Patrols of police vehicles have been encircling Argentina's Embassy, located in a tiny southeastern district of Caracas, since Nicolás Maduro’s disputed win in last week's presidential election over challenger Edmundo González Urrutia on Sunday night.
The pressure forms part of a widening clampdown on dissent as opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who tapped Gonzalez to run in her place, tries to rally international support to claims that Maduro rigged the vote.
Venezuela’s government has responded by detaining hundreds of protesters and ordering the diplomatic staff of world leaders that question the victory to leave the country. Envoys from Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic have been given until Friday to leave the country.
Machado allies who have taken refuge in the embassy say security forces are now trying to drive them out. “The lights have still been turned off, we are under siege,” Pedro Urruchurtu, a senior member of Machado’s political party, wrote on X Tuesday evening. “They cut our electric cables, even for the entire street.”’
A spokesperson for Argentina’s Foreign Ministry said patrols are currently limited to a single vehicle.
Since March, a half dozen aides to Machado have sought asylum in Argentina’s embassy after the Venezuelan government issued arrest warrants. President Javier Milei’s government has since sought safe passage for them out of the country but has so far been denied.
Argentina’s self-professed libertarian president has been one of region’s most strident critics of Venezuela’s socialist regime and has called on world leaders to reject Maduro’s self-proclaimed victory. Even before the first official results were announced early Monday morning, Milei said his government would refuse to recognise “another fraud” carried out by the “communist dictatorship.”
Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez wave to supporters during a post-election rally in Caracas on Tuesday.
Maduro shot back immediately. “Milei, you trash, you are the dictatorship,” he said. The Venezuelan leader continued to deride his Argentine counterpart as “a fascist, a Nazi” and “a sadist who enjoys making the people of Argentina suffer.”
Privately, the Argentine government has asked Brazil for assistance diffusing tensions around its embassy. The South American neighbors have been holding informal talks at a diplomatic level since Monday, according two Brazilian government officials familiar with the matter.
On Monday, Celso Amorim, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s chief foreign affairs adviser, told Maduro in a private meeting that the Argentine embassy must be protected, the officials said.
Patience for Maduro is also wearing thin in neighbouring Colombia. President Gustavo Petro, a fellow leftist who is aligned with Venezuela’s socialist government on most issues, called for a “transparent” accounting of the voting results and declined to recognize Maduro’s self-declared victory.
Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino is in Washington and is set to discuss the situation, including the embassy standoff, at an emergency meeting on Venezuela at Organization of American States together with representatives from around the region.
Similar diplomatic spats have already inflamed regional tensions. In April, Mexico severed relations with Ecuador after security forces raided its embassy in Quito. Former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been sheltering in the Mexican mission since December, was hauled off to face an investigation in a drug probe.
– TIMES/BLOOMBERG
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