The Daily - The Standoff Over Food and Power in Venezuela

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is worsening as President Nicolás Maduro refuses to give up power and blocks food from entering the country despite widespread hunger. Here’s a look at why, in Mr. Maduro’s mind, giving up control of food means giving up power. Guest: Nicholas Casey, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. The crisis in Venezuela is worsening as President Maduro refuses to give up power and is blocking food from entering the country as his people starve. Why, in Maduro's mind, giving up control of food is giving up power.

It's Monday, February 11th. Nick Casey, where are you right now? I'm on the border of Venezuela. I'm on the Colombian side of the border, which has become one of the ground zeros of this crisis. This is where hundreds of thousands of people, Venezuelans, have crossed the border looking for food because there isn't any on the other side of the border. Nick Casey covers South America for The Times. People don't have food. They don't have medicines that they need. And just this week...

What you see here is the first shipment of what we hope will be a great flood of humanitarian relief for the people of Venezuela. A large shipment of aid came from the United States. Truckloads of food and supplies arrived at the Venezuelan border with Colombia today. Food and medicine on display in Cucuta, Colombia. It's thousands of bags and boxes with food and medicine for the Venezuelan people. Right on the border with neighboring Venezuela.

This is a down payment. This is just the beginning. And it's sitting on the border. But between that aid and Venezuela is a blockade that's been set up by Nicolas Maduro, the president. President Maduro appears determined to keep the foreign aid out. He's blocked this aid from getting in with a tanker, with a couple of shipping containers, it looks like. His troops are under orders not to let it through. And it sent the message that he does not want it coming into his country. The message from President Nicolás Maduro, stay out.

And Nick, why would the president of Venezuela block badly needed food from entering his own country? Venezuela, not Venezuela, will not allow this. Well, Maduro said that Venezuelans aren't beggars. Simply as that. But one of the things he seems to be most worried about is the possibility that this is a trick. These are historic days, he says,

that could decide between war and peace. We demand the end of US aggression and threats of military intervention. This aid is coming in as something which looks like a gift, but is actually some kind of Trojan horse being sent to destabilize him, to overthrow him ultimately. He's suggesting that the food is not actually humanitarian aid. It's a trick, even though that sounds far-fetched. He's suggesting that the food is not actually humanitarian aid.

It's a trick, even though that sounds far-fetched. Yeah, it seems extremely far-fetched because there's millions of people suffering and without food on the other side of the border. But when you look back, not just in Venezuela, but also in Latin America at large, you see a long history of the U.S. meddling in this region and overthrowing people that it doesn't want to be in charge. The first important thing you can do is to be sure you know what communism really is and how socialism ties in with it. In other words, know your enemy. So it's hard to say exactly where it begins because there's so many examples throughout this region. But the time that it really started to pick up was the Cold War. These were the years after World War II when communism and capitalism were at their loggerheads. And Latin America had become the big chessboard for the two.

It began the first week of the year when Castro's revolution overthrew the Batista regime. So this was a time where Latin Americans were trying to decide whether they were going to throw their lot with the United States or with Russia. So at this stage, the U.S. starts to get involved in these countries directly, in their elections, in their democracies, in subtle ways, in overt ways. And one of the most extreme examples of this was Chile in 1973. Dateline 1973, Chile. It began with the election of Salvador Allende,

who was from the left and had a very clear vision for where he wanted to take the country. One that Richard Nixon, who was president at the time, deeply disagreed with. Very early on, Nixon said... Shelley, of course, is interested in obtaining loans from international organizations where we have a vote. That the only way to deal with Allende was to make the Chilean economy scream. And I indicated that wherever we had a vote,

where Chile was involved, that unless there were strong considerations on the other side, that we would vote against them. The U.S. was looking for ways to get rid of Allende from the moment that he stepped into the presidential palace. And this all came to a head in September 1973, when after all of this destabilization that the U.S. had backed, a group of military officers decided that they were going to take charge.

A group of military officers decided that they were going to take charge. This began with an assault on the presidential palace, La Moneda, which everybody in Chile who was alive remembers. They remember seeing the pictures of the smoke coming up from the presidential palace, like if you'd seen smoke coming up from the White House because it had been attacked by the armed forces. Shortly afterward, Allende shot himself dead in the presidential palace, and that was the end of democracy in Chile. A military junta took charge, and the U.S. recognized it. This laid the foundation for one of the most famous dictatorships in Latin America,

which was the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. This government started to round up anyone who was seen as one of its political opponents and took them to the national stadium stadium where they began torturing them. I saw quite a lot of brutality. I've seen a man with three men with guns on him and then disappearing for a little while into the shade of the back of the stadium, into a room at the back of the stadium, and then we saw somebody just could make a map and carried out.

