What’s Next for Venezuela? A Q&A with Angel Alvarado

On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans overwhelmingly voted to reject a bid by Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader since 2013, to secure a third six-year term as president. Precinct-level vote-tally receipts obtained by the democratic opposition representing 83.5 percent of cast ballots show that 67 percent of Venezuelans voted for Edmundo González, a retired former diplomat and the unity opposition candidate, and that just 30.5 percent voted for Maduro. Nevertheless—and despite widespread international condemnation—the regime-controlled National Election Commission published baseless (and almost certainly fabricated) vote totals and declared Maduro the election winner. Since claiming victory, Maduro has embarked on a heavy-handed campaign of political repression to silence the opposition, stamp out dissent among the population, and legitimize his sham election results.

In this interview, Angel Alvarado, a senior fellow in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Economics, former member of Venezuela’s National Assembly, and current policy advisor to Venezuelan President-elect Edmundo González, joins Public Discourse Fellow Matthew X. Wilson to discuss the post-election state of affairs in Venezuela and the democratic opposition’s strategy to compel Maduro to respect the results of the July 28th election.

Matthew X. Wilson: Opposition leaders are being arrested and imprisoned right now. And Maduro has been giving speeches in which he’s vowed to “pulverize” challenges to his falsified election results. He has vowed to do everything to fight the opposition. What is the situation like on the ground right now? Are María Corina Machado and Edmundo González going to continue leading rallies and leading the peaceful protest movement? Are they going to keep being as public as they were before, despite the risks, or are they considering going into hiding?

Angel Alvarado: I think the strategy of the opposition is to resist—peacefully. Every time the opposition tries to rally on the streets, they do so peacefully. But you know that some that are there or will be there at the rallies are going to go to jail—the police will take anyone, it could be a leader or just a random young guy hanging around. They take them to prison. Maduro now is promising that he will build more space in jails for “fascists.” That means members of the democratic opposition that are protesting peacefully in the streets. The arrested people also have no lawyers to defend them. They get assigned public lawyers, you know, and there is no guarantee of due process. At this moment, there is no rule of law for anybody in Venezuela, but especially for the people that are protesting for their rights on the streets—even so, the people still want to protest, because they are hungry for liberty, for freedom, and for democracy. Remember that Venezuela has a long experience of democracy, from the 1950s, before almost any country in the region and even before many European countries. So, there is a strong tradition of democracy, and the people want democracy and the people want democracy in peace. After years of hunger, of hyperinflation, of poverty in a country that used to be the wealthiest country in Latin America, at this moment people have lost their patience, and the people are looking for the true election results to be respected. They want—and are demanding—the true election result. And yeah, the answer is, the opposition will take risks. They will take risks to claim their rights and the rights of the whole nation—the opposition will demand that democracy and the rights of the people be respected.

MXW: As of now, the only countries in Latin America that have recognized Maduro’s election results are Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, and Nicaragua. China, Russia, and Iran have also recognized Maduro’s election. Interestingly, Gabriel Boric, the left-wing president of Chile, has taken a very strong stance against Maduro and denied the legitimacy of the regime’s fabricated election results—his stance was strong enough to prompt Maduro to kick the Chilean ambassador out of Venezuela. This is particularly notable because Boric is a political leftist whom the casual observer might expect to have ideological sympathies with Maduro and the Chavismo movement. Why haven’t Colombian president Gustavo Petro and Brazilian president Lula da Silva, who come from similar ideological backgrounds to Boric, taken the same hard-line position against Maduro—the position that respecting a democratic election result supersedes ideological sympathies, and that an undemocratic result must be rejected?

