In the eyes of President Joe Biden and much of the world, Edmundo González Urrutia is the rightful next president of Venezuela. Yet he’s in Washington this week seeking America’s help making that a reality.
Venezuela holds its inauguration on Friday, and strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro is planning to be sworn in. González says he, too, intends to be there to take the oath of office — if he can reach Venezuela’s shores, avoid the $100,000 bounty on his head, and convince Maduro to step aside. The odds are against González, but he’s doing his best to convince Biden, aides to President-elect Donald Trump and other American leaders to support his cause.
In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, the 75-year-old González was upbeat about his prospects. He stressed that he wants a peaceful transfer of power in Venezuela, and is not requesting outside military intervention, but he also pointed to some not-quite-analogous examples of transitions that at times felt impossible.
“Look at what happened with Assad,” he said, meaning the recently ousted Syrian dictator. “Look at what happened with the Libyan government. They fell down one day and disappeared.”
González shared his thoughts after meetings with Biden and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), whom Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. González — whom Maduro forced into exile last September — stopped in Washington as part of an international tour to rally global support ahead of the inauguration.
González said his message to Biden was one of gratitude and a request for more support for the Venezuelan people. He wouldn’t go into specifics about what that meant, but the possibilities include more sanctions and more legal targeting of Maduro and his aides on criminal matters.
“They know what they have to do. We don't have to give lessons to the U.S. administration,” González said. “They have done a lot. It’s not sufficient.”
And what did Biden pledge to him? “We will do whatever we can.”
The Biden administration in November recognized the opposition’s victory, and the White House readout of Biden’s meeting with González referred to him as Venezuela’s president-elect. According to the readout, Biden “underscored the U.S. commitment to continue to hold Maduro and his representatives accountable for their anti-democratic and repressive actions.”
Still, even with U.S. backing, González and the rest of Venezuela’s opposition face many barriers, not the least of which is that Venezuela’s armed forces continue to support Maduro. The strongman has outlasted previous efforts to push him from power, including a push six years ago under the first Trump administration.
González has not been able to get a meeting with Trump, but his aides are in touch with people in Trump’s orbit in the hopes of influencing the incoming U.S. president’s thinking. González indicated that his conversations with the incoming national security adviser gave him hope. Waltz, as a lawmaker from Florida, is well-aware of issues involving Latin America and its diaspora.
“He's very kind and very clever and very sympathetic to our cause,” González said.
The United States has over several years imposed many economic sanctions on Caracas, but there’s more the U.S. can do on both sanctions and other fronts, especially when it comes to targeting Venezuela’s energy sector.
Venezuela’s chaos has many implications for U.S. national security. Venezuela is an oil giant with ties to U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia. Its problems exacerbated a migration crisis on America’s southern border. Its government is widely seen as a criminal enterprise that has wrecked the country’s economy. Venezuela also often detains Americans and other foreigners to use as bargaining chips in international negotiations.
Waltz and others who plan to work for Trump in his second term, including secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, have often taken tough stances against Maduro and backed the opposition forces in Venezuela.
During his first term, Trump rallied many other countries to refuse to recognize Maduro’s highly questionable win in a previous election. Through a Venezuelan constitutional mechanism, the U.S. declared that another opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, was the country’s interim president. That effort eventually fizzled out.
The situation in Venezuela is arguably more complicated now, and Maduro more entrenched. Trump also is keen on maintaining low oil prices and lowering migration to the United States, so his policy toward Caracas could be affected by what further pressuring the country could do on those fronts. He might be hesitant, for instance, to impose more sanctions on Venezuela if it could mean more people flee the country and head to the United States.
At the same time, Trump has pledged to crack down on migrants already in the United States. That could include stripping various groups, including Venezuelans, of legal protections that permit them to stay.
When asked what he would advise Trump when it came to dealing with the Venezuelan migrants in the United States, González said: “Help us to get rid of Maduro, and when that happens, the Venezuelans who left the country will be back again to Venezuela.”
González, a retired diplomat, was named the opposition’s presidential candidate after the movement’s leader, María Corina Machado was barred from running.
The Venezuelan opposition published extensive voter data showing González handily defeated Maduro in the July 28 presidential election. But Maduro refused to concede and his government has cracked down on opposition activists in the months since.
Maduro and his loyalists control all key state institutions in Venezuela. González decided he had to leave Venezuela in September when the government issued an arrest warrant for him, accusing him of several crimes. He went to Spain.
Days ago, Maduro offered a $100,000 reward for information on González’s location. González nonetheless said Monday that he will reach his country’s inauguration Friday “by any means possible — by plane, by ship, by road, by cycle.”
Machado herself is believed to be somewhere in Venezuela, though in hiding. She has called for protests to be held on Thursday in Venezuela, and she herself may make an appearance.
González is continuing to visit other countries in the hemisphere and said he will not be at the Thursday rally. According to the White House, Biden said he would be following the Thursday protests closely, and that “Venezuelans should be allowed to express their political opinions peacefully without fear of reprisal from the military and police.”
González had a long career as a diplomat — including a stint in Washington, where his daughter was born, more than 40 years ago. He enjoyed walking in Rock Creek Park, he said, calling the posting one of the most interesting he held.
Asked why he agreed to take on the mantle of opposition presidential candidate at this stage in life, he struck a patriotic note.
“I did it for my country,” he said. “I mean, I could have stayed at home, watching Netflix and TV and things like that, and going out to the beach on weekends, but I think this is the moment to act.”
After years of economic deprivation and political repression, do the Venezuelan people still have the energy to oust the strongman?
“The people are fed up, are tired” of the regime, he said. A transition is inevitable, and, as far as the opposition’s role goes, it will be peaceful, González argued.
“If it’s not this week, it will be next week, it will be next month,” he said. “But it will happen, sooner rather than later.”
