Petro's Venezuelan conundrum
Petro's Venezuelan conundrum
Venezuela's presidential election has put Gustavo Petro at a crossroads. Colombia has kept a cautious approach, in between Maduro and the opposition. A look at why Petro is acting the way he is.
Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed as the ‘winner’ of the Venezuelan presidential election, held on July 28, with the ‘official’ results being widely contested by the opposition, whose numbers showed Edmundo González with 67%. This election has become a real conundrum for Gustavo Petro and Colombia.
An uneven playing field
From the beginning, the elections were neither free nor fair. The opposition’s initial candidate, María Corina Machado, was disqualified, accused of supporting sanctions and involvement in corruption, and her first substitute candidate was unable to register her candidacy. At the last minute, the opposition registered and united behind little-known former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, with Machado energetically leading the campaign. The opposition’s campaign faced repeated obstacles, including arbitrary arrests of campaign staff, random road closures before campaign events and hotels and restaurants being shut down after hosting events. Nicolás Maduro broke several points of the October 2023 Barbados agreement, among them imposing extremely restrictive requirements on voter registration abroad, suppressing the votes of the large Venezuelan diaspora—only 1% (or 69,000) of Venezuelans living abroad were able to vote.
Maduro controls the courts, state institutions, the military leadership and the electoral machinery. The National Electoral Council (CNE) has a chavista majority, and is led by Elvis Amoroso, a longstanding chavista functionary who disqualified Machado from office when he was comptroller general. In the closing days of the campaign, Maduro warned of a ‘bloodbath’ if the opposition was to win. Although González had a huge lead in nearly all polls (although there are questions over pollsters’ reliability), many doubted that Maduro would let the opposition win.
There were very few international observers. The CNE revoked its invitation to the EU to monitor the election, the Brazilian electoral court withdrew after Maduro’s comments about Brazil’s electoral system and Argentine President Alberto Fernández was uninvited by the CNE because comments he made ‘raised doubts about his impartiality’. Colombia did not send observers because there wasn’t enough time to put together a team. Venezuela denied entry to Colombian senator Angélica Lozano (and other European parliamentarians), Claudia López was deported (along with other Latin American politicians) and a flight from Panama carrying four former right-wing Latin American presidents (including Vicente Fox) and former Colombian Vice President Martha Lucía Ramírez was blocked from taking off until they deplaned.
The stench of fraud
Amidst very tense uncertainty and following a long delay on election night (not unusual in Venezuelan elections), the CNE’s Elvis Amoroso cane out a bit after midnight to read out the first ‘official’ results bulletin. With 80% reporting, the CNE declared Maduro the winner, with 5.150 million votes (or 51.2%) against 4.445 million (44.2%) for González. These numbers contradict the opposition’s count, based on the collation of individual vote tally sheets (actas) for individual voting locations (mesas). To support their claims, the opposition published scanned copies of actas on a website with detailed electoral results, broken down by state, municipality, parish and mesa. According to these ‘parallel’ results, González won over 7.3 million votes (or 67%) against just 3.3 million (30%) for Maduro.
The CNE said that they’d release detailed results, including copies of actas, but unlike the opposition, two weeks later, they’ve not released any further data beyond the topline numbers—no information on invalid or blank votes and no granular results of any kind. On August 2, after a long delay, the CNE read out its second bulletin, with Maduro winning 51.95% (6.4 million) votes. Again, this announcement didn’t come with any more granular results or actas. The CNE’s website has been down since the election.
The number of votes for all candidates in the first bulletin were almost round to the first decimal place (51.19997%, 44.199999% etc.), which is highly suspicious and often an indicator of fraud (like in Russian elections). The probability of such round numbers in one percentage is 1 in 10,000. This strongly suggests that the number of votes were ‘made up’ by the CNE after they arbitrarily defined percentages for each candidate.
The opposition’s results are, by far, much more credible, transparent and detailed than those of the CNE—and the opposition, unlike the CNE, has the ‘receipts’ to back up their claims, in the form of over 24,500 digitalized actas.
The Carter Center, the only major impartial observers of the election, issued a harsh rebuke of the election process, saying in a statement that the election “did not meet international standards” and “cannot be considered democratic.” They could not “verify or corroborate the results of the election” and said that the CNE’s “failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles.”
