Front Burner - Who is Venezuela's rival president?

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

Juan Guaidó is touring Venezuela this week, meeting with journalists and citizens. But while Canada acknowledges Guaidó as the official president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro says the job is still rightfully his. The CBC's Adrienne Arsenault and Evan Dyer on the latest from Caracas.

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Uncover, bomb on board. Investigating the biggest unsolved mass murder in Canada, CP Flight 21. Get the Uncover podcast for free on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Available now. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Venezuela is a tinderbox. Millions have fled and massive protests are expected today. Food and medicine is in short supply.

Its leader, the official one anyway, has been called a dictator by Canada and others. This ongoing humanitarian crisis that is solely the responsibility of the brutal dictator, Nicolas Maduro. Meanwhile, a guy named Juan Guaidó has declared himself the president of a country that some think is on the brink of widespread violence.

We have CBC reporters on the ground in Venezuela this week, Adrian Arsenault and Evan Dyer. I'm talking to them about a rare interview they got with Juan Guaido and about what it would mean if the country landed in his control. This is FrontBurner. This is FrontBurner. Hi guys. Hey there. Hi there. You've been reporting from Venezuela for the last week or so. Can you tell me what it's like there today?

Today seems like a calm day. People are waiting for a demonstration that's going to begin on Tuesday. But it's been a sort of a quiet week, a kind of a calm between the storms, between two major mobilizations. And one of the reasons for that is because people have to work, they have to make some money, they have to feed their families. And, you know, to what Evan's saying, because it's a calm day, we went to a market today,

just to have a look, and it's so interesting because on the face of it, it looks completely normal. There's lots of fruit and vegetables, and it breaks your brain a little bit because you think, wait a minute, you know, this is a place where the economy's in crisis and people are hungry, so what's with all this fresh food? What happens is when you actually get in the market and you start looking at the prices, it all starts to make sense. So the majority of the people in this country are living on maybe 25,000 boulevars a month. Between 18 and 25,000. And that's maybe 13 Canadian dollars. So you look at the prices of, say, a kilo of red peppers,

and that is two-thirds of a monthly income. And meat is sometimes more than a monthly income. I come here to shop with 300, 400 bolivars and they say no, no, no. So how am I going to live in the situation we're in? As with any place in the world where there's a problem with the economy or hunger, if you have the money, you can get what you need. But it's complicated, right? Like sometimes there are some products that are only supposed to be sold in regulated places at a regulated price.

But there's a black market thing going on. And you can use U.S. dollars, even though that's illegal. And it's just complicated to live here. And even if you have the means, it's still really complicated to feed yourself. So you're lucky. No. In this moment, no. It's very difficult to live here.

Very, very difficult. Even if you have a good job? Yes. It's difficult because everything is so expensive for every people. It's astonishing how little works here, even though it looks normal, like an ATM looks normal in Venezuela, looks like the ones at home, but it will only give you 20 cents. sense. I know there have also been issues with power cuts as well. I mean, we weren't sure if we could talk to you today because of that, and we just tried you and lost you. What's happening there? Well, I mean, you have basically crumbling infrastructure, money that is meant to repair that infrastructure that in some cases is

being siphoned off. You know, there was a really kind of telling moment the other day when Nicolas Maduro was at a press conference waxing poetic, and then in the middle of the press conference, the power went out. I saw that it sort of looked like a meme in a way. It did. And it went viral on Twitter. It was turned into one very quickly here. This is the sort of thing that hasn't hit the Capitol all that often, but it's clearly starting to.

Adrian, you mentioned earlier that there's a kind of black humor that seems to be setting in in parts of the country. Probably people in crisis do this all the time. You know, humor is fundamental to survival, frankly. But, you know, as outsiders watching some of it, it's kind of brave and it is kind of funny. There was a massive train delay the other day. We're talking thousands and thousands of people delayed from getting on their trains

that are only working at like 60% capacity on a good day anyway. So one guy gets out his cell phone and says, let's just see what happens if I lean over the balcony and blow over the thousands of people and just shout out Maduro. Let's just see what happens. And so he turns the camera around and he screams, Maduro. Let's just see what happens. And so he turns the camera around and he screams, Maduro! Maduro!