AA: The opposition has been insisting that this is not a typical problem between the right and the left or between progressives and conservatives. This is about democracy, and we welcome the opposition of all the democracies of the world—from the left and from the right—to the regime. And at this moment the opposition wants, and is receiving, sympathy not just from the typical right-wing and conservative sources in the region. Now the progressive movement, the left-wing movement of the region, is supporting the opposition, demanding a transparent process of counting the votes in this election. Look at the example of [former president of Argentina] Cristina [Fernández de] Kirchner, who was one of the closest friends of Hugo Chavez—the Kirchners in Argentina, because at that time Venezuela and Argentina had been experiencing the same problems. They were very close—so close that when Chavez died, Cristina Kirchner came [to Venezuela], and it was Cristina who organized the funeral of Chavez. For the Venezuelan election on July 28, her party, which is Peronismo, sent many observers. And what did they see that happened in Venezuela? Now, Cristina is demanding that Maduro release the actas [precinct-by-precinct vote tallies]. They are demanding the results: voting center by center, county by county, state by state, you know. They are saying that if Maduro claims he won, he must demonstrate that. So, at this moment you see Boric, Cristina, and many on the left coming together to demand transparency and respect for democracy. You might have seen that the Colombian mission wrote a statement about the election in Venezuela saying that it was not a transparent election. So, I think in Colombia they are at this moment trying to be mediators. They are not supporting Chavismo and Maduro trying to stay in power. I think they’re looking for more evidence. Of course, I think the evidence is clear—completely clear. We don’t need more evidence, but Colombia is more hesitant to release a statement of full opposition because they want to be a mediator on this. Remember that in the end the problem is not just between Lula, Petro, and Maduro. They want less migration, fewer problems dealing with Venezuela, and a peaceful and stable region. And they want to mediate between the U.S. government and Maduro’s regime.

MXW: Brian Winter, an analyst of Latin American politics, recently published an article in which he wrote that Maduro is going “full Ortega” (referring to the Nicaraguan dictator). He writes that: “In trying to understand Maduro’s behavior, and anticipate what may happen next, I come back to two key assumptions. The first is that what Maduro and his allies fear most is not losing power per se, but spending the rest of their lives in a Supermax federal prison in the United States . . . [t]he second assumption is that Chavismo’s model has always been Cuba, where authorities have ‘successfully’ stayed in power by repressing dissent, ignoring the economy when necessary and exporting malcontents for sixty-five years and counting. Take the long view, the Havana view, and this is just another storm that will pass.” Do you think his assessment is correct? Is Maduro content to allow Venezuela to become a total pariah state like Cuba and Nicaragua, and lose whatever semblance of international legitimacy he has left? Is it possible for the regime to continue with just countries like Russia, China, and Iran as allies?

AA: First, Russia and Iran are sanctioned by the United States. But their economies didn’t collapse as Venezuela’s collapsed in the last ten years. Venezuela lost 75 percent of its GDP. And you have eight million migrants around the region from Venezuela. Our economy collapsed completely. That didn’t happen to Iran, and it didn’t happen to Russia. So that makes Venezuela a little bit different to go full Cuba, full Russia, full Iran, in my opinion. Maduro needs an agreement with the United States and Chavismo knows that. The comparisons are obviously very nice. I like it, you know, but you have a little nuance that makes it a little bit different. And I think this is a big, important point: Venezuela is not as far away from the U.S. as the Persian Gulf. Caracas is just a two-hour flight from Miami and a one-hour flight to Puerto Rico. And especially with migration, there’s much more of a regional impact.

Second, there is a reason Venezuela has not already become exactly like Cuba or Nicaragua, even after twenty-five years under Chavismo. True, this is a long-term regime. In my opinion, twenty-five years is a lot. It is my whole life as a public person—you know, I was eighteen years old when Chavez came to power. But before that, in Venezuela we had a long tradition of democracy. In 1974, just three countries in the region were democracies: Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela. There is huge democratic capital in this country for that reason: it’s not full Havana or full Nicaragua. At this moment, the people want, and the people are fighting for democracy—for what their parents’ generation had. The people here are not giving up, especially now, because now the opposition has support not just among the middle and upper classes—now very poor people from the rural countryside of the country are supporting the opposition. So, the opposition is at its best moment.

MXW: But Maduro knows that his only option to try to stay in power at this point is to try to make Venezuela into a regime as oppressive as Cuba or Nicaragua. Is he okay with that?

