00:00Now we talk about the situation in Venezuela, because we told you at the beginning of this news that Edmundo González Urrutia
00:08arrived in Argentina in the framework of an international tour. After having spent several months in exile in Madrid,
00:15there in Spain, he first came to the city of Buenos Aires, where he was received by President Javier Milay last Saturday,
00:22where he was met half an hour in his office. And then they left, as you are seeing in the middle of this triptych,
00:28to greet nothing more and nothing less than the balcony of the Casa Rosada.
00:33To whom is good, apart from the Venezuelan diaspora that lives here in Argentina.
00:41Let's remember that they have a huge number of people who have left the country,
00:46about 6 million Venezuelans and Venezuelans have left the country and a good part have come here to Argentina.
00:52Well, this is one of the points. Obviously, the situation is also linked to the tension that our country has particularly
00:59with Venezuela these days and something that has been more complicated, that has stressed this more,
01:06has to do with the search of this soldier, punctually of this gendarme, Nahuel Gallo,
01:13who has not been known for more than 27 days what his whereabouts are.
01:18We are in communication with Gustavo Sierra, political analyst.
01:22Because Gustavo, in the middle of all this, there is a tour by Edmundo González Urrutia,
01:29which will take him to the United States, nothing more and nothing less. How are you? Good morning.
01:34Hello, how are you? Good morning. Yes, really this is a desperate attempt by the Venezuelan opposition
01:44to try to reverse the situation, because obviously, despite having won the elections last July,
01:53several months have passed in which they have obviously not been able to reverse the decision of the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro
02:07to not recognize the results of that election and to send Edmundo González Urrutia to exile in Spain
02:18and to the leader of the opposition, who could not be the candidate, Mrs. Machado,
02:33who is in exile there in Venezuela, is in the clandestinity, in a European embassy,
02:45it is not known exactly in which, and then we have González Urrutia giving a tour that has been very successful
02:55here in Buenos Aires, as we know, with the mobilization of the Venezuelans in Plaza de Mayo,
03:01he was also in Montevideo, and he is going to Washington, which is already at the end of a transition,
03:10on January 20, Donald Trump assumes the new president, and he will supposedly meet with the current president Joe Biden,
03:21and a game that will have to do with powers in which González Urrutia would have to have the very clear support of the new administration.
03:36In that sense, Gustavo, the United States has been having a linear policy, I say, beyond being Democrats or Republicans,
03:46the situation regarding Venezuela is, let's say, based in the same sense,
03:52but while this is happening, there in Caracas, for his part, Nicolás Maduro,
03:57who ten days before the assumption of Donald Trump, next Friday, January 10,
04:01will be resuming his mandate again, based on what he considers, or what the electoral justice,
04:10which basically has everything to do with his alignment, has decided that they have been clean, transparent elections,
04:20as they qualify them, is filling, is filling the city of Caracas with security forces.
04:29Obviously, a dictatorship, the only thing it will do is that,
04:34is to try to create fear so that people do not mobilize.
04:39Maria Corina Machado called a mobilization for Thursday, the day before the assumption,
04:47and it has, obviously, Maduro is worried about this, we already know that the previous mobilizations were very important,
04:59and he will try, by all means, that this does not happen, and he will repress.
05:05Now, I would like to return to the United States, because I think that there is the key,
05:10and that it has to do with the fact that, from the political point of view, as you said,
05:15there is a total alignment with the Venezuelan opposition,
05:20and obviously, both Democrats and Republicans support it, let's say,
05:27grant the triumph to the opposition, and believe that González Urrutia is the new Venezuelan president.
05:37But at the same time, there is a double game that has to do with oil.
05:44Venezuela has a type of oil that is refined only in some type of refineries,
05:52and those are located in Texas.
05:55And that is where the United States is obtaining oil at a very low price,
06:01and that, in some way, cheats both Venezuela and the United States.
06:07On the one hand, the United States, as I told you, receives oil at a very low price,
06:12on the other hand, Venezuela cannot sell it to many other possible customers
06:18because they do not have the adequate refineries.
06:22This means that the oil lobby in the United States is pressuring the new Trump administration
06:30to take a more ambiguous attitude.
06:33That is, on the one hand, from a political point of view, with the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
06:39obviously supporting the opposition, accusing the Venezuelan dictatorship,
06:47but at the same time maintaining that economic channel that gives a certain breath to the Venezuelan dictatorship.
06:58Yes, of course, because there is this kind of double-edged sword.
07:01On the one hand, the inevitable political claims for, as you said, any of the two parties,
07:08but on the other hand, something that also came a long time ago,
07:11because I remember when the situation with Guaidó was, at the time,
07:17there had been very strong support from the United States,
07:22but then those restrictions that were given even for Venezuelan businessmen
07:27began to become a little more labile, a little more, I don't know, delicate,
07:32I don't know how to qualify them, but these back and forth are not new.
07:37No, and notice that it also involves several Latin American countries,
07:42because the countries that should act as referees in the elections
07:50and would be the ones that can really pressure Maduro,
07:54which are Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, also took an ambiguous attitude.
08:00So the position...
08:04If they are not the OAS, let's say.
08:07No, of course not, but even Mexico in recent days
08:16gave signs of maintaining a natural relationship,
08:24let's say as if it were with a democratic government,
08:28after assuming the new Mexican president.
08:31That is to say, what we have is a great ambiguity
08:35and this is what gives air to the dictatorships.
08:39On the other hand, Venezuela is very much on the same path
08:47that Cuba has traveled in these 60, 70 years,
08:51which have to do with closing up and maintaining a relationship
08:58with a few friends who are the ones who give them the possibility of international trade.
09:06In the case of Venezuela, it is clearly Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah
09:15that also has an activity center there
09:22and there is an important commercial relationship with Lebanon
09:30and that also involves the Attorney General,
09:33who was the one who decreed the imprisonment of our gendarme.
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