 Leo, do you want to? There we go. Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Friends of Latin America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast every Wednesday, 4.30 PM Pacific, 7.30 PM Eastern on CodePink YouTube Live. Today's episode is titled, Is the Crisis in Ukraine Forcing a New US Approach Towards Venezuela. My co-host today is CodePink Latin America Policy Specialist, Leonardo Flores. Our story was inspired by news from Saturday, March 5, when a group of senior US officials flew to Venezuela for a meeting with President Nicolas Maduro's government to discuss the possibility of easing sanctions on Venezuela oil exports as the Biden administration weighed a ban on imports of Russian gas and oil. The trip was the highest level US visit to Venezuela in years and came as the United States was seeking to isolate Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Venezuela, Russia's most important ally in South America, was a significant supplier of crude to the United States before exports were crippled by sanctions imposed by Washington. Joining today's conversation is our friend Carlos Rón. Carlos is Venezuelan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America, and we're so honored to have you back with us, Carlos. Welcome. Thank you, Terry. Pleasure to be with you guys and to be able to talk a bit more about these recent events. As always, you know that for us, our relationship with the United States and having an opportunity to speak directly to people in the United States is, of course, very important. So let's start with, I mean, you can imagine. I mean, you were in the States for many, many years in Washington. I mean, it was just, oh, it was shocking in an exciting way and in a very hypocritical way when the news broke of this meeting on March 5. Can you tell us how that came about and maybe some background at what led up to this acceptance of this meeting? Sure. So like you said, on March 5, these news broke out of a meeting that took place between high-level US government officials and President Maduro, also other high-level officials from the Venezuelan government. It was perhaps the first meeting in a very long time of this high-level representation. I believe that we can say there's a lot of changes going on throughout the world. I think we're definitely in a new era of many situations that are going on. I think it shows the failure of that maximum pressure policy that was implemented during the Trump administration in the sense that it didn't amount to what the US had wanted as an objective. And of course, it ended up hurting a lot of Venezuelan people. I think that now this new administration that's been a bit over a year in government hasn't really changed policies up to date. None of the so-called sanctions of unilateral course measures have been lifted or changed. But there was this very important first meeting between government officials. So I think it shows that at the end, we've always been right in saying that the best ways to communicate or to establish a policy between Venezuela and the United States is through the channels of diplomacy, is through speaking rather than through aggressions. I think if there's always room for communication or for dialogue, if it comes in a respectful way, Temaduro stated a couple of days after the meeting when he came on to live television to speak to Venezuelan people about these issues, he said it was a cordial meeting. It was a diplomatic meeting. It was a respectful meeting. And I think that's very important for us to point out. Venezuela has never been against diplomacy. Venezuela has never been against speaking. What we've been is reacting, of course, against aggressions. I mean, you have to remember in the last three, four years, we've undergone attacks like a blackout that came out of an attack to hacking our electrical system and attempted an invasion by mercenaries, US trains, some of them coming from Colombia, coup attempt led by Guaidó and López. Like all these things, all these forms of aggression. And of course, we're going to react and we're going to have a strong position against them. But what we've always continuously stated is that we're open to politics. We're open to diplomacy. We're open to speaking on another term. So this visit, I think, represents a victory for diplomacy in a sense. That is not to say that things have completely changed or that this is the beginning of conversations. And we'll see if they continue and if there's the political will to continue them. But I think it is definitely an important new moment where diplomacy is the least in this moment. Triumphing over all the other types of aggressions. To me, this meeting was really interesting because in the days just before the meeting, you had President Biden extending the US national emergency with regards to Venezuela, the one that calls Venezuela an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States, which is patently absurd. You also had the United States and Colombia engaging in military exercises, maritime exercises with a nuclear submarine right off of the Venezuelan coast. So what does it say that on the one hand, finally, after so many years, you have the United States willing to speak with Venezuela? I read in the media that it was the first visit by a White House official since the late 1990s. So over 20 years. And so on the one hand, they're willing to meet. But on the other, they're still kind of keeping this pressure on Venezuela. And then right after the meeting, a few days later, you had the Colombian President, Ivan Duque, come to Washington where the news was announced that Colombia was named a non-NATO major ally of the United States, which carries with it all sorts of implications for the defense industry and for the Colombian economy. So what