There are countries that cannot be counted from within, because those who dare to deviate from the official discourse find themselves lashed out, persecuted and even expropriated. It is enough to discipline a person or institution that is sufficiently visible so that the entire population understands that it is better not to talk about certain things.
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This was experienced firsthand by Miguel Henrique Otero, director of the newspaper El Nacional de Venezuela. He was visiting Israel when he learned that Diosdado Cabello, an official who has been at the top of power in the Nicolás Maduro regime since 2002, had sued the newspaper for defamation.
In 2015, El Nacional, along with other media outlets from different parts of the world, published an article in the Spanish newspaper ABC that reported on a drug trafficking investigation involving Cabello. The newspaper, along with La patilla and Tal cual, was sued. The event reported in the news item in question was confirmed, as was the sentence that enabled the expropriation of the newspaper. In May 2018, the court sentenced the newspaper for non-pecuniary damage and to pay one billion bolivars, which at the time was just over 12,000 dollars.
An April 2021 resolution indexed the fine to $13 million. Another, in June of that year, raised it to 30 million. Since then, Otero has lived in Madrid, from where he directs the newspaper’s team, which works scattered in various countries.
In 2022, the El Nacional newspaper building, with all its facilities, was delivered at public auction to Diosdado Cabello himself. The case illustrates the risk that the loss of institutions that define democratic quality, such as the separation of powers and a free press, implies for a country.
How do you reach a resolution like the one that affects the newspaper and your person?
In Venezuela, the judicial system works like East Germany before the wall fell: everyone has a file. When they want to criminalize someone, they take the file, look for a judge, a prosecutor, file a lawsuit and the judge orders precautionary measures such as a ban on leaving, freezing assets, periodically reporting to headquarters or deprivation of liberty. Of the almost three hundred political prisoners in Venezuela, let’s say that 95% have no sentence, but precautionary measures. Ten years can go by like this. It is part of the perversity of the system. In the eyes of the world it is a judicial process, but in reality it is a political weapon.
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When did this mechanism begin in Venezuela?
Chávez started that, controlling the judges; Maikel Moreno, who was the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, gradually dismantled all the organizations, changing the judges. The judges today are ignorant people, with degrees that they are given in five minutes in those Bolivarian universities and they make the decisions ordered by the Executive. They are the most corrupt judges in the world.
After your forced exile, what do you think when a Spanish politician praises Latin American populist regimes?
That has changed a lot. When I left, I visited 34 parliaments from different countries. The right-wing parties agreed one hundred percent. Those in the center no longer agreed so much and the leftist parties had a revolutionary alliance with those people. That was changing. Today, if we talk to someone from Vox, from the PP, from Ciudadanos, they agree. They still have some allies in the PSOE, we don’t know if they do it for their own interests or for other reasons, although they do not defend the regime. And the left of United We Can and the pro-independence parties, which do whatever it takes to stay in the alliance. But today there are not many people who defend them.
The United Nations reports confirm serious abuses in Venezuela and, nevertheless, there are parties that validate that government. Why do you think Latin American societies vote for parties of low democratic quality?
A few months ago Francis Fukuyama, the great ideologue of liberal thought, gave a conference in Spain. All of us who attended were convinced of his speech, but in Latin America that position is not connected with anyone. Elections are won by people who think Maduro is doing something good, which is the most appalling setback in recent times. I asked him what happens that in Chile, in Argentina, in Peru, people have voted for that. He didn’t answer me well. He told me that there were two problems. One, the distribution of income. But the distribution of income in Mexico, Colombia and Chile had improved a lot, and conversely, there are times when there is poor distribution of income and they vote for a liberal candidate. That is not the cause. Then he added that the right-wing candidates are very bad. I told him that he understood that they were bad because Mrs. Fujimori was nothing special, but Mr. Castillo is a horror. That is not an argument either. In Ibero-America there is something that is not working that makes the populists continue to win. The complicated thing is that they see Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela as autocracies, terrible left-wing populist dictatorships, and they see the rest as democrats. But these people are in solidarity with Maduro and with Cuba. There is support from these presidents for groups that want to demolish the pillars of democracy.
One of those pillars is the free press, which has been heavily attacked by populism. How do you see the Latin American press?
In Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela there is simply no press, it is totally repressed. In other countries there is a free press but, to a certain extent, scared, which sees what has happened in those countries and is seeing if Petro or López Obrador, who constantly attack the press, become radicalized. That is what Chávez did at the beginning. They may end up in something similar.
What is it like to put together a medium for a country from another country?
