Things have gotten worse. Nicolás Maduro’s Chavist regime has undoubtedly violated all paragraphs of the O.A.S.’s Interamerican Democratic Charter and deserves to be sanctioned, but suspending Venezuela from the organization is not much of a punishment and may come too late. The damage that society has suffered is most profound.
Worse than trying to turn Venezuela into another Cuba is having transformed it into another Congo, a chaotic and disorganized country dominated by local chieftains who live by the blade of a knife. In addition to being a «rogue state» that assaults others, Venezuela is a «failed state» that disobeys its own laws and ignores its institutions, a state from which the principle of authority has disappeared, the capacity to repress has metastasized into one thousand violent centers and the state apparatus does not respond to the orders from those who allegedly lead it.
Maduro, a man who spouts drivel and dances the salsa, heads (precariously) one of those centers. «For now» he is the most powerful leader, but only provisionally. It is within his power to incarcerate Leopoldo López or Antonio Ledezma because the opposition acts within a peaceful and predictable republican scheme, but Maduro can’t control the thousands of slam-and-slash Venezuelans, the goons to whom Chavism gave weapons and permission to fleece and terrorize what they call «the bourgeoisie,» i.e., the people intent on living a decent and normal life.
It’s total lawlessness, an absolute lack of civilized principles, values and norms. Even if he wanted to, which is not the case, Maduro can’t prevent the production of and the trafficking in drugs. That, from the Chavist perspective, is just one more source of enrichment. Drug trafficking is barely a variant of the crime. It is practiced by many generals who collude with the drug lords and even Maduro’s own closest relatives, such as his narco-nephews. Some white-collar thieves are ransacking PDVSA.
Others create phony businesses to «mediate» in the state’s purchases or receive large bribes from companies such as Odebrecht. In the end, they’re all the same.
How to appeal to order if Chavism has been a huge machine dedicated to the commission of crime? The heartless criminal who kills a girl to steal her cell phone believes that what he does is no worse than taking advantage of personal relations to obtain dollars at preferential rates and profit from their illegal sale. Everyone makes a buck as best one can. The contemptible «wild dogs» use a knife or a pistol to extort or kill someone and flee from the scene of the crime on a motorcycle. The sophisticated bandit uses a gold-plated pen, keeps an account in a tax haven and prepares to leave Venezuela in his own private plane as soon as the ship begins to sink. The two are brothers in impunity and in their contempt for the country of their birth.
What more can happen in Venezuela? Given the regime’s infinite ineptitude and the growing loss of authority, anything can happen. It already is happening. The default and the ensuing disappearance of credit to import food are knocking at the door. As a result, we can foresee a period of starvation that will kill thousands of Venezuelans or turn them into skin and bones. A prolonged absence of electricity and drinking water cannot be ruled out, nor the spread of monstrous and uncontrollable diseases. We’ll see a rise, in crescendo, of the desperate hyperinflation that adds zeros to prices and can reach incalculable figures, as happened in Germany in the 1920s or in Andean countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador in the 1980s.
How does one put an end to this nightmare? It is hard to believe that Maduro can appeal to common sense and seek a collegial solution along with the opposition, which constitutes an infinite majority in the country. Raúl Castro will order him to resist and entrench himself in the anti-imperialist discourse. Raúl is willing to fight to the last Venezuelan. All that Havana cares about is to continue to milk the cow. I don’t see Nicolás Maduro losing an election and handing the presidential sash to Henrique Capriles or María Corina Machado, much less Leopoldo López.
Sure to be fulfilled is a dictum typical of these situations: The greater the destruction of the national foundation and the longer it lasts, the more painful and bloody will be the cure.
*Journalist and writer. His latest book is the novel A Time for Scoundrels.
