by Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
It’s time to admit that Venezuela’s “21st century socialism” failed.
President Donald Trump’s full-fledged backing of Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president of Venezuela last week, was met with a bipartisan support among American political leaders. But one stubborn segment of the ideological spectrum is unimpressed and has gone so far as to compare Trump’s move to America’s 20th century transgressions in the region. These protests are being led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky and other notable cheerleaders of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who brought socialism to the country two decades ago. The elder statesman of America’s left penned a tone-deaf letter, co-signed by dozens of U.S. intellectuals, rejecting attempts by Venezuela’s opposition to remove Nicolás Maduro from office and insisting that U.S. sanctions are to blame for “worsening” Venezuela’s economic calamities.
Although the Democratic Party establishment has fully embraced Guaido, freshman members of its new House majority have troublingly joined the chorus against Trump’s decision.
Rep. Ro Kahnna (D–Calif.) took a shot at Sen. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) for embracing the opposition leader, calling Venezuela’s situation an “internal, polarized conflict.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.) took to Twitter to decry “U.S. meddling,” adding that Venezuela’s Supreme Court, stacked with Maduro loyalists, had declared Guaido’s action “unconstitutional.” Never mind that in 2017, that same court allowed Maduro to strip Venezuela’s Congress—the only governing institution he did not then control—of its powers and set up a parallel legislature, essentially giving him dictatorial power.
To be clear, supporting Maduro or downplaying the catastrophe he and Chavez have overseen in Venezuela is a fringe position. The leadership there is responsible for human rights abuses, rampant corruption, and a full-blown humanitarian crisis in the region, with the United Nations putting the number of Venezuelan refugees abroad at a staggering 3 million, or almost 10 percent of the country’s total population.
Last year, Maduro was re-elected in what the U.S. called “a sham election,” which the European Union said was neither free nor fair. Among the abuses, second-place candidate Henri Falcon accused the government of buying votes through food and money giveaways at polling stations.
Internationally, Guaido has the backing of a vast majority of Latin America nations, the U.K., Canada, Australia, and counting. The E.U. has given Maduro eight days to call new, credible elections or it will also back the 35-year-old opposition leader.
With Maduro’s dismal record and a nearly worldwide consensus against him, why are some on America’s left turning their fire on the United States instead?
Venezuela’s Socialist Failure
Hugo Chavez’s experiment was cleverly dubbed “socialism of the 21st century,” in part to lure and charm the international left, which was hungry for another shot at making socialism work somewhere.
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