22 January 2020 — FAIR
by Lucas Koerner
In Jacobin (2/5/19)…
It’s been a year since Juan Guaidó began his US-anointed mandate as “interim president” of Venezuela.
Following the opposition leader’s failure to secure reelection as National Assembly president this month, Washington and its corporate media stenographers have hysterically decried a “coup” (FAIR.org, 1/10/20) against the coup leader, moving absurdly to recognize a new parallel parliament that he can still be in charge of.
However, the January 23 anniversary of Guaidó’s farcical self-proclamation has a darker legacy largely ignored by the corporate media: the almost unprecedented US decision to recognize a leader with no effective state control has unleashed a level of economic warfare unseen outside of Cuba, Iran or North Korea.
Who would have thought that, during the attempted coup d’état in Venezuela on January 23 and its immediate aftermath, Caracas would become, only five months later, the epicentre of the Latin American left? The XXV São Paulo Forum is planned for July 25–28 in the very Caracas that was supposed to be in the hands of the US and its allies. The day of the coup attempt, international hemispheric right-wing reaction – from the north, in Ottawa, through Washington, DC, to Bogotá and southward to Lima and Santiago de Chile – was ready to get the champagne bottles popping.