This was some of the darkest days that Chile had, but at the same time, Chile had become one of America's closest allies, and America had forged an alliance with the man who had become their dictator. So what began as a U.S. effort to oust Allende because Nixon feared that he leaned too much toward Russia ends up leading to the rise of a replacement who is, by all accounts, much more dangerous and destructive to the people of Chile. And that was just one example of where the U.S. tried to determine the fate of a country in Latin America.

There was Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954 in Guatemala, a leftist who got overthrown by a CIA-backed coup. These rebel troops, backed by air power, have compelled the ousting of Guatemala's pro-communist regime. There was the Bay of Pigs, which was ordered by JFK

when they tried to use Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. Cuban revolutionary troops such as these have invaded Castro's leftist island fortress. There were the Contras in Nicaragua, these right-wing paramilitary groups that were being funneled money from the Reagan administration to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Too many have thought of Central America as just that place way down below Mexico that can't possibly constitute a threat to our well-being. There was the overthrow of Manuel Noriega in Panama in the late 1980s.

There was the overthrow of Manuel Noriega in Panama in the late 1980s. To protect the integrity of the Panama Canal treaties and to bring General Manuel Noriega to justice. And then there was even Venezuela itself in 2002 when there was a coup against Hugo Chavez, President Maduro's predecessor. So remind us what happened back then in Venezuela. So Hugo Chavez had been elected democratically in 1998. He started to take a hard turn toward the left. And he was starting to hit a lot of the historic tripwires with the U.S. In December, President Hugo Chavez expropriated this 4,000-hectare cattle ranch from one of Venezuela's wealthiest families. He was talking about land redistribution.

He wanted to take control of the state oil company. about land redistribution. He wanted to take control of the state oil company. Now, remember, Venezuela has the world's largest proven reserves of oil in it. So this was something that was making the U.S. perk up. And this was the man who eventually would go to the U.N. and say that George W. Bush was the devil and that he could still smell the sulfur on the podium. In this same place, could still smell the sulfur on the podium.

This was someone who was setting himself up in direct conflict with the United States and making no bones about that. And so what does the U.S. do? So. about that. And so what does the U.S. do? So there was talk of a coup that was coming in Caracas. Now, interestingly enough, there's a CIA document which showed that they weren't interested in this. They didn't think that a coup was going to work. United States officials explicitly made clear repeatedly to opposition leaders that the United States would not support a coup. And they were only going to support a democratic solution to this. But in April of 2002, massive protests develop on the streets of Caracas. Protests develop on the streets of Caracas.

And those end up right in front of the presidential palace, and there's bloodshed there. At that point, the military stepped in and said, we're taking charge of this country. Chavez has lost control. Members of the military high command of the armed forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela deplore. Countries across Latin America were saying, we can't support this coup. Now, when people asked the U.S. immediately, what do you think of this? What's happening in Venezuela?

The U.S. didn't tell the world what it had told those that were planning the coup originally. It said that it supported the new president and that this was the only way to head towards democracy in Venezuela. Let me share with you the administration's thoughts about what's taking place in Venezuela. It remains a somewhat fluid situation. But yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a change in the government and the assumption of a transitional authority until new elections can be held. The details still are unclear. We know that the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis. Essentially backing a coup that had taken place in the country.

According to the best information available, the Chavez government suppressed peaceful demonstrations. Government supporters on orders from the Chavez government fired on unarmed, peaceful protesters resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded. It turned out to be a mistake. Because within days of Chavez being deposed, supporters came down from the barrios and said, This isn't what we asked for, surrounded the presidential palace again, and Chávez was returned to power.

And the U.S. ended up in the position where it not only supported the person that didn't become president, but it also supported yet another coup in Latin America. Nick, why so long after the Cold War, which basically ends in the early 1990s, would the United States play any meaningful role in the fate of a country like Venezuela? You know, it looked like the temptation of being a superpower was just too great. They had the chance to influence the course of a country's history, and they took it. And the president addressed that this morning in the Oval Office when he said that if there's a lesson to be learned, it's a question of will President Chavez learn the lesson? So the irony of all of this is that in supporting this coup, the U.S. gave Chavez the tools to make

America the boogeyman and actually start his very radical project of transforming Venezuela. He purged the military. He set up parallel parts of the government. And he also laid the groundwork, which Maduro started using when he became president, to completely undermine Venezuela's democracy and set into motion the crisis that we've got today. So how do these historical examples factor into Maduro's thinking in this moment? Years ago, the United States officially recognized the legitimate government of Venezuela and its new president, Juan Guaido. These have got to be Maduro's nightmares right now. He was growing up when this happened with Salvador Allende. He was in the government when this happened to Hugo Chavez. He was in the government when this happened to Hugo Chavez. These are the points of reference that he has when he sees the U.S. at his doorstep, recognizing his rival. And we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime.