Maduro digs in
After his ‘victory’, amidst mass protests in Venezuela, Maduro has started digging in. He brutally cracked down on protests—with at least 20 deaths so far, over 1,200 arrests and charges for those detained for violent acts going up to ‘terrorism’—and has started going after the opposition, detaining opposition politician Freddy Superlano and threatening to arrest Machado and González for allegedly leading ‘violent groups’ and a ‘fascist conspiracy’. The government has also accused North Macedonian hackers, somehow acting in collusion with Machado, of leading cyberattacks against the CNE on election night, delaying the announcement of results. Tarek William Saab, the chavista attorney general, has depicted protesters as violent extremists part of a foreign ‘fascist’ plot against Venezuela, and has opened an investigation against González and Machado for ‘falsely’ proclaiming a winner in the election.
Maduro, while saying that he’s willing to present full vote tallies, has asked the Supreme Court (TSJ), controlled by the regime, to audit the election, claiming that he has sufficient evidence of a ‘national and international plot’, a coup attempt and massive attacks. The TSJ has said that its ruling would be ‘final’.
International reactions
International reactions to Maduro’s fixed reelection broke alone fairly predictable geopolitical lines.
In the Americas, his ‘victory’ was only recognized by Cuba, Ortega’s Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras and some small Caribbean island nations aligned with ALBA. Globally, China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Syria, Vietnam and Serbia are the only major countries to recognize his ‘victory’.
In Latin America, the right-wing governments—Argentina, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay—rejected the CNE’s results, many of them explicitly calling them fraudulent. Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who despite being left-wing has always been very critical of Maduro, was quick to react, saying that the results were “hard to believe”, demanded full transparency and declared that Chile would not recognize any result that is not verifiable. Guatemala’s new centre-left President, Bernardo Arévalo, expressed his “many doubts” about the CNE’s results.
The United States began by taking a more cautious approach, at first saying they had “serious concerns” didn’t reflect “the will nor the votes” of the people, and demanded that a full tabulation of the votes be published and evaluated by independent observers. However, on August 1, the US joined some other Latin American countries (Peru, Uruguay, Ecuador) in recognizing González as the winner.
The OAS’ secretary general, Luis Almagro, mincing no words, has said that Maduro should accept defeat or held new elections under a new electoral authority and EU and OAS monitoring. However, the OAS failed to adopt a resolution demanding the release of detailed vote tallies, with 17 votes in favour (18 were required) and 11 abstentions.
Maduro has been defiant in the face of international condemnation. The day after the election, Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, describing them as a “group of right-wing governments, subordinated to Washington and openly committed to the most sordid ideological postulates of international fascism.” Maduro has attacked Argentina’s hard-right president Javier Milei, who’d called him a dictator, claiming that he could beat him in a boxing match and calling him ugly and a ‘Nazi fascist’. Counting on the backing of China, Russia, Cuba and other friendly governments, Maduro appears willing to resist and isolate himself back into pariah status, and to kill, torture and repress his way out of this mess.
The trio
This has left Colombia, Brazil and Mexico—the big trio of Latin American democratic left-wing governments—in the middle ground, not outright rejecting the CNE’s results as fraudulent but not explicitly recognizing Maduro as the winner. The three countries are seen as key in any negotiation or dialogue, given their more cordial relations with Maduro—and both sides in Venezuela realize this.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been treading an implicitly pro-Maduro line, criticizing the OAS’ ‘biased’ attitude, attacking Almagro for ‘recognizing a winner without evidence’ and claiming that there’s no evidence of fraud. According to La Silla Vacía, if it was only up to him, AMLO would have recognized Maduro, but the influence of president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum and Mexican diplomats have kept Mexico with the non-aligned bloc. In Brazil, Lula, who’d been a chavista ally in the 2000s, called on Maduro to present the actas and on the opposition to appeal any disagreements in court, but sparked controversy by saying he was convinced that this was a “normal, orderly” electoral process. Lula’s own party, the PT, has recognized Maduro’s ‘victory’ but members of the government have distanced themselves from the party’s statement.
Gustavo Petro’s attitude has been under close scrutiny both at home and abroad. Colombia has more at stake than Brazil, Mexico, Chile and other countries: it shares a very porous, 2,219 km long border with the ‘sister republic’, major security problems, longstanding economic, social, cultural and personal ties across the border and Colombia has received over 2 million of the estimated 7.1 million Venezuelans who have left the country over the past decade or so.
