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Twenty-five years after Hugo Chávez took office and began the in Venezuela, United States officials have still not tired of dreaming up new plots to overthrow the country’s government.

Five years ago, following the last presidential election, they attempted to install Juan Guaidó — a politician most Venezuelans had never even heard of — as the country’s head of state. And now, with the date for the next presidential election officially set for July 28, the Joe Biden administration is gearing up for the biggest regime-change push since the Guaidó coup attempt.

Venezuela has long been a target for US intervention because of its efforts to build an alternative model to the neoliberal capitalism pushed by institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. First theorised and implemented under the leadership of Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela puts forward a new model that emphasises using the country’s resources, such as its oil revenue, to fund crucial missions. These then guarantee rights such as education, food, housing, transportation, culture and sports to historically excluded majorities, to decrease longstanding socioeconomic inequality.

A central part of the Bolivarian Revolution is the political and cultural transformation of the people through the promotion of Venezuelan national culture, internationalism, anti-imperialism and the empowerment of all people as political subjects with rights and responsibilities. It is a project in direct contradiction to US interests in the oil-rich country and the region Washington considers its backyard.

The 2024 elections

President Nicolás Maduro is running for re-election as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the broader Great Patriotic Pole coalition. He has built his campaign around a referred to as the, proposing major new initiatives in the fields of economic modernisation, asserting national sovereignty, safety and security, ensuring social rights, political participation, the environment and geopolitics. These aim to maintain the pro-poor, socialist orientation of the country’s development model while enacting reforms to stimulate greater economic activity and counteract the impact of crippling US sanctions.

The opposition is divided into several different camps. The largest coalition of opposition parties is called the Unitary Platform and consists of parties or factions of parties controlled by the Venezuelan elite who were displaced from positions of power as a result of the Bolivarian Revolution. The Unitary Platform has taken part in several rounds of negotiations with the government over the past year leading up to the elections and signed an agreement last October known as the “Barbados Agreement”.

In this agreement, the opposition was granted concessions on issues related to the organisation of the electoral process, and in exchange, the US agreed to loosen some sanctions relating to Venezuela’s oil and mining industries. The agreement stipulated that only opposition figures eligible according to existing laws would be permitted to run. At this stage, the Unitary Platform has not chosen a candidate.

The specifics of how the electoral process will be carried out, regulations on campaigning on media platforms, participation of electoral observers, and the updating of electoral rolls were outlined in. The agreement was the product of dialogue among more than 150 political and social organisations and based on more than 500 proposals. Ninety-seven percent of the political parties registered with the National Electoral Council participated.

Nonetheless, US officials have presented this process, subject to such extensive deliberation and approved with such wide support, as an attack on democracy.

María Corina Machado and the fraud narrative

The approach of the US government follows a familiar script: wage a campaign in the media and through international organisations to cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral process so relentlessly that the result can be presented as fraudulent no matter what the actual evidence is on Election Day.

The key piece of the “electoral fraud” narrative is already in place and revolves around the disqualification of the opposition figure María Corina Machado.

Machado is the oldest daughter of Henrique Machado Zuloaga, who was an executive of Sivensa. One of Venezuela’s largest steel companies, Sivensa was nationalised in 2008 under Chávez. Since the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, Machado has been active in the right-wing opposition and has gone so far as to support destabilisation campaigns and attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected governments. She served as a member of the National Assembly from 2011‒14.

In July 2015, the Venezuelan comptroller general’s office from holding public office for a period of one year after neglecting to disclose the extent of her earnings while she held public office.

The investigations into Machado continued. In July 2023, opposition deputy José Brito requested an update on Machado’s eligibility for holding public office given the upcoming presidential election and her stated intention to run. The comptroller general’s office responded, confirming that the disqualification of Machado was maintained and constituted a 15-year ban due to her support of regime change plots.

Though she initially refused to participate in the process, Machado appealed her ban through the Barbados Agreement procedure, which also stated that all candidates must defend Venezuela’s independence and reject violent actions against the government. In January 2024, the Supreme Court of Venezuela issued a.

The Biden administration immediately sought to use economic coercion to undermine this decision. As part of the Barbados Agreement, the US government issued licenses to certain oil companies permitting them to resume operations in Venezuela despite the sanctions. At the end of January, the State Department announced that the sanctions waivers issued to these companies would not be renewed once they expire on April 18.

At the same time, there is endless media reinforcement of the position that an election without Machado cannot be considered legitimate.

This combination of economic and political pressure is what has led to explosions in right-wing street violence in the past, following the 2013 presidential election when Maduro was first elected.

Machado: Regime change operative?

In 2002, following the short-lived coup d’état against Chávez, Machado signed the decree which established an unelected government under chamber of commerce head Pedro Carmona. In 2005 she George W Bush at the White House to discuss “democracy” (ie the overthrow of the Venezuelan government). More recently, she has been a key supporter and leader of the numerous right-wing plots to overthrow Maduro. These include the 2014 and 2017 protests which saw extreme violence against security forces and chavista supporters, as well as the destruction of infrastructure.

In 2014, Machado was removed from her post in the National Assembly after she attended a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in order to testify about the 2014 protests, speak out against the government, and call for foreign support for her cause. The move was widely condemned as a violation of both the Venezuelan constitution and Panamanian law, and in response, Panamanian civil society and movement organisations against her for.

Machado has also the effectiveness of the illegal sanctions regime imposed on Venezuela and on several occasions has. The sanctions have had devastating consequences for the Venezuelan people. UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan noted that “[t]he announced purpose of the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign — to change the Government of Venezuela — violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in the domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations.”

In 2019, Machado the push by Guaidó’s parallel, fictitious government to (TIAR) against Venezuela to end the “usurpation of power” by Maduro. The activation of TIAR would have provided a legal justification for foreign military intervention, (more) economic sanctions, and a commercial blockade.

Machado participated and benefitted from the looting of the state companies and assets that the such as and CITGO.

US seeks to delegitimise Venezuela’s democracy

An examination of the actual facts of Machado’s political career shows how the truth is much more complicated than the mainstream narrative about a government baselessly repressing an opponent.

After years of political instability caused by right-wing plots to overthrow the democratically elected government and , the Venezuelan government has pursued a straight-forward principle: political forces of any ideological variety can participate in elections as long as they do not conspire with foreign powers to undermine the independence of Venezuela or its sovereign institutions. This is in line with practices around the world.

As the July 28 elections approach, tensions between the disparate elements of the Venezuelan political scene are bound to intensify. But the Biden administration is bound to be guided by the same overarching goal that has animated the policy decisions of Democratic and Republican administrations alike — remove from power one of the most long-standing opponents of Washington’s dominant role in the western hemisphere.

[Abridged from . Zoe Alexandra is the co-editor of Peoples Dispatch. Walter Smolarek is the editor of Liberation News.]