Dozens of countries have come out to support Guaido, saying that they don't recognize Maduro anymore. This must be what's going through his head. And is he right to think that? Is it fair to compare what's going on now with Chile or with Chavez? Ooh, that's a hard question. In Maduro's head, it's probably a fair comparison. But Maduro isn't Allende, and he's not Hugo Chavez. Salvador Allende's daughter came out recently and said,

Maduro is not like my father. Don't make that comparison. Salvador Allende was democratically elected. Hugo Chavez was democratically elected. We're not talking about a democratically elected leader who was trying to lead a transformation of his country. We're talking about someone who's desperate and trying to hang on to power. Maduro, in order to win re-election, had to ban all of his

closest rivals from even participating. They've put out arrest warrants against members of the opposition. They've cracked down on protesters when they come out into the streets. They've killed scores of people. So Maduro is right to fear that the U.S. is trying to undermine him, but he's wrong in seeing himself in the tradition of Allende as a democratically elected leader who the U.S. is trying to oust. Yes, but what is the same here is that the U.S. has gotten invested once again in regime change. And the weapon that they're wielding right now is food. Food that they want to cross the border to go into the hands of Mr. Maduro's rivals,

for those rivals to be seen as the legitimate government of the country because they can distribute the food, and eventually for Maduro to be toppled by all of this. And what's interesting is that Maduro has a history of using food as a weapon himself. His government is in charge of food distribution in the country, especially for the poor. And during the last election,

he repeatedly said that if he won re-election, he would give major food bonuses to poor areas, especially those who had voted for him. He called this dando y dando, which in Spanish would mean, I give, you give. In other words, you give me your vote, and I give you the food. Wow. So he understands better than anyone that the person who controls the food is the one who controls the votes in the country. And it sounds like the U.S. understands that just as well. Yeah, it's a lesson which definitely hasn't been lost in the U.S.

So that's the thing that bothers Maduro the most. That's the thing that he's worried about when he's looking at those containers on the other side of the border. Self-declared interim president Juan Guaidó seems hopeful that he can provide what Maduro cannot, while at the same time tempting the military to change sides. And if they don't, there's a plan B. I am convinced that we will get the aid through with the Venezuelans.

People, people and more people carrying the humanitarian aid. People, people and more people making a humanitarian corridor a reality. But if the opposition fails at this, this is going to have huge consequences for them. They've said they can open a humanitarian corridor into Venezuela. They've got Venezuelans' hope up that there might be food on their shelves,

that there might be milk in the refrigerator, they might have something to eat. And if they can't do that, it's not clear who's going to follow them. It's not clear whether people are going to think of them the same way that they're thinking of Maduro, another politician that can't give them anything to eat. So that is why Maduro is blocking this food. This is the meaning of the Trojan horse. He knows that if the food gets into the hands of his opponents and his opponents begin distributing it to hungry Venezuelans, then they become the de facto government and Maduro could be seen as even less legitimate than before. Maduro is a politician and he knows that politically there's more at stake than just that food.

But for the Venezuelan people, for people who are hungry, for people that I've talked to that have had to flee Venezuela, I've talked to many of these people. They're not concerned about politics at that point. If you don't have food for your kids, you're thinking about whether you have something to eat in the morning. You're not thinking about that geopolitical chess game that's taking place at the border. If you're hungry, this is food. You just want to eat it. You don't care about the politics of this. You just need something to eat.

I'm not hoping for food or anything else for me. I want this aid to get in because people are dying. Mr. President, we are dying. Families are dying. In the days since the U.S. declared its intention to replace Nicolas Maduro as president of Venezuela, the Trump administration has appointed a special envoy to the country, who earlier in his career was deeply involved in some of America's most controversial Cold War activities in Latin America. The envoy, Elliott Abrams, pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the 1980s about the Reagan administration's illegal scheme to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. And documents show that Abrams also misled the public about human rights abuses in El Salvador, including the massacre of nearly 1,000 civilians by U.S.-trained soldiers.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. I think the talks are stalled right now. I'm hoping we can get off the dime later today or in the morning because time's ticking away. On Sunday, negotiations over a long-term border security agreement between Democrats and Republicans appeared to break down, increasing the odds of another government shutdown by the end of the week. But we've got some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE, that is, detaining criminals that come into the U.S. And they want to cap on them. We don't want to cap on that. The 17 House and Senate members charged with negotiating a deal, including Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, have reached an impasse over how many undocumented immigrants the U.S. can detain at any given time, with Democrats demanding limits that Republicans will not accept.

Under the temporary spending bill passed to end last month's shutdown, government funding will run out by Friday, prompting acting White House Chief of Staff Nick Mulvaney on Meet the Press to suggest that a shutdown was still quite possible. We cannot definitively rule out a government shutdown at the end of this week. You absolutely cannot. A shutdown entirely off the table, the answer is no. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.