Venezuela

Venezuela reappeared on the geopolitical chessboard as an option to contribute to the substitution of part of Russia’s oil exports. The idea puts Biden in a dilemma.

The interests that a democratic government might have in fighting corruption do not exist in dictatorships. In fact, their permanence in power is largely due to corruption.

Venezuela has been subject to severe sanctions from the United States and the European Union. The hope was that economic pressure on Nicolas Maduro’s authoritarian regime would force democratic elections and changes in governance. That did not happen.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has generated important changes in global geopolitics. A side effect has been increased volatility in the global energy market and a consequent resurgence of hydrocarbon industry interests.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on the international energy market has opened a new political scheme that the Venezuelan dictatorship will try to take advantage of by positioning itself, after years of sanctions and international isolation.

In the international media, the Venezuelan government is still often referred to with the prefix ‘socialist’. Inside the country, a disorderly deregulation process is opening more spaces to the market, yet it is also creating apparent new inequalities.  Towards what kind of economic system is Venezuela moving? Faced with a dearth of public data, we … Continued

At the end of the 1990’s, before Chávez came to power, PDVSA was ranked as the fourth most important oil company in the world according to the American Petroleum Institute’s ranking. Today it occupies the last place among 253 oil companies.

The area shared by both countries has witnessed the transformation and mutation of the armed conflict, the proliferation of criminal organizations and the precarious State presence of both Caracas and Bogotá.

The result of the regional elections of last Sunday 21 in Venezuela did not constitute a substantial change in the political scheme of the country. And while this is not good news for the opposition, the result is not positive for the government either.

What happened in Venezuela, which four decades ago was an example of a democratic model, in the midst of a South America ruled by military governments. Today the country is at the bottom in terms of freedom, democracy and rule of law.