Sociologist and political scientist Atilio Boron, who provides his opinion on the presidential election in Venezuela and explains important details on the electoral process taking place. teleSUR
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00:00Doctor, one very quick question before finishing this important interview.
00:05What is, in your opinion, what is the impact that these elections will have for the region
00:09and for the international arena?
00:12Well, very important because Venezuela is a country which is extremely important.
00:19This is, I am not flattering my Venezuelan friends, I am just making a geopolitical statement.
00:26Venezuela is a major reserve of oil in the world, it is a great deposit of gold and all
00:38kinds of minerals, water, whatever, it is a country enormously endowed with natural
00:47resources of all sorts.
00:49In addition, it is very close to the United States, this is something which is not a minor
00:54question, just think that a tanker, an oil tanker coming from Saudi Arabia takes approximately
01:0240 days of very difficult navigation to reach Houston in which they have to go and transfer
01:11the oil.
01:12It takes only four days going from Venezuela to Houston.
01:16For the US, then Venezuela is extremely important in a moment in which there is this race to
01:23the natural resources because people who before did not go to get oil or copper or
01:33lithium or whatever, or there are especially two big countries like China and India, if
01:39you look at all of those countries, China and India are about three billion people in
01:48the world, almost 40% of the world population and that is something which is extremely worrisome
01:54for the US.
01:55And this is why the general of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, has said repeatedly
02:03that a sign of good policy in our countries, I mean the countries in Latin America, should
02:11be to keep Chinese, Russians and Iranians out of the region.
02:17The problem is that those are countries which have a special interest in the natural resources
02:24we have in Latin America and therefore the importance for the US to get these competitors
02:32out of this region, out of the hemisphere, as they call, is of the utmost importance
02:38and will do whatever is necessary to prevail in that sense.
02:43The problem is that economic relations may be running in an opposite direction of what
02:49the State Department or the White House think and therefore countries like, I don't know,
02:54take the case of Brazil or Chile, Chile may be very, very loyal in general to the orientations
03:02of the White House, but China is the first commercial partner of Chile, so President
03:11Boric is torn apart between loyalty to the guidelines of the State Department or the
03:17Southern Command, on the other hand, the stark realities of economics by which China is the
03:25main buyer of Chilean natural resources and that is the reason why it is so important
03:33the election here in Venezuela, because if the Bolivarian revolution is supported once again
03:42by the people, then the chances of going forward in the process of supranational integration,
03:53in the process of the strengthening of UNASUR and CELAC will receive a very, very significant
04:01and positive impact, something that it is very, very much needed for two reasons,
04:07and I'm sorry if I am extending too much this question, we need a Latin America united
04:14on the one hand to stop the imperialist process in the region, the imperialist
04:23influence in our countries in terms of politics, economics, culture and so on,
04:28but at the same time we need a united Latin America to be able to negotiate the position
04:36of our region, Latin America and the Caribbean, I should always say, right, in a multilateral,
04:43in a multipolar world in which we should negotiate our insertion and the best way to do it is
04:51Latin America and the Caribbean are together and not on an individual basis, because if you
04:59have to negotiate on an individual basis with China, with India, on Russia, your power,
05:05negotiation power is quite much reduced, but if you can go with a Latin America united through
05:13schemes like CELAC or MERCOSUR or UNASUR or whatever, then you have chances to get much more
05:22national and international autonomy and this is what we need. Self-determination is crucial
05:28in this moment and if we are united, our self-determination will be more likely to be
05:36established.