In the face of controversy and even violence in the wake of Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, responsible Latin American leaders have called for two things: no foreign interference and release of detailed results from polling stations.

Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio da Silva (Lula), and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador(AMLO)—along with AMLO’s successor, Claudia Scheinbaum—all emphasized the principles of non-intervention and transparency.

You might not learn this in mainstream media, but today (July 31), Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro promised to release all the electoral tally sheets. (These are poll-by-poll results that are called “actas” in Spanish and translated into English variously as minutes, receipts or tally sheets.)

After affirming Maduro’s victory early Monday, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) has 30 days to publish full results, but it is impeded this week by various hacking attempts and by the need to protect staff from protesters outside their regional offices.

Maduro also asked his country’s Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the election. “I am asking the Court to rule on the attack against the electoral process and the attempted coup. Let the Court clarify everything that needs to be clarified… Venezuela has strong institutions,” he told reporters.

But will that be enough to satisfy long-time opponents of Venezuela’s 25-year attempt to break from rule by a wealthy minority and to turn the nation’s resources to the benefit of the impoverished majority?

U.S. and allies block profound change

Not likely. To me it feels like we’ve seen this show before. Whether excusing a military coup (Honduras 2009), a clever parliamentary ruse (Paraguay 2012, Peru 2022), or justifying an outright invasion (Panama 1989, Iraq 2003), the United States and its allies have found many ways to block profound change.

This election took place in the face of more than 900 different sanctions and in the wake of other measures that stripped the country of assets held abroad.

Yesterday, the Mexico City independent daily newspaper La Jornada warned in an editorial that a coup is underway in Venezuela. My translation follows: 

Once again, Venezuela finds itself besieged by the threat of a coup d’état that seeks to restore the oligarchic regime run from Washington that controlled the country until the triumph of the Bolivarian revolution in 1998. The personalities and organizations that a few hours ago called for respect for democracy and offered national reconciliation threw down their masks once they realized that their candidate had been defeated at the polls by President Nicolás Maduro.

The attempt that is now underway to unseat the constitutional government of Venezuela and to impose a puppet administration has followed a prepared script from which the Caribbean nation has already suffered in 2002, 2014, 2017 and 2019, the same one that has been replicated in other parts of Latin America. Large communications media reproduce accusations of fraud as if they were proven facts, do not recognize Venezuelan law and paint the far-right shock groups as heroes in the struggle for democracy. Multinational organizations with clear conservative biases put the results in doubt and legitimate violent actions instigated by the opposition. Opposition leaders proclaim their triumph in a unilateral way and put in action the perfectly-coordinated mechanisms for destabilization with which they have gained much skill through decades of coups.

Recall that the strawman candidate Edmundo González and the true leader of the Venezuelan right, María Corina Machado, are only the most recently-chosen by the White House and the CIA to take over the Miraflores Palace, and with it, the largest oil reserves of the planet. Just in 2019, the legislator Juan Guaidó was the useful idiot with whom the West mounted its parallel government ruse, stole Venezuelan foreign assets and tightened its homicidal blockade that prevented the country from acquiring all kinds of goods, including food and medicine. Today relegated to history’s wastebin, Guaidó inflicted immeasurable damage to his country and is directly responsible for the hunger, illness and misery of millions of his compatriots who could not make a normal life because of imperialist aggression. Just as in the worst moments of the Cold War and in Plan Condor with which the United States orchestrated the genocide of leaders and militants of the left in this hemisphere, a group of Latin American governments joined the attack on Venezuela and backed the coup-supporters….It is imperative that Western powers and media aligned with them take their hands off Venezuela and allow Venezuelans to arrange their own differences through institutional and democratic means. Without financing, advice and foreign media amplification, the local right would not dare to try over and over again to overthrow the Chavismo that it has not been able to defeat by voting. 

A day later (July 31), La Jornada warned in a new editorial that Venezuela is again consumed by a “spiral of violence” driven by the United States and its local agents who will not recognize any “electoral result that is counter to the plans of the superpower to impose a puppet government that will turn over political, diplomatic and economic control of the country and its natural resources.”

It continues: “Think what you may of the Maduro government, nothing justifies interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela beyond the channels established by international law.”