Venezuelans to vote in regional elections
May 23, 2025
Venezuelans head for the polls on Sunday in parliamentary and regional elections. It’s the first time they’ll vote since last year’s discredited presidential elections — most of the world rejected Nicolás Maduro’s claim to have won reelection in July 2024, and human rights groups have documented widespread human rights violations committed against protesters, bystanders, opposition leaders, and critics during the protests and over the months that followed.
Earlier this month, the government-loyal Electoral Council moved to remove the QR code that previously appeared on the tally sheets that every electronic voting machine used in an election printed after polls closed. These same QR codes were used by the opposition last year to prove massive fraud in Maduro’s reelection claim.
“Maduro’s decision to bring forward the elections, which are usually held later in the year, appears to be a calculated move aimed at reshuffling the political deck before pressure mounts further—both domestically and internationally,” wrote Tony Frangie Mawad in Americas Quarterly earlier this month.
Partial Boycott
The political opposition to Maduro has again fractured — after a brief period of unity surrounding last year’s elections. María Corina Machado, who remains in hiding in a context of political repression, is urging voters to boycott the vote. Other relevant leaders are in exile or prison, reports the Associated Press.
But other opposition politicians are participating, exhausted of years of boycotts that also failed to obtain political change in Venezuela. “The government has co-opted some opposition (parties) and there’s other opposition that are just tired of this strategy that’s never worked,” expert David Smilde,told the AP. “So, what you are going to have is a partial boycott, which means the government is going to cruise to victory and can say, ‘We had elections, the opposition didn’t participate.’ It’s going to backfire on the opposition.”
Essequibo
On Sunday, for the first time, Venezuela will elect representatives not only for its 23 recognised states but also for a new state: Guayana Esequiba. The state is in territory Guyana claims as its own, and has administered for over a hundred years. Guyana’s government has warned that participating in Venezuela’s election could amount to treason.
Venezuelans living in Guyana who become involved in Sunday’s elections could also face arrest and deportation, officials said. Nearly 100,000 people of direct or indirect Venezuelan ancestry currently live in Guyana, reports the Associated Press.
Venezuela’s decision to elect officials to administer a swathe of Guyanese territory constitutes “a full-frontal assault on Guyana’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” that “undermines regional peace”, the country’s president, Irfaan Ali told the Guardian.
The International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body at the United Nations, ruled that Venezuela must "refrain from conducting elections" for Essequibo while it continues to weigh the territorial dispute between the two countries, reports Al Jazeera.
Chevron
The U.S. decision regarding Chevron’s permission to operate in Venezuela, which is set to expire next week, will have a greater, more immediate effect on Venezuelans than the result of Sunday’s poll, reports the Associated Press.
Contradictory statements from high-level U.S. officials regarding the extension or not of Chevron’s waiver caused oil price whiplash this week, “the latest sign of the administration’s internal tug of war over how much pressure to put on the regime of President Nicolás Maduro. Advocates of tightening the squeeze — led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — were opposed by those seeking to ease the limits in order to win Venezuela’s cooperation on other issues like migration,” reports Bloomberg. (See yesterday’s post.)
Axios reports that Rubio’s faction won the day, and permitted Trump to salvage his giant spending plan in Congress by ensuring the death of the Chevron oil deal opposed by Miami Republicans.
Deportations
The U.S. Trump administration’s plan to expel gang members to El Salvador relies on Osiris Luna, the Salvadoran prison director sanctioned by the U.S. for gang negotiations, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Regional Relations
The U.S. is planning a 5% tax on remittance transfers that would cover millions of foreigners living in the US. With about $160 billion sent by Latin Americans alone, their home countries would be among the hardest hit, reports Deutsche Welle.
Mexico
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she discussed U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs in a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, yesterday. She said they didn’t talk about the review of the North American free trade agreement scheduled for 2026. Sheinbaum said she welcomed the decision by U.S. lawmakers to reduce a proposed tax on remittances, but will continue fighting for these payments to be tax free, reports Bloomberg.
A U.S. court ordered Mexico’s former head of public security, Genaro García Luna, to pay more than $748m to his home country for his alleged involvement in government corruption, reports Al Jazeera.
Haiti
U.S. officials are pushing the Organization of American States to help quash gang violence in Haiti. A U.S. Department of State official attending an OAS meeting on Haiti’s security crisis yesterday said that the Washington-based group has a critical role to play in the nation, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil
Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction, reports the Guardian.
An Indigenous group from the Brazilian Amazon has sued the New York Times, saying the newspaper’s reporting on the tribe’s first exposure to the internet led to its members being widely portrayed as technology-addled and addicted to pornography, reports the Guardian.
Peru
A civil court in Peru has issued a landmark ruling recognizing the territorial rights of the Kichwa people within a protected area in the Amazon — marking a major breakthrough for Indigenous land claims, reports the Associated Press.
Regional
·Latin American countries are beginning to develop AI regulations inspired by global benchmarks … Without the burden of legacy systems or entrenched regulatory regimes, (the region) can leapfrog into governance models that reflect local constraints while aligning with global standards,” argues Eduardo Levy Yeyati for the Brookings Institution. (Via Latin America Risk Report.)
‘Global red alert’: forest loss hits record high – and Latin America is the heart of the inferno, reports the Guardian. (See Wednesday’s post.)