Daniel Lozano

Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-01:37

  • Latin America Spain insists on lifting sanctions against Venezuela despite the electoral coup against María Corina Machado

  • Venezuela María Corina Machado promises to go "to the end" despite the fact that Chavismo ratifies her disqualification for 15 years

Washington has reacted in a fulminant manner after "reviewing" for three days the "disqualification" of

María Corina Machado,

electoral candidate of the democratic opposition. The Treasury Department has ordered

to reverse the flexibility granted

to the public company Corporación Venezolana de Guayana Minerven, in charge of exploiting and marketing Venezuelan gold from the Gran Sabana, bordering Brazil, on the world market.

Minerven was one of the great beneficiaries of the flexibility undertaken by the

Joe Biden

government after the signing of the

Barbados Agreement

between the government and the opposition last year by allowing all transactions.

With the new license made public today, Monday, all operations with Minerven will be closed before February 13. "In short: sanctions are reestablished in Venezuela only in this area," confirmed expert

José Ignacio Hernández,

one of the key men during the presidency of

Juan Guaidó.

The US had already shown its "deep concern" over Machado's 15-year disqualification, which is why it announced last Saturday that it had begun a review process. And not only because of the judicial coup by the Supreme Court of Justice, but also "because of the recent attacks against candidates of the democratic and civil opposition." For the Washington government, it goes against the "electoral roadmap of allowing all parties to select their candidates for the presidential elections."

Thanks to the Barbados Accords and direct negotiation between Washington and Caracas, the US relativized its pressure for the sale of oil and exchanged the alleged figurehead Alex Saab for 10 American hostages and 16 Venezuelan political prisoners.

The US agency Bloomberg also reported in recent hours that within the US administration the option that the suspension of energy sanctions

would expire in April if Machado is not rehabilitated was gaining weight.

"The Barbados Accords are a process that we built to try to neutralize, once again, the violence of the extreme right and bring them to the constitutional path," the "people's president" insisted meanwhile during the broadcast of his weekly program, Con Maduro. +.