• Latin America The Argentine president joins the campaign to whitewash Nicolás Maduro

  • Propaganda Populists and dictators of Latin America embrace the Russian bear

The opposition leader exiled in Spain

Leopoldo López

warned this Thursday at a conference at the headquarters of

EL MUNDO

about the fragility of democracy and the future of international relations.

López has stated that

humanity is heading towards a clash between democracies and autocracies

, and not between communism and capitalism.

"Neither China nor Russia are communist countries and by going to the ideological field you can distract yourself from the fact that

the dictatorial threat can come from both the left and the right

, just as there are China and Iran."

López believes that Europe has been naive with Putin, particularly Germany, by allowing itself to depend on Russian oil and gas, something that it is now suffering after the instability caused by the

war in Ukraine

.

In addition, he has warned about the danger that dictatorships represent for democracies, since the former "try to influence the public opinion of the latter, as we saw in the United States with Trump in 2016, with Brexit or with the referendum of Catalan independence".

López began his speech by recalling how, in the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuela was a "prosperous democracy in the middle of a continent full of dictatorships" where "parents thought their children would live better than they did," and where "freedom" was took for granted.

The arrival of Hugo Chávez to the presidency in 1999 meant a regression in the democratic quality of Venezuela.

"

Autocracies undermine the foundations of the rule of law and democracy from within

, just as Chávez came to power by winning the elections," López said, adding:

"Unidas Podemos has an autocratic conception of power and whitewashes Nicolás Maduro. The same can be said of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero"

.

The opponent has recalled how "freedom cuts are understood as an isolated event until the disappearance of freedom" is consummated, since it is the permanent threat of being watched that keeps citizens "domesticated", and not so much sophistication of the state security apparatus.

"Maduro is a usurper of power", he has sentenced, to assure later that "I did not know what freedom is until I was imprisoned in a cell of two by three meters".

In recent years,

millions of Venezuelans have left the country

and 90% of the population lives in poverty, and yet Maduro remains in power supported by international allies who provide "economic, military and media support" .

López lamented that "Maduro and his dictatorship" have support "far superior to that which the United States or the European Union lend to the opposition

. "

"Maduro is not isolated because most of the countries in the world are autocracies," he summarized.

However, at the end of the conference, López positively valued the possibility of lifting the sanctions on the Venezuelan regime that the White House has been considering in exchange for oil.

"The sanctions could be lifted only if the country moves towards democratization through free elections

," he said.

"It may be an opportunity," he concluded.

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  • Venezuela

  • Leopold Lopez

  • USA

  • Petroleum

  • United We Can

  • Hugo Chavez

  • Nicholas Maduro

  • Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

  • European Union

  • Ukraine

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • China

  • Iran