Biden Should Open His Eyes to Reality when it comes to Policy toward Venezuela

 

The “new” Biden strategy toward Venezuela is to drop the Trump administration’s insistence on regime change as a precondition for talks with the Maduro government as a more realistic path to achieving regime change. If I were Maduro, I would say from the outset ‘I’m willing to talk about anything including cultural exchanges and even policy toward foreign investments, but issues dealing with politics IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

The Webinar on Venezuela’s recent parliamentary elections organized by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in which I participated along with several electoral observers (Margaret Flowers and Danny Shaw) reported that there was absolutely no evidence of electoral fraud nor were there any significant incidents.

The true winner was the bloc consisting of the Chavistas and the moderate anti-abstentionist opposition since the elections put the lie to the claim of illegitimacy put forward by Washington and the European Union. Try comparing Venezuela’s December 6 elections with the presidential ones held one month earlier in the United States!

https://www.coha.org/steve-ellner-at-coha-webinar-parliamentary-elections-are-a-victory-for-chavismo-and-the-moderate-opposition/

 

TRUMP’S “LOST CAUSE” AND THE U.S. RIGHT’S NEW NARRATIVE

 

The US right is spinning a narrative of the "Lost Cause" in which evil forces embodied in the Democratic party robbed Trump of his electoral victory in 2020. It’s the same narrative framed by Jim Crow southerners following the ending of the North’s military occupation of the south and the highly contentious presidential election of Rutherford Hayes in 1876. These southern whites claimed that superior numbers alone explained the defeat of the heroic southern army. Slavery, according to this line, had nothing to do with the war since, after all, the slaves supported the southern cause and some even fought alongside the white southern soldiers (thus the recently-fabricated myth of the “Black Confederacy" for which there is no documentation). The deceitful narrative of the “Lost Cause” was enriched by the United Daughters of the Confederacy who publicly mourned the death of their brave husbands and fathers.

It’s uncommon for losing sides to glorify their defeated struggle. But this is exactly what Trump is setting out to do. In fact, his avid defense of Confederate symbols and his claim that the Civil War could have been avoided reinforces the Lost Cause narrative. Indeed, the South in 1860 and the racist right in 2020 have something in common: rightists today, like southerners at the time of the Civil War, perceive that time is on the side of the enemy. Southern whites in 1860 knew that they were becoming no match for the northern industrialists. Similarly, the racist white reactionaries in 2020 realize that it’s only a matter of a decade or so when they will become a minority. It’s for that reason that the “Proud Boys” and the Boogaloo movement resort to violence in order to provoke a civil war. And it’s for that reason that the Republican Party has become increasingly bold in dropping all pretenses of abiding by democratic norms and fair play.

https://www.bestoftheleft.com/_1385_the_lost_cause_of_the_confederacy_and_the_forty_fives

Venezuela's National Assembly electoral results cannot be called a "Pyrrhic Victory" for the Chavistas

 

Monday, December 14th evening’s Webinar in which I will be presenting an analysis of last Sunday’s National Assembly electoral results in Venezuela. I will attempt to refute the claim of the Venezuelan opposition – even opposition “moderates” like Enrique Ochoa Antich - that with such a high abstention rate, President Maduro’s triumph was a Pyrrhic Victory (or in the words of radical opposition journalist Carlos Acosta from Miami that Maduro is a “loser”). Obviously, support for the Chavista government has declined somewhat. I will argue that the two most important factors are the economic situation due to international sanctions and declining oil prices. Another factor is the natural erosion of support (desgaste) for the Chavistas that is virtually inevitable as a result of such a long period in power (22 years). But a fourth factor cannot be brushed  aside: errors committed under both Chávez and (even more so) Maduro and the failure to act decisively to deal with the problem of corruption. How can this fourth factor be conceptualized?  I will attempt to provide some rough answers to this key question.

https://www.coha.org/webinar-the-national-and-regional-impact-of-parliament

WILL ELECTORAL ABSTENTION TODAY BE MUCH HIGHER IN VENEZUELA THAN IN COLOMBIA?

 

Abstention in congressional elections in Colombia seldom dip below the 50% mark. In 1994 it reached 67 %.  In 2006, 2010 and 2014 it was 54.3%, 55.8% and 56.4% respectively. The presidential elections in 2002 the abstention rate was 56.3%. Yet in none of these elections did Washington question the legitimacy of the process. The rate of abstention in Venezuela today may be a bit higher, but that’s only because in Venezuela, unlike Colombia, there is an internationally orchestrated campaign supported by national elites to convince people not to go to the polls.

"Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings"

Choice, which is a publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries, has selected "Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughous and Shortcomings" as a "Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2020. The book, which I am the editor of, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in the series Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom. The book argues that the Pink Tide has proved to be more long-lasting and tenuous than democratic and leftist “waves” in Latin America in the past. The Pink Tide has lasted longer, has taken in more governments and shown a greater sense of internal unity and solidarity than the post-World War II wave and that of the 1980s. 

https://www.choice360.org/choice-pick/choice-outstanding-academic-titles/