do you make of the United States kind of talking to Venezuela, but that at the same time almost increasing the pressure in some ways? Well, I think, I mean, I can't speak to what's on their minds and really what the objective or the purposes that is. I mean, we can say that this is a first advance or first achievement in diplomatic terms, but like I said before, it's by no means the recomposition of relations or the, you know, everything is over and there's a new relation. What I think though it does is definitely call for or show the need to re-engage in that type of approach and approach for diplomacy rather than all these aggressions rather than, you know, the military threats next door. You know, I think because I feel the response even the way President Maduro addressed nation and, you know, and talked favorably about this type of communication between the two countries should show people and leaders in the United States that there's a lot that we can gain from diplomacy and much more than we lose when we resort, you know, to these other, when they resort, let's just say to these other types of aggressions and so forth. If there's a long path I believe to, you know, ahead, even if conversations continue, even if, you know, we can come to some understandings, but I think again, the diplomacy is the key where, you know, in which we should establish relationships. And I think that it was, it must have, it is very telling that the United States finally realized that they needed to come to this approach. It was them that requested the visit and it was very well tuned in the sense that, you know, under these circumstances, the circumstances of communication with respect, we are willing to sit down and talk and listen and dialogue. You know, it's fascinating to me. I mean, and it's not been overtly discussed in the U.S. media, well, to some of us on the progressive and leftist news, yes, but the meeting was with the Maduro government, not the Guaido government that has been recognized by the United States. I mean, that's basically a de facto recognition that Nicolas Maduro is the democratically elected president of Venezuela, which is huge in and of itself. It's huge in and of itself. I completely agree. I think it was quite important because when we settle along all this time, you know, there really isn't another government. There is no parallel structure that, you know, it is only a fiction to Guaido, Interim President or whatever, you know, and it shows, you know, as far as I understand, they didn't even know, you know, that this was taking place until afterwards. So it shows that, you know, it's telling a lot of these people that are willing to, in a way, you know, do damage or call for damage on their own country, thinking that, you know, they will get somehow rewarded by the United States. It might as well, you know, history has shown this many times. They could probably end up as, you know, bypassed or even ignored in moments when they're no longer in part of the interests of the US. So I think it is a positive, of course, a recognition. It's a recognition that happened not only by the US government, you know, it's a recognition that even the US media, mainstream media that, you know, we used to no longer call President Maduro President, but you know, the regime or the faculty leader or whatever, then all of a sudden you start seeing other lines again, you know, President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. It's funny that you have to go through this in order to come back to reality in the United States. Yeah, and going off that, I mean, I think it's really interesting, this changing media landscape that you alluded to, because, you know, in the days before, weeks before this meeting and then immediately after it, you had all these articles and mainstream publications kind of changing their tone towards Venezuela. So for example, before the meeting, the New York Times had this long piece, lauding Venezuela's so-called new technocrats. You had the Washington Post and really the most incredible opinion I've ever seen in the Washington Post, where they said it's titled behind US foreign policy toward Venezuela or century old racist tropes or basically arguing that US Venezuela policy has been based on white supremacy. You had an opinion in the Miami Herald of all places calling for sanctions relief. And even Bloomberg is saying, well, now then as well as embracing capitalism, which isn't true, but I think the point Bloomberg is trying to make is that it's okay to approach Venezuela. I think what's important here to recognize is that, you know, if you can so easily change a couple of headlines and a couple of articles in order to show it's not that reality changed in three days, is that reality wasn't being told the way it should be. And then, you know, again, like you said, you know, we're in no way renouncing, you know, we haven't renounced socialism. As a matter of fact, President Maduro has been since the beginning of this year talking about the renewal of our socialism. We're talking about, we believe we're not at the socialism stage where we want to be. We're in a process of transition towards socialism. But this is a new moment, a new era of transition towards socialism. This is something that we've been discussing, but we've never renounced that idea. We've always said that we are adapting socialist policies to our own reality, to our own context, to our own time, you know, it's a different moment in time. But, you know, we said that. And, you know, we've been claiming for so many years that this is not a war zone. This is not a place that when you come here, you know, you guys know this because you've been to Venezuela in recent years, but you know that if you read the newspapers, you think that this is a war zone and that you