Sending a delegation of senior US officials to Venezuela It continues to generate debate in Florida, the state with the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, in which there are different opinions, although the Republican leaders consider that it was an “insult” for everyone.
Republican parliamentarians from Florida, some in the midst of a re-election campaign, demanded this Thursday that the United States government not soften the policy towards the “dictatorship” of Nicolás Maduro by negotiating or lifting the sanctions and also requested more information on aspects pointed out by their voters. .
“By negotiating with the Maduro dictatorship, his administration is undermining foreign policy toward Venezuela and neglecting the United States’ commitment to the Venezuelan exile community,” legislator Carlos Giménez wrote in a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretaries of State and Energy, Antony Blinken and Jennifer Granholm, respectively.
The letter has the signatures of senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, as well as legislators Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, Giménez reported on his social networks.
“Maduro is a puppet of Presidents Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jimping in China. Sending the delegation to Venezuela that used US sanctions as a bargaining chip is an insult to the thousands of Venezuelan-American citizens we represent,” Republicans say.
diverse opinions
José Antonio Colina, president of the Organization of Politically Persecuted Venezuelans in Exile (Veppex), told Efe that “negotiating with Nicolás Maduro is a betrayal and disrespect towards Venezuelans. We have political prisoners, we have six million displaced people, we have thousands of dead and assassinated by the tyranny».
Helena Villalonga, leader of the Multicultural Association of Activists, Voice and Expression (AMAVEX), a platform of Venezuelan organizations in the United States, indicated that she is not in favor of giving “more oxygen” to Maduro, but at the same time she believes that it is necessary to put a stop to Russia’s advance in the region and that opening a channel of communication is always good.
“Furthermore, the sanctions and all the heavy-handed policies (imposed during Donald Trump’s presidency) have not served to change anything in Venezuela,” says Villalonga, who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years and lost one of his brothers victim of «chavismo».
Villalonga rejects that politicians “play with the pain” of those who have had to leave Venezuela and underlines, when asked by Efe if there is an electoral interest, that there are barely 150,000 Venezuelans with the right to vote in the entire United States, where there are almost 1 million migrants from your country.
The letter from parliamentarian Carlos Giménez is due to the recent visit to Caracas by a delegation of high-ranking US officials, led by presidential adviser Juan González, to meet with representatives of the Venezuelan government, which was followed by the release of two US prisoners in Venezuela.
Criticisms and explanations
Faced with the criticism aroused by the visit to Caracas, a senior official in the Biden administration, who requested anonymity, assured this Thursday that his country did not make any concessions in exchange for the release of the two Americans.
The source claimed that the United States sent an “important signal” to Maduro by organizing the first trip to Caracas “since the late 1990s” and denied that the envoys offered to buy oil in exchange for the release of Americans.
“We would never do that,” the official stressed.
Before the letter from Republican lawmakers to Biden became known, the Florida Democratic Party came out against criticism of the federal government.
Manny Díaz, president of the Democrats in Florida, a state governed by the Republican Party and whose voters supported Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential elections, indicated that “President Joe Biden has made it very clear that he stands firm with the Venezuelan people ».
According to Díaz, the high-level meeting between the representatives of the White House and Nicolás Maduro had two purposes: “to bring home the Americans unjustly imprisoned in Venezuela and to promote democracy in the Latin American country.”
They feel “disappointed” with Biden
“President Biden has always been on the side of Venezuelans and there is no doubt about his commitment to the return of democracy to Venezuela,” he said. He recalled that the president granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States a year ago.
However, Colina declares himself “disappointed” with Biden. “Those who sit with Maduro have disrespected the sacrifice of the Venezuelan people,” he says.
The letter from the Republican parliamentarians concludes “with a reminder of the atrocities that the Chávez-Maduro political machine has committed against the people of Venezuela and against our own strategic interests” and with several questions to Biden from his constituents, beginning with that of whether he still considers Juan Guaidó as the interim president.
Another question is: Is the Biden administration considering weakening the current sanctions against Nicolás Maduro, his family, his associates, the oil, banking and related industries, or entities placed by the United States in exchange for more oil production from Venezuela? or for any other reason?