Venezuela: A Country Trapped in Binary Logic - with Marina Hernandez

Latin America Correspondent speaks to Venezuelan journalist Marina Hernandez about how Venezuelans have seemingly lost the ability to resist simplistic readings of reality, sliding instead into a binary logic: my enemy’s enemy is my friend.

To read Marina's article in Weave News, copy and paste the link below:

https://www.weavenews.org/stories/2026/1/20/my-country-is-no-longer-a-place-its-an-argument

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio 0:19

Marina, I wanted to get a chat in with you because I know you published um an article a few days ago earlier on this week uh called My My Country Is No Longer a Place. It's an argument. Um I wonder we're gonna link to the article in the show notes. Um anybody who wants to read it can can get hold of it there. But Marina, I thought it was a really interesting piece. Um I wonder if you could maybe just outline the the argument that you're making in the in the article, please.

Marina Hernandez 0:47

Yeah. Well basically what I say is that uh Venezuela, as as the title says, has turned into a country more than a place, and that the Venezuelan political subject is forced to choose between two sides. So you you either have to be pro uh intervention or against intervention. And there's no room for a middle analysis. We are turning to a binary way of thinking that leaves little room uh to understand the complication of things. So we are turning to a place where we are no longer able to see um the nuances and the complications of the situation that the country has gone through for the last 27 years. Um and so most of the Venezuelans are well very, very eager to be intervened by the US and actually are supporters of what's happening right now. And so I talk about that and I talk about how I struggle to be perceived as my my fellow Venezuelans, because I am a critic of the US intervention and also I am against Nicolas Maduro, which shouldn't be. I mean, if you think about it, those are two truths that can coexist and should be opposite, but they are perceived as opposite in the Venezuelan society and among other places too, like also here in Argentina. And so I think about how the political phenomenon of Chavismo has ripped us from the ability to actually analyze things with a more understandative uh vision than just binary thinking.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:23

And how do you negotiate that personally? I mean, of course, I mean you've always been at the at the center of conversations as regards what's taking place in or what was taking place in Venezuela, what is currently taking place in Venezuela, and of course among the the Venezuelan diaspora, I'm guessing that is also personally difficult for you.

Marina Hernandez 2:43

Yeah, it's particularly difficult. I I struggle with uh insults, threats uh on a day-to-day basis on my social networks from my fellow Venezuelans. I also receive critiques from from friends, from families, etc. But I mean I chose journalism for a reason, and that is I think the truth has power and that uh being able to analyze things critically without having an agenda behind it is crucial to build uh a democratic society and a better world. And so that is my my motive, and that's why I chose this career, and that's why I stick to it. And I also think there is a need in the world right now for voices that speak uh in a way that do not are not uh governed by agendas and can think freely and really understand the nuances of what's happening right now because it's really very complicated. It's not like we're on the on the Cold War anymore, it's a different world, different things are going on. And so this historical moment requires a more deep analysis than what I'm seeing on a day-to-day basis on social media, Venezuela media, and also Argentina and around the world. Um and so I I think I need to speak to that. I need to fill that gap, and people that think that me, like me, need to fill that gap. Um so something different can be said, uh, so other voices can be listened to. Um and we can actually just build a better world, a more democratic world. Because I don't see in in tomorrow, in Venezuela, like in the day or tomorrow, in the future, if elections actually happen and if we actually can rebuild society again, that we will be, we will be on an equal society if we are constantly just choosing one way of thinking and then insulting the other way, the other side, you know, and being very, very uh, I don't know, violent against the other side. I mean that's that's not what I believe in a democratic society. And I think that the the big challenge for us Venezuelans in the future will be to rebuild a society with where there will be a lot of gaps, there will be a lot of uh people thinking differently. Chavismo is not a movement that will disappear, it's still there, it still has people that support it, and we will have to be able to build something with it. That's what democracy is all about. Um, so yeah, it comes with a high personal cost, but uh I mean that's what I chose and I stick to it.

