Venezuela’s dictator and Trump spread lies about mass exodus | Opinion

Fake news alert: As the exodus of Venezuelans to the United States reaches new heights, both Latin America’s old-guard left, and America’s Trumpist right are spreading a false narrative about the estimated 8 million Venezuelans who have fled their country in recent years.

If you listen to the disinformation campaign by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his Latin American allies, the Venezuelan exodus has been caused by U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.

Venezuelans flee

Echoing Maduro’s false claim, Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote on Feb. 17 in his X, formerly Twitter, account that “what has caused the migration of millions of Venezuelans is an economic blockade.”

He added that the United States “blockaded the international sale of (Venezuelan) oil, and that’s what Venezuela’s society lived from. The immediate impoverishment produced migration.”

That’s factually wrong. While the U.S. government first imposed mild oil sanctions on Venezuela in August 2017, prohibiting the trading of Venezuelan bonds in U.S. markets, the mass migration of Venezuelans had started in 2013, the year in which Maduro took office.

By 2017, an estimated 1.7 million Venezuelans had already fled their country. The main reason for the exodus at the time was Maduro’s near-total destruction of Venezuela’s private sector, coupled with the collapse of world prices of oil - Venezuela’s main export - from about $100 a barrel in 2014 to less than $50 in 2016.

U.S. sanctions

In 2019, the U.S. imposed more stringent sanctions on Venezuela’s oil, gold and mining industries after Maduro re-elected himself in fraudulent elections a year earlier. But by 2019, the Venezuelan exodus had reached about 4 million, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency data.

And Petro’s claim that the U.S. imposed an “international blockade” on Venezuela is equally misleading. Venezuela is still shipping its oil to China and several other countries. Last time I checked, no U.S. warships stopped oil cargo vessels on the Venezuelan coast.

If you listen to Trump and his followers in the Republican Party, you hear an equally distorted narrative about the Venezuelan exodus. They make it look as if undocumented Venezuelans are responsible for an unprecedented wave of violent crime in the United States.

Murder rate decline

In fact, U.S. murder rates have declined dramatically since they peaked in 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic, according to FBI figures. And undocumented migrants commit fewer violent crimes than U.S.-born Americans, several studies show.

And yet, when an undocumented Venezuelan migrant was charged earlier this week in the murder of 22-year-old Augusta University College nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia, Trump jumped on the occasion to blame non-authorized immigrants for an alleged explosion of violent crime in America.

“The monster who took her life illegally entered our Country in 2022,” Trump wrote in his Social Truth social media platform. Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp falsely claimed that “Biden’s border invasion is destroying our country and killing our citizens!.”

In fact, cherry-picking a crime allegedly committed by a Venezuelan undocumented migrant, much like Trump’s famous 2016 claim that Mexican immigrants “are bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” can only be described as racist fear-mongering.

Debunk narrative

According to a multi-year study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, among other reports, undocumented immigrants are half as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as U.S.-born citizens. So much for the claims of an alleged invasion of violent criminals.

It’s about time to debunk the false narratives about Venezuelan exiles, and take the current influx of refugees for what it is: a mass exodus of people fleeing from a country that has been destroyed by the Maduro dictatorship, and who are seeking a better life.

There is only one way to stop this mass migration, and it’s stepping up the pressure on the Maduro regime to hold free elections.

Barring a restoration of democratic rule in Venezuela, the exodus will continue.

Don’t miss the “Oppenheimer Presenta” TV show on Sundays at 9 p.m. E.T. on CNN en Español. Blog: andresoppenheimer.com