The new representative of Venezuela’s opposition in the United States is urging the Biden administration to relax crippling oil sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s government or risk seeing the socialist-run country turn into another Cuba with Washington scapegoated for increasing authoritarianism and economic hardships.Fernando Blasi’s comments represent a sharp break from the opposition’s “maximum pressure campaign” of the past four years when it was relying on the US to muscle Maduro out of power.The failure of that hardline approach led the opposition in January to remove the beleaguered former lawmaker Juan Guaidó from his role as “interim president”, a title he claimed as head of the National Assembly elected in 2015 – widely considered Venezuela’s last democratic vote. The opposition has replaced that arrangement with a more horizontal style of leadership of mostly exiled politicians.
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