It was not a cry of, oh, we love him. It was a very disparaging, like, ugh, kind of cry. And it was kind of a hilarious moment and super brave, you know, super brave. But you're seeing more of that now. You're seeing more graffiti that is not Romadoro Pro Chavez. You're seeing more no bread, no elections kind of graffiti.

The word hunger is the number one word you see painted on the streets of Caracas. And why is it that you think people are becoming braver in that way? Well, I think it's a combination of the fact that people are hungrier than ever and more desperate than ever. Venezuela, it's not just a shortage of food, but it's malnutrition caused by the bad quality of the food.

The bags of rations that they give to six million households are now basically down to starch. It's pasta, rice, flour. households are now basically down to starch. It's pasta, rice, flour. There's some cooking oil, but all of the protein is being removed bit by bit, the milk, the tuna, and so on, even the beans. And you know, to what Evan was saying about the bags, you see the flashes of that bravery with the bags. So we met some women who were telling us that they had been asked to sign documents by the people who were giving them these monthly ration bags. In one case, the document was very clearly a document in support of Maduro. They wanted me to sign a statement in support of Maduro, she says.

I told them, no way. You can take away my bag and my benefit, but there's no way I'm signing that document. That took some serious courage. You hear that, and then you hear Maduro say that he is collecting upwards of 10 million signatures in support of him and his government. And you think, hmm, is this how some of the signatures are being gained? You know, is this hunger and food being leveraged? And there are a small nucleus still of true believers,

but there are also people who will sign because they're afraid of losing all the food they have. And there are people who go to rallies for the same reason. I've met public servants who've told me, and these are people who will express loathing of Nicolás Maduro and the whole regime in private and yet they tell me that they're forced to attend the rallies and have to sign attendance. They're afraid, she says. They know the people are rising up against them and that's why they're pressuring us to sign. And while some will refuse, others are signing, she says, out of fear of being left with no food at all. And I understand at the border of Venezuela and Colombia, there's this

standoff happening over food. Can you tell me a little bit more about what's happening there? Sure. So you have on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, there's a community called Cucuta. This is a place where people have been walking, and most of them have been walking into Colombia, have come from Venezuela into this town. Sometimes they come daily, they buy goods, and then they go back across, or some just walk out of the country and stay gone.

So that is where you have the humanitarian aid that the Americans keep talking about that is landing on the Colombian side. And this is stuff that is, you know, high nutrition food. These are medical kits. This is stuff you give to people who are in famine, children who are malnourished, just to keep them going. So far, seven truckloads, a lot more coming. But Maduro's forces on the other side have blocked the roads. They're saying there's no way you're going to get this food aid in. The Americans are on the other side saying, sure we are. Juan Guaido is saying to the military, come on, your families are hungry too, let the food through.

This is a direct order to the armed forces. Allow the humanitarian aid to enter the country in order to take care of your families. This is a terrible standoff, and in the middle of all this are Venezuelans on the Venezuela side and Venezuelans on the Colombian side saying, hey, hi, what about us? Can we have some of this? Somebody pointed out to us that to feed Venezuela, you need 33,000 tons of food a day. There's no way that that is coming in in a convoy of trucks.

So a lot of people understand that this is really more of a standoff about power, a power play between the opposition and the government, rather than an instant relief for the suffering of the Venezuelan people, because this is a country that should be able to feed itself. There's no reason why Venezuela shouldn't be able to not only feed itself, but export food, and that used to be the case. the case. The humanitarian aid has become a show to justify intervention in the country. And it is a cheap show aimed at humiliating Venezuelans to humiliate us.

Is there a sense, you know, you guys are in Venezuela now, is there a sense that this is like a real powder keg situation in that if this aid doesn't come across, that something really devastating could happen? It feels like a dam with a huge amount of water built up behind it. Somebody was talking to me in the street today outside of the market, and he was talking about how this can't go on, this has to change. He was saying, you know, even if it's a bit violent I'd rather have that confrontation now that just be dying drip by drip by drip and a woman

walking out of the market overheard that and she said amen and then another woman stopped. People I never met before and he'd never met before and she wanted to add her two cents as well. You literally almost don't meet anyone who doesn't feel that way. You know, the overwhelming majority of people seem to be exhausted, desperate for change. We'll be back in a second. Discover what millions around the world already have. Thank you. With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca slash cbc to learn more.