We function, I always say, like a newspaper of the Spanish Communist Party in the 50s, that is, we are clandestine. They took away our paper supply, and we went on to make a web platform. They took away our building and facilities with the military and we decided that everyone would work from home. The technical part is in Miami; the servers, in Texas. Half of the journalists left the country, as part of those seven and a half million who emigrated. There are some journalists who are in Venezuela, but the hard work we do with the journalists who are abroad, the majority. With the internet, it doesn’t matter where they are.
On the El Nacional Twitter account they offer a link to download the VPN, which has been the most downloaded application in Russia this year. Does this resource challenge government censorship?
There are fifty pages that are blocked in Venezuela. And the blockade affects. The way to evade it is the VPN (Virtual Network Protocol), an application that connects you from another country and allows you to evade the blockade. But for someone who sees things on a phone, it’s not that easy. We have another blockchain system through social networks, so that the domain does not say El Nacional, but bitly. The percentage of people who see us on Twitter and Facebook is very high. Even so, the blockade knocks down more than half of our traffic. But it’s not just the blockade: it’s the impossibility of people having an internet service.
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Venezuela is among the most distrustful countries in Latin America. What role does information play in regaining trust?
The first thing is that 75% of the Venezuelan population lives on a salary below the critical poverty level. Venezuela is more or less like Haiti. There is no possibility for these people to have access to the Internet or to keep an eye on the news, they are practically outside the information circuit. Then there is 13% of the population that lives below the poverty level. And 60% of the national territory only has access to the State channel. There are no newspapers, there is no internet, there are no other channels, the radio is muted. A sector of the population remains, the new rich that they call the ‘plugged in’, and what remains of the middle class. But in Venezuela, 7.5 million people have left in five years, which is a quarter of the population. That has not happened in the history of humanity unless there has been a war or a natural catastrophe. To this we must add the economic crisis, because Maduro destroyed 80% of GDP in six years. It is an economy reduced to the minimum. The drama of the country is how they eat, not how they are informed.
What prospect do this year’s elections have of resolving anything?
There are two elections, the primaries and the elections. The primaries are to choose an opposition leader to run against Maduro. My position is that the primaries are important because they activate militancy in a country that has no hope. It is also important for an opposition that is atomized to choose a leader. Later, that there are elections with the possibility of removing Maduro, I do see that as very unlikely. Given the thesis that by talking with Maduro it is possible to get him to set transparent conditions for the elections, the question arises of how they are going to convince him to hold a transparent election so that they defeat him and have to go out to face international justice. I think that is practically impossible. That is why there have been twelve negotiations that have come to nothing. He sets impossible conditions: he asks that all sanctions be lifted to discuss. The Americans are not going to do that. So those elections are going to be held and Maduro is going to win it, even though 99% of the population is against him, because that’s what dictators do. The only dictator in modern history who has been elected is called Pinochet. The others either die or go out for a revolution or become democrats.
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So how does Venezuela come out?
I think it comes out because we are in a perfect storm. First, it has the entire political sector working there. It is not like Cuba or Nicaragua, where they are imprisoned or they are outside. They are all in the streets, seeking votes for a primary, activating a militancy. Second, so far this year there have been more than 4,000 popular protests: the teachers, the nurses. The third floor is the military, which in the last eight years has staged six or seven rebellions with confrontations. There are more than 200 officers imprisoned, tortured. And also now the regime has no way to pay them their salary. That is already an insurrectionary factor. Afterwards, the regime is not a normal dictatorship, with a pyramidal structure. It is a criminal corporation whose economic foundation is illegal operations. They are like the mafia, structured groups with quotas of power in a very unstable balance. It is a table with four pillars: Tareck El Aissami, Diosdado Cabello, Nicolás Maduro and Vladimir Padrino López. One of those pillars, El Aissami, is being dismantled right now. To this must be added the economic crisis. El Aissami was the president of PDVSA and Minister of Mines. A year ago he said that he was going to increase production to 700,000 barrels and he never did. Of the oil that he sold, there are 3,000 million dollars missing and it is the only income that the national treasury has. This year they do not have the capacity to increase oil production and they have not been able to collect last year’s oil. So they can’t increase the basic salary, they can’t pay the military, who don’t protest like the teachers. What keeps the population half fed are the Clap boxes. Each one has a subsidy of 10 dollars and they have to produce eight million boxes biweekly. So, they have an economic crisis never seen before and also inflation of 500%. The basic salary at the moment is 8 dollars. But it is in bolívares, that is, within a month it will be 6 dollars and the next month, 4. That is why I say that they are in a perfect storm; any spark is the Arab Revolution.
What do you miss about Venezuela?
All. It is my country, my city. If they remove the measures and give me guarantees that they are not going to put me in prison, I will return immediately, even if Maduro is there.
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