This Sunday, Venezuela’s dictatorial Bolivarian regime will face the most vigorous challenge yet to its quarter-century rule. President Nicolás Maduro will face off in a single-round vote against opposition leader Edmundo González, who leads by a commanding margin in the polls. Despite likely fraud and voter suppression by Maduro and his loyalists, the opposition has a real chance to win. Whether or not Venezuela devolves into further crisis will depend, in part, on international actors, notably the United States. Even more important will be the response of neighboring states. Indeed, the opposition’s prospects owe a considerable amount to pressure exerted on Caracas by the governments of Colombia and Brazil.
For Maduro’s opponents both in and outside of Venezuela, this may come as a surprise. Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian President Lula da Silva are often described as allies of Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Chávez upon the latter’s death in 2013. In 2023, Lula—a longtime friend of the late Venezuelan president—hosted Maduro in Brasília and dismissed what he called the “constructed narrative of authoritarianism” used by Washington to justify sanctions against the country. Petro, for his part, restored relations with Venezuela after assuming office in 2022 and has pursued commercial agreements with Maduro’s government.
But the clearest indication that things aren’t so simple comes from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was originally slated to run against Maduro before being disqualified from the race, and is now campaigning on behalf of González. The conservative Machado has frequently appealed to Petro and Lula; for instance, in a July 6 interview, she told the Colombian daily El Tiempo that both leaders have “an important role to play in this process.”
And the reality is that Maduro might well have barred any real opposition candidates from the election were it not for pressure exerted by Colombia and Brazil. This doesn’t necessarily mean Bogotá and Brasília are altogether unsympathetic to the Maduro regime, but it does suggest that neither Petro nor Lula are willing to put ideological affinities ahead of national interests.
Under the terms of the October Barbados agreement, Washington eased sanctions against Venezuela for a period of six months in exchange for a list of commitments, among them releasing political prisoners and allowing Machado to run for president. In the end, Maduro honored neither of these stipulations. On the contrary, his government made further arrests of opposition figures and barred both Machado and her chosen substitute, Corina Yoris, from the race. Come April, the Biden administration finally reimposed sanctions, allowing the agreement to lapse.
Meanwhile, the opposition Unitary Democratic Platform coalition, or PUD, has abided by its Barbados commitments and leaned on ostensibly neutral parties such as Colombia and Brazil for support. Amid fears that the PUD would be prevented from fielding a candidate altogether, both Petro and Lula condemned the disqualification of Yoris and successfully pressured Maduro to respect the candidacy of the former diplomat Edmundo González.
Petro, in particular, has been a key intermediary between Washington and the Venezuelan opposition. In Machado’s own words: “The interventions of President Petro are more than justified given that this is a matter of absolute priority to peace efforts in Colombia.” One of the Petro administration’s top priorities is the negotiation of peace deals with Colombia’s armed groups, many of whom—such as the ELN guerrillas—are active in Venezuela. Both Chávez and Maduro were vital to Colombia’s 2016 peace accords with the now defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Similarly, Bogotá correctly views Caracas’s continued role as a guarantor of ongoing peace talks with the ELN as indispensable to their success.
Whether Petro views a regime or opposition victory as preferable to his peace priorities is hard to say. On the one hand, a González win could complicate negotiations with the ELN, given the Maduro government’s close ties with the guerrillas. On the other, mass repression following a contested regime victory, possibly with the help of ELN fighters, could derail the peace talks. Despite Petro’s left-wing stances, Colombia continues to be Washington’s closest ally in the region, maintaining joint exercises with US forces and extraditions of top drug traffickers—all of which the Maduro regime regards with suspicion. All in all, Colombia’s clearest interest is likeky in mitigating post-electoral instability.
Brasília has probably come to a similar conclusion. It’s worth remembering that Brazilian troops have been stationed throughout its northern border region with Venezuela since 2023. This in response to Maduro’s repeated threats to invade neighboring Guyana over the disputed Essequibo region. Should Venezuela attempt to seize Guyanese territory, ground troops would be forced to invade via Brazil, given the lack of roads connecting Guyana and Venezuela. Brazil seems unwilling to facilitate a Venezuelan invasion through its territory in the way Belarus facilitated Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Various analysts, me included, have noted that the Essequibo affair offers the regime a get-out-of-jail-free card ahead of this month’s vote. Polls indicate that González would be poised to trounce Maduro in a fair election. Should attempts to rig the casting or counting of votes fail, Maduro could instead suspend the results by declaring a state of emergency and invading Guyana—and by extension, Brazil. Like Petro, then, Lula probably views Brazil’s national interest as best served by a vote in which all actors involved respect the results. This is perhaps why the Brazilian president, who was previously more hesitant to criticize Maduro than his Colombian counterpart, urged the Venezuelan leader to “respect the democratic process.”
“Amnesty is likely indispensable to ending Maduro’s disastrous rule.”
To that end, both leaders have advocated for a parallel referendum on July 28 that asks voters to affirm a blanket amnesty for alleged crimes by both the regime and opposition. Crucially, this measure offers Maduro an offramp that could incline him to accept a loss. The sad reality is that an amnesty is likely indispensable to ending Maduro’s disastrous rule by peaceful means. Virtually all of the region’s military dictatorships only ceded power to democratic governments on the condition that officers receive broad immunity for past crimes. Indeed, last week in an interview with CNN en Español, González made this exact point when explaining the opposition’s willingness to consider an amnesty.
The cynical view of some regime opponents, which may well be borne out, is that both Petro and Lula are merely conducting damage control for the Venezuelan regime ahead of an inevitable fraud. But there is a very real potential for violence throughout the country in the coming weeks and months. Defying all expectations, the opposition has seemingly roused an otherwise apathetic and defeated population. If the regime resorts to outright fraud or finds another way to suspend the results of Sunday’s vote, we may well see a return to the mass unrest seen in 2017 and 2019, when Maduro violently suppressed protest. In that case, whether Maduro’s erstwhile allies can continue to sustain their increasingly tenuous balancing act will be put to the test.