can't even come here because something's going to happen to you. Like all of a sudden we realized in three or four articles that these things were, you know, Venezuela somehow is not as bad as it seemed, or it's not as bad as they made it seem for all these years. There's the reality here. There's a reality where this is a country that has been hurt, and it's true, they has been hurt by this US policy of sanctions. We have seen a lot of difficulties we could have. And, you know, these things were aimed at the beginning at attacking those things that we had, that the revolution had been able to improve and to better you know, after the years of neoliberal policies, we had strong healthcare, we had strong food and distribution, we had strong education, and all these things started being affected directly by these sanctions. Even then though, you know, the people and some of the people have resisted, and you know, we've made all these strides to, you know, to make sure that we survive and the government has tried to make, you know, make use of the little revenues that we're able to get and not let the, you know, social programs die down, it's been a struggle for us. And it's been a struggle that in the last couple of months or even the last year, we've seen a lot of success in, you know, overcoming these difficulties. You know, for the first time in this whole year, we overcame hyperinflation, you know, this hyperinflation that we're talking about and that this whole year so far has not had those high levels of inflation, you know, and even in despite all these sanctions put into place, we've found ways to be creative and to move around it. So what I think is interesting is that now the US can really or should really start seeing the Venezuela that is really here, the truth about Venezuela, that's what really exists and not this, you know, mythical monster that they've built in the press. It's so, I guess as a US citizen to say it's so astounding and hypocritical and to see the US change. I mean, we are all happy that it's happened, that it was the US that approached the Venezuelan government. But to have, I mean, I would just be very coarse about it. The US has had a policy of basically starving, starving your nation, you know, and denying medical access to medical supplies and technology, all of it, I mean, just on and on and on. And then just, oh, by the way, now we need your oil. It's just, it doesn't say much for the integrity, to me as a US citizen, to me, the integrity with US diplomacy. And I think it sends a very big message to the rest of the world that's like, well, and to a certain degree, I understand this is politics and economics too, you know, everybody has certain interests at one point and then it shifts and, you know, the puzzle gets put back together in a different way. But it's very, it's huge that it was the US that approached the Caracas, that it was Washington that took the initiative out of need. I would say, you know, out of political need, because a lot of people are going to be very upset paying a lot of money for gas this coming summer. Well, I think, Terry, that the issue here is that we have to remember it was never Venezuela that changed its relationship. I mean, and, you know, even since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, even with President Chavez was here early on, Venezuela, you know, developed its own policies, its own independent foreign policy, developed its own social policies, you know, we went through, we started on this path for socialism and we never broke, you know, we never decided to break, you know, relations, we never decided to change oil trade with oil commerce with the United States. These have all been results of policies that the US implemented towards Venezuela. When we finally decided regulations in 2019, it was because of, you know, something that, you know, it was even something that we were left with no choice. You have a government that in our face is basically saying, we don't recognize, ooh, we recognize this other person, you know, proclaims self-right. It was really, there was no other way but to, you know, to break relations. But Venezuela had never, you know, we've never had this intention, you know, we've always been reliable trade partners. And today, you know, it's funny that, you know, they, if you want to really, you know, trade with Venezuela oil again and buy with the oil, it is the United States that has to do all the work. It's the United States that has to lift the sanctions, the United States that have to allow its companies to operate in Venezuela. It's the United States that has to allow us to access the financial system so that we can, you know, go back and be able to work within that system. It's never, it was never us. That's what I mean. It was never us that placed, you know, these difficulties or these, you know, blocks in the relationship. So if this ends up being a construction, where in some, you know, in the near future, you know, some of these measures are lifted and we start, you know, when we go back to something that we had before, it's what we always, you know, proposed. It's what we always did. You know, it was United States that changed that the maze of changes. And I do think, you know, in the current context, you know, all the issues that are going on the world, you know, we're going to have an energy crisis also because the planet is in itself in a crisis mode. The capitalist is in a crisis mode. It's been there many years. We saw it, we've seen it more in a crude way because of the pandemic. But, you know, in order to stabilize, you know, I think, you know, it will be in the interest of the people in the United States, the movements in the United States, you know, everybody should sort of think, you know, it would be better to go back to