AA: I think so. Of course, we saw that on Sunday. He and his apparatus demonstrated that he doesn’t care about democracy at all. They have shown that they have so little respect for the result, for the people, for what the people are thinking at that moment, and for the sovereignty of the people. Why not? If they need to stay in power, they will try to become Cuba or Nicaragua. Why not? And that possibility does make us afraid—of course, because they will have to increase the repression! They will have to build up the state’s capacity for repression. The army will have to repress the population. 

Take this, for example. The working class in the cities and especially in Caracas typically live in big block-style buildings. There is a protest tactic in which you hit something that makes noise, you know. For old women in the big buildings, that’s an easy way to protest, you know, hit whatever they have. But right now, the regime is using drones to surveil civilians. For windows that make noise during the night protests, they will try to use drones to take a picture of you, and then go for you. So, the capacity for oppression is something new. They have been investing a lot of money on surveillance, but not just like the Chinese regime does. This is more open, you know, and they are very openly repressing dissent expressed among the population—especially among the working class, the people that are suffering the most amid the situation we have in this country.

MXW: Is the model of sustained peaceful protests the only option the opposition is considering right now? Obviously, the opposition is calling for peaceful protests only, but of course angry demonstrations often become violent, and if protests continue, there might be more violence. I know before the election the opposition was considering other options, like convincing the military to respect the democratic election outcome. Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Maduro’s minister of defense, said before the election that democracy would be respected. But now he’s with Maduro. Still, if there are enough protests and support on the streets, the military could switch, right? Do you envision the military switching sides after they see the popular support, and that being a way to get Maduro out?

AA: At this moment, what we can do is the right thing. And sometimes the right thing is very risky—going out into the streets and demonstrating your opinions on the situation. It’s risky, but I think it’s our right, and I think it’s what is right. I never say never, but we tried that model in 2017, with sustained protest on the streets. And there was a lot of repression. At some point the people were exhausted and decided to stop because it didn’t work. This time I think it is different, because now, the feeling is not just primarily among the middle class—it is among working class people. There is an opportunity here. Of course, they need to overcome the fear that everybody can experience. And the people are right to be afraid: Maduro is in full repression mode at this moment.

MXW: Will the regime kill thousands of people if they think they must do so to stay in power?

AA: Yes. They will also just keep putting more people in jail. He has said he’s going to build more prisons to hold the “fascists,” you know, to hold the people that are demonstrating what they think about the election. But, you know, the other thing is that people have been humiliated a lot this country. Now the people have a huge opportunity to express what they think and challenge the regime in a peaceful way. I am especially thinking about working class people and very poor people who have been humiliated for many years, and the challenge of positioning themselves to channel their anger in a peaceful way. Because Maduro, you know, has no issue with using any kind of violence, and he also loves to provoke people to violence in demonstrations and then falsely call the protesters violent fascists. People have been suffering a lot, but we need to remember to carefully administer our actions. We know that Maduro has a long-term strategy here. The opposition gained momentum a few weeks ago, for sure. But remember that the oath of office for the next presidential term is on January 10. There’s a long way to go until that point. Nobody knows what—Or maybe you do!—what’s going to happen in the U.S. in November. Maduro knows that, and that’s part of his game.

MXW: Speaking of the United States, some politicians here, mostly from the Republican side—like Senator Marco Rubio and Representatives Carlos Giménez and María Salazar, for example—have been very forceful against Maduro after the election. They’ve been leading rallies. They’ve been speaking out. But for the most part the State Department has been careful and reserved in its statements about the election. They haven’t called Edmundo González the president-elect; the State Department said only that he had won the most votes. What should the U.S. be doing right now? Is the more reserved path being undertaken right now the correct one, or is a more forceful U.S. policy against Maduro necessary?

