Nicolás Maduro during a press conference.LEONARDO FERNANDEZ VILORIA / Reuters
A round of negotiations is announced in Mexico.
Once again, the spokesmen of the erratic Venezuelan opposition and the emissaries of the unsinkable Nicolás Maduro, someone for whom bettors did not owe a nickel eight years ago, will face.
If everything continues to happen as I imagine Maduro calculates, the mustache will not only preside over the celebrations on the occasion of the 200 years of the battle of Ayacucho but will also be a candidate for a new presidential term in 2025. That would, hypothetically, keep him in power until 2031. Better not think about it.
Although it may be worse not to think about it because Maduro, friends, does not stop thinking about it and acting accordingly.
More information
Maduro and his opposition go to Mexico
Guillermo Sucre and the earthquake diary
This time, and contrary to what the delegates of the Guaidó coalition express, Maduro goes to the weigh-in with little to lose.
On the contrary, seen from afar, the round will offer Maduro the perfect setting and occasion to victimize himself as the “progressive” leader of a South American nation under a blockade.
The alibi of the US blockade has already been successfully tested by Havana for six decades.
The blockade argument is fallacious but very powerful in the diplomatic sphere.
And in the case of Maduro, together with the fall in oil prices, it contributes to hide the ineptitude and looting that Chavismo has subjected Venezuela to for twenty years.
The delegates of the dictatorship will not stop demanding the lifting of international sanctions and thus reverting to Washington the blame for the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis.
There will be more than one who will chorus them.
It is not surprising, then, that Maduro was the one who loudly announced the imminence of the Mexican dialogues and is willing to negotiate "with all the oppositions" without offering anything in exchange in advance.
It is foreseeable, of course, that in the prelude to the party, there will be measures of grace for some political prisoner
This plural, "the oppositions", uttered sarcastically by the dictator, singles out the opposition tragedy: fractured, without inspiring leaders, the insane strategy of one of its main factors by betting everything on a military pronouncement accompanied by a Yankee military intervention has resulted equivalent to painting the floor with your back to the corner.
The most serious obstacle to the opposition unit is the invincible suspicion that it managed to sow.
Only now, almost two and a half years after the unfortunate coup threats engineered by Leopoldo López, is it appreciated how damaging such blind arrogance could have been for the Venezuelan democratic opposition.
Seen closely, the rounds of Mexico will not be, as is thought, just a procedure that the corner of Guaidó must comply with like someone who swallows a mouthful of castor oil to leave behind the rhetoric of "cessation of usurpation and transitional government." and go gallantly to the election of mayors and governors called by Maduro for mid-November.
To make matters worse, the opposition goes to Mexico without even being able to drag it out with the power to lift the sanctions in exchange for clean elections because, simply, that power is not theirs: it belongs to Washington.
The past of international sanctions allows us to think that Biden will not lift them in the foreseeable future, even though his government still provides "diplomatic" support to Guaidó's interim term.
I have for me that the round of Mexico will deepen even more the division between the opposition parties.
It is clear that for the parties that the Guaidó coalition left aside from the advantages of its privileged relationship with Trump, the foreseeable failure of the talks will be the beginning of the end for Guaidó.
Something highly desired deep down by other competitors.
In the midst of the pandemic, it will not be easy at all, to give back to the impoverished Venezuelans their faith in the vote as a weapon.
Subscribe here to the
EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the information keys on the region's current affairs