diplomacy, it would be better to go back to the other type of relations that we used to have in Venezuela so that things can, you know, kind of stabilize. You know, I think it could be even something that's worth running around, you know? So right now in the United States and in Europe, we're seeing kind of corporate media really demonize not just Russia, not just Vladimir Putin, but also the Russian people. What's the perspective on this conflict from Venezuela and from kind of the global south? How is Venezuela seeing what's going on in the Ukraine? What does Venezuela think about Russia and the Russian people? Look, I believe that we have to start by saying something and, you know, it's very important. We've always believed, you know, we're talking about diplomacy, we've always believed in the promise of peace, you know? And we are, of course, against conflicts. We're very, President Manduro has said it as well. You know, we are very concerned about, you know, things escalating and going into another direction that could engage possibly the world into a major confrontation. And, you know, we definitely believe that we need, as an international community, as a global community, we need to do things so that, you know, conflicts scale down so that, you know, we can return to diplomacy. Now, we can't have this conversation without noticing or without realizing that these are issues that have been going on not since February, but that have been going on for many years. You know, there are issues that threaten that, you know, that put in jeopardy Russia's security, you know, since many years ago that put in jeopardy the lives of ethnic Russians within Ukraine, you know, since many years ago. You know, how many people have died in the conflicts prior to this recent operation in February? And those things are not in the news or they don't make the news cycle. And in any case, you know, if you have a NATO that is providing more weapons that is falling for, you know, building up, you know, a larger conflict, then of course, you know, we're all going to feel threatened and this is something that's completely the wrong direction. Well, you should have, we believe countries in NATO and elsewhere should, you know, be promoting peace, understanding meetings, you know, sit down, let's sit down, let's talk, you know, that's what you de-escalate, not by sending more weapons and planes or whatever, you know, offering things that would continue or exacerbate a military conflict. And there's another thing, you know, we don't think the solutions. I mean, we've experienced throughout all these years, these unilateral coercive measures. Now, when you say, you see that every day new sanctions against Russia are announced and new things, well, where is that going to be? Because we have, we know that sanctions definitely do not lead to prosperity, to, you know, to any of the goals that are set except for the, that goal that you cannot admit in public, which is that you want to hurt the people of that country, the sanctions. So at the end of the day, what, you know, if that's going to be the solution offered by the US or we're going to put sanctions and a stronger sanctions than ever on Russia, is that when, who's that going to part? No, nowhere in the world has to have sanctions for anybody but the common people of any of those countries in question. So having lived through that, having lived through, you know, all these attacks, the xenophobia that has spread even in this region against Venezuelans when some Venezuelans have been forced because of the sanctions to migrate to other countries. So we know, you know, that when that discrimination that that attack, having lived through censorship as, you know, as Venezuelans, you know, there's no media information that comes from Venezuela that you can listen to. That as soon as that's something that you could easily access in, you know, in the North and so forth. Well, having lived through this, we see what's going on in Russia, you know, towards Russia and we're, you know, we understand that this is, you know, this is something negative and that, you know, we definitely don't agree with or we definitely don't support. We have expressed our support to the Russian people, to the Russian government in a sense that we know these actions that are being taken place against them are very dangerous. I mean, just the fact that it's as ridiculous or things are getting that, you know, you want to erase Judy Garger in from, you know, space history. So as if this man never reached space, I mean, how ludicrous is this? I mean, how far are we willing to go to accept and to normalize this? You know, we've lived it. I mean, we've seen things against Venezuela, how our own history has been turned upside down by this narrative. Now we see it going on in Russia. Well, when is this going to stop? You know, so I think we sympathize with that, with what we understand what's going on Russia as we live something similar. You are in a really unique position sitting in Caracas and particularly working for the Venezuelan foreign ministry, but being Venezuelan where you and Leonardo both, you have a relationship along history with the United States, which has, you know, and has had a real positive turn of events this month, but you have a very strong relationship with Russia as well I mean, I have seen the, you know, the humanitarian aid that's come into the country and specifically sacks of wheat when, you know, wasn't possible for Venezuela to produce its own food, fertilizing companies were sanctioned. I mean, on and on, anything you tried to do was sanctioned so that couldn't do anything to help yourselves. So how, I mean, that's a really, you sit in a very, very unique place at this moment in history that you are so close to the States with perhaps