Venezuelan Elegy

A land of freedom, that gave the world Simón Bolívar, has been sadly in a state of ruin during all of the 21st century. A once prosperous and proud nation that was the fourth richest country in the world is now considered a failed state. Socialism does this, for as J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote “Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” 

I am not an expert on Venezuela, by any stretch of the imagination. But for all my life the specter of what happened to that nation has haunted the Caribbean. Growing up in Puerto Rico, one rarely did not hear about Venezuela under dictators Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro as cautionary tales against voting for the Left and socialism. I also know many Venezuelans, my girlfriend, her family, many dear friends and teachers from when I was a child. I feel their pain at what Maduro has wrought, especially after another fraudulent election, and it is fitting to reflect on what happened. 

Daniel Di Martino from the Dissident Project, provided a useful timeline on X about how Venezuela was subsumed under the current insidious socialist regime. Martino explains that Venezuela’s 1976 oil nationalization led to 1980s stagnation and socialist-instigated looting in 1989. Hugo Chavez’s failed coups in 1992 preceded his 1998 election, after which he packed the Supreme Court, rewrote the constitution, and began extensive nationalizations. Following a failed 2002 coup, Chavez centralized power, imposed controls, and increased spending. His re-election in 2006 saw further nationalizations and constitutional amendments ending term limits while also shutting down the free press. 

After Chavez’s 2013 death, Nicolas Maduro’s “election“ led to a deep recession and widespread repression of protests. By 2015, the opposition-controlled National Assembly was powerless, and the refugee crisis escalated, reaching over six million by 2021. Despite continued economic decline and rampant poverty, Maduro’s regime persisted. Now in 2024 the regime held an election (with support from the Biden-Harris administration by, for example, easing oil sanctions) which according to the Carter Center and reports from multiple sources was deeply flawed and allowed the tyrant Maduro to remain in power despite the opposition’s vote tally showing that he lost the election to Edmundo Gonzalez 67% to 30%. 

How was the election stolen? According to the New York Times, there was widespread voter intimidation, changing voting stations, delays in tallying votes, irregular hours for polling places, withholding paper tallies, and not publishing the full vote count. Hours after the vote, protests erupted all over Venezuela. There are reports that Maduro is looking to detain and arrest the opposition leaders, as well as using security forces (who are loyal to the regime because of their own pecuniary interests and a web of corruption that will always be to their dishonor) to violently quell all demonstrations. All barbarous acts. 

It is not surprising that a tyrant uses brute force to remain in power. That is all they know. It is the same thing from Communist China, North Korea and Cuba to tyrannical Russia, Nicaragua, Syria and Iran. The world is sadly plagued with evil men and regimes, and it should serve as a reminder to be vigilant at home and strong abroad. 

And for Venezuela, it might seem as if there is no hope. Yet, as Argentine President Javier Milei said, “Dictator Maduro has committed elector fraud. He has awakened the Venezuelan lions, and sooner or later socialism is going to end. Socialism is always murderous. Courage, dear Venezuela.” Freedom is a very powerful force. It is engrained in the natural moral law written in every human heart. 

It usually seems that things are very dark in difficult times. To paraphrase Samwise Gamgee, how can everything possibly go back to the way it was before so much evil, so much suffering and pain? I don’t know, but by the grace of God the world made it out of the Great Depression and World Wars. Freedom triumphed over slavery, Fascism, Communism and it will triumph over the Axis of Evil of China, Russia, Iran, Maduro, Cuba and all others. 

To Vaclav Havel, Roger Scruton, Lech Wałęsa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Pope John Paul II and all those other anti-communist heroes it must have seemed like an eternity before the Iron Curtain fell. But it did. As President Ronald Reagan made sure to engrave in his tombstone, “I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.” 

To the Venezuelan heroes, such as Maria Corina Machado who refused to leave her country, standing against evil and looking at it in the face, to all those countless patriots both in their land and in exile keep fighting. Keep working. Do not give in to the regimes’ lies that they will win. Do not give in to despair. When asked to say something to the noble Polish people who fought against the Soviet Empire and Communist enslavement of their own land, Pope John Paul II told them a simple phrase so rich in Sacred Scripture: “Don’t be afraid.” 

Winston Churchill once wrote that “In harsh or melancholy epochs free men may always take comfort from the grand lesson of history, that tyrannies cannot last[.] The years which seem endless to those who endure them are but a flick of mischance in the journey.” And so I dedicate this piece especially to my beloved Natalie Chevrel, and to all those Venezuelan heroes of freedom. The dawn is coming, it might take a long time, but it will arrive. Sic semper tyrannis.