Extractivism Talks #09: “Venezuela’s 2024 election: accommodation and transformation"
The Event:
Our Extractivism Talks #09 is entitled ‚Venezuela’s 2024 election: accommodation and transformation.’We will discuss with Anais López (FES Caracas), Manuel Sutherland (CIFO and UCV), Benedicte Bull (University of Oslo) and Osmel Manzano (Georgetown University) the political, social and economic context of the upcoming presidential elections in Venezuela. Considered one of the oldest Petrostates in the world, Venezuela is immersed in a multifactorial crisis that concerns not only its own oil and gas production but also its future in a context of energy transition, decarbonisation, and furthering extractivism. With that in mind, we will be debating who are the possible winners and losers of the 2024 elections in political, ecological, societal and economic terms.
Moreover, discussion happens days before the elections take place. Therefore, it will explore the quest for free elections, the possibilities of democratic transition, the main contested goals for the future of the country and the international and regional factors influencing the outcomes. We will give particular attention to Venezuela’s economic and diplomatic circumstances as well as how global geopolitical events, like the return of left-leaning governments in Latin America, the reorientation of international focus to the Russian war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Hamas war, can affect the outcomes in Venezuela as an important energy producer.
The event will take place on July 17 by live-stream on Zoom at 18h to 20h.
The speakers:
Anais López
(FES Caracas)
Anais López is a sociologist from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. She is an expert in gender studies and development planning from the Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo (Cendes) at the same university. Since 2018, she has been the project area coordinator of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation in Venezuela.
Manuel Sutherland
(CIFO and Central University of Venezuela)
Manuel Sutherland has a double major in Planning-Budgeting and Banking-Finance from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). He specialises in Planning Instruments and Techniques at CENDES (Center for Development Studies) and has an MA in Industrial Engineering from the Universidad Experimental Politécnica Antonio José de Sucre (UNEXPO). He recently finished his PhD in Development Studies with CENDES at UCV. His thesis is a comparative study of progressivism’s evolution in Bolivia, Uruguay and Venezuela. Moreover, he worked at the Ministry of Labor and at the Ministry of Light Industries and Commerce (MILCO) as an assessor and consultant in industrial policy. He also worked at the Industrial Bank of Venezuela (BIV) and the Ministry of Planning and Development (MPPPD). Finally, he has been the founder and director of the Centro de Investigación y Formación Obrera (CIFO) since 2015. Manuel Sutherland has written about the economic crisis, oil rentierism, the socialist revolution, the collapse of extractivism in Venezuela and the ecological transition in Latin America.
Osmel Manzano
(Georgetown University)
Osmel Manzano is an Adjunct Professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Professorial Lecturer at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University, and Regional Economic Advisor for the Country Department for the Andean Countries at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). He has been working on the development challenges, with an emphasis on natural resources, energy, and growth. He has authored different policy and academic publications on these subjects and teaches on economic development in Latin American and the political economy of natural resources. Previously, he was the Regional Economic Advisor for Belize, Central America, Haiti, Mexico, Panama and the Dominican Republic. Before joining the IADB, he was Assistant Director and Coordinator of the Research Program at the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). He was also an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello (UCAB), the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown, and IESA Business School, and has been invited to teach at different Latin American universities. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He holds a Ph.D. Degree in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in economics from UCAB.
Benedicte Bull
(Oslo University)
Benedicte Bull is a Professor of political science at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo. She was the director of the Norwegian Network for Latin America Research between 2008 and 2020 and is the president of the board of the Nordic Institute for Latin America Studies at the University of Stockholm. Her research focuses on the role of elites and, institutions and external forces in sustainable development and democracy in Latin America. She has written extensively on economic and political developments in Venezuela, among other Current History, Nueva Sociedad, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and America Latina Hoy.
Moderation:
Luíza Cerioli
(University of Kassel)
Luíza is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kassel. At the project, she researches the possibilities of transnational cross-comparison of extractivist countries in Latin America and the Middle East, focusing on the development plans of Venezuela, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Algeria. She defended her doctoral thesis in Political Science at the Centre for Near and Middle East Studies (CNMS) at the University of Marburg. She holds an International Relations and Comparative Foreign Policy Master from the University of Brasília (UnB), and her alma mater is the University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).