Little is casual in politics. And the margin of chance in an international summit, where the agendas of the leaders are usually measured to the millimeter, tends to be zero. That is why the brief, apparently improvised greeting between the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, during the UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt (COP27), was no coincidence.
"When are you visiting us?" Maduro snapped at Macron this Monday at the beginning of the talk, while the press services of the Miraflores Palace recorded the conversation that was going to serve the Chavista leader to internally sell a new step in his exterior rehabilitation. .
Until the war in Ukraine began, Maduro was a plague for international powers, which recognized the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as interim president of Venezuela. A symbolic gesture that, in the end, has tickled the authoritarian Caribbean regime.
Maduro's abrupt question surprised the French leader, who put on a face of circumstances and prepared a response that outlined the desire to reopen dialogue between the government and the opposition. "We have to find the way," says Macron, who added that "the continent is putting itself back together," an implicit reference to the gradual shift to the left in Latin America, confirmed after the recent victory of the progressive Lula in Brazil.
The brief talk continued with Macron telling Maduro that he would call him in a few days to "start bilateral work that is useful for the country and the region." Leading the conversation, the Venezuelan brought up the reason for that hall greeting: the closed-door meeting, next Friday in Paris, of a Chavista delegation, headed by the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, with representatives of Juan Guaido.
“With him (Jorge Rodríguez) you can speak with confidence. Did you hear? With absolute confidence”, Maduro releases to Macron. “That is going to work out very well,” adds the Venezuelan leader, referring to a meeting invented by Macron in the framework of the third Paris Forum on Peace. The progressive presidents of Argentina and Colombia, Alberto Fernández and Gustavo Petro, invited to the Forum, could be present at the meeting between the Government and the opposition. Petro traveled to Caracas last week to restart relations between the two countries.
Oil works miracles. Venezuela is home to the largest oil reserves in the world and the global energy insecurity created by the war in Ukraine has made the Caribbean country a coveted geopolitical token despite the traditional closeness of Chavismo with the government of Vladimir Putin.
The fleeting meeting between Maduro and Macron has provoked criticism of the French president from anti-Chavistas because it legitimizes the questioned regime. But since coincidences do not exist in politics, the key is in oil. Within the framework of the G-7 summit in Germany last June, the Elysee issued a statement making it clear that "Venezuelan oil must also be able to return to the market." The French presidency then called for "diversification of oil supply sources", which also included Iran.
"Venezuela is ready to receive all French companies that want to come and produce oil and gas for the European market, for the world market," Maduro was ready to respond in a televised speech.
The Russian invasion took place on February 24 and fifteen days later a US delegation headed by Juan González, President Joe Biden's main adviser for Latin America, traveled to Caracas. Although it minimized the matter, the White House did not hide that energy security and access to Venezuelan oil were on the agenda of a visit that months later, in October, also bore fruit with the exchange of five US oil executives imprisoned in Venezuela with exchange for the pardon granted by Biden to two Venezuelan drug traffickers, nephews of Cilia Flores, wife of Maduro.
The excuse of reopening the negotiation between Chavismo and the opposition in order to lay the foundations for the 2024 presidential elections to have democratic guarantees has been the main argument used by the US to unfreeze relations with Chavismo. With Friday's meeting in Paris, France uses the same excuse.
But in the background, oil underlies.