The first official statements from Bogotá came from foreign minister Luis Gilberto Murillo, while Petro remained uncharacteristically quiet on social media on July 29. Murillo on July 29 emphasized the importance of clearing up any doubts about the results and called for the complete vote tally, its verification and an independent audit to proceed as soon as possible. Petro retweeted Murillo’s tweet. The next day, Murillo reiterated the call on the publication of all the actas so that they could be audited, and called on maintaining dialogue and avoiding violence. Petro remained silent, under intense domestic pressure to say something and amidst beliefs that his silence was a tacit endorsement of Maduro’s ‘reelection’.
On July 31, Petro finally broke his silence, in a lengthy multi-paragraph tweet. He began by noting that there were “serious doubts” over the results and calling on the Venezuelan government to allow “for a transparent final vote tally with vote counting, actas and oversight by all the political forces and professional international oversight.” While this is being done, Petro urged for calm and end to violence, suggesting that there be a formal agreement between the government and the opposition that would grant ‘maximum respect’ to the losing side, regardless of who it may be. However, he continued his long tweet by calling on the US to suspend its ‘blockades’ and ‘decisions against Venezuelan citizens’, considering that the US sanctions are inhumane and only bring hunger, violence and mass emigration. He continued with long, esoteric lamentations about violence in the world and reflections about Colombia’s own violent past, and how this shouldn't happen in Venezuela, expressing a desire for Colombia to help Venezuela find peace just like how Venezuela has contributed to peace in Colombia. In a direct message to Maduro, he called on him to “remember the spirit of Chávez” and “allow the Venezuelan people to return to tranquility while the elections end calmly and the transparent result is accepted, whatever it may have been.”
At the OAS, Colombia, along with Brazil, abstained on the proposed resolution, and Mexico didn’t even attend. Amidst the criticism this vote received back home, the foreign ministry explained that because Venezuela is no longer a member of the OAS since 2019, it’s not the proper venue to raise matters related to the political situation. Petro later tweeted that a ‘foreign government’ shouldn’t decide the president of Venezuela.
On August 1, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil issued a joint statement, which largely reiterated their presidents’ stances: that the CNE should quickly release full data (actas, results by polling station), that any disagreements must be settled through institutional means, that results be impartially verified and exhorting all sides to calm and caution to avoid an escalation of violence. Colombia is the only country in the trio that has explicitly said that the results should be verified independently and impartially.
The trio are seeking to coordinate their actions and capitalize on their cordial ties to Maduro’s regime and their equidistant position between both sides to facilitate some form of dialogue and agreement between Maduro and the opposition, however unlikely such negotiations may seem in the current context. The trio has not recognized the CNE results and wants Maduro to ensure a full, transparent and auditable tally of the votes, but has also made clear its opposition to heavyhanded US intervention or multilateral action by the OAS (reaffirming their ‘absolute respect’ for Venezuela’s sovereignty). Nevertheless, Murillo, who was ambassador to the US before becoming foreign minister, has close contacts in Washington.
Petro has the advantage that both sides in the Venezuelan crisis appear to respect him, boosting his legitimacy as a mediator. Maduro has said that he’s an “honourable man” and “one of the most intelligent persons” he’s ever met, while Machado and González have thanked Colombia for its stance.
El País revealed the outline of the trio’s plan: a direct negotiation between Maduro and Gónzalez, without Machado, based on the assumption that chavismo would never negotiate with Machado (who they consider a far-right extremist). They’d need to convince Machado—which she appears willing to do—to step aside and convince Maduro that this path offers him more legitimacy than judicial recourses to the regime-controlled TSJ.
The US’ recognition of González as the winner has complicated things, but the State Department clarified on August 5 that the US is not recognizing González as president (unlike what they did with Guaidó in 2017) and said that they’re in close contact with Colombia, Brazil and Mexico about a path forward in the region. The next day, the US explicitly said it supported the trio’s mediation efforts for a ‘transition’ in Venezuela.
