Will Venezuela ditch Chavismo?

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1:57Nicolas Maduro:On the 3rd of January this year, Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro was removed from office by a U.S. military intervention. Alongside his wife, Celia Flores, he was flown to the United States to face charges of trafficking and partnering with terrorist groups. Charges he denies. His leadership and that of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, had seen Venezuela move from being an oil-rich, prosperous country to a country which was heavily sanctioned and under investigation by the International Criminal Court. Maduro's vice president, Delce Rodriguez, has succeeded him as acting president.

2:39Nicolas Maduro:Some Venezuelans feel that she represents continuity with Chavismo, the political system Hugo Chavez created over 20 years ago. Here's BBC Mundo's Jorge Perez and Alicia Hernandez. Maybe at the beginning they thought, oh, this is the end of Chavismo. But now it's like, no, Darcy Rodriguez is in power and it's like, what's going on now? So maybe they are looking at the situation that is a bit unstable. and thinking, OK, what's going next? Porque, yeah, there was celebration. People were fed up with chavismo, with poverty that it brought. And what were they afraid of?

3:19Hugo Chavez:I would say that in the first hours of what happened in January, there was a lot of expectation. And I would say that the celebration feelings were probably shared by both the diaspora and the people inside the country because Nicolás Maduro is a quite unpopular personality within and outside Venezuela. But of course, the way they express it was completely different because for the people inside the country, it is still very restrictive. Venezuelans right now have a huge diversity of opinions, even within those who oppose the Chavismo. You hear them debating in open spaces, in cafes, in social media.

3:56Hugo Chavez:And it's very hard because some, for example, support the idea of the U.S. intervening more in Venezuela. Well, some believe that the U.S. should, for example, pursue an open and free election and contribute more with a democratic and political change. But it seems that the U.S. strategy is more leaning to the oil industry. So you hear plenty of opinions, Venezuelans sometimes even fighting and arguing among each other because it's very emotional what is behind it. Because these are people that are suffering from exile, from families being ripped apart. To talk about Chavismo, we have to talk about 26 years of recent history in Venezuela, and it would be hard to say it in a few minutes, right?

4:39Hugo Chavez:But Chavismo starts with Hugo Chavez in 1998 when he was elected as president. He promises to bring all the wealthiness from the oil revenues into the people, into the social programs, and he sort of managed to do it in the first years. The problem is that it wasn't sustainable for the country. The oil industry collapsed because of many reasons, because of mismanagement, because of corruption, because of sanctions from foreign countries. But it still is a political movement that dominates power in Venezuela. It doesn't mean that it's a majority, according to some people.

5:14Nicolas Maduro:And actually, Nicolás Maduro was handpicked by Hugo Chávez, so he continued his policy. But Dulce Rodriguez was vice president, deputy to Nicolás Maduro. So what was the incentive for her to change the policies of her predecessor, if not American pressure? Is the American pressure? Just exclusively American pressure? Not only that, but I have to say that Chavismo was a left-wing movement, but with Maduro, it changed a lot, it changed the economics policy. And in fact, I think that now Chavismo is a social movement, but also a movement that tries to stay in power. So if they need to change things, they are going to change, to stay in power.

6:02Nicolas Maduro:That's the goal. The opposition, Venezuelan opposition abroad, was hoping that after Maduro is deposed, things in Venezuela will change. So what has changed in all that time, apart from the name on top?

6:18Hugo Chavez:If I can answer a little bit of this, I think for now we have seen very specific changes, like opening the oil industry to foreign investment, mostly American investment, basically. they have been sort of freeing people that are considered political prisoners inside the country. I think this is a huge thing. And the fact that they are even trying to propose an amnesty law, which would see more people leaving the prisons, people that are in prison, according to NGOs, for political reasons, this would mean that the repression apparatus is being dismantled. And that is something huge to mention. It doesn't mean that the political structure is going to change itself, because what we are seeing is that the same personalities, the same officials that we have been seeing for the past years, the same officials that are still being accused of human rights violations and even to be apparently involved in crimes and serious crimes like drug trafficking, according to the U.S.

7:22Hugo Chavez:Justice Department, for example, they are still ruling the country. So we haven't seen that moving that much.

7:30Nicolas Maduro:And we mentioned Delce Rodriguez, who is now acting president. What is her background, Alicia? Where does she come from? Where does she fit in that picture? She has a long career in Chavismo, but not with Hugo Chavez. A lot of sources said that they don't go well together. But she made a career with Maduro. She was in the president's office, also was the president at the National Assembly, foreign minister, communication minister and hydrocarbons minister. Responsible for oil, right? Yeah, responsible for oil. And she's a Maduro ally and was part of his inner circle. So she made a career in Chavismo.

8:15Nicolas Maduro:She's a very powerful person there. A lot of opposition supporters abroad, Venezuelan opposition supporters abroad, were celebrating when Maria Corina Machado came to receive her Nobel Peace Prize and were hoping that once she gave that peace prize as a present to President Trump, he would be more supportive of her as one of the political leaders in Venezuela. It didn't happen.

8:43Hugo Chavez:I think what we are seeing right now, and at least for Venezuelans everywhere abroad and inside the country, is that their expectations seems to be changing week by week. Because at the beginning, there was this enormous belief that the Chavismo was over. But across the time, we have seen President Trump saying that Delce Rodriguez is a fantastic person, saying that he's working very well with this regime. And our questioning is, when are the elections going to take place? Because the transition, actually, what the US is proposing, the strategy has three phases. And the political transition is the very last one of this.

