Atilio Boron | The electoral system of Venezuela stands out for it's safety
Sociologist and political scientist Atilio Boron, who provides his opinion on the presidential election in Venezuela and explains important details on the electoral process taking place. teleSUR
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00:00Doctor, one very quick question before finishing this important interview.
00:05What is, in your opinion, what is the impact that these elections will have for the region
00:09and for the international arena?
00:12Well, very important because Venezuela is a country which is extremely important.
00:19This is, I am not flattering my Venezuelan friends, I am just making a geopolitical statement.
00:26Venezuela is a major reserve of oil in the world, it is a great deposit of gold and all
00:38kinds of minerals, water, whatever, it is a country enormously endowed with natural
00:47resources of all sorts.
00:49In addition, it is very close to the United States, this is something which is not a minor
00:54question, just think that a tanker, an oil tanker coming from Saudi Arabia takes approximately
01:0240 days of very difficult navigation to reach Houston in which they have to go and transfer
01:11the oil.
01:12It takes only four days going from Venezuela to Houston.
01:16For the US, then Venezuela is extremely important in a moment in which there is this race to
01:23the natural resources because people who before did not go to get oil or copper or
01:33lithium or whatever, or there are especially two big countries like China and India, if
01:39you look at all of those countries, China and India are about three billion people in
01:48the world, almost 40% of the world population and that is something which is extremely worrisome
01:54for the US.
01:55And this is why the general of the Southern Command, Laura Richardson, has said repeatedly
02:03that a sign of good policy in our countries, I mean the countries in Latin America, should
02:11be to keep Chinese, Russians and Iranians out of the region.
02:17The problem is that those are countries which have a special interest in the natural resources
02:24we have in Latin America and therefore the importance for the US to get these competitors
02:32out of this region, out of the hemisphere, as they call, is of the utmost importance
02:38and will do whatever is necessary to prevail in that sense.
02:43The problem is that economic relations may be running in an opposite direction of what
02:49the State Department or the White House think and therefore countries like, I don't know,
02:54take the case of Brazil or Chile, Chile may be very, very loyal in general to the orientations
03:02of the White House, but China is the first commercial partner of Chile, so President
03:11Boric is torn apart between loyalty to the guidelines of the State Department or the
03:17Southern Command, on the other hand, the stark realities of economics by which China is the
03:25main buyer of Chilean natural resources and that is the reason why it is so important
03:33the election here in Venezuela, because if the Bolivarian revolution is supported once again
03:42by the people, then the chances of going forward in the process of supranational integration,
03:53in the process of the strengthening of UNASUR and CELAC will receive a very, very significant
04:01and positive impact, something that it is very, very much needed for two reasons,
04:07and I'm sorry if I am extending too much this question, we need a Latin America united
04:14on the one hand to stop the imperialist process in the region, the imperialist
04:23influence in our countries in terms of politics, economics, culture and so on,
04:28but at the same time we need a united Latin America to be able to negotiate the position
04:36of our region, Latin America and the Caribbean, I should always say, right, in a multilateral,
04:43in a multipolar world in which we should negotiate our insertion and the best way to do it is
04:51Latin America and the Caribbean are together and not on an individual basis, because if you
04:59have to negotiate on an individual basis with China, with India, on Russia, your power,
05:05negotiation power is quite much reduced, but if you can go with a Latin America united through
05:13schemes like CELAC or MERCOSUR or UNASUR or whatever, then you have chances to get much more
05:22national and international autonomy and this is what we need. Self-determination is crucial
05:28in this moment and if we are united, our self-determination will be more likely to be
05:36established.