AA: What we felt about the U.S. is that over the last seven years, under the Trump and the Biden administrations, they tried almost everything. They tried to use all the tools in their diplomatic toolkit. I would say that the U.S. has been supporting all options, and we appreciate that. At this moment, I think the U.S. has been coordinating the solution of Venezuela with other countries in the region, especially Brazil. As I mentioned to you before, Brazil has strong ties with the Venezuelan regime, especially because both Brazil and Venezuela were part of the “Pink Tide” in the 2000s. Remember that the first country in the Pink Tide was Venezuela, and then Argentina, and then Brazil—Lula was elected in 2003. The Pink Tide countries relied on the leadership of Chavez, and they probably received a lot of money from Venezuela—support to create and gain momentum and eventually win election in those countries. So, I think Brazil has a lot of influence. A Brazil-centered strategy is something new that we didn’t try before. We are trying to use that way. We respect democracy, of course. We don’t say that democracy doesn’t work. We need to try to push that message especially because we need to work with the friends and former friends of Chavez. Brazil and Colombia share borders with Venezuela. We just have to wait.

But regarding the U.S., if this doesn’t work and Maduro stays, I think Maduro will have big problems not just with a potential Trump administration, but with a Harris administration as well. Venezuela is a bipartisan problem—as I said before, it is not a left and right issue. We want to receive the support of everyone at this moment. If Trump wins, Marco Rubio will probably be very involved in shaping the U.S.’s Venezuela policy—that’s going to be a nightmare for Maduro, in my opinion.

MXW: Many Republican politicians including Senator Rubio were accusing Biden of being weak because he agreed to lift sanctions in exchange for Maduro’s promises of a free and fair election, promises that he obviously broke.

AA: I think that criticism is true, especially under the leadership of [Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs] Juan [Sebastian] Gonzalez. There was criticism about that, and I would say that the Biden administration was at that time trying out something different. Because at that moment what they knew was that the Trump administration’s hardline policy didn’t work. But in the end the Juan Gonzalez approach in the Biden administration also didn’t work. That’s the tragedy of Venezuela—we have been trying, and the region has been trying, all options, as I said before. Of course, we keep up resistance and we keep trying. I think that the world should keep trying—don’t give up. You can say you tried everything. You can say you tried demonstrations, and you tried boycotts—you tried everything, and nothing worked. Well, yes, but this is our country. We need to keep fighting for it. We need to try to figure out how to escape from this. The situation of Venezuela is that it is a kidnapped nation, and we need to figure out how to escape from this and try everything—from the left, from the right, liberal and conservative governments, the U.S., Brazil, everybody is welcome here in this movement for democracy. But we need to figure out how to solve this.

MXW: What are the concrete steps that the opposition is going to try in the coming weeks and months to solve this? What is left to try?

AA: We just keep trying everything. We have the leadership of María Corina, which I think is very important—because she is never defeated. She is a strong woman who is providing the strong leadership we need at this moment. The opposition is united—everybody is represented in the opposition movement because you have the leadership of María Corina, but at the same time you have the presidency of Edmundo González, which is the whole spectrum of the opposition. I think at this moment, after a big wave of repression, we need to wait for more messages from other players. We need to wait for Chavismo to realize it is impossible for them to continue in this way. I think it’s especially true for the Chavismo leadership and members. Not just the cupola, but the cockpit of the Chavismo as well as the people—the typical Chavismo has no way to continue in this way. And the opposition understands that we need to exercise our power. We won the election—it’s very clear. I think Lula and Petro are waiting for more reports from the electoral center. You know the CNE, the [Maduro-controlled] National Electoral Commission. They’re waiting for a final report. And if the CNE doesn’t show that, after that moment I think that Colombia and Brazil are going to realize that Maduro has crossed all the red lines that he didn’t cross in the past. At that point, I think we’re going to see more pressure. 

As you mentioned before, I believe that Biden was very weak not just with Venezuela, but with Latin America—there was no coherent policy to deal with Latin America, in my opinion. But at this moment we have a new candidate. There is an opportunity for Harris to show something. But at this moment the leadership is on Brazil and Colombia. So, let’s wait for that. And after November, we will see if there is a more proactive policy from the United States.

Image by Oleksii and licensed via Adobe Stock.