Where is Guaidó 2.0?

While the old Guaidó lives it up in Florida, at somebody’s apparent expense, the new Guaidó, Edmundo González Urritia, seems determined to spoil Maduro’s party.  

The former US-selected interim president of Venezuela Juan Guaidó is currently living in Florida, where he gives occasional classes at the Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom while under investigation by the FBI for allegedly fleecing US taxpayers. One thing I learned from reading Gauido’s bio on the Adam Smith Center’s website is that the former “interim president” of Venezuela is a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program.

It just goes to show that not all graduates of the program when on to great things. In recent days, Guaidó, who is also wanted on charges of treason, usurpation of functions and money laundering back in his home country, was caught on a smartphone camera drinking and chatting at one of Florida’s most exclusive tennis clubs.

Guaidó jugando padell en Miami mientras en sus redes pide que en Venezuela haya una guerra civil.

Véalo Ud mismo 👀

pic.twitter.com/bMzbAQfzbW

— Michel Caballero Palma (@MichelCaballero) January 9, 2025

While Guaidó wines and dines with Florida’s well-to-do, many Venezuelans are asking themselves how he is able to fund such a lavish lifestyle. From the Brazilian media outlet Globo Vision (machine translated from Spanish):

Juan Guaidó is once again viral on social media for his pleasures in Miami, United States, after appearing playing paddle tennis with his wealthy friends and squandering the money he stole from the Venezuelan people.

A video shows him very comfortable and happy wearing sportswear at an important paddle tennis club in Miami, this after having asked for sanctions against Venezuela and promoting suffocation of the Venezuelan family.

It should be noted that the former deputy and fugitive from Venezuelan justice has not been able to explain how he covers his luxuries in the North American nation.

In mid-2023, it was impossible for him to explain in an interview how he covers his living expenses, or what he lives on, while he remains in the United States, a country in which he is a refugee.

“I am an engineer. I have two postgraduate degrees,” was the response of the former parliamentarian, who did not offer further details on whether he practices this profession to finance his stay in the North American country. When asked how he supports himself abroad, the journalist said: “I do not believe that you are working as an engineer these days.”

In addition, at the end of 2023, the media reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States is investigating the destination of millions of dollars that the White House approved for humanitarian aid for the so-called “interim government” headed by Guaidó.

On the relentless social networks, comments against Guaidó are gaining ground. Users talk about the significant transformation since his flight to the United States and wonder about that life in Miami, characterized by luxury and comfort.

The New Guaidó

But where is the new Guaidó?

Edmundo González Urrutia, the 75-year old former diplomat who, according to the opposition’s calculations, won Venezuela’s elections on July 28 by a landslide, only to flee to Spain just over a month later, has spent the past week touring Latin America trying to drum up support for his claim to the presidency. The countries he visited include Argentina, where he was given a hero’s welcome by Argentine President Javier Milei; Uruguay; the United States, where he met with Biden but was unable to secure a meeting with Trump; Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Here is a tweet from the original Juan Guaidó celebrating Guaidó 2.0’s appearance at the Casa Rosada in Argentina alongside Milei. “We will be free,” Guaidó writes, before thanking Milei for “bearing witness to the defence of democracy”:

Seremos libres.

El presidente electo de 🇻🇪 @EdmundoGU en 🇦🇷

Gracias presidente Milei por dar testimonio de la defensa de la democracia. pic.twitter.com/qP6eoqw4Dv

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) January 4, 2025

Here is another video of a very frail-looking González backstage being supported and shepherded by two women, one of whom I believe is his daughter. This is a man who, to all intents and purposes, can barely walk without the help of others, who makes even Biden look fit and strong, yet who is expected (by some) to seize power from Maduro today.

Edmundo González no puede ni caminar solo. Lo tienen que sostener entre dos mujeres. El títere que escogieron para representar los intereses de María Corina (y por tanto de 🇺🇸 + 🇮🇱) está más senil que Biden.pic.twitter.com/jOXluW1W97

— El Necio (@ElNecio_Cuba) January 7, 2025

Of course, González Urritia is nothing more than a place-holder for Marina Corina Machado, who is the de facto leader of Venezuela’s main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unitary Platform. Machado was barred from standing for election in July due to corruption charges and because, for years, she has toured the world trying to organize a US or Israel-led invasion of Venezuela. Often referred to by her supporters as “Venezuela’s Iron Lady”, she is also the CIA’s lady in Caracas. Unlike González Urritia, she is still in Venezuela, albeit in hiding.

So, where is González now?

