Venezuela Crime: Asdrúbal Aguiar’s Warning

When Asdrúbal Aguiar speaks, he does so with the authority of someone who has experienced Venezuelan democracy from the inside and has seen its collapse from the outside. At 77 years old, with the experience of having been a minister (1996-1998) and even former president in charge of the Republic (1998), Aguiar is the general secretary of the IDEA Group (Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas) and maintains an uncomfortable thesis: the Venezuelan regime can no longer be defined as a simple autocracy, but as “an organized crime holding company” that took possession of the State.

From Miami, where he coordinates the IDEA Group, which brings together 40 former presidents of the region, Aguiar reviews the achievements and challenges of a decade of work in defense of democratic values.

—His career has taken him to government and diplomatic positions and he knows inter-American justice very well. How did your relationship with the IDEA Group begin?

—The observation of the experience of democracy, especially based on what happened in Venezuela since 1999, when an already mature and modernized society opted, through voting, to return the pages of its history and resurrect the necessary gendarme (freely choosing the path to dictatorship, paved by media and financial interests), could not be overlooked. Hence, in my 2006 speech before the Academy of Buenos Aires, I presented my thesis on the right to democracy, to vindicate it beyond its engineering and the vote as sources to determine power. The issue worsens after the death of Chávez, and it is clear, now under Maduro, that an unprecedented humanitarian crisis is being deliberately promoted by those in power, in order to better dominate him. And at that moment the concern shown in this regard by the former presidents of Spain and Colombia, José María Aznar and Andrés Pastrana, coincides. They also agree with the editor of Las Americas NewspaperNelson Mezerhane, victim of the regime installed in Caracas, on the urgency of alerting international public opinion about this drift. More than 40 joined (former presidents and former heads of government) and from there the effort began to move forward with a tank of thought and action that we first called IDEA, and then the Democratic Initiative of Spain and the Americas.

—What has motivated you in these 10 years of the organization’s existence? And what do you think have been the most decisive actions of the group?

—Former presidents Aznar and Pastrana, as well as Mezerhane, asked me to centralize the interaction with their colleagues for the task we proposed. Our task was to assume the Inter-American Democratic Charter as a decalogue, highlighting its ideals and the objective of contributing on our part to the rescue of democracy where it had disappeared; help strengthen it where it showed serious shortcomings or threats, accompanying the democracies that managed to sustain themselves over time. I can summarize the achievements of the IDEA Group, firstly, that almost 35 former presidents, without adding the deceased (Sebastián Piñera, for example) have not ceased in their spirit of preaching and fighting for freedom and democracy, with no other compensation than knowing that they are morally consistent with their convictions. Two volumes, located on the IDEA Group portal, show the expansion of its actions towards numerous Ibero-American countries. Which is not limited to declarations, but to carrying out tasks of democratic promotion and pedagogy and annual dialogues, in which former presidents address pressing and current issues, pointing out paths as well as providing electoral support in all those countries that have requested it.

—The IDEA Group has advocated for a transition towards democracy in Venezuela. You, with your experience as minister (1996-1998) and president in charge of the country (1998), why do you think it has been so complex to return to the democratic course in Venezuela?

—If there is no precise and clear diagnosis, that is, one not contaminated by the interests and circumstances of power, the prognosis for Venezuela will always be wrong. The course of the last 25 years has demonstrated this, where the constants have been negotiations and dialogues, the signing of agreements that never honored either the praetorian dictatorship of Hugo Chávez or the satrapy of his successor Nicolás Maduro.

—You have said that the Venezuelan regime represents an unprecedented phenomenon: a criminal structure that uses the State. Could you explain it?

—The first thing was the digitalization of the systems, whose source codes the dictatorship has always controlled, transforming its defeats into victories. The only clean victory was in 1998 and no more. The diagnosis, except for those who clarify it in order to relapse into doing the only thing they know how to do, I am referring to the political elite that continues to conjugate with the verbs of the 20th century, reveals the presence in the Venezuelan political system, if it can still be called that, of a carcinogenic germ that manages to metastasize. I am referring to the agreement signed in August 1999 by Chávez with Colombian narcoterrorism to join their activity and provide relief from Venezuela. Official documentation is no longer secret. From then until now, progressively, there was a kind of marriage between Islamic terrorism, promoted from Havana in 1998, and the FARC such as the ELN, to the point of being formed as a holding company for a transnational organization of organized and structured crime that, rather than corrupting the military or officials of the Venezuelan State, takes possession of the State organs to use the State itself and its sovereignty as a niche of impunity for its global businesses. That monster or Leviathan of the 21st century is the unprecedented. Meanwhile, academia and diplomacy continue to talk about elective authoritarianism, about dictatorship, about arbitrariness from power, about the importance of Venezuelan actors negotiating among themselves to find a constitutional and democratic solution to their issue.

—The Venezuelan situation has generated problems for the rest of the countries in the region for years: from mass migration to the rise of organized crime. Under this context, what can the international community do to help foster a transition towards democracy in Venezuela?

—The first thing is to point out that the countries that complain about the Venezuelan diaspora do not seem to understand that the solution lies, precisely, in breaking and ending the absolute evil installed. And the strange thing is that the same chancelleries, incapable of understanding or refusing to understand, due to dark or circumstantial interests, the crude reality of Venezuela, seek to empty new wine into old wineskins. The sovereignty argument, which is now thrown on the table, is cynical and fallacious. It is alleged or used by human rights violators to hide their crimes. Those who have kidnapped Venezuela and assaulted its institutions for their transnational crimes of narcoterrorism cannot be treated as subjects of international law. This is the unprecedented experience of the Venezuelan State as a criminal holding company for narcoterrorism, whose persecution becomes ineffective with the treaties in force, since those related to persecution and international criminal cooperation entrust or refer the solution to each State and its sovereign jurisdiction. That is, it amounts to as much as asking the criminals themselves to judge themselves.

—What can the democratic opposition do against a government that combines all these criminal characteristics that you describe? Do you see a realistic negotiated solution to the situation in Venezuela in the short term?

—The Venezuelan people did what they could do and it was in their hands as a victimized and unarmed people. He defeated the criminal power at the polls and gave himself democratic legitimacy represented by Edmundo González and María Corina Machado. It is the international community’s responsibility to stop the kidnapping that Venezuela is experiencing. Only cohabitants, those who use politics without being committed to the cause of Venezuela and accustomed to giving in to criminal power, repeatedly ask for dialogue with it. The necessary negotiation requires a balance of forces and only those who are convinced that his regime is the origin of the problems experienced by the region as a whole have it before Maduro. The dialoguers either already benefit from the criminal scaffolding or, like prisoners sentenced for life, they limit themselves to talking with the jailer so that he can let them see the sun or have a plate of food. They don’t expect to be free.

—If I asked you for three minimum conditions to talk about a successful transition in Venezuela in 2026, which would you put on the table first?

—The statement that the Nobel Committee recently gave, when justifying the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, has been auspicious for us. The Committee, to this end, has declared that for there to be peace there must be democracy. And this says a lot and goes against the current of the dominant creed that maintains that people’s rights can be realized without insisting so much on democracy or the rule of law. And I must repeat what Sebastián Piñera told us, in our meeting two years ago: “To defend democracy, you have to love its ideals, but it is not enough without action. But action without ideals is corrupted and ideals without actions are sterilized.”