How Venezuela’s elections — or lack of them — could worsen the US border crisis | Opinion

Venezuela’s opposition candidate Maria Corina Machado is forecasting a huge increase in the already record numbers of Venezuelan migrants heading to the United States and Latin American countries if her country’s dictatorship fails to hold free elections as scheduled this year.

In an interview this week, Machado told me that leaders across the Americas are playing with fire if they fail to put pressure on Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to hold free elections date this year, as required by the Venezuelan constitution.

“Nobody benefits from Venezuela collapsing and descending into total chaos, which is what will happen if Maduro doesn’t hold the election,” Machado told me, noting that the Venezuelan regime has not yet announced a date for the vote. “Failure to hold the election could result in an additional one to two million new [Venezuelan] migrants over the next few months.”

Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled their country in recent years, most of them to other Latin American countries, according to United Nations figures. More than half a million Venezuelans have fled to the United States, many of them crossing the U.S. border through Mexico, contributing to a border crisis that is becoming a key issue in the 2024 U.S. elections.

“The migration will only slow down and reverse itself the day when Venezuelans feel they have a future in their country,” Machado told me. “But that will only happen when we kick Maduro and this regime out of power.”

In addition to the risk of a new wave of Venezuelan migrants, not holding free elections this year would pose a danger for the region’s security, Machado added.

“More than half of Venezuela’s territory is already under control of criminal groups,” Machado said. Many of these groups have ties to the drug gangs that are terrorizing other Latin American countries, U.S. officials say.

Machado, who won an opposition-organized primary election by more than 90% of the vote in October, has launched her presidential campaign this week despite the regime banning her from running for any public office.

The Biden administration and some Latin American countries are demanding that Maduro reverse that ban. But after years of unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to restore democracy in Venezuela, calls for Maduro to hold free elections have waned.

When I asked her how she will campaign, she said she is getting massive public support despite being totally censored in Venezuelan media.

“Do you know how many interviews I had on... television in important media in all of last year?” she asked. “Zero! It has been about 10 years since I was last interviewed by an important TV network.”

She told me that Venezuelans are flocking to her campaign anyway, as was shown during the opposition primary election last year. Because of government intimidation, only one million people were expected to vote; more than 2.2 million showed up. “The regime is much weaker than what is perceived abroad,” Machado said.

It’s hard to know whether Machado has any chance to reverse the Maduro ban on her presidential candidacy, or whether Maduro will hold the elections at all. His recent border dispute with neighboring Guyana made many of us wonder whether he’s looking for an excuse to suspend the elections.

But Machado is right that it’s in the interest of U.S. and Latin American governments to step up the pressure on Maduro to hold fair elections this year.

Venezuela’s economy is once again going down hill, after a brief recovery fueled the regime’s de-facto dollarization in 2019. Last year, the country had a 193% inflation rate, one of the world’s highest, and there is a 50% poverty rate, recent studies show.

Unless Washington and Venezuela’s neighbors demand that Maduro abide by his government’s promises at a Norwegian-brokered deal in Barbados last October to hold free elections this year, we may soon see a new mass exodus of Venezuelans, and more gang violence across the region.

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