Latin America weighs Venezuela sanctions in 2019

A group of Latin American countries met in Colombia today to discuss possible actions aimed at restoring democracy in Venezuela.

The actions would be taken on 10 January 2019, when Venezuela´s president Nicolas Maduro is scheduled to be inaugurated for another six-year term following 20 May 2018 elections widely seen as fraudulent.

The Lima Group includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Santa Lucia.

"This has been a preparatory meeting of the actions of the group in the near future. We have done a detailed analysis of a wide range of options in the face of what will happen on January 10 when president Maduro renews his mandate as a result of elections that the group has deemed illegitimate, which will require a reaction from the group. We also talked about the worsening crisis in Venezuela, massive Venezuelan migration and other matters," said Peru´s vice minister for foreign affairs, Hugo de Zela, who co-hosted today´s meeting.

"We have renewed the unity of the group and assigned tasks to the members of the group. We will meet once or twice more before January 10 to take firm decisions," De Zela said in a video released at the end of the meeting.

His Colombian counterpart, Adriana Mejía Hernández, called the meeting "very productive" and celebrated the unity of the group.

It is not clear what actions the governments are considering, but military action is not seen as a near-term possibility. Venezuela does not export oil to any of the Lima Group countries. Many of them have been struggling with a tidal wave of Venezuelan migrants over the past year. More than 1mn are currently in Colombia and 500,000 in Peru.

Washington has been pressing the region to take a more proactive stance. The US, EU and Canada have targeted sanctions on individual Venezuelan officials for corruption, drug-trafficking and human rights abuses. The US has also had financial sanctions on Venezuela and state-owned oil company PdV since August 2017.

Maduro has been in power since 2013. Last year he effectively dissolved the opposition-controlled national assembly in favor of a rubber-stamp national constituent assembly (ANC), which is currently drafting a new constitution that could replace PdV with a new oil company, stripped of its mounting debt.

The US administration called Maduro's re-election illegitimate but has not clarified whether it will continue to recognize his government following the expiration of his current term. The US is preparing a new round of sanctions on Caracas, this time targeting what it calls lucrative exports of gold from government-sanctioned wildcat operations.