Poster for Orinoco Tribune's new episode of "Coffee and Chavistas," with Venezuelan analyst and founder of Misión Verdad Diego Sequera. Photo: Orinoco Tribune.
Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—In a new episode of Orinoco Tribune’s Coffee and Chavistas program, Orinoco Tribune editor and founder Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza interviewed Diego Sequera, founder and member of the Misión Verdad news outlet, about recent developments in Venezuelan politics, the Essequibo dispute, and the anti-Chavista position adopted by the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV).
Diego Sequera is a Venezuelan journalist, author, political analyst, and researcher. He graduated in Arts from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and was part of the Documentary Support Unit of the Secretariat of the Presidency during the presidency of Hugo Chávez.
Sequera made several important comments about the recent Venezuelan Supreme Court ruling ratifying far-right politician María Corina Machado’s political disqualification as well as on the arrest of Venezuelan USAID-backed NGOist Rocío San Miguel and Washinton’s maneuvers to use these events as evidence of a nonexistent violation of the Barbados Agreement by Venezuelan authorities. He explained that whatever the White House rhetoric might be, its ultimate goal is to own Venezuelan oil and energy sources.
“Actually the main US interest, which is not anyone’s human rights, it’s oil, it’s energy,” he said. “It has to do with the energy market, it has to do with the supply of energy and also has to do with how much they’re going to resort to their own strategic reserves, after the special military operation started in Ukraine, which with all the sanction package that the US and Europe tried to isolate Russia, sadly backfired.”
Regarding the resignation of Joe Biden’s special advisor for Western Hemisphere in the US National Security Council and his replacement by Brian Nicols of the US Department of Defense, Sequera does not see any possibility of change in the US policy towards Venezuela. However, he recognized that in the United States the de facto powers sometimes have more influence on foreign policy than the president.
“There might be differences in style, there might be differences in method and approach, ways of engagement, but it’s the same aim, the same goal all the time, which is regime change. The difference is that the demographics these people were looking for, a more sugar-coated approach was actually also conceived and ringed by fintechs, by fintech land,” Sequera noted, highlighting the relevance of a Wilson Center document published on December 27, 2022, that in his opinion has served as a route map for Washington’s approach against Chavismo in recent months.
As for the Rocío San Miguel case, Sequera explained, “You can go check Wikileaks, there are several cables which they talk about in 2005, 2006, 2007, there’s even William Brownfield, who was of course ambassador of Colombia before that and now part of fintech land because now he’s part of the Wilson Center. He talks about San Miguel as a person who’s very much involved in the USAID. So the current investigations about her specifically or around her to be more accurate were about her role in a major plot, which was she was going to be like some sort of coordinator about everything that had to do with military affairs. And her main task was to inform in real-time all the military affairs that were going on throughout Venezuela—Venezuelan army bases, air bases, infantry bases, and what not. And this is something that’s actually very well investigated. There’s a lot of evidence about it.”
Sequera commented that all these events will soon be forgotten because for the US this is not a “solidarity issue” but more a maneuver due to anxiety over the information that San Miguel might provide to Venezuelan authorities, and she might end up naming some names due to her long-standing destabilization activities as a US asset.
Essequibo dispute
Regarding the Essequibo dispute and the recent actions taken by the Venezuelan state to exercise sovereignty over an area de facto controlled by Guyana but that for about two centuries has been claimed by Venezuela as its own, Sequera briefly explained the historical development around the issue and highlighted the relevance of the 1966 Geneva Agreement as the only tool for resolving the controversy in an amicable and mutually satisfactory manner.
While discussing the Guyanese and mainstream media argument that claim that the 1966 Geneva Agreement is not being valid because Guyana did not sign it while it was independent, that narrative deviates from the historical fact that representatives of the to-be-independent Guyana signed the Geneva Agreement and that it was even ratified in 1970 when Venezuelan and Guyanese authorities signed the Port of Spain Protocol.
Sequera also commented that the Geneva Agreement had been breached by the Guyanese side by not adopting the steps of peaceful resolution stipulated in the United Nations Charter before sending the case unilaterally to the International Court of Justice. Thus the Guyanese government did not respect the letter of the Geneva Agreement that directs that any decision on the dispute should be taken by mutual accord.
Sequera recalled that it was in 2015, when the US oil transnational ExxonMobil discovered oil off the coast of Guyana, that the historically more-or-less amicable dispute took a different and more aggressive turn. He explained that this led to Venezuela deciding to organize a referendum on the Essequibo in December 2023 and the people overwhelmingly voted in favor of the government proposals.
On the issue of mainstream media and Washinton portraying the referendum as a de-facto annexation of the Essequibo territory by Venezuela by the creation of the Guayana Esequiba state, he explained that in reality, it was a symbolical incorporation of the territory as the least aggressive exercise of sovereignty that Venezuela could do.
Sequera noted that because of the referendum, Guyanese authorities finally agreed to sit down with Venezuelan authorities to look for common ground and a diplomatic solution, something that the Guyanese side had been rejecting for years, especially since ExxonMobil began to operate in Guyana. The referendum led to the meeting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with his Guyanese counterpart Irfaan Ali in December 2023 in Argyle, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the signing of the Argyle Declaration that set a route map for a diplomatic rapprochement between the two countries.
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Sequera dismissed the narrative created by some leftist circles in the US and Canada about Venezuelan authorities not consulting the Guyanese people or the indigenous communities of the Essequibo region and thus Venezuela acting as a proto-imperialist power. According to the journalist, this narrative is part of the irrationality of certain individuals or groups which, instead of helping the socialist cause, play the game of imperialism. Some other groups tried to diminish the lawful Venezuelan claim through automatic Black-Afro solidarity.
The PCV-PSUV controversy
As for the confrontation between the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the deviation of the PCV from the lines and principles of Chavismo, Dieqgo Sequera was emphatic in pointing out that this situation has been created by the dictatorship that has taken control of the PCV for more than two decades and this has created friction within the party cadre.
“When was the last time you heard a congress where the Central Committee renewed itself? Renewed, yes, they are all the same people all the time, at least for the last 20 years… It’s already fossilized,” said Sequera. He added that the PCV also receives financing from “somewhere else” and named former oil minister and currently wanted in Venezuela for corruption, Rafael Ramírez.
Sequera clarified that he was a big supporter of the PCV during Chávez’s time, not for the merits of the party itself but for what it represented. He then made a profound historical analysis of the PCV during the 20th century and found out how the party was plagued with infiltrations, internal disputes, wrong decisions, and betrayals.
He remarked that PCV statements recurrently aligning with Washington and hegemonic media narrative against Venezuela not only harm Chavismo but also, more importantly, the sovereignty of Venezuela.
Regarding the recurrent PCV accusations against President Maduro and the supposed persecution by his government, Sequera commented that PCV comes out with this drama every year and that the party leadership loves to victimize itself.
Sequera added that he could have been harsher towards the PCV in his comments but that he opted to be moderate because of the respect he has for the positive historic leadership of the party.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/JRE/SC