The Colombian, Mexican and Brazilian foreign ministries released another joint statement on August 8, following a call between the three presidents a day before. The statement reiterated what they’ve been saying for a while: calling on the CNE to release full data broken down by polling station to allow an impartial verification of the results, and noting that the CNE—and not the TSJ—is the body responsible for the “transparent disclosure of electoral results.”
Petro, Lula and AMLO are set to have a virtual meeting with Maduro in the coming days. Maduro has said that he’s waiting for their call.
In an interesting interview with La Silla Vacía, Petro’s ambassador in Caracas, Milton Rengifo, spoke at length about Colombia’s position. The very cautious, measured and equilibrist tone is clear: using careful language, he criticizes both the regime for not publishing results with the proper evidence and the opposition for publishing their own partial results online, saying that there are doubts “on both sides” and emphasizing the need for a public “institutional response” (CNE) that would provide legitimacy and public confidence regardless of the result. Rengifo describes the trio’s work as a “prudent and sensible waiting period to support a negotiated and peaceful process.” He also said that it’s not necessary to announce red lines, and rejects sanctions against Venezuela and its leadership, preferring “dialogue and persuasion.”
The trio is willing to wait. By Venezuelan law, the CNE has 30 days to publish the official results, including the actas.
Petro’s conundrum
Even before the election, Petro was walking on a tightrope on the thorny issue of Venezuela. He’s in an impossible situation, needing to balance a domestic public opinion that is almost unanimously anti-Maduro, his own ideological biases and the need not to imperil the normalization of relations and reactivation of commercial relations with Venezuela by getting into a confrontation with Maduro.
Restoring diplomatic relations, reopening the border and reactivating commercial ties and bilateral trade has been Petro’s main foreign policy initiative since he took office in 2022.
Rebuilding commercial relations and bilateral trade with Venezuela, vital to the economy of border regions in both countries, has been one of Petro’s main goals. His administration has spent a lot of time negotiating with the Venezuelan government the reopening of land crossings and bilateral trade, and signed a bilateral investment treaty that was just ratified by the Colombian Congress in May. In 2023, Colombian exports to Venezuela increased to $673 million, the highest level since 2015 but still far below the 2000-2015 average.
Maduro remains a vital strategic partner for Colombia’s peace process, particularly with the ELN, a group so deeply entrenched in Venezuela that it’s sometimes called a binational guerrilla. Petro needs to have Maduro on his side to have a chance at success in peace talks with the ELN and other Colombian illegal armed groups, just like Juan Manuel Santos needed to make peace with Hugo Chávez in 2010 in order to stand a chance at success in peace talks with the FARC. There are also many other serious binational security problems along the very porous border (drug cartels, smugglers, human trafficking, illegal groups, Venezuelan criminal organizations like the Tren de Aragua etc.) that can only be realistically tackled through bilateral coordination and action. Maduro made sure to remind Petro of this in one of his recent press conferences, saying that he’s been helping him “silently” to make peace in Colombia, never giving his opinion or getting involved in negotiations, only helping in ‘good faith’—a sly way of saying “don’t forget that you need me”.
In addition to these issues, there are also important economic, energetic and geopolitical interests at stake. Facing a natural gas deficit, Colombia considered importing gas from Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas giant PDVSA, although it recently ruled it out.
Since 2022, Petro has built cordial relations with Maduro. He’s met with Maduro six times, all but once in Caracas and most recently in April 2024. The apparently cordial rapport between both heads of state has helped smoothen relations, although they haven’t stopped the Maduro regime from publicly criticizing Colombia—most recently in May 2024, when Diosdado Cabello insulted and threatened Murillo, calling him a “puppy of the empire” after Murillo talked of the need for a ‘smooth transition’ after the elections. In March, Maduro’s foreign minister Yvan Gil had accused Colombia of “gross interference” after the foreign ministry expressed ‘concerns’ about the difficulties faced by the opposition in registering its candidate. Maduro, perhaps implicitly targeting Petro among others, attacked the “cowardly left” for failing to condemn ‘coup attempts’ in Venezuela.
Unwilling to endanger the diplomatic and economic gains made since 2022 by risking a confrontation with Maduro, Petro was much quieter about the political crisis and democracy in Venezuela. Petro’s early efforts to make Colombia a key player in the political negotiations in Venezuela largely failed—his international conference in Bogotá on the Venezuelan crisis in April 2023 was a flop, Colombia only had a minor supporting role in the Barbados agreement and Lula upstaged Petro as a more vocal and effective regional leader, particularly during the Guyana crisis last year.