Jon Bonfiglio 5:13

It strikes me that you've not changed your position at all. I mean, if you if you we go back to before the incidents or the events of January the 3rd, um you a a sort of a core line of your uh public presence and your sort of intellectual cohesion, coherence has been about a uh critique, a strong-minded critique of authoritarianism, which of course manifested itself as regards Nicolas Maduro and Chavismo in um in Venezuela, but it's entirely consistent to then also be critical of what took place on January the 3rd and currently what's what's being evidenced in the USA. So again, it's not that your position has changed at all, events have happened, and as a result, you've also you've come into the line of fire as a result of that.

Marina Hernandez 5:58

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that if if anything, the the events of January the 3rd has done nothing but reassured me that this is not the way. I mean, Donald Trump has not done anything to even hide the fact that he wants to go against uh oil. We have Delcy Rodriguez, which is the second one, uh the second hand was the second hand of Maduro in the presidents. I mean, we are not seeing in any way a transition happening in Venezuela. We have uh María Corina Machado gladly giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump, a prize she herself said belonged to all Venezuelans, and she and she gladly gave it to him. The manda is saying that he that Venezuela owes oil to the United States. And I think if anyone, I I don't see, I really don't understand, I struggle to understand how there are people that still defend that. If if you had any hope that the US intervention would solve all problems after January 3rd, I think that there is and there is no doubt that that will happen. I mean, we have other powers just um taking ownership uh of our oil. And do not, I mean, do not mistake me here. I know that before that with Nicolas Maduro and the government, we were also, I mean, uh slightly you could say governed by the Iranians, by Cubans, by Russians, by China. You had a sort of intervention there. But I'm I mean, the solution for that is not to trade one intervention for another intervention. The real problem here is that Venezuelan people are still in the same place that we were before January 3rd, and that we are handled by another uh dictatorship, if you could say that right now. I mean, there is no uh Nicolas Maduro is out of place, and now we have Donald Trump, but none of those are actually benefit uh um being beneficial to society, and we are not regaining our sovereignty in any way. I mean, the law, the oil law that was uh put in place by Hugo Chavez was changed this week, and now it basically says, uh just to summarize it, that US companies can freely take ownership of the oil. It deletes the part of the sovereignty of the Venezuelan part in oil. And so the the woman that changed the law was Desi Rodriguez himself, herself, sorry. So, I mean, there is no this is not this is not, I believe like strongly that this is not the answer, and I haven't changed my poster if anything. I I'm just more more against US intervention. What is happening right now is just I think of I mean we talked about it that it was a historical moment, and as as things remain to develop and we see more of that, and we see more how uh the the basic notions of international laws do not matter anymore in the world with this. I just it it strikes me as something that is it's really it's a weird time to be alive in history and uh it's a weird time to be to be Venezuelan. Um and to be against those two. I mean you can you have because before that people people say that yeah, I mean the the UN didn't work before, they weren't able to stop maybe the genocide in Gaza, for example. But before Gaza, you had some sort of like uh if you could you can call it a hypocrisy, you know, that things work in certain way, that there were international uh uh uh things to stop uh this this thing happening. But now there is no there is not even like the notion of us pretending that. I mean, mask has fallen and uh the Prime Minister of Canada said that in Davos, that uh this week his speech is very good. That uh we are not even pretending that we care anymore. Anyone can do anything, and that is actually it was an ultrasound, so yeah.

