Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I should address some of the points that Deputy Niall Collins raised. Elections in Venezuela are normally held in December but in December 2017 and January 2018 there were talks between the government and the opposition in Venezuela. The opposition insisted on the election being held in early summer and the government caved in and agreed. The opposition was warned by the Americans that it should boycott the election, that it should not stand and that it had other plans. The opposition boycotted the elections. That is their idea of democracy. I would not blame Deputy Collins for not knowing Mr. Guaidó's name, given that 80% of Venezuelans did not know him either six months ago. It is not "Gwee-doh" but "Gwy-doh".

We should put matters in perspective. Since 1904, when Theodore Roosevelt declared the US's right to exercise an international police power in Latin America, the US has successfully intervened more than 40 times in Latin American elections. That is 40 times in 100 years of elections. We should acknowledge the role that a century of US-backed military coups, corporate plundering and neoliberal sapping of resources has played in the poverty, instability and violence that drive people in Latin America towards Mexico and the United States border. For decades, US policies of military intervention and economic neoliberalism have undermined democracy and stability in the region. What the US has done to those lands is horrific. In the Caribbean alone, the US physically intervened 30 times in the first three decades of the 20th century. It has wreaked havoc on the place.

It is gas to think that today there is serious instability in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because they are experiencing a growing militarisation and neoliberal policies through various initiatives, mostly sponsored by the US Government and the US private sector. They have stolen much of the land to use as banana plantations by American-owned companies and run millions of people out of their land in the region, many of whom end up on the Mexican-US border, trying to make new lives somewhere else after their lives have been destroyed.

Do people realise that Mike Pence phoned Juan Guaidó on 22 January? The next day, Guaidó appointed himself President of Venezuela. The US, which advised the opposition to boycott the election, wants a coup to be organised to get rid of Maduro. What does that have to do with democracy? I do not think Maduro is a wonderful fella who is doing a great job in Venezuela, but I would leave it to the Venezuelans to get rid of him. It is clear he is only a shadow of the man that Chávez was. It should be up to the Venezuelans. We should stop meddling and we should not promote other people meddling. People talk about democracy but they ignore the number of countries, leaders and dictators that the Americans prop up. The US supplies military assistance to 73% of the world's dictators, yet it is worried about Maduro. It is worried about him because it does not like that he does not have an open-door policy to American capitalism and financial imperialism.

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