a, you know, a restoration on the horizon of diplomatic ties, their relationship there, but this really, really important relationship with Russia too. So, you know, I think we have to, you know, I think this was important and I, you know, the important reflection that I've heard during the past couple of days is that we should also, in this current context, try to not be pushed into the lens of the Cold War or the Cold War mentality. You know, the fact that Venezuela, Venezuela, like you said, has a wonderful relationship with Russia. Russia has been a country that has shown solidarity with Venezuela at the worst moments. When the United States blocked our capability of purchasing vaccines through the COVAX method on the United Nations, we were able to obtain vaccines from Russia and, you know, and confront this pandemic. The same way we've been able to obtain health in Cuba from China, et cetera. So the world has changed. This is no longer, first it was no longer a unipolar world. It's no longer a world where, you know, the US is the complete dominant as it was perhaps for some time after the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it's also not the bipolar world of the Cold War. And we shouldn't let ourselves be dragged into that position of, you know, saying, you know, one or the other and, you know, this, because I think that's really hurtful for the rest of the world. You know, I think that we can look forward to having respectful relations with the United States where we can, you know, trade and have exchanges, you know, in the way countries that respect each other should and maintain a relationship of friendship and solidarity and alliance with Russia and with China, with Iran, you know, all these other countries that we've already established relationship with. The world is, you know, we shouldn't fall into this as a country. I mean, we shouldn't fall into the strap of having to choose one or the other The world is no longer divided in those terms. The world is divided in, you know, we as a sovereign nation should really be looking towards where, who can we cooperate with to, you know, obtain true benefits for our people to obtain true, you know, exchanges that are profitable for, you know, both countries rather than seeing, you know, this line we can't cross, you know because if you do your, you're with us or you're with the enemy and so forth, we have to overcome that, that, you know mentality is putting the world into halves. This is another type of world then. I'm like really pleased to hear that. And I think, as I've thought, boy, since this meeting of March 5th, it's like the Venezuelans could really teach the US something here. It is a multilateral world. The US hasn't recognized it. If it has, it's going to take a while to accept it, if ever, in my opinion. But your country is such a great example of what's possible. I mean, you have allies, trade relationships, diplomatic relationships all over the world, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, East West and it's such a beautiful example of what's possible and what's emerging and in a big part of the world, what has emerged, I would say. And that's part of what the US is trying to stop or control, perhaps. You know, I think we learn this from President Chavez's foreign policy. If you remember when CELAC was constituting, which is that space where all of Latin America meets, you know, it was, the government of Colombia was a very, you know, aggressive and there's a lot of distance ideologically from England, another world between Venezuela and that government and many of the other governments in the region. Well, we came together because, you know, common issues and common challenges that we had that we all faced in the same way. I think that that's, you know, we've learned that you don't necessarily have to agree on everything or have the same ideological perspective in order to have relations with another country. I mean, it would be fantastic and I honestly say this and I honestly believe this, it would be fantastic if we, through the process of more communications, more exchanges, we can, you know, again have our embassy back and, you know, again open, you know, a relationship that, you know, Alex Sab, who's a diplomat who's unjustly detained in the United States can come back to Venezuela. You know, it would be great if we could have a normal type of relationship where, you know, we don't have to see things eye to eye. I know, and you all know this, that the United States doesn't necessarily see eye to eye all the other countries has a relationship with it. But, you know, there's a thing about diplomacy and that allows them to have relations. This has always been the aspiration of Venezuela. You know, we don't, we've, and we've never said to anyone, we want to impose our world view on you. We want to impose our model or political model on you or social model on you. We have an experience, you know, you're welcome to learn from it and to do what you want that would help you, but we've never tried to impose anything on anyone. And I think that's the world we should strive towards. You know, a world where, you know, we can always talk and recognize each other's differences. I'm glad you mentioned Alex Sab, because as we know last fall, you know, between August and October, the Venezuelan government was engaged in dialogue with the Guaidol faction of the opposition. And this dialogue ended when the United States illegally extradited Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Sab. But just after this meeting on March 5th between the White House and President Maduro, the president announced that, you know, the dialogue with the opposition would restart. But not only that, he said he was gonna expand it to not just include the Guaidol faction, but also