Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro seems much more remoted this week after shedding two regional allies, Honduras and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on the polls as he confronts Washington’s naval buildup in the Caribbean.
In Honduras, preliminary outcomes from Sunday’s elections have made one factor clear: Candidate Rixi Moncada, the protégé of leftist President Xiomara Castro, has been relegated to a distant third place in the presidential race with little hope of a victory.
Though votes are nonetheless being counted, the race has narrowed to two right-leaning candidates who have promised to chop ties with Venezuela’s authorities: Salvador Nasralla and Nasry Asfura, who was endorsed final week by US President Donald Trump.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, a staunch supporter of Maduro, lost an election final week after virtually 25 years in energy. The nation will now be led by center-right politician Godwin Friday, whose social gathering gained 14 of the 15 seats in Parliament.
These outcomes, coupled with earlier political shifts throughout Latin America, point out the area’s transfer away from Venezuela’s once-popular populist motion generally known as Chavismo. It was based by President Hugo Chávez, who died in workplace in 2013, and continued by Maduro.
Even international locations ruled by left-wing or center-left leaders – resembling Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Colombia – have restricted their ties with Maduro’s Venezuela, particularly after its disputed 2024 elections. Maduro was declared the winner in his reelection bid regardless of proof to the contrary.
A shifting panorama
While Venezuela has remained in roughly the identical place after greater than 25 years of Chavismo, international locations in the area have swung between left- and right-wing leaders.
Colombia, which shares a lengthy land border and a transnational drug-trafficking drawback with Venezuela, has at all times had a rocky relationship with its neighbor. Under the present presidency of Gustavo Petro, that partnership has teetered.
Early in his admiration, Petro reestablished diplomatic ties with the Venezuelan authorities, however he now seems to have distanced himself from its chief. Last week, Petro told NCS that Maduro has no hyperlinks to drug trafficking, because the US has claimed, although he acknowledged that the Venezuelan president’s drawback is a “lack of democracy and dialogue.”
Venezuela’s relationship with Argentina has deteriorated over time. During the left-wing presidencies of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his spouse, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), Caracas and Buenos Aires skilled a resurgence in diplomatic ties, with rising commerce and assist. But dialogue was virtually reduce off after Mauricio Macri, a center-right businessman, was elected president in 2015, and much more so after the 2023 election of Javier Milei, a self-described libertarian who says he hates socialism.
In latest years, different Latin American international locations have additionally shifted to the proper and away from Maduro, together with Ecuador, El Salvador and Bolivia.
Relations with Brazil have ranged from pleasant to antagonistic. During the leftist governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2010-2016), ties with Caracas flourished, however they soured throughout the right-wing administrations of Michel Temer and Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right Trump ally. Relations have been restored when Lula da Silva returned to the presidency three years in the past – although to not the identical level.
If the scenario in the Caribbean escalates into a bigger battle, Venezuela would have solely a handful of remaining associates in the area, and it’s unlikely any of them can be helpful.
Cuba, a longtime adversary of the United States, has been a loyal ally of Venezuela since Chávez got here to energy, and stays so to at the present time.
Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez informed NCS in late September that Cuba “fully and completely supports” the federal government of Venezuela. But when requested whether or not Cuba would reply to a US assault on the nation, the overseas minister prevented answering immediately: “It’s a hypothetical scenario. When you inform me that a US military intervention has occurred, I will let you know.”
The battered Communist island, which goes by one in all its largest financial crises in latest reminiscence, is in no place to supply navy support to Venezuela, and past Rodríguez’s statements, Cuba has remained on the sidelines.
Venezuela’s different good friend is Nicaragua, a small Central American nation, led by Daniel Ortega. The controversial president has lengthy been accused of human rights violations, allegations he strongly rejects.
Ortega has been largely silent throughout this tense time and has supplied no assist to Venezuela. In late September, although, he condemned the US navy buildup in the Caribbean, claiming Washington was attempting to “seize Venezuelan oil by fabricating a story that cocaine comes from that southern country.”
Although Maduro is more and more remoted in Latin America and his outdated associates are preoccupied with their very own issues, the consequences of a potential battle are very tough to foretell in a area that has lengthy had a love-hate relationship with the United States.
With greater than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops in the area as a part of what the Pentagon has branded “Operation Southern Spear,” Trump held a assembly on the White House on Monday night about subsequent steps on Venezuela, sources accustomed to the matter told NCS.
On Sunday, Maduro responded to the US strain marketing campaign with a acquainted, defiant message: “It’s been sanctions, threats, blockades, economic war, and Venezuelans did not cower. Here, as they say, everyone put on their boots and went to work,” he mentioned.
Since he succeeded Chávez as president in 2013, Maduro has grown accustomed to residing at some point at a time, particularly in the various essential crises that solely led to him tightening his grip on energy, individuals who have handled him immediately informed NCS.
“He’s preparing for a round of negotiations, so he will not give up any card in his deck unless he’s forced to,” a diplomat in Caracas informed NCS final month, asking to talk anonymously because of the confidential nature of the dialog.
It is a tactic cast from years on picket traces, and it signifies that Maduro, a former union boss, is successfully betting that the White House is bluffing. The Venezuelan chief is all too conscious that US public opinion, and Trump’s base in specific, has a very low urge for food for overseas interventions.