By Marco Teruggi on July 9, 2019
Juan Guaido is an incidental piece in a scene of disputes among national bourgeoisies, which in turn are subordinate to the United States — a deciding party in which Donald Trump is carrying out a plan he did not devise. This is the analysis made by investigative journalist Victor Hugo Majano, who suggests that investigations should be focused on “hidden agendas.”
“Though the strategic core of the war against Venezuela is the U.S., it’s worth specifying that the current administrators in the White House did not devise the plan so they are not actually those who make decisions. Developers, those behind the story, are part of the Hillary Clinton administration still within the US State Department, while the plan is related to projects of the ‘Clinton Global initiative’,” Majano says.
The plan against Venezuela has been under construction for years, Majano adds, “amidst the road map prepared for Libya 2011, undertaken by agents of the Hillary Clinton administration.”It started to be implemented in 2015, when then President Barack Obama declared that Venezuela was a national security threat to the U.S., together with the creation of a speech about a Venezuela under a humanitarian crisis to justify interventions. This would all date back to the Balkan wars in the nineties under the Bill Clinton Administration.
Renewable Energies vs. Oil
Regarding the “Clinton Global Initiative,” Majano highlights a road map about a main axis: energy sources and a date: 2050 —deadline to control fossil-fuel emissions. “The fight is between producing energy through fossil fuel and alternate options.” The Clinton agenda is focused on the second option.
The story behind that strategic plan is evident in specific entrepreneurs who showed up, for instance, on February 23 when the coup d’état against president Nicolas Maduro was attempting to enter Venezuela by force through Colombia’s bordering city of Cucuta. Richard Branson publicly organized a music concert in a philanthropic manner —which ended up in nothing but corruption.
“Branson was the public symbolic promoter through BMR Energy, a company operating in the Caribbean that has been taking up space through wind parks, solar plants, trying to dissociate the Caribbean from its oil dependence to Venezuela through the Petrocaribe initiative fostered by President Hugo Chavez (1999-2013),” Majano comments.
Not only Branson, but others such as Frank Giustra, also involved in the renewable energy business and who traveled to Cucuta allegedly in an aircraft historically used by Bill Clinton.
Therefore, Majano says, “this hypothesis contradicts the theory suggested during the last months, through which the conflict is linked to an attempt of the U.S. to seize (Venezuela’s) resources because it needs cheap and secure energy.”
These are “sectors linked to alternative energy production mechanisms, where the Caribbean comes to be the scenario to build a new world order.” In this connection, “the influence of a country like Venezuela, with important oil resources and material for alternative energy production in the coming years” will be a key participant.
“If Venezuela has the capacity to produce significant amounts of oil at a competitive cost, it will impact the alternative energy generation: low oil production costs disincentives the possibility of making those energies an alternative,” Majano states.
That plan was devised prior to the current U.S. Administration, “Trump took office with an agenda defined by the State Department which is not his own.” This is why there are strong contradictions between the original plan and the actions carried out by the Trump Administration. This is why we see a temporal gap when comparing Libya’s road map to events unfolding in Venezuela. It’s like carrying out that same road map but behind time,” Majano remarks.
“They managed to impose on him that agenda promising that his administration would have access to cheap, secure oil and at a short run. But he is not willing to risk anything for it. This is the reason why he distanced from that agenda when the situation got complicated.”
According to Majano, in that agenda there was never planned a conventional military intervention, rather “It depended on the process of the Venezuelan opposition, which had promised to move their forces to coerce ‘Maduro’s dictatorship’ and oust him through people’s unrest.”
The National Agenda
The crisis of the putschist plan also has a national perspective. The same as in the U.S., a decisive part of those who make decisions are not the same speaking publicly. “The political view is usually magnified over economics. This is to say, economic stakeholders who are in fact behind this process and also linked to the issue of energy, natural resources, very associated to the oil properties and securities model,” Majano asserts.
Who is behind Guaido inside Venezuela? The creation of an interim presidency was initially backed by two main sectors of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie; trade importers and sectors related to landownership who were displaced when the oil rentier model led to a different model of capital accumulation.
The first on the list is the giant importer Empresas Polar, followed by members of the academic field, like Harvard economics professor Ricardo Haussman, appointed representative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) by the fictitious Guaido government.
One of the well-aimed shots against Guaido came from the Venezuela opposition itself. A key issue was the leak of the corruption that occurred in the Cucuta fiasco regarding the humanitarian aid, case spread by the Panama Post. The director of that website is Luis Enrique Ball Zuluaga, ex-president of the Venezuelan Confederation of Industries (CONINDUSTRIA) and “member of the traditional transforming industrial sector, part of the background bourgeoisie though mainly dedicated to commercial activities.”
Such a denunciation had a domino effect since it was taken up by the secretary of the Organization of American States (OAS) when it was becoming an international scandal. Was Guaido hit by those who supported him?
A fictionalized president emerging as the facade of a hybrid war conducted by several sectors of U.S. power together with majority sectors of the Venezuelan elite came into crisis due to their own mistakes but also by plots undertaken by their economic allies.
In the face of this scenario, Majano asserts that “the strategy of the (Maduro) Government has been accurate. No elements indicate a possible shift of power within Chavism. The Government is sound and strengthened in the short run.”
A major threat is the economy, as well as alliances amidst a scenario of blockade and crisis. “A field where Chavism may face weakness is in the types of commitment and alliances with sectors of the local bourgeoisie. Mistakes may be committed when it is not clear who is an ally among the business sector,” he warns.
Such mistakes would bear a double consequence; leaving the social rank and file, who have been loyal, outside the agenda, and causing, “pacts with sectors that would take advantage of the current situation that demands alliances with the private sector that could result in agreements that run contrary to the strategic interests of the Bolivarian Revolution,” says Majano.
This is part of what the journalist describes as the two ways to overthrow the Venezuelan Government and its transformative project. “The access to seize power may be achieved through two means: taking formal control of the State, that is to say a coup d’état, ousting the Government, or penetrating it and infiltrating the State itself.”
“Sectors of the bourgeoisie are testing the two means, linking to a project to displace Chavismo or infiltrating it, entering inside Chavism, bribing officials, corrupting people,” the journalist adds.
Those hidden economic plots are operating behind many superficial images of the opposition, behind events as that on February 23 (when the opposition tried to enter ‘humanitarian aid’ through the Colombian border) or on April 30 (the failed attempt to seize the air base in Caracas), scenarios attacking the Government from inside, and pressures to join or reject the talks.
Guaido is just an incidental face of the prize and complex map that Venezuela represents for those who are leading the strategy in secrecy or clinging to one of the parties.
Source: Sputnik News, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau