The early morning of January 3 brought back to us an image that we believed was archived in the video library of the 20th century: the Caribbean sky illuminated not by fireworks, but by the lethal pyrotechnics of geopolitics. The extraction of Nicolás Maduro, executed with the surgical choreography of an action movie that today would seem implausible, left Latin America in front of a broken mirror, unable to recognize itself in its own reflection.
Donald Trump, that reality show scriptwriter who occasionally acts as imperial Caesar, decided that the Monroe Doctrine deserved a high-impact sequel. By capturing the Venezuelan dictator, he cut the Gordian knot of diplomacy with the edge of an axe. And here we are, stunned, debating whether to applaud because the villain fell or cry because the sheriff broke down the door of the house without asking permission.
Maduro, the bus driver who ended up leading an entire country into the abyss, perfected what experts call a crisis by design. It wasn’t incompetence, but social engineering. Hunger became state policy; loyalty, a caloric issue; dissent, a forced fast. With the CLAP boxes as a control instrument, the stomach of Venezuelans was nationalized. While a part of the continental left looked the other way, trapped in nostalgia for revolutions that no longer exist, the regime administered terror with bureaucratic efficiency in the basements of its intelligence services.
Just because the executioner is indefensible does not make the invader a saint. The Venezuelan tragedy is twofold: dignity was first expropriated by a domestic tyranny that pushed millions into exodus and today it is mortgaged by a foreign “liberation” that comes with an attached bill, payable in barrels of oil.
The intellectuals who today invoke libertarian authors to tear their clothes for violated sovereignty forget that sovereignty is not a shield for the impunity of those who massacre their own people. But those who celebrate the arrival of the Marines without nuances forget that the freedom given is usually a borrowed one.
Brazil, Colombia and Mexico raised their voices. Claudia Sheinbaum and Lula da Silva appealed to the UN Charter; Gustavo Petro denounced the operation as a regional affront. The gesture was dignified, but it rang hollow. Latin American diplomacy raised a moral act in the face of accomplished facts that it did not know how to prevent. Without real capacity for dialogue or pressure, the sentence was reduced to its best-known form: that of a late claim that does not alter the course of events. The so-called “Trump Corollary” met no resistance; barely written record.
The immediate future is blurry, to say the least. Trump, oblivious to the subtleties of democratic design, talks about rebuilding rotten infrastructure as if Venezuela were a failing hotel in Atlantic City. The scenarios range between a surrender pact by a military leadership expert in sniffing the wind and the nightmare of an “Iraqization” of the conflict, with militias entrenched in the neighborhoods and a country converted into another’s board.
María Corina Machado appeals to hope and the legitimacy of the ballot boxes, but history is not very lenient with transitions supervised by the Pentagon: they are usually born with an expiration date.
Venezuela woke up without Maduro, and that is a relief that can be felt in millions of homes fractured by the diaspora. But he also woke up under the shadow of an eagle that does not usually hunt out of altruism. We exchanged the horror of the dictatorship for the uncertainty of the occupation.
I hope that Venezuelans, owners of a resilience that moves and amazes, manage to find, in that crack opened by force, a way out that does not depend on other people’s ideas or armed nostalgia. A freedom that does not come by assault and that, for once, does not have to be given back.
About the author:
Journalist by vocation, provocateur by default. Eduardo Navarrete is Head of Comms & Press at Fintual México and writes columns because Excel doesn’t let him express himself.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eduardo-navarrete
Mail: (email protected)
Instagram: @elnavarrete
The opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of their authors and are completely independent of the position and editorial line of Forbes Mexico.
Subscribe to Forbes Mexico
