Editorial: The US must keep Venezuela in check

You might have missed the news late last month announcing the death at age 78 of Gustavo Cisneros. He was the wealthy co-founder of TV network Univision and an advocate of free enterprise who controlled a baseball team and a beauty pageant, among other valuable assets.

Cisneros died in New York, but he was a native of Venezuela, just like the 20,000-plus migrants who have flooded into Chicago since 2022 — upending the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson and creating scenes of despair on Chicago’s streets and in shelters around the city.

It may seem incongruous to connect a rich media mogul with the impoverished folks being transported north by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other heartless politicians, but it’s important to remember where this crisis originated and why.

The migrants you see on the nightly news are not accidental travelers.

By all rights, Venezuela should be one of the wealthiest countries in South America. It sits on what is thought to be the world’s biggest oil reserve and, decades ago, with the help of homegrown tycoons such as Cisneros, it developed this resource into a huge moneymaker.

That’s right: The city of Chicago’s budget is being busted in part by the dysfunction within a country sitting on a liquid gold mine.

Authoritarian regimes in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba also have forced their people to flee north, but none had the level of economic potential that Venezuela enjoys.

Don’t blame the Venezuelan migrants for showing up in shorts and flip-flops in the middle of a Chicago winter. The fault lies with the failed leaders of their country, including a selfish business elite and, especially, the current dictator, Nicolas Maduro.

Corruption and violent crime have made this once-promising nation unlivable. Maduro has destabilized neighboring countries and, most recently, threatened Guyana, a nation friendly to the U.S., with close ties to the United Kingdom.

The Biden Administration has taken baby steps to ease the conditions leading Venezuelans to flee, and the country’s economy has partly recovered from the utter disaster of recent years. Still, the mass migration continues.

It’s a mess, made even more frustrating because of the squandered potential.

Hard to believe today, but Venezuela struck it rich a century ago. Standard Oil and other multinationals moved in, increasing production while handing over a share of their profits to the state. In the late 1950s, Venezuela elected a stable Democratic government and in 1960 joined the OPEC oil cartel, which led to huge windfalls.

Alas, business and government leaders helped themselves to billions in oil revenues that could have been used to build a more diverse economy. When oil prices plunged in the 1980s, Venezuela was unprepared, leading to runaway inflation and an enormous foreign debt.

The 1990s brought an attempted coup by military officer Hugo Chavez, who became president in 1998 by promising that oil revenues would be used to reduce poverty instead of lining the pockets of the rich.

Chavez remained in power until his death in 2013, expanding social services but also ruining the state-run oil company by forcing out competent managers. He ended term limits, compromised the courts and seized assets owned by multinationals. The U.S. and other countries responded with severe sanctions that limited the country’s oil exports. Those sanctions made life difficult for everyday Venezuelans and yet didn’t stop Chavez from consolidating his autocratic powers.

When oil prices plunged a decade ago, Venezuela again was unprepared and more vulnerable than ever, given the sanctions and the erosion of its Democratic institutions.

Maduro, who succeeded Chavez, locked up his critics and restricted access to information. In 2018, Maduro stole an election, leading the Trump administration to ratchet up sanctions in a transparent effort to topple the regime. When the pandemic hit, so did hyperinflation. Basic goods and services became unavailable.

Millions of Venezuelans fled, mostly to neighboring countries such as Colombia and Peru, but also to Spain and the U.S.

At the end of 2022, under pressure from the flood of migrants, the Biden administration tried easing the economic embargo, allowing oil giant Chevron to resume operations, but also requiring free elections. Maduro, predictably, has failed to hold up his end of the deal so far, and he recently revived a long-ago dispute over oil-rich territory that makes up a big part of Guyana.

You can’t blame the U.S. for trying, given the pressure on its southern border, but even without sanctions, Venezuela will never attract the private investment needed to rebuild its economy with a dangerous despot still in power.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it exactly right: “When President Biden gave him an inch, President Maduro took a mile. And with no accountability, he is taking more.”

The world cannot allow Maduro to seize an inch of Guyana, and he’s unlikely to submit to a truly free election, given that his people have good reason to vote him out. In the absence of democratic reforms, Maduro leaves the U.S. with little choice but to keep the pressure on.

One day, we hope, a country with great potential will wake up from its national nightmare and create the conditions needed to keep its people from running away.

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