As of writing (1 am, Friday, Mexico City), González Urritia is in Santa Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. This is apparently his final stepping stone to Caracas where he will apparently claim his presidential title, on the same day that Maduro is scheduled to begin a third six-year time. González Urritia will be accompanied in that endeavour by seven former Latin American heads of state, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, Vincente Fox, both former presidents of Mexico, Andrés Pastrana (Colombia), Yamir Mahuad (Ecuador), Mireya Moscoso (Panama), Ernesto Pérez Balladares (also of Panama) and Mario Abdo Benítez (Paraguay).

These seven former statesmen and woman claim to be champions of freedom and democracy yet Felipe Calderon, for instance, is strongly suspected of rigging Mexico’s 2006 elections in his favour as well as having close ties with the Sinaloa drug cartel. Jamil Mahuad, in 2014, was sentenced in absentia (after absconding to the US) to 12 years in prison for the crime of embezzlement. During her ten years in power was also accused of embezzlement while subjecting Panama to an “absolute subordination” to the United States. Pastrana, meanwhile, is accused of flying with on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express to the tycoon’s infamous island.

By the time you read this, on Friday morning or later, González Irritu and his seven companions may already be in Venezuela, probably in custody. All of this has been organised by the IDEA Group (Democratic Initiative of Spain and the America), an ad hoc forum comprising former heads of state and governments of Spain and Latin America — all of a right-wing, neoliberal bent — that, in its own words “seeks to strengthen Ibero-American and international solidarity in favour of democracy itself, the rule of law, and the effective and universal guarantee and protection of human rights.”

Here is a full list of the former heads of state and government that signed the Declaration of Panama recognising González Urritia as president-elect and calling for him to be instated as president on January 10.

González Urritia and the seven ex-presidents, if indeed that is how many are on board when the plane takes off, are unlikely to receive the red carpet treatment on their arrival in Caracas.

Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan Parliament, announced earlier this week that the authorities will distribute “wanted” posters throughout the country against the seven former Latin American presidents. On the posters, each ex-president is labelled as an “invader” and accused of “conspiracy and complicity in terrorist acts, as well as of attacking the peace of Venezuela.” There is also a $100,000 price on González Urritia’s head. His son has already been detained.

In a televised address, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello asks: “how do these people intend to enter a country to which they are not invited?” And more importantly, whose government they seek to overthrow?

Still No Clarity

Even by this stage in proceedings, more than five months after the the July 28 election, it is still still not clear who won. Maduro was declared the winner by the National Electoral Council (CNE), a collegiate body with a pro-government majority.  The Supreme Court has also supported Maduro’s claims while ruling that voting tallies published online by opposition parties showing Maduro lost by a landslide were forged.

But the CNE did not present the ballots that proved that Maduro had obtained 6.4 million votes, just over a million more than Gonazález’s 5.3 million. It is the first time this has ever happened. For its part, the opposition claims to have collected and exhibited 83.5% of the voting records as proof of González Irritu’s crushing victory over Maduro, which were duly endorsed by some international electoral observers including the Carter Center.

However, as flagged in a previous post, concerns have been raised that the Carter Center may not be quite as independent an electoral observer as it once seemingly was. One possible reason for this is that its current CEO, Paige Alexander, who was appointed in 2020 — i.e., after Venezuela’s previous election but before this one — has spent the lion’s share of her career working for USAID, the CIA’s soft-power arm. She has also served on the board of the Free Russia Foundation.

If that doesn’t raise enough flags, there’s also the Carter Center’s list of donors to take into account. The highest bracket of sponsors ($1 MILLION+) includes the US State Department, which already declared Venezuela’s opposition candidate as electoral victor, USAID, Belgium, the UK Development Office, Pfizer, Open Society, Coca Cola, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Foundation, to name just a few. It really is quite an impressive list.

Put simply, there is still no definitive proof. Nonetheless, more than 50 countries have already recognized Maduro’s electoral triumph since August, according to the accounts of the ruling party. They include Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Turkey and Qatar, as well as other countries in the Arab world – including the fallen regime of Syria – Africa and the Caribbean. In Latin America, only Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Honduras have recognised his victory.

On the other side of the divide are a smattering of countries that have recognised Edmundo González as president elect, including the US and some of its client states in the region, such as Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Guatemala and Costa Rica. Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, three Latin American powers with left-leaning governments and close ties to Venezuela, have tried to maintain a neutral stance. In all three cases, they are expected to be represented by their ambassadors in Caracas during Maduro’s inauguration. But none of them have been willing to recognise Maduro’s alleged victory.

The Poisoned Legacy of Guaidó

The humiliating experience of the Guaidó farce appears to have left an indelible mark on many national governments. For example, the only EU country that has recognised González Urritia as president elect is Meloni’s Italy. Brussels itself refuses to take a position either way, though the European Parliament has recognised González Urritia. Even the UK, which continues to hold onto Venezuela’s gold and which did everything it could to support the Guaidó parallel government’s claims to that gold, is still sitting on the fence on this one.