9:22Hugo Chavez:And there are no timelines to know when it's going to happen.

9:25Nicolas Maduro:When was the last time Venezuelans voted in really open elections? In really open elections? It's difficult to say.

9:34Hugo Chavez:I would say that the last time that there was, I mean, the last elections were 2024. the presidential elections.

9:41Nicolas Maduro:It was stolen by Maduro, according to international observers. Yeah.

9:45Hugo Chavez:But the last time that there was an election, that I would say that there was a participation from both those Chavista supporters and the opposition was in 2015 when the National Assembly, the new parliament, was elected. And it turned out to be a big wing for the opposition. I mean, the opposition won by landslide. And that's when some Venezuelans believe that the political change was coming because they were winning one of the pillars of the institutions in Venezuela. The parliament in Venezuela, according to the constitution, has an enormous power and has an enormous influence in the political life in the country.

10:23Hugo Chavez:So for some Venezuelans, though, who believe in democracy, thought it was the end for the chavismo. But it wasn't because actually what we saw in the next years was the other powers, executive and the judiciary battling against this new parliament.

10:38Nicolas Maduro:Alicia, can you describe the contrast between oil riches on the one hand and the desperate, desperate economic situation of Venezuela on the other hand? I'm going to display in a very simple way. Imagine that you own a house and you have money. Every month you have money. But you, instead of paying the wall or fix the sink, you spend that money in, I don't know. Going to gigs. Yeah, for example. Or restaurants. Yeah, you don't use the money well. If you spend a year like that, it's okay. Imagine that you spend a lot of time without invert money in your house. The wall is falling down, the sink is broken, things like that.

11:23Nicolas Maduro:So if the government doesn't invest the money in people or in infrastructures, this is going to happen. And also Chavismo did a lot of not so good economical policies that goes with hyperinflation, for example, and the devaluation of the Bolivar. And that's the thing, that they have a lot of money. They didn't invest the money well. And on the other side, they don't do very good economical politics. So after years and years and years of that, you have this. As well as American sanctions, I suppose.

12:05Hugo Chavez:They began with Obama in 2015, but in 2019 was the very first one that addressed directly to the oil company. Venezuela is highly dependent on oil. It's over 90 % of the country's income comes from oil. So this means that the country is going to be very affected by any sort of situation that can affect oil prices internally, outside. For example, there's a very specific moment that happened in 2002, 2003, when there was like a national strike from the oil company that was very reluctant to change. according to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan national industry that by the time was sort of a state within a state.

12:50Hugo Chavez:It was very independent, very autonomous from the government and the government of Hugo Chavez wanted to have a little bit more of control of that. So the oil workers and the oil industry went on a strike and this ended up with the strike not accomplishing its goals and with Hugo Chavez firing many of the most qualified people within this industry. It is said around 18 ,000 employees were fired by that time. Chavez did it on a national TV address. And this specific historic moment is what many analysts say. It marked the decline of the oil industry because it turned into a politized institution.

13:31Hugo Chavez:And from then on, we saw that the things weren't going well for the oil production in Venezuela.

13:37Nicolas Maduro:Maduro is gone, but Delce Rodriguez is in charge. Will there be change? Will it be a turnaround? What is your feeling first, Jorge?

13:47Hugo Chavez:I think it's very hard to predict the situation in Venezuela. I think there are several areas in which we have our eyes on trying to see if something is going to change. is, for example, the civil rights and civil liberties are going to maybe change. People are expecting that they are not prosecuted for posting something on social media or for even sharing something with a relative because people even today avoid to make a comment or to chat with relatives about politics because they fear if a policeman or someone, an authority, checks their phone, they might be prosecuted. To that level of repression, people are living inside Venezuela.

14:27Hugo Chavez:But also on the economic part, there's a lot of expectation. And this is very important because for some people, it's the key part. They want to have a better life standard. It's very hard to live in Venezuela in this moment. It is a country where you can go home and you don't have electricity, you don't have water supply. And if you want to buy food, it's extremely expensive. So what people would like to see is an improvement of their life conditions.

14:53Nicolas Maduro:Alicia, we mentioned that the security apparatus of Maduro years is still there. And as Jorge says, people are afraid to voice their opinions. Is there any chance of the political situation changing for Venezuelans inside the country? And what is the role of diaspora in that process? because there is a sizable number of Venezuelans living in both Americas and in Europe. Can diaspora help Venezuelans to kind of gain those political freedoms and improve the situation in the society? I think that people outside the diaspora need to make their voice be heard because they are the people that have free speech because they are outside.

15:39Nicolas Maduro:But I don't know, really, if they can do a change, because all the things depends on now the Nancy Rodriguez government and also the pressure that the United States put on her. And I don't know if Trump really wanted to make change in that sense, or if his administration only want to make a deal with oil. So the diaspora can push and they are doing that. But, for example, in this case, after the 3 of January, with the Maria Corina Machado novel trying to put her in charge, but it's not happening. If people were to vote, is there a choice now in Venezuela? So we don't know if tomorrow there are elections.

16:33Nicolas Maduro:Are they free elections? Are guarantees? And if Delce Rodriguez were to lose, would she relinquish power?

16:44Hugo Chavez:That's a big question.

16:45Nicolas Maduro:And the other thing is that the more time pass, if the economy has oxygen, the more power Chavismo gets.