzaléz fled the country in exile, stating that he had been subject to coercion and threats by Maduro’s government. Maduro’s actions were condemned by international actors, including the United States and the European Parliament, as a breach of democratic institutions.
González and Machado joined virtually; Gonzaléz is currently in exile, while Machado joined from a safe house in Venezuela. Before the country’s highest court upheld a ban of her running in the election, Machado was the leading opposition candidate and won more than 90% of the vote in the October primaries. She then endorsed the candidacy of González. Smolansky, former mayor of El Hatillo Municipality in Caracas and fellow at SNF Agora, was forced into exile in 2017.
González began the discussion by calling attention to Venezuela’s current humanitarian crisis. In particular, he focused on the events that led up to this crisis, as well as its potential impacts on the international level.
“I want to use this moment to outline why Venezuela is the weakest and most dangerous thing in the security chain of the Western hemisphere and why, at the same time, it represents one of the greatest opportunities for democratic renewal and economic regimentation,“ he said.
González argued that chavismo — the political ideology established by former President Hugo Chávez and supported by Maduro — was a planned scheme to seize and retain power that began by aligning the country with autocratic regimes like Russia, Iran and China, while severing ties with Western democracies. He also commented that Venezuela’s government has actively partnered with organized crime and participated in an international trafficking network, which has an important impact on neighboring countries as well.
“The explosion of violence in Colombia's Catatumbo region, which borders Venezuela, is not a coincidence. It is a strategic move to inflate cocaine prices,” González said. “Criminal groups are [also] extracting gold, diamonds and even uranium from...the Orinoco mining area. These illicit profits are laundered through a web of international financial networks destabilizing democratic institutions across near regions.”
He maintains hope for the future of Venezuela — a country that is rich in oil and mineral resources — and stated that the country can offer the United States the opportunity to strengthen energy independence.
“If the results of the July 28 elections are respected, Venezuela can rapidly transition from a source of instability to a pillar of security and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere,“ he said. “Nearly 70% of the voters, closer to 90% if Maduro had not dropped millions from voting, overwhelmingly chose change.”
After thanking everyone for joining the event and Hopkins for shedding light on the importance of Venezuela as an international actor, Smolansky added on to González’s words, reaffirming the severity of the impacts of the Maduro regime on human rights, political freedoms and the migration crisis.
Despite the challenges, he spoke positively about how the last elections brought the voters and the political opposition together, expressing hope that soon the situation in Venezuela will look very different.
“But to understand the present, we must acknowledge how much we have achieved in the past few years. In 2023 the situation was hopeless,” he said. “The opposition, and it is not a secret, was fragmented and divided. [...] [During] the elections Venezuelans didn’t choose only a candidate. Venezuelans chose a leader [...] to face the dictator Nicolás Maduro.”
After describing how much was at stake during the last elections, and the persecution that the opposition faced while campaigning for their candidate, Smolansky introduced the third speaker of the event, María Corina Machado, who took the floor to add her perspective as the leader of the opposition.
Machado summarized three key points: why the election results were so remarkable, why is the current regime weaker than ever before and why all people in Latin America, the U.S., and the hemisphere should care about developments in Venezuela.
Machado began by detailing that Venezuela is not governed by a conventional dictatorship and highlighted the forces that led to Maduro’s power.
“[The election] is so remarkable because we are not facing a conventional dictatorship; no, we are facing a criminal structure,” she said. “Venezuela has been hijacked by a band of rough kingpins [...], [that have] turned our country into very dangerous territories and forced, intentionally, over a quarter of the population to [side with Maduro].”
Machado then highlighted that of the over 30 elections held in Venezuela in the last 25 years, all had fraud and many were scam elections; she stated that the regime had to use these tactics to remain in power because they were a minority. The opposition party, Machado contended, had helped to unite the nation and give them trust in each other.
“We reached communities that people told us that the last presidential candidate came to in the 70’s or 60’s. People would tell me, ‘There’s no votes in that community,‘“ she said. “This is not about votes, it’s about the heart and soul of a society — that we [needed] to get back our pride being Venezuelans and trusting each other, and that’s what we did. We reached out and realized that we were a huge majority.”
