A Conviasa plane at the Simón Bolívar international airport in Maiquetia, Vargas state, Venezuela, February 2021. Carlos Becerra (Bloomberg)
The first Bogotá-Caracas flight operated by Conviasa certified in the air the reestablishment of relations between Venezuela and Colombia after three years of blackout.
However, the United States deployed all its diplomatic power to stop it, despite the fact that Gustavo Petro and Nicolás Maduro had agreed to do so.
This has been the first time that Washington has warned a country for scheduling flights with the Venezuelan state airline, which travels without problems to other parts of the world such as Spain or Ecuador.
“People and entities that materially help, sponsor or provide financial, material or technological support, goods or services, in support of Conviasa, may be exposed to sanctions.
We encourage the Government of Colombia to deny landing rights”, the US made known through a message.
That plane never got off the ground.
Venezuela's response to the ban has been defiant and leaves Colombia in the middle of a dispute.
It qualifies the measure as coercive, unilateral and illegal.
"An action against Conviasa in a different country or derived from a coercion exercised by authorities in that country (...) would contravene Public International Law," the Chavista government wrote forcefully.
Even so, the flight has not taken place, so Caracas has gone one step further.
Wingo, a Panamanian airline that already had authorization to cover that route and had been selling tickets to passengers for two weeks, has said that the Chavista government has asked it to temporarily suspend its activity.
“We are waiting for the final decisions adopted by the authorities for its restart,” the company explained in a statement.
That is to say, Venezuela, for the moment,
it will not allow any airline to operate between the two countries.
It has been his way of protesting against pressure from Washington.
The United States trusts that the new president of Colombia will mediate with Maduro and convince him to return to the negotiating table in Mexico, where the Chavista government and the opposition were trying to agree, among other things, on holding presidential elections with guarantees in 2024. Petro has also let Maduro know that he would like Venezuela to return to the inter-American justice system, which would serve as a guarantor for citizens who suffer arbitrariness in local courts.
The Joe Biden government sees the rapprochement between Petro and the Chavista government as an opportunity to get out of the blockade that Venezuela has been in for years.
However, he considers that Caracas should make some gestures of opening that for the moment it has not given,
Nicolás Maduro wearing a Conviasa cap at a protest when the US announced sanctions against the airline, in February 2020. picture alliance (Getty Images)
Conviasa remains on the Clinton list, a list of companies and individuals that the US Treasury Department accuses of money laundering.
"(The airline) has been publicly identified as blocked property, to the extent that it is compatible with its international and national legal obligations," stressed the American diplomacy.
The message was clear: pay attention to the consequences if you let Conviasa fly into Colombian territory.
The request is striking because the airline connects Caracas with other countries that maintain good relations with Venezuela, such as Mexico, Iran, Russia or Peru, but also with others that are not so aligned, such as Spain, Bolivia and Ecuador.
The Maduro government pointed out that none of those countries with which it has a connection had received any warning.
“Conviasa has been operating frequently and normally in different countries of the American continent and the world, establishing trade agreements and significantly expanding its international operations and services, without any country being warned by US authorities of an alleged violation of the illegal regime. of US sanctions," he added.
Petro has been torn between two loyalties.
On the one hand, reconnecting with Venezuela allows him to negotiate more effectively with the ELN, a Colombian guerrilla with a presence in Venezuelan territory, and opens up economic possibilities that have remained stagnant until now.
At the same time, the relationship with the US is essential.
Negotiating the surrender of drug cartels and criminal groups, as Petro wants, is unfeasible without the support of Washington.
Biden budgeted $453 million in 2020 to help fight drugs in Colombia.
This has been the first time that the interests of the Washington-Bogotá-Caracas triangle have collided, but it will surely not be the last.
Until Maduro returns to the negotiating table with the opposition, the situation will be tense.
The challenge tests Petro's ability as a mediator.
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