I'm hoping we can talk then about these shifting power dynamics in the country. So the last time that we all spoke about Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro was about to be sworn in as president. Canada and many other countries said that he was not a legitimate president. Now Juan Guaido has declared himself president as well. So it's just like extraordinary situation where there are two presidents in this country. You know, Evan, is there a sense that that Juan Guaido could possibly take over tomorrow if something happened in Venezuela? Well, I would say one of the problems with Juan Guaido is that while he's very popular and he's succeeded in rallying the opposition in a way we haven't seen before, he's the interim president. But I always ask myself, where's the interim government?

You know, he hasn't named a cabinet, for example. Now, even if he did, it would again be an act of symbolism to begin with. The government that he would appoint would not be able to actually seize the levers of power yet. But at least you would be able to reassure those people who have become used to 20 years of this regime that it won't just be a jump into a vacuum where there's no one else to take their place. And you also would be protecting him. For example, if he's the interim president, who's the interim vice president who's going to take his place if he's arrested or if something worse happens to him? He's doing some things that he needs to do, focusing on kind of getting the support of civil society.

Adrian and I saw him, for example, convincing the Farmers and Ranchers Association to jump over to his side. They didn't need much convincing, I have to say. They did so very enthusiastically. And he's been going to the universities and trying to get, you know, get the other poles of power that are outside of the government behind him. And I would say he's succeeded in doing that very well. But it isn't as if he has an entire caretaker government behind him yet that's ready to just step in and take power.

And it also, we haven't seen the scale of defections from the Maduro government, the kind of avalanche of defections that you would need to see to really know that its time is up. I know that you both interviewed Guaido a few days ago. Adrian, what did he say to you? We asked him a few things. One of them is, why aren't you in jail? Why do you think you haven't been arrested yet in the last couple of weeks?

You know, he said that this is something that he's asked himself a fair amount to. He was at one point detained for about an hour back in January. It's never clear whether that was a detention or almost an interview on the part of the intelligence services. You know, hi, nice to meet you, what would happen if? But he thinks that he hasn't been arrested because of the popular support of the people, because of the international support, because he believes he's operating within the Constitution. So that was one thing we talked about. We talked about whether it helped him or hurt him to have President Trump be so embracing of him. Right. This is something I'm super interested to hear. The way I understand

it is that maybe that wouldn't play so well on the ground in Venezuela to have the United States supporting your government. Well, no kidding. You know, he sort of skirted that. He didn't really answer that directly. What he was saying is that, oh, you can't reduce the Venezuelan situation to that. He said he was very happy with President Trump's fierce and firm response. He wouldn't go into the subject of whether he was in favor of any sort of intervention beyond the humanitarian aid. He has since sort of indicated that maybe he wouldn't say no to it. At another time in this country, that would have been red meat to a lion and the place would have turned upside down. Things have changed. Things have changed. Now people are like, oh, maybe not such a bad idea in some form or another.

We talked a little bit about the fact that some Canadians, even though Canada officially has thrown its support behind him, some Canadians are saying, why should Canada do this? Why on earth should Canada care about this and stand behind him? And his answer was, what happens in one country affects others. So whatever happens in one country of the region will happen in others. Because you have seen it in Canada. You have seen the warmth of Venezuelans. You've also noticed an important migration to Toronto, to Ottawa, to Quebec, and to some other cities.

And we have an enormous potential not only to help the region and for our resources to serve as leverage for development, but also for a fundamental value. You, like us, appreciate freedom and democracy to do our fight. We were in Patari, which is a poor neighborhood of Caracas yesterday, and there was a man only kind of half joking, but also pretty serious about it, saying, where are the Marines? When are they going to get here? You know, you'd be surprised at how much public opinion on that has shifted. intervention and we're even hoping that will happen. But I think that there's not enough of them for that to be a kind of a consensus opinion in any way. And certainly it's something that Juan Guaido doesn't want to encourage. He doesn't want to appear to play into the government's propaganda that he's just a puppet for a U.S. invasion or a front man for a U.S. takeover of Venezuelan oil. Definitely the idea that having U.S. involvement is some kind of a taboo topic, I don't think that that's accurate anymore in Venezuela

from what I'm hearing from people here. People just are at a point of desperation where they just want help. But that's certainly the old-school fight that Maduro is painting it at, that this is an existential fight. And if you do go into some neighborhoods that are Chavista strongholds, they will say things to you like, the Americans would have to kill us all, and we have the Russians and the Chinese behind us.

