The colossal electoral fraud of dictator Nicolás Maduro and his henchmen was thoroughly prepared well before July 28. The call for elections itself was a big hoax, as were the "negotiations" in Mexico and the Barbados agreements.
They were maneuvers to, taking advantage of President Biden's weakness, get the United States to remove or ease sanctions and free its frontman Alex Saab, buoy the Venezuelan economy, and reduce international pressure on Venezuela.
What happened was that, surprisingly, the plan failed and the fraud was exposed because military officers ordered to bar the opposition from accessing polling stations as witnesses did not obey, and it was confirmed that María Corina Machado received more than 80% of the vote, according to polling station records, exposing the mind-blowing magnitude of the fraud.
The fraud having been discovered, Maduro has entrenched himself in power because he feels shielded from any coup attempt. The case is that his dictatorship is not the same as the many other that have occurred in Latin America in its long history of autocracies since the dawn of independence 200 years ago.
Madurismo + castroismo = Cubazuela
And that spells the difference. El madurismo is tied to el castrismo, the only totalitarian-communist tyranny in the history of the Americas. Castroism furnishes Venezuela with guardians, guides, and protectors, with thousands of Cubans on Venezuelan soil as intelligence agents, henchmen, conspiracy-savvy political officials, senior military officers, and repressors, including generals and colonels.
There are also Cuban snipers, and even combat battalions. Until recently, it was known that one of them was stationed at Fuerte Tiuna, the military heart of the country, according to journalist Sebastiana Barráez, a specialist in military issues in Venezuela.
There has never been any autocracy in the New World wielding the overwhelming surveillance and control over its armed forces that is exercised today in Cuba and Venezuela. It is because of this mutual entanglement that many talk about "Cubazuela" as a phenomenon.
Havana, through its surveillance and information work within the Venezuelan armed forces, prevents a military conspiracy from flourishing. Meanwhile, the Castroist MININT (Interior Ministry) is in charge of Capo Maduro's personal security.
To restore democracy the Venezuelan people must not only square off with Maduro and his gangsters, but also with the repressive, logistical, political and counterintelligence machinery of the Castroist tyranny. Without its "Fidelist-Raulist" military interference, Maduro would have fallen some time ago, as Latin American dictators typically have.
Military autocracies initially took root in Latin America as legitimate heirs to el caudillismo, inherited from Spain, in a kind of hybridization with pre-Columbian caciquismo. Later, in the twentieth century, they were inspired by the nationalist winds with fascist overtones blowing from Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal ("Estado Novo").
There have been so many dictators that there is a whole genre called "dictator novels" in Latin American literature, with dozens of works by great writers, including three Nobel Prizes (Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Ángel Asturias and Mario Vargas Llosa) and a Cervantes Prize (Alejo Carpentier).
The worst dictators don't hand over power without a fight
It could be said that with a "normal", traditional dictatorship, the Biblical axiom of qui in gladio occiderit, gladio peribit (live by the sword, die by the sword) is fulfilled.
From the most famous tyrant of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte (taken prisoner in Santa Elena), to the also famous Juan Manuel de Rosas, in Argentina (1829-1832, and 1835-1852) down until today, the most notorious and bloodthirsty "strongmen" in Latin America have been overthrown by the military, with some very singular exceptions such as that of Augusto Pinochet, who in 1988 called a plebiscite to continue in power, convinced that he was going to win it, and lost. He recognized his defeat, and months later Patricio Aylwin was elected President of Chile.
Venezuela itself began the 20th century under the dictatorship of General Cipriano Castro, who seized power in 1899 after overthrowing General Ignacio Andrade, who, in turn, had overthrown General José Manuel Hernández.
Cipriano ruled until 1908, when he was overthrown by General Juan Vicente Gómez, who ruled until his death in 1935. In 1952 another general, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, carried out a coup d 'état and ruled until January 1958, when he was overthrown by the military.
In the rest of Latin America, the most lethal dictators have also been forcibly removed, such as Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), Jorge Videla (Argentina), Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Manuel Antonio Noriega (Panama), Jean-Claude Duvalier (Haiti), Humberto Castelo Branco (Brazil), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Marcos Pérez Jiménez (Venezuela), Juan Velasco Alvarado (Peru), Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (Colombia) Jorge Ubico and Carlos Castillo Armas (Guatemala), Juan María Bordaberry (Uruguay), José María Velasco Ibarra and Guillermo Rodríguez Lara (Ecuador), Porfirio Díaz and Victoriano Huerta (Mexico).
"21st-century socialism," spawned by the Chávez-Fidel duo
The chavista dictatorship, however, from the outset, was not traditional in the Latin American historical context. Hugo Chávez rose to power legitimately, in elections, after failing in an attempted coup against President Carlos Andrés Pérez in February 1992.
I was in Caracas as a journalist in October 1992, where, at the residence of a wealthy businessman named Godínez, I heard a recording of a then-imprisoned Chavez, or so I was told.
To my surprise, after the recording, rife with populism, demagoguery and mellifluous promises for the "future of the homeland," several of the Venezuelans there, including Godínez, very excitedly told me: "this is the man that Venezuela needs" And they were envisioning Chávez as an elected president, not another coup d 'état. And so it was six years later.
This is why I think Fidel Castro gave Chávez a "suggestion," convinced that "the Cuban model no longer works, not even for us," recommending that he not eradicate all private property in Venezuela (as Castro had done on March 13, 1968), amend the Constitution. Ostensibly, he also told him that with oil revenues and private property strongly controlled by the State, the Venezuelan population would not suffer the hardships of Cubans, and that he could be re-elected, by hook or by crook, "incidentally" continuing to give Cuba oil along the way.
If Fidel Castro did not make that "recommendation" to his godson Hugo, at least this is what most resembles the "21st-Century Socialism" promoted by Chávez, aware that armed struggle made no sense, and it was most expedient to rise to power through democratic elections.
Maduro, a Cuban intelligence officer since the 1980s
Another important detail: when Chávez was in Havana, about to die, his intention was to hand over power to Diosdado Cabello. His political boss, however, Fidel Castro, "advised" him to appoint Nicolás Maduro, for the simple reason that the former city bus driver had been a Cuban intelligence asset since the 1980s.
Maduro was recruited in Havana, where he was being inculcated with communism and subversion at the Nico López Communist Party of Cuba School. That is, Maduro was Cuba's man in Venezuela, as an officer of the Communist Party of Cuba's America Department, the main arm of Castroism's subversive network operating against Latin American democracies.
As for the dramatic crisis in Venezuela, there is talk that the secret negotiations that Lula, Petro and López Obrador are holding with the Maduro leadership and with Washington could yield a "Win-Win" agreement recognizing the opposition's electoral victory in exchange for not persecuting or prosecuting the dictatorship's top men.
A general strike could cause the necessary military fracture
I do not trust the mediators, allies of Maduro's until yesterday, nor do I expect a clear and strong position by the Biden Administration, but I do wish that this agreement can be reached.
If the Venezuelan political opposition, today more united than ever, continues to press hard, and everything leads to an indefinite general strike that paralyzes the country, no one could prevent the necessary fracture in the armed forces. Members of the military with direct command over troops and not linked to drug trafficking could force Maduro to accept defeat.
Of course, everything may unfold very differently, as it almost always does. What is already a fact is that after July 28, 2024, the dictatorship in Venezuela is in a terminal phase, as is its Castroist nurse.