Weekly Report - 20 February 2020 (WR-20-07)

According to Maduro, over 2.3m uniformed officers were deployed across the country for the first large-scale military exercises of the year, “to defend [our] territorial integrity, [our] independence and [our] national sovereignty.” Footage broadcast over the weekend by the state television VTV showed the armed forces handling artillery and tanks, as well as marching through the streets of Venezuelan cities, including the capital Caracas.

These military troops were deployed “on each ship, to each border post, throughout the airspace, in each city, on each street, determined to defend their homeland with love,” Maduro’s defence minister, General-in-chief Vladimir Padrino López, said on 15 February. He was taking part in the exercises at the Fuerte Tiuna military base on the outskirts of Caracas.

Padrino López also said that the Escudo Bolivariano manoeuvres were the first test of the Milicia Bolivariana’s operational capacity since these pro-government militia groups were formally incorporated into the FANB. A reform presented by Maduro to the constituent assembly (ANC) last December, and promulgated on 4 February, constitutionally established the militias which were set up under former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013) as collectives of armed civilians loyal to the government, as the fifth branch of the FANB.

This is merely the formalisation of a well-established reality. But the estimated 3.3m members of the militias now officially swell the ranks of the FANB, which reportedly number in the region of 365,000, although they have suffered from desertions.

Ahead of the start of the Escudo Bolivariano exercises, on 14 February, Maduro gave a press conference in which he framed the military manoeuvres as necessary preparation in the face of the threat from “terrorist groups” in neighbouring Brazil. He recalled an incident last December, when FANB deserters based in Brazil attacked a military base in Venezuela’s southern department of Bolívar, and the Brazilian government refused to hand over the military deserters who escaped back over the border.

Despite the acrimony between Maduro and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, a military face-off seems unlikely, with the Brazilian armed forces present on the Venezuelan border ostensibly for humanitarian rather than belligerent reasons (see below). Brazilian authorities did not react to Maduro’s most recent display of military might. Maduro has since said that these military exercises will be maintained in a spontaneous manner and could happen at any time, anywhere in the country, without prior warning.  

Another appeal from Guaidó

Despite the growing economic asphyxiation of Maduro’s administration through US sanctions, Guaidó’s chances of overturning the de facto government remain virtually non-existent while it maintains the support of the armed forces. On the day that the military exercises – which he dismissed as “propaganda” – ended, Guaidó once again appealed to the military to change sides, directly addressing both the military rank-and-file and the high command in a video published on Twitter.

• Rosneft sanctions

The latest move from the US against Maduro’s de facto government, announced on 18 February, has been to slap sanctions on Rosneft Trading, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, for doing business with Maduro’s government and the Venezuelan state-owned oil company Pdvsa. Maduro’s government has become increasingly dependent on Russian economic support, with Rosneft Trading handling 70% of Venezuelan oil exports. Both countries insist that the bilateral relationship remains unchanged. 

“A transition is inevitable in Venezuela,” Guaidó assured them, evoking the foreign support he had drummed up on a recent international tour [WR-20-06]. The next day he called for all Venezuelans to mobilise and take to the streets, promising to disclose an agenda for protests and mobilisations against Maduro shortly.  

Tensions on Brazil’s Venezuelan border

Brazil’s vice-president Hamilton Mourão and the justice & public security minister, Sérgio Moro, visited the Brazilian border state of Roraima on 12 and 13 February. They held meetings with local authorities and military representatives to discuss the state’s security situation and give support to Venezuelan migrants there. According to the Brazilian government’s ‘Operação Acolhida’ programme, which is run by the armed forces, over 264,000 Venezuelans have arrived in the country since the start of the crisis.

The majority remain in Roraima, one of Brazil’s poorest and least populous states, with only 27,200 Venezuelan migrants having been relocated to other parts of the country through the ‘Operação Acolhida’ relocation programme.

The combination of migrant arrivals with economic stress and increased crime and violence in recent years (although homicides did fall in 2019) has contributed to fuelling anti-Venezuelan sentiment in Roraima, which periodically flares up.

Brazilian courts are currently considering requests by human rights groups to ban a local law passed by the municipal council of Roraima’s state capital Boa Vista, which would limit the access to public medical care for non-Brazilian nationals (public health centres are managed by municipal authorities in Brazil). Those who oppose the law say it is xenophobic.

Just before Mourão and Moro’s visit, the border town of Pacaraima had seen five consecutive days of protests, after local residents took to the streets on 7 February, outraged at the rape of a Venezuelan teenage girl by a Venezuelan man and demanding better security. The protests only ended after state prosecutors, public security forces, and the local commander of the army presented new measures to fight crime and better guarantee the security of local residents, Brazilian and Venezuelan alike.  

Maduro threatens Guaidó with arrest

Juan Guaidó was not arrested when he re-entered Venezuela on 11 February after a four-week international trip, despite being legally barred from leaving the country. When questioned during a press conference on 14 February why Guaidó had not been apprehended upon his return, the de facto president Nicolás Maduro said that this was because the day of Guaidó’s arrest had not yet arrived. “The day that the courts of the Republic give the order for Guaidó to be detained for all the crimes he has committed, that day he will go to jail,” Maduro declared. 

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