Trump keeps a grip on Venezuela

Venezuela’s government continues to develop an uneasy, but ultimately subservient, relationship with the Trump administration. Delcy Rodriguez has held onto power, and seems to have pulled much of the Venezuelan government into line behind her.

There are still elements of a “tightrope” approach, where Rodriguez tries to posture as an anti-American leader who will refuse to bow down to Trump’s unreasonable demands and flatter anti-American sentiments in her support base. But the posture seems only a posture.

At an event on 27 January, Rodriguez told a group of oil workers “enough already of Washington’s orders over politicians in Venezuela […] Let Venezuelan politics resolve our differences and internal conflicts. This Republic has paid a very high price for having to confront the consequences of fascism and extremism in our country.”

Strong words. But less than two days later, it was announced that the country’s oil industry was being completely overhauled, undoing great swathes of the nationalisation that occurred under Chavez in order to appeal to international oil companies — particularly American ones. It’s possible this will face legal challenge in Venezuela before becoming reality.

Marco Rubio (left in charge of much of the aftermath of Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro) announced that the Venezuelan government would provide a monthly budget to the United States, which would then release funds from a Qatar-run account receiving the income from Venezuela’s oil sales. Rubio described this as a “short-term measure” to deal with a “fiscal crunch”, rather than in Trump’s more brutal terms: the US running Venezuela’s economy month-to-month, indefinitely. Either way, it is nakedly imperialist, and leaves behind any norms of even bourgeois economic diplomacy.

An external power controlling the purse strings is terrible news for any workers’ action in Venezuela. What concessions can a strike in the oil sector win if the government doesn’t even have control of its own money?

It may seem tempting to paint Rodriguez as a renegade, cutting the “true” leader, Maduro, away and betraying his legacy in order to do an easy deal with the US. If that’s true, then she has pulled some high-profile Madurist figures along with her. Maduro’s son, Nicolas Maduro Guerro, announced on 16 January that he would be open to establishing diplomatic relations with both the US and Israel, “because it is our self-determination”.

The workers’ movement has no dog in this fight: whether or not the capitalist states of the world have embassies in one another’s capitals has little bearing on our vision of politics. But it is a useful demonstration of how starkly the Madurists are bending over backwards to accommodate every whim of the American regime — ditching ideas that would previously have been seen as central to their worldview.

All this manoeuvring may have won the Venezuelan government dribs and drabs of income, but little recovery from the country’s drastic economic decline under Maduro. Oil companies remain entirely sceptical about the idea of returning to the country unless they have concrete guarantees that their property won’t be nationalised again, and the large quantities of oil on the international market continue to make Venezuela’s reserves of heavy, expensive-to-process oil a difficult sell.

Airspace

Trump has attempted to offer new benefits: on 29 January he announced after a conversation with Rodriguez that he would open Venezuela’s commercial airspace for the first time in years, hoping to encourage American businesses and consumers to explore the renewed possibilities. The brilliance of American diplomacy in full force: they take away your dictator, and they replace him with holidaygoers, all before you’ve had time to offer an opinion yourself.

The reopening of the US embassy has coincided with a significant change: Rodriguez announced on 31 January that she would be rolling out a mass amnesty for political prisoners, thousands of whom have been arrested throughout the Maduro reign. The plan also involves closing El Helicoide prison, notorious for housing and torturing opponents of the government.

The Venezuelan working class, for now, remains a muted force. Freeing political prisoners is an encouraging development, but without positive rights to establish and operate independent trade unions and other civil society organisations, the country’s democratic urges will remain stifled. Commentary from those on the anti-Maduro, anti-Chavista Venezuelan left such as Venezuelan Voices is valuable, but still a long way from building a movement capable of winning the struggle for democracy.

Vacuum

Many on the left in Britain have expressed opposition to the naked imperialism of Trump’s government, and the unjust nature of their military attack on Maduro. Workers’ Liberty agrees, but politics can never be purely negative: in opposing American imperialism in Latin America, you must also name the force that you wish to see victorious over it, or else that vacuum will be filled with corrupt and reactionary forces, like the Rodriguez government that is currently dismantling Venezuelan independence in the hopes of placating the US.

When socialists here call for solidarity with independent working-class activists in Venezuela, we do so not as something to look to at some point in the future, once things have calmed down, but as an urgent answer to the current political crisis in the country. Given free reign over an election period, Rodriguez will cling onto power by repressing her opposition through strong control of the military, much as her two predecessors did. It is vital we support struggles to prevent that outcome.

Against Trump and the Maduristas, back Venezuela’s workers, and their right to decide their own fate!