Op-Ed
The Bolivarian government claims that it distributed over 13 million toys to children from low-income families for this Christmas. In 2016 the government managed to only subsidize 4 million toys so that they cost a bit less. The toys that were distributed this year were primarily to help ensure Maduro's re-election in the 2024 elections.
While he looks nothing like the westernized Saint Nicholas, Nicolás Maduro has been generous to the poor of Venezuela and not just at Christmas. His generosity is mostly to ensure that the poor will vote for him, but perhaps also because he actually cares about them. He has used Venezuela's meagre oil revenues to build massive amounts of low-income housing and provide food, fuel and medical subsidies. However, the generosity has not been enough to keep some 7 million Venezuelans from leaving the country in search of a better life.
As a high school drop-out with more social skills than academic ability, he has developed effective political skills and managed to stay in power and mostly hold his country together under the continued efforts of the U.S. to remove him from power. U.S. sanctions decimated Venezuela's economy and caused the collapse of the currency, yet Venezuelans adapted and persevered.
Maduro has been successful at forming new alliances and working around the crippling sanctions but not enough to pull the economy back to anything resembling a normal state.
Yes, Maduro is a dictator of sorts and sometimes brutal and incompetent, but he has managed to keep Venezuela independent of the U.S. and has not descended to the level of brutality of U.S. backed military dictators. His body count is a fraction of that of previous right-wing dictators.
In his annual Christmas Eve message, Maduro was upbeat and predicted that Venezuela would continue to make progress in 2024.
"Venezuela has not stopped and will never stop. We are moving forward with economic recovery and sustained progress, through our own efforts and the unity of all sectors of the national economy. 2024 will be a good year for the homeland," he said.
What Maduro did not mention is that Venezuela may also be at war in 2024, despite the fact that Guyana agreed to not respond militarily to Venezuela's annexation of some 2/3 of its territory. The British have already announced that they are sending the Navy patrol vessel HMS Trent to Guyana as a show of force and support, and Guyana is busy building up its military in partnership with the U.S. and UK as fast as it can.
But, with a new deal in place to partner with Shell oil company to tap Venezuelan natural gas and export it to Trinidad and Tobago and beyond, both the U.S. and UK governments may be told to back down from a military confrontation. The oil companies who greatly influence the two governments may see keeping the peace with Venezuela far more profitable than defending Guyana. Big Oil doesn't care who it pays royalties to, as long as there are sufficient profits to satisfy shareholders and pay big fat executive bonuses. With the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela has plenty of potential wealth to tap to pay for some privileges and since the U.S. economic sanctions and CIA assassination attempts failed, perhaps it is time to just get down to business while there is still plenty of demand for planet-killing oil and Maduro is willing to make deals.