That's them repeating the line that Maduro keeps spouting. I want to get back a little bit to Juan Guaido. There are a lot of comparisons being made between him and Obama. Can you tell me a little bit more about who he is and where he came from? Okay. I'm laughing at the Obama thing because it's something that you see on paper and you think, oh, you know, what a ridiculous comparison. And then you stand a few feet away from him and you realize that's not such a ridiculous comparison. It's the mechanics of the way the man moves, the way he interacts with people, the smile, the selfie king of South America.

He is very actively charming towards people. He's a winker. You know, this is a guy who sees you in a crowd and winks at people. He makes that personal connection in the same way that Obama did. And certainly with a certain generation, I mean, at the university, people were losing their minds, pushing and shoving to try to get to him. And he was standing there, cool as a cucumber, just smiling at everybody, taking it in. So that element of him is very much Obama-esque, if you will.

But we've been talking for a long time that the opposition had no major face because the important people are exiled or in jail. And then along comes Juan Guaido. You know, he's young. He's 35 years old. He's an engineer. A couple years ago, he was in a protest and was shot. He was leading a group of student protesters,

was shot in the neck and in the back with rubber bullets or shotgun pellets. Shotgun pellets. So he's done his time on the streets, and he was elected to the National Assembly and the way the opposition parties sort of take their turn in control of the National Assembly, the way the wheel turns, it just so happened

that around January 10th, it was his party that was in control and he was in control of that party and so ding dong control of that party. And so, ding dong, it's you. Adrian, the last time we spoke, you told us that we had to watch the military. And so it looks like the military hasn't really done anything yet, including not letting this aid across the border at Colombia.

Are there any indications that their allegiances could be shifting here? For sure. I mean, you have had some defections. Some colonels have defected, but there are a lot of colonels in the Venezuelan military. They don't necessarily have large groups under their command. You haven't seen any of the major, major players yet. What you do hear is that in the lower ranks, the officers, the soldiers, the ones who are getting 23,000 bolivars a month are fed up and are saying,

there's no way I'm not going to fire on my own people. This will not happen. Evan, you know, I know this is all very much in flux right now, but if you were to speculate on what could happen here, you know, it seems like the options are the military ends this, Maduro steps aside himself, or he entrenches his power even deeper. I think I would rule out the last option.

I just can't see that happening. You know, to govern, you have to have some basic resources, and those are rapidly running out. For the military to flip, it's not going to happen, I don't think, at the very highest ranks. I think a lot of people say that they're looking at the lieutenant colonel rank. Hugo Chavez himself was lieutenant colonel when he staged his first coup. So yeah, I wish I could predict, but I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Let's just put it that way. I'm going to make a prediction that we can't predict because I don't think there's a precedent for this geopolitically. I mean, I think you have to look at a lot of countries and go back a lot of years, and I'm not sure that there's an example

that stands out that stands as a model for this. We might be in brand new territory here. Thank you to you both so much for helping us understand this. It's been a pleasure. No worries. So as Adrian and Evan mentioned in our conversation, the situation in Venezuela right now is really volatile and hard to predict. They've been filing amazing stories under very difficult circumstances. And you can check those out online or at The National. Another thing. Yesterday we put together a podcast on the big story coming out of Ottawa right now.

Allegations that former Attorney General and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured by the Prime Minister's office to intervene in the prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin. Well, a pretty significant update on Monday. The ethics commissioner has launched an investigation. At a news conference in the afternoon, the prime minister said he welcomed it. I believe that it's extremely important that Canadians can continue to have confidence in our system, and that's why I welcome the ethics commissioner's interest in this matter. Worth noting, though, even though he was in her hometown, Jody Wilson-Raybould was noticeably absent when Trudeau made his remarks. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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