Embargo against Venezuela?

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In the Conservative Political Action Conference of USA, on Saturday, February 12, Republican Congressman Connie Mack proposed a full-scale economic embargo against the government of Hugo Chávez. This proposal would be agreeable to the majority of Venezuelans because such a measure could affect the Castro-Chavista regime, but things are not always what they seem.

Embargoes do not work, usually, against authoritarian governments. Retrospectively, the long U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea or Syria, far from paving the way for democratic transition, have facilitated things for these repressive political systems to rule over economically weak states, where people depend more than before on government assistance. Resulting in fewer people dare to defy the despot.

Embargoes serve also as an excuse for autocratic leaders to evade responsibility for the inefficiency of their administration, by blaming the sanctions imposed by the outside for all the social ills, and to appeal to the idea of a conspiracy orchestrated by Washington as justification for jailing domestic opponents and shut down media outlets for allegedly cooperating with it.

Wait for the North Americans to solve almost always has been a bad deal for countries affected by oppressive governments. The desperation for immediate solutions has often led exiled immigrant communities in the U.S. to be sympathetic to any proposal to do something against their oppressors, and Venezuelans are not immune to that reality. However, a package of economic sanctions by the United States against Venezuela, to undermine Chavez, have no great expectations for what we have mentioned. Dictatorships end when the internal opposition is numerous and determined to change things, the recent case of Egypt, Venezuela in 1958 and Ukraine in 2004 are some examples.

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