When Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the Venezuelan presidential election last week, there was an immediate outcry and accusations of fraud. Maduro had trailed significantly in many polls, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) didn’t provide access to voting breakdowns as it is legally required to do.
While much of the rhetoric from Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s supporters has been heated, left-leaning governments in the region haven’t come down on either side – despite many longstanding connections with Maduro’s administration. This marked shift within the remnants of the “pink tide” of leftist governments that dominated Latin American countries in the 00s may provide a way through the crisis, and achieve a democratic transition in Venezuela.
The governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have led many other nations in demanding electoral authorities release voting tallies for each electronic voting machine, but they have abstained from accusing Maduro of wrongdoing – they have not used the term “fraud” or denounced the Venezuelan regime’s unacceptable post-election human rights violations. They are apparently hoping to get Venezuela’s government and opposition parties back to the negotiating table.
This is perhaps the most high-profile example of the mediating role Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, seeks on the world stage, and a demonstration of what his “active nonalignment” diplomacy looks like in practice.
If Lula’s strategy – taken on by the larger bloc – works, it will be a resounding affirmation of his much-misunderstood “third way” diplomatic strategy, which seeks to further the economic concerns of developing countries without picking a side in the great powers conflict in the current global cold war 2.0. It will also be a moral compass in a region where democracy is threatened by backsliding driven by elected leaders. The strategy could serve as an important electoral bulwark against the rise of extreme-right movements that threaten Latin American democracy.
This studiedly unhostile approach to Venezuela’s crisis represents an alternative to the dominant approach of the past: with Latin American countries denouncing whichever side was ideologically convenient and the US bluntly deploying economic sanctions. While the Biden administration has strongly supported negotiation efforts in Venezuala, Washington unilaterally recognised the opposition candidate González as the winner of the election on Thursday.
This kind of posturing has done little, and unreserved support from western states has often provided cover for governments to make authoritarian moves. Additionally, in a multipolar world where Venezuela can rely on the support of Russia and China – both of which have already congratulated Maduro on his re-election – it risks pulling the region into larger international conflicts.
Leftists in the region have traditionally maintained a soft spot for Cuba, and have, for years, refrained from fully denouncing democratic backsliding in Venezuela. This tolerance reflects a cold war-influenced bilateral tradition in the region that has always tried, wrongly, to differentiate between leftwing and rightwing authoritarianism, allowing that violations committed in the name of an ideology could somehow be justified in the face of the larger battle between the two sides. The stance must be understood against the backdrop of cynical US intervention in Latin America that long supported violent military dictatorships.
Statements this week by Lula, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, Chile’s president, Gabriel Boric, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner are the most visible sign of a deep shift in the Latin American left, away from these ideological commitments.
To have even former fellow travellers, such as Lula and Kirchner, push back against Maduro’s election fraud lays bare the increasing gap between Latin America’s leftist democracies and “leftist” dictatorships. The old leaders’ new stance partially responds to generational turnover. Today’s young voters were raised in the pink tide period and didn’t live through the social devastation wreaked by Washington consensus neoliberal economic policies. In Chile, Colombia and Brazil, they have elected leaders whose platforms focused on climate crisis, social justice and reproductive health.
The leftist leaders’ statements also hint at a manifesto for Latin America’s new left, with democracy and social justice as cornerstones, framed as historical continuity. Indeed, Petro and Kirchner invoked the legacy of Hugo Chávez in calling for Maduro to publish detailed election results. They also emphasised the deleterious effect of US sanctions on Venezuelan democracy. The decades-long US embargo on Cuba is detested by the region’s left, and the reference marks a ratification of their historical anti-imperialist stance.
The region’s rightwing leaders have rightly highlighted the crimes against humanity committed by Maduro. But few expressed the same concern for human rights abuses committed by ideological allies, such as the massacre of protesters under the interim government of Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia in 2019, or the electoral fraud that Juan Orlando Hernández leveraged into a second presidential term in Honduras in 2017. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has called Maduro a “communist dictator”, but has cozied up to El Salvador, apparently unconcerned by the systematic human rights violations that form the backbone of President Nayib Bukele’s controversial security policies. Thus, their outrage will carry little weight in this crisis.
Leftist leaders’ new stance represents a moral line that is consistent with the ideology they profess; how they respond to increasing government repression will be a test of this shift. In any case, the goal of bringing about a true accounting of the election results cannot be accomplished without engaging Maduro’s government.
Jordana Timerman is a journalist based in Buenos Aires
