Analysis: Why Do Many on the Global Left Still Support Venezuela’s Maduro?
by Simeon Tegel | Oct 26, 2017
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a press conference with international media correspondents at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas on October 17, 2017
LIMA, Peru — Addressing Peru's national congress in the wake of Venezuela's widely condemned constituent election this summer, representative Manuel Dammert of the leftist Broad Front party described the poll as an "epic democratic accomplishment."
Hailing the heavy win by the administration of President Nicolás Maduro, Dammert expressed his "recognition and solidarity with the fraternal people of Venezuela who have defeated the imperialist meddling maneuvers of Trump and his lackeys."
The Peruvian lawmaker’s speech came despite the United Nations, European Union and Organization of American States all suggesting the vote was nothing more than an authoritarian ruse to usurp Venezuela's opposition-dominated national legislature.
It also came amid a mushrooming
vote-rigging controversy. That received renewed momentum, the day after Dammert spoke, from the British company that supplied the voting machines to the Venezuelan government. It claimed at least one million votes had been fabricated.
A demonstrator takes cover behind a makeshift shield as clashes with riot police erupt, during a march against President Maduro on May 10
In the United States, where support for the Maduro regime — which has overseen Venezuela's collapse into economic catastrophe and what many regard as outright dictatorship — is restricted to a tiny political fringe, Dammert's comments might seem jarring.
But they remain typical of many elected hard left leaders across Latin America and Europe. From Lima to London, prominent progressives, some within spitting distance of governing, still either actively defend the Venezuelan regime or resist calls to condemn its abuses.
Former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, an early frontrunner in his country's 2018 presidential election, has suggested Venezuela's opposition leaders are encouraging protesters demanding elections to needlessly risk their lives, effectively blaming them for the violent repression they face.
In Brazil, various leaders of the Workers Party of former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, continue to back the Maduro regime. Party chairwoman Gleisi Hoffman even defended the constituent assembly against what she calls a "violent offensive by the right."
Across the Atlantic, Spain's populist insurgent Podemos party, perhaps just one election away from forming its first ever government, has also continued to back the Maduro regime, with leader Pablo Iglesias insisting the constituent vote was "legitimate."
But the most prominent European "Chavista" sympathizer is Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the United Kingdom's main opposition party. Long an admirer of the Venezuelan model of "21st Century socialism" and once dismissed as a fringe leftist, he is now viewed as strong contender for prime minister after his Labour Party's unexpectedly strong showing in the June election.
Corbyn has consistently avoided any clear condemnation of Maduro's authoritarianism or acknowledgement of the Venezuelan government's catastrophic policy failures.
By almost any standard, including its principal aim of reducing poverty, the "Bolivarian socialist revolution" launched by Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez in 1999, has been a spectacular failure.
Venezuela endures hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicines so intense that the average citizen lost 19 pounds in 2016. It also has a homicide rate so high many residents fear leaving their homes in broad daylight. All this despite Venezuela having the world's highest crude reserves.
Yet Venezuelans have increasingly been denied the right to express their disapproval, with human rights groups accusing the government of silencing critical journalists, jailing political opponents, and using violence to repress protesters.
For Dawisson Belém Lopes, a professor of international politics at Brazil's Minas Gerais Federal University, the refusal by some in the global left to acknowledge the Venezuelan government's human rights abuses and flouting of the constitution, is rooted in an outdated image of Latin America.
Although supporting Maduro is often "political suicide," many on the left still see geopolitics as a binary choice between Cuban-style "revolution" or being a satellite of US "imperialism," he adds.
"There is a lot of romanticizing of Latin America, with this image still that it is full of guerrillas, like Fidel [Castro] and Che [Guevara]," says Belém Lopes, who describes himself as a fan of the Chavista attempts to curb inequality — until personally witnessing empty shop shelves and massive food lines during a 2014 trip to the country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/v...ftists-defend-nicol-s-maduro-s-regime-n803866