As for the US, it is surprisingly hard to fathom what position it will take once Trump is back in power. With Marco Rubio leading the State Department, it is hard to imagine Washington taking a softer stance toward Maduro. However, Trump himself is apparently facing pressure from oil execs to maintain Biden’s policy of granting concessions to Maduro to secure oil imports from Venezuela. There is also the question of Venezuelan migrants. According to the first-time Republican senator, Bernie Moreno, Donald Trump, will end up working with Nicolás Maduro, “since he is the one who will take office”.

“They had an election, people say it wasn’t fair, but at the end of the day,” the top U.S. priorities will be stopping the flow of drugs and that Maduro take back many Venezuelan undocumented immigrants. This could be in exchange for economic concessions from the US. It is also true that Trump will probably have enough on his hands buying Greenland, absorbing Canada into the US, invading Panama and taking on Mexico’s drug cartels. Such a prospect is causing anxiety among Venezuela’s opposition and its supporters in the US.

Overly Dynamic

Meanwhile, on the streets of towns and cities across Venezuela the heat is once again rising. To borrow from Lambert, “the situation is overly dynamic”. Large protests are taking place on both sides of the divide. On Thursday, Maria Corina Machado emerged from hiding to address protesters in the capital. After her speech, word suddenly broke out that she had been detained by over a dozen police officers. There were rumours of gunshots yet not a single piece of footage of the incident. Machado was then quickly “released,” according to her party, Vente Venezuela.

The story was apparently bull. Within less than an hour, a video appeared showing Machado admitting that nothing had happened. She had simply lost her purse. But the word had already spread all over the world. Within minutes, the Spanish government, presumably terrified of being caught napping by Spain’s right-wing opposition, and the Milei administration in Argentina had denounced Machado’s detainment. Hours later, politicians and jouralists were still talking about her illegal detention.

Chavistas have accused Machado of using this fabricated — and seemingly well-rehearsed — routine to distract from the fact that the demonstration had been a total dud. In one video, shared by the Venezuela News agency, there are barely 100 demonstrators in attendance. Whether the video is genuine is hard to tell, but one thing is clear: if tens of thousands of people had attended the protest, social and mainstream media would be awash with videos, photos and drone shots testifying to its size. As far as I can tell, it isn’t.

That said, given the scale of the Maduro government’s crackdown, perhaps it’s little surprise that the protest was lightly attended. Maduro has mobilised “organs of integral direction” (ODIS), a structure that centralises political power, the Armed Forces, the Bolivarian National Militia, police forces and community groups, with the stated aim of maintaining order. According to the the Argentine media Infobae, “it is a mechanism of absolute territorial control, designed to subdue the population and stifle any expression of dissent before January 10.”

Or perhaps it is an attempt to prevent yet another long-anticipated coup — something Venezuela has plenty of experience with. Will there be snipers on rooftops shooting at crowds of protesters, as already occurred in the attempted coup against Chavez in 2002, and many other US-sponsored regime change theatres (Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon…)? Will foreign mercenaries pour into the country to place bombs in crowded public places, attack police stations and generally sow chaos? Or will order generally prevail?

These are, I believe, reasonable questions. After all, former Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince has spent the past few months spearheading a go-fund me site for overthrowing Maduro called” Ya Casi Venezuela” (Almost There, Venezuela). Mercenaries are his business (although that business was sold a number of years ago). And let’s be honest, Venezuela’s Chavista government is no stranger to regime change operations, assassination attempts or parallel governments picked and staffed by Washington.

In the past few days alone, the Venezuelan authorities claim to have captured more than 150 alleged foreign mercenaries, including Americans, Ukrainians and Colombian hitmen, who apparently confessed that they intended to generate acts of violence and terrorism in the country. Maduro said that the terrorists sought to manipulate and confuse with the argument that they were in the country to visit the families of their Venezuelan lovers.

“They all came for family reasons. They were all given the same script.”

Ultimately, as even Spanish language CNN conceded yesterday, Maduro is almost certain to stay in power despite his opponent’s international tour and possible arrival in Venezuela. Maduro continues to enjoy the support of loyal institutions that answer to the Executive, including the country’s all-essential armed forces.

“As long as Maduro has the support of the constituted powers in Venezuela and fundamentally of the military institutions — which ultimately have, let’s say, the responsibility of managing, controlling, administering, regulating the repressive organs of the State — then there is no possibility that all these movements can have any end other than the swearing-in of Nicolás Maduro,” De Michele told CNN.