After the utter failure of the Guaidó-Duque strategy (isolating and blockading Maduro and ‘wishcasting’ for a coup), Petro’s strategy (if he had a coherent one in mind), like Lula and Biden, was built on the premise that by engaging with Maduro and restoring commercial ties there would be a gradual political opening, paving the way for political change. After July 28, it’s clear this strategy was quite naïve.
In recent months, behind the scenes, Colombia has been able to reassert its importance as a regional power in the Venezuelan political crisis, thanks largely to more effective and competent diplomats. Murillo, who’d already been one of Petro’s point men when he was ambassador in Washington, replaced Álvaro Leyva as foreign minister in February 2024 and has been a more effective voice, trusted by the US. Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela since 2023, Milton Rengifo, is a political appointee but is a much more competent and effective ambassador than his predecessor, the unstable and temperamental Armando Benedetti.
Petro chose to keep quiet or be deliberately ambiguous throughout the Venezuelan electoral process, in contrast to his more forceful stances on other global issues as he professes to defend peace, democracy and human rights. Petro severed diplomatic ties with Israel because of the war in Gaza, very strongly criticized the removal of former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo after his failed autogolpe and took a clear and audacious stance against the right-wing Guatemalan kleptocracy’s attempts to derail the inauguration of president Bernardo Arévalo in January 2024. In contrast, Petro and the administration remained cautious, deliberately ambiguous and mealy-mouthed in their limited pronouncements about the Venezuelan electoral process, expressing ‘concerns’ but always sure to reiterate ‘absolute respect’ for Venezuela’s sovereignty and institutions.
Colombia remained conspicuously silent for a long time about Machado’s ineligibility, originally decreed by the comptroller general and upheld by the TSJ, even though it should have been a case that spoke to Petro personally (arbitrary disqualification, on flimsy grounds, from elected office by a non-judicial body, in violation of the American Convention). Petro, who took the Colombian state to the the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and won, made himself an advocate of the political rights guaranteed under the American Convention. In 2022, he had invoked the Convention to come to Castillo’s defence in Peru. He had briefly mentioned Machado’s case in a reply to a journalist’s tweet last summer, saying that it was clear that no administrative authority should take away a citizen’s political rights. Eventually, in April, Petro did finally denounce Machado’s disqualification as an “antidemocratic coup”.
In a perfect example of Petro’s tightrope walking, just days after he made those comments, Petro flew to Caracas to meet with Maduro. The joint statement issued by the two presidents dryly stated that Maduro ‘explained’ the progress of the electoral process to Petro. Petro’s comments following the meeting didn’t mention the elections but rather ‘political and military peace’ in both countries.
In good part, Petro’s cautiousness comes from his unwillingness to jeopardize his important and vital relation with Maduro’s regime. However, Petro does have ideological sympathies with chavismo. He’s been an admirer of Hugo Chávez since the 1990s, previously calling him a great Latin American leader, and has clear affection for many of the ideological principles of chavismo (leftist ‘Bolivarianism’, Latin American unity, anti-imperialism, opposition to neoliberalism) which are similar to that of the M-19 guerrilla he was a part of in his youth. He’s toned down the public praise of Chávez but it still comes out occasionally, most recently with ‘Chávez’s spirit’, or, in April, ‘Chávez's magic’. He’s been much more ambiguous about Maduro, having previously called him a dictator and not recognizing his 2018 reelection, but also retaining a soft spot for the regime likely because of his lingering chavista sympathies—for example, he’s opposed to US sanctions and has blamed them for much of Venezuela’s economic problems. Despite cordial ties at the high level, there are few personal affinities between Maduro and Petro: the Maduro regime doesn’t think very highly of Petro.
Petro’s administration and the Colombian left have basically nonexistent ties with the main Venezuelan opposition, especially Machado, who comes from the most radical or intransigent wing of the opposition. Much of the left dislikes her and the opposition, even if they don’t much like Maduro either, and the Venezuelan opposition distrusts the Colombian left (and perhaps the Petro administration).
