Venezuela braces for protests, repression

Jan. 9, 2025

Protests against President Nicolás Maduro’s plan to stay in power are taking place in Venezuela, despite government efforts to breakup demonstrations. Tomorrow Maduro plans to assume a third consecutive mandate, despite evidence that he lost last July’s presidential election by a landslide. (Efecto Cocuyo, see yesterday’s post)

Many businesses and schools were shut today, as people braced for potential violence in response to protests, reports the Associated Press.

Most democratic governments will boycott tomorrow’s inauguration, which analysts say “represents a painful milestone in the slow collapse of one of South America’s largest democracies.” (Guardian)

Rumor has it that Edmundo González, who the opposition claims won the election, “will attempt to fly from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela accompanied by a number of former presidents including former Mexican President Felipe Calderon,” in defiance of government promises to arrest him upon arrival, writes James Bosworth in Latin America Risk Report.

More Venezuela

• Protesters take part in marches at significant personal risk, but are the only possibility to force any change in the status quo, argues Boris Muñoz in El País. Venezuela’s fate is a coin toss between totalitarian terror and the possibility to rebuild democracy, he writes. “Faced with both possibilities, it is the people standing up and the small groups of civil society that still survive that will make the difference.”

• The Maduro government’s post-electoral repression differs from past crackdowns with a wave of disappearances: at least 31 people detained by the government since the July 28 vote remain unaccounted for. “Their family members have received no information on their whereabouts — in some cases, for months,” reports the Washington Post. At least nine U.S. citizens have been detained in this time period, and the locations of at least three of them remain unidentified. (See yesterday’s post.)

• By stealing the election – which voting tallies published by the opposition suggests Maduro lost heavily – Maduro’s administration went from being one of “electoral authoritarianism” to being “a closed, hegemonic authoritarian regime,” academic John Polga-Hecimovich told the Guardian.

Regional Relations

• U.S. “president-elect Donald Trump is considering declaring a national economic emergency to provide legal justification for a large swath of universal tariffs on allies and adversaries,” reports CNN. It’s the same tool he used to threaten Mexico with tariffs in 2019, driving an immigration deal demanded by Trump that year.

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sarcastically proposed renaming the United States to “Mexican America,” based on a 400-year-old map, and in response to Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Amid concerns that Mexico’s leftist president is unlikely to hit-off personally with Trump, like her predecessor did, the joke could “set the tone for what a Sheinbaum-Trump relationship could look like in the coming years,” reports the Guardian.

• Regarding the name itself: Trump can lobby for changes to geographical names as they are used within the U.S., but he can’t make other countries use the new name, explains the New York Times.

• Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he has been invited to Trump’s inauguration and is seeking to obtain the return of his passport, confiscated last year as part of an investigation into an attempted coup in 2023. (Reuters)

Brazil

• Social media giant Meta’s decision to end factchecking in the United States is “bad for democracy”, according to Brazil’s newly appointed communication minister, Sidonio Palmeira. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that he was pulling the plug on factchecking at Facebook and Instagram in the US, citing concerns about political bias. He “also slammed what he called censorship in Europe and Latin America, leaving many countries wondering if they will be next,” reports the Guardian.

• Electric vehicle producer BYD brought hundreds of Chinese workers on irregular visas to build a factory in Brazil, reports Reuters.

Ecuador

• Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa appointed interim vice-president Cynthia Natalie Gellibert to serve as acting president from Thursday to Sunday so he can participate in campaigning for his re-election. The move takes place in the midst of a long-running spat between him and elected vice-president Veronica Abad, notes Reuters.

Haiti

• Three high-profile Haitian political groups proposed a reconfiguration of the country’s tarnished Transitional Presidential Council to CARICOM, in hopes of saving the shaky process backed by the regional bloc. Their recommendations range from replacing everyone on the ruling presidential panel to reducing its numbers to just three members, reports the Miami Herald.

Colombia

• Two soldiers were killed and three injured in an ELN attack in Arauca today, days after a meeting between the guerrilla force and government officials seeking to restart peace talks, reports La Silla Vacía.

Argentina

• "Lawyers representing Argentina in a New York court have refused to reveal the location of the Central Bank’s (BCRA) gold reserves, at least some of which is believed to be overseas,” reports Bloomberg.