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BUENOS AIRES — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro calls Argentine President Javier Milei a “cowardly bug,” “fascist trash” and an “ugly, stupid SOB.” To Mr. Milei, the socialist strongman in Caracas is the political gift that keeps on giving.
The continent-spanning ideological grudge match shows little sign of ending. Mr. Milei’s favorite villain will likely remain on the political stage for years.
On Friday, Mr. Maduro is expected to cement his control over Venezuela in a contested inauguration ceremony. He refused to relinquish power after his presidential election defeat last year.
Mr. Milei, a self-styled libertarian populist, denounces “cancerous” socialism as Venezuela descends into full-fledged authoritarianism. His strong support for the embattled Venezuelan opposition, his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump, and his firmness in the face of Caracas’ provocations make him an uncomfortable thorn in Mr. Maduro’s side.
Political scientist Tomas Mugica said the staunchly capitalist Mr. Milei has purposefully “positioned himself as the polar opposite of Mr. Maduro,” who, at least on paper, still champions his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s socialist “Bolivarian revolution.”
“Milei is someone who understands that foreign policy is part of a culture war,” said Mr. Mugica, who teaches international relations at Buenos Aires’ Catholic University of Argentina. “And in this spirit, he sees Venezuela as a kind of ‘anti-model.’”
The Argentine leader welcomed opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez on Saturday as Venezuela’s “president-elect” and appeared alongside him on the symbolically charged balcony of the presidential Casa Rosada.
Buenos Aires and Washington consider Mr. Gonzalez the real winner of the July 28 election. Thousands of expatriates, part of the estimated 8 million Venezuelans who have fled the country since Mr. Maduro took power in 2013, feted Mr. Gonzalez in the historic Plaza de Mayo.
“What President Milei has done — to recognize him and to meet him and to have the [expat] community in the Plaza de Mayo — I believe is a milestone,” said Vincenzo Pensa, who helps lead the Association of Venezuelans in the Argentine Republic.
The Venezuelan regime appears to be on edge as Mr. Maduro prepares to take the oath for a third six-year term in office. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, a key ally of Mr. Gonzalez, emerged from months of hiding Thursday and called for mass demonstrations to stop the swearing-in ceremony. She was arrested immediately.
Riot police were out in force in Caracas in a bid to intimidate would-be demonstrators, The Associated Press reported. The streets of the Venezuelan capital were emptied as schools, businesses and government agencies shuttered over fear of violence, AP reported.
“They wanted us to fight each other, but Venezuela is united. We are not afraid,” Ms. Machado reportedly shouted to a few hundred protesters from atop a truck in the capital moments before her arrest.
After visiting President Biden in Washington this week, Mr. Gonzalez attempted to rally regional support against the Maduro government. The opposition leader, who fled to Spain after the contested election results, stopped in Panama and the Dominican Republic and claimed another diplomatic victory when leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced he would not attend the inauguration festivities in Venezuela.
“We can’t recognize elections that were not free,” Mr. Petro wrote Wednesday on social media platform X.
Standing out
Mr. Milei’s explicit embrace of Mr. Gonzalez, a former diplomat making his first run for elective office, sets him apart from other regional leaders. The heads of Brazil and Mexico have cast doubt on Mr. Maduro’s victory and will not attend his inauguration but have stopped short of rolling out the red carpet for his would-be successor.
The Argentine leader was back at it again Thursday, seemingly unable to resist commenting on Ms. Machado’s arrest and the uneasy state of Caracas on the eve of Mr. Maduro’s inauguration.
Mr Melei “calls on the region’s governments to repudiate the attack against Corina Machado and to demand the end of the socialist regime that has left millions of Venezuelans in poverty, exiled or dependent on the dictatorship’s handouts, creating a true hell on Earth,” the Argentine government said in a statement.
Mr. Gonzalez’s visit culminated a crescendo of tensions between Buenos Aires and Caracas, which began when six Venezuelan opposition leaders were granted political asylum at the Argentine Embassy four months into Mr. Milei’s presidency.
Repeated power outages and constant patrols of heavily armed militia have since besieged the mission. Brazil became a protecting power when Mr. Milei cut diplomatic relations with the Maduro regime over apparent electoral fraud.
Tensions were further inflamed in early December when authorities in the western state of Tachira arrested Nahuel Gallo, a corporal in Argentina’s National Gendarmerie who had entered Venezuela on a private trip to visit his wife and young daughter.
Unable to provide consular assistance or even ascertain Mr. Gallo’s condition and whereabouts, the Argentine government accused Mr. Maduro of “arbitrary detention and forced disappearance” and pressed charges against his prosecutor general, Tarek William Saab, before the International Criminal Court.
Mr. Maduro countered this week by claiming the police officer had entered Venezuela with orders to kill his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez. On Wednesday, he announced the capture of seven additional foreigners, including two Americans, whom he accused of a conspiracy to overthrow his regime.
In a tersely worded communique, the Argentine Foreign Ministry said it “categorically rejects dictator Nicolas Maduro’s false and unfounded accusations.” The State Department voiced its concerns over arrests “without justification or due process.”
Attempts to up the ante with more provocations point to the regime’s increasing weakness, diplomat Milos Alcalay said. They include Mr. Saab’s colorful request for Interpol to detain Mr. Milei over the 2022 seizure of a Venezuelan cargo plane.
“It’s the anxiety of a government that gets everything wrong. It’s like a boomerang,” said Mr. Alcalay, who once served as Mr. Chavez’s ambassador to the United Nations. “They have to throw the hard-liners something, like in Roman times: bread and circus.”
Amid his “national and international isolation,” Mr. Alcalay said, Mr. Maduro is finding it increasingly difficult to hide the loss of his electoral base.
“[The opposition’s] followers aren’t Martians,” he said. “They are the same ones who voted for Chavez.”
The former ambassador said Mr. Milei should be applauded for his outspokenness on the Venezuelan regime’s shortcomings and his solidarity with its victims. Mr. Gonzalez, whose visit he insisted was to the country, not just its president, nimbly avoided being used as a political trump card.
Still, what may be good politics for Mr. Milei can turn into a practical nightmare for Venezuelan nationals here who, with the Venezuelan Embassy in Buenos Aires shuttered, now find their closest consulate in La Paz, Bolivia, some 1,400 miles from the Argentine capital.
“To feel that you don’t have the ability to take care of formalities is more and more frightening,” Mr. Pensa said. “All we have left now is Bolivia and Brazil. That’s the greatest worry.”
Given that Venezuela is not a major creditor or trading partner, the political benefits of further antagonizing Mr. Maduro likely outweigh any risks for Mr. Milei, Mr. Mugica said
He predicted that the Argentine president would be in harmony with the White House and the State Department after Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
“Everything indicates that Trump will take a more hawkish position than Biden,” Mr. Mugica said, and “people like [Secretary of State nominee] Marco Rubio will fully agree with Milei’s policy toward Venezuela.”
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