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Why 10 Million Venezuelans Have Signed A Petition Protesting The United States

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro greets supporters during an anti-imperialist rally with state oil and electric workers at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 18, 2015. The rally was held amid tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. after Maduro this month said Washington is plotting to oust him and ordered the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to slash staffing levels. The U.S. later levied sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations. CREDIT: AP
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro greets supporters during an anti-imperialist rally with state oil and electric workers at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, March 18, 2015. The rally was held amid tensions between Venezuela and the U.S. after Maduro this month said Washington is plotting to oust him and ordered the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to slash staffing levels. The U.S. later levied sanctions against seven Venezuelan officials accused of human rights violations. CREDIT: AP

The United States set off a diplomatic firestorm last month when it declared Venezuela a “national security threat” and imposed sanctions against seven of the country’s officials last month. Many South American leaders have decried the sanctions which will cast a dark shadow over the Summit of the Americas set to begin on Friday.

“Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement when the sanctions were first imposed.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro vehemently countered the charges. He even congratulated the seven officials U.S. for the “honor” of being placed on the U.S. sanctions list, and called them “heroes.”

He has promised President Barack Obama a gift as a response to the sanctions: a petition decrying the charge that Venezuela poses a threat to American security with signatures from 10 million Venezuelans — or, a full one-third of the country. As of Wednesday, the Venezuelan government said that it was just a million signatures off from its goal.

The government is promoting the petition as a matter of national pride.

“It’s an opportunity all of us Venezuelans have, to defend the fatherland,” Interior Minister Gustavo Gonzalez told reporters in downtown Caracas on Monday.

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Television and radio ads promoting the campaign have attempted to stoke fear in order to get signatures by claiming “the U.S. has declared Venezuela a threat to its interests and is preparing to intervene — and even use military force.”

But some Venezuelans see through the efforts.

“No sir, I’m not putting my name on [the petition],” Mercedes Victor, a Caracas-based housekeeper told the Wall Street Journal.

She said that those collecting signatures at a state-run supermarket near her home implied that those who didn’t sign the petition wouldn’t get to buy groceries which have been seriously under-stocked for months.

A recent tweet from the country’s armed forces told military personnel that it was mandatory for them and their families to sign the petition. Some have reportedly been fired from their jobs at a state-run electronics parts manufacturer for refusing to sign the petition — including some pregnant women.

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For many Venezuela watchers, the condemnation of the sanctions and the extensive campaign to denounce them is an effort by Maduro and his backers to distract from the country’s deep economic woes.

“And what other choice does Maduro have?” Moisés Naím of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in The Atlantic.

After all, it is essential for his political survival to convince the world — and especially his own citizens — that Washington is behind his country’s catastrophic situation. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain the world’s highest inflation rate, a severe shortage of basic necessities, an economy spiraling out of control, and one of the world’s highest murder rates — all in a nation with the planet’s largest oil reserves. Maduro and his lieutenants claim that this mess is all the result of America’s stealthy actions to destabilize the country and change the regime, in part by plotting to assassinate the Venezuelan president.

“Like all clever manipulations,” Naím wrote, “the government’s campaign relies on a kernel of truth to make its lies more credible.”

That kernel is the justification Obama used when he issued the sanctions through an Executive Order on March 9. By invoking a “national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela” the administration left the door open to sharp critique from Venezuela and its allies who have repeatedly invoked the U.S. history of “meddling” in South America to admonish the sanctions.

The focused campaign has taken the slogan “Yankee Go Home” as its anthem. Thousands have rallied to decry the sanctions — even if they were only imposed on a few individuals — as an example of American imperialism. With so much force behind the movement, Naím noted, it’s understandable that many Venezuelans would come to believe that the U.S. may well take military action against Venezuela.

The administration has since attempted to walked back the claim made to justify sanctions.

“The United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security,” Senior White House Adviser Ben Rhodes said on Wednesday.

He insisted that while the Executive Order invoked inflammatory language, it was “completely pro forma.”

“This is a language that we use in executive orders around the world. So the United States does not believe that Venezuela poses some threat to our national security,” Rhodes said.

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Even so, the sanctions — and the harsh language used to justify them — may have real repercussions for the U.S. at the Summit of the Americas.

Amongst the biggest issues before the regional meeting of leaders is the historic thaw in relations between the U.S. and Cuba. In fact, this week’s Summit will be the first time since the meeting was first held in 1994 that Cuba is even included. But the monumental moment has been badly marred by the controversy around U.S. sanctions against Venezuela — and has led Cuba to caught in a difficult bind between Venezuela, it’s longtime ally and trade partner, and it’s newly-minted openness with the U.S.

“Nobody could think that in a process of reestablishing relations, which we’re trying to move forward on with the United States, Cuban support for Venezuela could be made conditional,” Cuban Vice-President Miguel Diaz-Canel told reporters in Havana on Wednesday. “If they attack Venezuela, they’re attacking Cuba. And Cuba will always be on Venezuela’s side above all things.”

Even if the Obama administration officials have tried to explain away the loaded words it issued on Venezuela, the damage may have already been done.

A round of talks between the U.S. and Cuba ended abruptly after the sanctions were issued. The Foreign Minister of Ecuador — another Venezuelan ally — told ThinkProgress and other media outlets at a press conference it’s the U.S., not Venezuela, that poses a threat to stability in the Western hemisphere.

Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research argued in an op-ed for The Hill, American sanctions against Venezuela violate the charter of the Organization of American States.

And, according to Cynthia J. Arnson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, the blunder has undermined years of work to improve relations between North and South America.

“Seemingly tone-deaf to the symbolic importance of language, the administration has succeeded in doing what it sought for years to avoid — making U.S. policy, not the disastrous political and economic direction of Venezuela, the central focus of discussion,” she wrote in an L.A. Times op-ed. “The best course now would be to listen to hemispheric allies who share deep concerns about Venezuela’s potential implosion, and work quietly behind the scenes to guarantee that legislative elections be held this year, and in a manner as fair and free of violence as possible.”