Interviews with Rodrigo Diamanti

I think that civil society and the people who work in the political parties are separating themselves from the defeat and they are trying to overcome this difficult situation. But I think that analysis is not as important as our motivation. The only fight that one loses is the one that we abandon. However, we know that we need other variables to be in our favor. Because while the government continues to receive financial funds from petroleum, assets from the economy, and gives money so that the people can live and receive benefits from the government, it is difficult for the opposition to convince (the people) with better options, or at least that is how I see it.

So I think that what we have learned is that petroleum nations have very high possibilities of turning into autocracies and that these autocracies will be maintained. By keeping only 51 percent of the population happy, it is not necessary to keep the others happy. And if you begin to talk about the other half, there is a possibility that financial funding will be halted and with your means of communication being censored, you are never going to win an election. And I think that this is what is happening in Venezuela – that the dictators are populists and that the dictators have always been popular.

One begins to see how dictatorships function and the people who also see them from a different angle do not have the means to oppose them. Sometimes these dictators have won because they have given people the basic benefits to develop. And this is something that we all have to understand. That just because the government is democratic – that there are people who are going to reject them. And that just because they win the election, that they are democratic. All of these myths and all of these hypotheses, we need to demolish them because there can be very popular dictatorships that win the elections and that violate human rights of a percentage of the population because they keep the other half of the people happy with resources from petroleum.

Rodrigo Diamanti of Venezuela is president of “Un Mundo Sin Mordaza” (A World Without Censorship), a network that promotes freedom of speech in the Americas and around the world.

In 2007, Diamanti obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Andres Bello Catholic University of Caracas. Two years later he received a master’s degree in political studies from Complutense University in Madrid. He is a founding member of the Venezuela Student Movement of 2007, which works for free and fair elections, transparent governance, freedom of expression and association, and reconciliation in Venezuela.

Diamanti is a senior fellow of the Alliance of Youth Movements (Movements.org) and has lectured in Turkey, Spain, Mexico and the United States.