Jon Bonfiglio 9:51

Yeah, the sign in the window was Mark Carney, the Canadian Premier's um reference there to taking down the there being time to take down the sign in the window. Um Marina, uh interesting what you reference about this illusion or this um this discourse that the US is using about the fact that Venezuelan oil actually was stolen from the US all along. I'm thinking that in the next few weeks it might be interesting to actually do a sort of a dive into that that sort of that theory uh and just look at actually the the story, the history of of Venezuelan oil. So perhaps we can talk again for that. But just to finish up, there's just a paragraph which towards the end of your article, which I think is really interesting. So I may read it out and then just ask you to sort of clarify your thoughts around that if if you might. So your paragraph reads uh governments around the world, particularly in Latin America, have abandoned us. They proved powerless to confront Maduro's regime, even when its consequences reached their own borders through mass migration. Now, born of that same impotence, we are all left facing the raw force of American power with as little agency as before, but we have also been abandoned intellectually. The idea of Latin America re-emerging as a global actor of consequence has been buried under Trump's bombs, and those of us who still believe in the hemisphere's political independence from the United States are dismissed as relics or even as Soviet sympathizers. That's um that's a hell of a paragraph. Could you just maybe sort of amplify some of those thoughts that you've that you've shared in that paragraph?

Marina Hernandez 11:23

Yeah, so uh what I hear often um by my Venezuelan polls are that is that uh Latin American governments were powerless. I mean, the same governments that are now critics of the US intervention, for example, Lula in Brazil, Pedro in Colombia, etc., were did nothing uh to stop Nicolas Maduro from from doing what he did, right? And so I agree with that premise, and I also think that yeah, they were powerless, and now we are even more powerless. I mean the notion of, and and I take again what Carney said in his speech, of uh of a middle power emerging, and I'm talking about uh an America, a Latin American middle power, is gone. It surfaced briefly during a brief time uh where you had all those uh lecture governments in Latin America, with Christina Kitchener in Argentina, Lula, uh Correa in Ecuador, Chavez himself in Venezuela, and so there was an attempt to do that, but now that is completely gone. You have every government in Latin America, in each in the in its own form, and we can say the same here, with Miley in Argentina, are negotiating with Trump to see how what can they do and what they can give to Trump to avoid being uh just overthrown by the US uh politics. I mean he's getting everything he wants from a Noble Peace guys to Greenland, to the Venezuelan oil, to uh the government he wants in Honduras, he's getting everything he wants. It's like a new dictatorship but around the continent. And so I think um what I say in that progress that is that we have been abandoned intellectually. No one is talking about uh Latin America as a united uh uh continent, as a middle power to be able to face again. That no one's talking about that. With the obsession quizás, maybe sorry, with the um the agreement between the UN and the uh the Americosur uh and that economic agreement that is happening right now uh between Europe and Latin America. But even that is not emerging, I mean, as a as an option, as a middle power to fight against uh uh the power of of the United States. And so I think that is it's very sad and I think it's very disappointing. I was disappointed with the with Latin American governments before, and I am disappointed now too, because they were powerless. We were all powerless before, and we are all powers now, even now, even more so now. Um and so it seems like we can do anything. There is anything to be done. There is nothing to be done to stop uh you know the dictatorships around the world, the tyrants, the authoritarians. I mean it's Nicola Maduro, and now it's Donald Trump. Um and so I think that uh that is a real sad notion, and I see that a lot, especially between my Venezuelan fellows. There are only few peoples, few organizations, few journalists, few writers that are talking about our need to re-establish sovereignty. Uh people are just talking about if you prefer Cuba or the United States, if you prefer China over the United States, if you prefer one dictatorship over another one. I even heard like um sentences and informations like, well, we have oil, let's use oil to negotiate our freedom. Um and so I think we're losing what's important in this discussion. We are just choosing one tyrant over another, and we are not even focusing on it. We're getting our own savory as Venezuelans and also as Latin Americans. And uh I think this is when we need it the most. And so we we need to re-emerge as a middle power, but I don't see anyone actually trying to do that in the world. And Garney said that himself, and he's from Canada. Uh, a much stronger middle power, if you will, than Latin America is.

Jon Bonfiglio 15:17

Marina, um it was really interesting to read that article again. We're gonna share that in the show notes. But as ever, really appreciate your time. And again, yeah, maybe we can break down this issue of I mean it's ridiculous that we have to break down this issue of who Venezuelan oil belongs to. But I think in a couple of weeks, yeah, maybe you can come back on and we can have that discussion. But for the moment, uh thanks so much and look forward to talking to you again soon.