Maduro and the Venezuelan ‘normalization’ for 2023

On Tuesday, January 3, the “Amadea” arrived on the shores of Margarita Island (Venezuela), a cruise ship with more than 500 European tourists on board. The matter, which might seem casual, is a perfect sign that the start of 2023 offers regarding the plans that the Maduro regime has with respect to the South American country, in the midst of the laundering operation of its dictatorship within the global context.

The Venezuelan crisis has not been a story. Before the arrival of said vessel on the Venezuelan coast this Tuesday, it is estimated that the Caribbean nation had not received visits from cruise ships from Europe for nearly 15 years. However, there are those who have a short memory and live on the instant gratification that events like this provoke in the collective imagination.

A quick recount of facts to refresh things: already in the final stage of Hugo Chávez‘s regime, and even more so with the arrival to power of his successor Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela entered a spiral of misfortunes that still leave consequences. 

Successive episodes of conflict in the midst of the establishment of a hegemonic political model, appearing in international rankings for many years as one of the most violent and insecure countries in the world, the collapse of an oil economy to the point that its citizens were forced to at certain times to make long lines to buy toilet paper, are just some of the negative milestones in the country’s modern history that portray part of the Chavist calamity.

However, for at least the last two years, Nicolás Maduro has given himself the task of trying to replicate the Chinese-Russian recipe for conciliation of an absolutely authoritarian and ruthless political model with a fiction of economic opening that, in the best of cases, it has only been limited to fostering the growth of a corrupt economic class related to the interests of Chavism and allowing certain layers of the citizenry to acquire supposedly “first world” goods and services through the frequent use of dollars and euros; all of this with the aim of projecting outward and inwardly the idea that in Venezuela there is no communism and that, even, life is very good.

This despite the fact that the country continues to have, today, the highest inflation in the region and that, by the end of 2022, according to a survey of living conditions conducted by the Andrés Bello Catholic University, close to 50% of the Venezuelans can be considered inserted within the spectrum of poverty.

Thus, Maduro’s objective in 2023 is none other than to finish stabilizing his regime. The exploitation of the modern myth that Venezuela is not so bad, the taming of the opposition to lead it into the fold of pure and hard electoralism and the strengthening of the international lobby with a view to dismantling sanctions against the Venezuelan State, are part of the repertoire of actions who will be in the forefront of the regime during the new year.

In the coming months, the holding of primary elections is planned in which practically all sectors of the Venezuelan opposition -even the most radically dissidents- have put forward presidential candidates. In this way, 2023 also looks like the year in which the electoral method is back in Venezuela as a mechanism to try to get Chavismo out of power. Until now, there are no clear rules of the game about the process itself or the eventual respect for the results that can be obtained from it.

However, the substitution or permanence of the regime through the vote does not seem to be an issue that really arouses great interest in the Venezuelan population which, to this day, maintains an attitude of rather apathy towards possible new elections than , as is well known, will be full of irregularities. People, in general terms, are directing their time and efforts to other areas that have nothing to do with politics.

The development of 2023 also allows us to foresee a gradual acceptance of the Maduro regime within the concert of the international community. This in a context accentuated even more by the settlement that has recently been placed by sectors of the opposition to the figure of the “interim government” led by Juan Guaidó. All this will be done, of course, in the midst of criticism of the procedures of the dictatorship, but without breaking relations with it.

A good part of the destiny of Venezuela, like it or not, is at stake right now precisely in the halls where the foreign policy of the world powers is decided. And, from what can be seen, these same powers are currently not too interested in the problem represented by Maduro, with whom they seem to have reached the conclusion that in the absence of effective methods to depose him, it is time to practice “letting go and let pass”.

That being said, it may seem obvious, but 2023 for Venezuela will be, except for the emergence of a black swan or an unpredictable event, nothing other than the prelude to 2024. That is, a year in which both the regime and the majority of the opposition sectors to it They will lay the foundations for the start of a new electoral campaign that will lead to the supposed presidential elections in which Maduro will act as subjecting the continuity of his mandate to popular scrutiny. A continuity that, from what has been seen so far, is not threatened in any way.

With information from La Gaceta de la Iberosfera