Before the elections, left-wing politicians in Colombia sang the praises of Venezuela’s electoral system. Former president Ernesto Samper and Pacto senator Clara López, who travelled to Venezuela to ‘accompany’ the elections, both said that the Venezuelan electoral system was one of the most trustworthy in the world. Gustavo Bolívar flippantly said that the electoral system was so trustworthy that chavismo could lose, and hoped Colombia could have such trust in its elections, before later tweeting that if the opposition lost it wouldn’t be because of fraud because the electoral system is one of the most solid, trustworthy and invulnerable. They were much less loquacious and effusive after the elections: Bolívar quickly distanced himself from his past comments to demand a full recount, Clara López initially said that Maduro’s reelection was ‘transparent’ but later said that actas should be published, and Samper has also said that the actas should be published to ensure transparency but has criticized the OAS and the US’ positions. Among Colombian politicians, only Rodrigo Londoño, leader of Comunes, the political party of the ex-FARC, congratulated Maduro.
Public opinion in Colombia is almost unanimously anti-Maduro, and the majority of political leaders on the centre and right openly support the opposition. In most polls, only 2-3% have a favourable opinion of Maduro and 90% have an unfavourable opinion, and a majority favour a tougher stance against Maduro even if it means a deterioration in relations. Petro’s awkward silences on Venezuela have become a very fertile issue for the right-wing opposition, exposing the contradictions in his foreign policy. His silence is often read as complicity with the Maduro regime.
Given the political climate in Colombia, anything short of a full-throated denunciation of Maduro as a dictator and the election as rigged will be unpopular, but Petro will never say something like that. Colombia’s abstention at the OAS was widely criticized back home, including by Duque, Santos, Fajardo, Medellín mayor Fico Gutiérrez, Bogotá mayor Carlos Fernando Galán, Claudia López and Petro’s first finance minister José Antonio Ocampo.
Colombia’s cautiousness was probably, until now, smart diplomacy but bad politics. Now, Petro’s tightrope walking and ambiguities is increasingly unsustainable. The trio’s work to attempt a negotiation between Maduro and the opposition is a big gamble, particularly given Maduro’s intransigent attitude since the election, and the outcome is very uncertain (another lengthy negotiation with no guarantees that Maduro keeps his word?). Given Petro, AMLO and Lula’s various public comments, their critics suspect that this mediation will just end in quietly acquiescing to Maduro’s fraudulent reelection.
On the off-chance that this mediation does produce a positive outcome, Petro would have scored his biggest foreign policy victory and become a real regional leader to be reckoned with.
Regardless of what happens, it’s unlikely that Petro’s attitude towards Venezuela will change much. The administration, not incorrectly, considers Duque’s strategy of maximum isolation of Venezuela to have been a disastrous failure for Colombia. Rengifo has said that Colombia will not break diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and bilateral trade and investment will continue.
Unfortunately for everyone, the elections seem to show that there is no obvious solution to the Venezuelan crisis or realistic way to get rid of Maduro. The Guaidó/Trump/Duque strategy of isolating Maduro and ‘wishcasting’ for a coup (an unlikely scenario given the regime’s control over the armed forces and their implication in lucrative criminal activities) was an utter failure. Even Álvaro Uribe has admitted this, saying in a recent tweet that “the concerts didn’t work”, a reference to the 2019 Venezuela Aid Live concert at the border (attended by Duque), which has since been widely mocked. Negotiating with the regime, as Petro, Biden, Lula and others have supported, has so far only allowed them to get more breathing room. Slowly ‘reintegrating’ Maduro into the continental mainstream and restoring ties with him hasn’t convinced him to embrace a democratic transition. Instead, Maduro made a mockery of the Barbados agreement and made clear since July 28 that he won’t be removed from office by a free election. Mass protests in Venezuela have been unsuccessful, only leading to violence, repression and bloodshed. Foreign intervention is a nonstarter.
Venezuela’s uncertain future will have a very big impact on Colombia, regardless of what happens. Maduro digging in and continuing to resist against all odds, as he has for a decade, may lead to another mass exodus out of Venezuela, with Colombia once again receiving the migratory wave. But Colombia is now ill-equipped to handle a new wave of migrants, with increasing hostility (and xenophobia) towards Venezuelan migrants and Petro’s administration much less receptive towards immigration. Continued instability in Venezuela would threaten to undo much of Petro’s efforts to normalize relations and rebuild bilateral trade with the neighbouring country.