Organization of American States chief Luis Almagro stepped out of diplomatic protocol on Wednesday and penned a hostile tirade to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, saying he refuses to “bow down” and be intimidated by the head of statement while accusing him of spreading lies and sliding toward becoming a “petty dictator.”
“I am not a CIA agent,” Almagro begins the letter in highly unorthodox fashion. “And your lie, even if it is repeated a thousand times, will never be true.”
The letter comes after Maduro made heated statements Tuesday accusing Almagro of becoming a traitor giving a helping hand to the CIA and U.S. interests.
In response, Almagro turned the tables on the Venezuelan president, calling him a traitor.
“You betray your people and your supposed ideology with your rambling tirades, you are a traitor to ethics in politics with your lies and you betray the most sacred principle in politics, which is to subject yourself to the scrutiny of your people,” Almagro wrote.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez responded to the letter saying Almagro’s statements increasingly detail his “hatred against Venezuela and its legitimate authorities.” She accused the OAS head of “only repeating scripts dictated by the imperial masters,” adding that Almagro “will never give orders to Venezuela.”
The comments come amid rising political tensions in Venezuela as the opposition continues to push for faster progress toward a recall referendum on whether to remove Maduro from office.
Right-wing leader Henrique Capriles escalated calls for mobilizations on Tuesday with an implicit appeal to the armed forces to revolt, saying “the hour of truth is coming” for the military to take sides.
Almagro told Maduro that Venezuela has an obligation to make sure the referendum happens this year. “To deny the people that vote, to deny them the possibility of deciding, would make you just another petty dictator, like so many this Hemisphere has had,” he wrote.
Maduro has said the opposition has every right to call for the referendum, but must follow regulations.
The Venezuelan government has accused the opposition of trying to use the OAS to advance its political interests and urged the regional body to focus on promoting dialogue, not following the opposition’s lead.
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But the OAS has threatened to apply the Democratic Charter against Venezuela, which could expel the country from the regional body over alleged violations of the democratic order.
Almagro closed his letter to the Venezuelan president on a strongly-worded and note atypical note for a regional diplomat. “I am sorry to inform you that I neither bow down, nor am I intimidated,” he wrote.
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Last week, the OAS chief attended the Concordia Summit in Miami, at which far-right former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe called for foreign military intervention in Venezuela.
Last year, Almagro criticized Venezuela’s electoral authorities, slamming the head of the electoral board for allegedly failing to ensure a democratic process in the National Assembly elections.
After the statements, former Uruguayan President Jose “Pepe” Mujica, under whom Almagro served as foreign minister, wrote a letter to the OAS chief lamenting the actions toward Venezuela and formally breaking ties with his former ally.
Some Latin American leaders, including Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, have argued that the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States should replace the OAS as the primary regional integration and dispute-settlement body. Such an approach would make regional issues more independent from Washington, where the OAS is headquartered.