Next, Machado emphasized that the current regime has to use violence and repression to maintain their power, and described that thousands of military personnel have been unfairly prosecuted, disappeared or tortured, because of their support for the opposition. Machado further stated that people in the Americas should care about Venezuelan politics, due to the regime’s threat to global security and strong relationships with powerful global actors and terrorists, including Iran, China, Hezbollah, Hamas and Slavic terrorists.
Machado further underscored that the criminal nature of the regime, particularly related to drugs, is dangerous for the country and the surrounding region, including the U.S.
“Suddenly, the regime has turned Venezuela from a drug channel to a drug producer, and the regime is part of the drug structure,” she said. “And it’s important to understand — in Mexico, for instance, the cartels fight against the government. In Venezuela, the cartel is the government. They are the power. They are the law.”
Further, Machado argued that the trans-national criminal organizations that operate from Venezuela, but have operations in other countries, are created and directed by the regime. She then stated that top government officials of Venezuela are actively involved with Tren de Aragua in Chile, a transnational criminal organization and U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. She referred to the words of Alvin Holsey, the U.S. commander of Southern Command, who explained that Venezuela, under the leadership of Maduro, has taken on a major role as a cocaine and armed trafficking hub.
While the opposition has faced repression, Machado expressed her and the opposition’s goal of transforming the nation from a hub of crime to one of energy.
“We want to be working really hard to build a country that we’re going to be so proud of, but also in terms of the huge opportunity in the old sector. [...] There’s no way Venezuela can be a major player in oil and gas energy while Maduro is in power,“ she said. “As soon as we reach [power], our group will privatize in a transparent manner, we will open markets and we will have a strong system.”
The event concluded with a question and answer session between audience members and the panelists. The News-Letter posed the following question for Machado and González: “You mentioned earlier in your presentation that you want to transform Venezuela from a criminal hub to an energy hub. What steps will you take once you’re in power to catalyze this transformation, and how would this be affected by President Donald Trump’s announcement to end Venezuela’s permit to export oil to the U.S.?”
In response, González explained how sanctions are Venezuela’s biggest myth. He argues that while many believe that the revocation of the oil exporting permit will cause major problems for the country, even before the economic sanctions were put in place millions had fled and millions more were living in poverty and without access to food.
“Since sanctions were relaxing by the end of 2023, approximately one million Venezuelans fled the country,” he said. “People are not fleeing Venezuela because of sanctions. People are fleeing Venezuela because they don't have liberties, because they don't have opportunities and because they are being persecuted.”
Machado then responded in turn, elaborating on the planned transformation of the oil industry.
“We have to change everything. [...] The state will no longer be producing, but will be, of course, the regulator with a very competitive, very transparent and efficient agency, and we will open markets to provide a certified sector — local, international, small, medium, large, everyone has the opportunity to invest in a country that has not only the biggest oil reserves in the world, but one of the most competitive cost structures,“ she said.
In an interview with The News-Letter, freshman Lily Eddy mentioned that she was particularly moved by the work of the thousands of volunteers and opposition leaders in Venezuela.
“Despite the fact that they have not been able to rightfully gain the power they won, they were still able to make that change,” she said. “The most important thing was when [Machado] discussed having broken the system, even though they were not in power,[...] understanding that these changes are possible was really incredible to hear and see.”
Second-year student Michelle Sicard Jimenez at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), who studies Latin America, described her experience organizing the event and bringing these panelists together in an interview with The News-Letter.
“For the level of security that we are operating under, I think it was a very successful event,“ Jimenez said. “[The speakers] were very honest in everything that they were doing. And it was a very casual conversation, I hope, with very high level officials that have been promoting democracy abroad, which I think is what SAIS is all about.”
She emphasized how events like this are meant to promote the importance of Venezuela and the broader region, an importance that could be lost in the current political climate.
“The main takeaway is for us to care, for us to take away the messages that they were saying and for us to support their actions, whether that means to provide them with the platform to have these events. I think that Hopkins does a really good job at that,” Jimenez said.
Samhi Boppana contributed to this article.
