Guaidó proposes to step aside if Maduro does so to conduct free, fair, and verifiable elections

But the truth is that time is not in Maduro’s favor. Maduro is usurping functions once again. He doesn’t have a country that recognizes him, nor an additional loan. He doesn’t have a way to solve the fuel crisis. He can’t even put gasoline in a vehicle in Venezuela, nor can he move the crop that our farmers sow.

That is the stark truth.

In Venezuela, neither does Guaidó’s government in charge win, because Maduro is still there. That is our variable of success. To achieve the transition while we attend to the emergency. While we resist. So, I can tell you that as long as Maduro prevails, all of Venezuela loses. The only possibility of winning for the nation and the region is through a democratic transition.

There’s a temptation. I must say it out loud: let the world’s countries get used to living with the dictator. We’ve seen it in other nations, in other regions. That’d be unfortunate.

JZ: There was, not many years ago, a time when the Venezuelan government had money to give away. Today, Venezuela doesn’t produce oil. Where does the money that the government handles come from?

JG: First, briefly, some indicators: 75% contraction of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), that is, a destruction of the economy. Inflation is counted in millions. Purchasing power doesn’t exist. According to the United Nations, less than $1.90 a day is extreme poverty. And here, we have two dollars a month minimum wage, because of corruption, because of inefficiency. They invested 300 billion dollars in the Venezuelan oil industry and bankrupted it. Venezuela was the fourth country in the world that has invested more in its oil industry in the last 12 years. If I am not mistaken, the first is the United States, then Russia, followed by Saudi Arabia. Those countries doubled their oil production in the same investment period. Venezuela went from almost three million barrels a day to 300,000. What happened to the money? It was stolen.

What does the dictatorship live on today? From an almost parallel economy, from the gold extracted from the south of Venezuela, which we can classify as blood gold, in a parallelism with what was the diamond conflict in East Africa. It has the same characteristics: financing of irregular groups, human trafficking, arms smuggling, money laundering, ecocide, ethnocide with the displacement of more than twenty indigenous communities in the mining arc.

This is what the dictatorship lives on, and the approximately 300,000 barrels of oil that it can still extract.

JZ: When you live a reality like the Venezuelan one, the first thing you lose is the truth. And when the truth is lost, what emerges is gossip, comments, some real things, other half-lies, and half-truths. One of those famous gossips assures that there are confidential conversations between Guaidó and the government. Obviously, I’m not asking you to give me details, but is that true?

JG: There are no conversations at this time. There aren’t because the dictatorship has used these mechanisms to mock any type of resolution.

I agree 100% with the expression that one of the first victims in a dictatorship is the truth and language use. Today, in Venezuela, talking about negotiation or dialogue is frowned upon. It’s the queen of conflict-resolution mechanisms, but the dictatorship has manipulated the concept so much, it has disrupted it in such a way that today it looks bad to discuss negotiation.

But, we’ve never denied that possibility. We even were at the mediation in Norway. Unfortunately, the dictatorship got up from the table and ran away, making excuses about the sanctions. We presented an alternative, but there was no case. We’re going to be present for any conflict-resolution mechanism.

We avoid using the word negotiation or dialogue so that we aren’t misunderstood at home. But today, the support for negotiation is evident. Europe, the United States, the OAS, Colombia, Brazil, South Korea, and Japan have all said so. Free presidential and parliamentary elections, with guarantees for all sectors that wish to participate in this process.

JZ: Does the result of the upcoming U.S. election have any significance for your political vision?

JG: The United States will decide in a sovereign way what it wants. I must thank the administration of President Donald Trump for the support we’ve received, a support that is bipartisan. We have a remarkable relationship in the Senate. And additionally, I must say, Maduro not only has a problem with the White House, with the Senate, he also has a problem with an independent power, which is the Judiciary, due to a criminal lawsuit for drug trafficking and terrorism.

I’m sure that today no one is comfortable with having a drug dealer as a neighbor, much less a criminal against humanity, or someone who has denigrated the human condition to such a great extent.

Imagine the desperation you have to feel to prefer leaving your house, turn everything off, grab a bag with whatever you find on hand, take your child in your arms and go, walking thousands of miles. How immense must be the despair that someone suffers to prefer that to staying one more day, fighting. That’s why I call on the world’s reflection to see how authoritarianism acts with such agility, with propaganda apparatuses that are always awake. Democracies sometimes go, in that sense, a step backward.

JZ: The main victims of this political, social, and economic crisis are the Venezuelan people. It seems that many have lost the horizon of the future and are hopeless. They only think about survival. How can these people, this majority, be given back hope in ‘another’ Venezuela?

JG: Well, I have good news for you, José. Right now, there are hundreds of people on the street protesting. This speaks of human dignity, resistance and tolerance, not of evil. On the contrary, of holding on to think about the future.

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