the, what we can call the more moderate factions of the opposition. Can you talk a little bit about this new dialogue that's gonna happen and what that means that might mean for Alex Sab? Sure, I think, well, first of all, you know, we firmly maintain our position in the sense that we believe Alex Sab has been unjustly detained, that, you know, he must be freed, he must be liberated, he must be able to come back to his family. Now, President Maduro said, you know, if we talk about dialogue, he said in live television after the events of March 5th, if we talk about dialogue, we must also be the ones to give the example. So, and that's when he said, you know, he announced that we would come back to dialogue with all sides, all those that are interested in dialogue for a better political moment for Venezuela, for, you know, to improve these communications. So I think what we see is, you know, there's a necessity to not only discuss things with that group that's represented by the Guaido Unitary Platform, but there's a lot of other actors here in Venezuela that are important to take into consideration. As a matter of fact, if you look at the results of the November elections, you'll find some quite interesting numbers where you'll see that the amount of votes of the opposition that is sort of aligned with the Guaido factions and the amount of votes of another opposition that has not called for sanctions but that has continued to participate in politics in Venezuela, they're kind of, they're almost equal in numbers. So this myth that Guaido represents the opposition or it's the main opposition, that kind of withered down during those elections. And that is part of, as a result of people not identifying with a sector that's calling for more sanctions for blockades and for all these unconstitutional ways out of, you know, government. I think that if anything that has been shown throughout all these years is the commitment of the Venezuelan people to a democratic process and to democratic processes. So it is only fair and I think legitimate that if we're going to have a national dialogue then the nation must be better represented, both, you know, government and the different factions of the opposition. Well, it's a great project and I just have to say that it's really for our audience that hasn't been to Venezuela. It's really a testament Carlos to you and your people what has happened in Venezuela since 1998 and what you have lived through with this economic warfare placed on you by the United States. You know, Venezuela is a nation of people still to this day despite everything. And it's very palpable when you walk the streets of Caracas but not just Caracas, any city throughout Venezuela. You can really feel that people are Venezuelans first. They love each other and their country. And I remember maybe 10 years ago maybe less than that, talking, I had come back from the delegation from Venezuela and I had a chance to meet with my congressman, Jared Huffman in California. And I said, you know, we're just kind of sharing the experiences I had in Venezuela with them. I said, you have to understand there's never going to be a civil war in Venezuela. It's not going to happen. These people are not going to fight each other. They see their country first. And I would say a lot of this US foreign and economic policy directed towards you and your country has made it stronger. It's a stronger sense of nationality. And I think that's true for other countries that are suffering enormous economic warfare imposed by the United States as well. It has the inverse effect that it's intended to have. That doesn't excuse the daily hardships, extraordinary daily hardships in a few years that I witnessed. But it's really, I mean, it's a real testament what all of you have lived through and you're still standing and standing strong and standing so proud. And it's a really beautiful thing. I think the people of Venezuela are great people. I think we've shown resilience well these years. It hasn't been easy. It has a lot of consciousness that has come to be the essence of motivating people to continue struggle. But it's also, it's a conviction that you're doing the right thing and that you have the right to choose your path. And I think that's primarily what guides us. In the end, like I said, what we want is prosperity for Venezuelans. We want people to have a dignified life. And we don't want to be in conflict with anybody around the world. We are a peace-loving nation. We haven't been in conflict since our independence movement with any other nation. I think what we're trying to do is really build a different society and a different society that is built on solidarity and other principles, cooperation, solidarity, these type of values. We live in a world right now that I think is deeply struggling to find its values. I mean, and when you see the rise of these, of hate, you know, of this xenophobia, of these fascist practices throughout the world, then you realize that our crisis is not only a crisis of the environment, it's not only a crisis of the economic system, it's a crisis of values. And, you know, in trying to construct a socialist society, we've learned that to survive, we've had to rely on the values of solidarity, on the values of cooperation, on the values of people helping each other out and trying to really stick through it together and not just each on his own. So I think that what has allowed us really to resist, and it may sound a bit romantic, but it's really not, you know, I say it from not from a figure of speech, I say it from what I've seen and what we live through. What has allowed us to survive this has been sticking together, has been, you know, a real unity and cohesion of the people and those are the values that I think are needed for the challenges that we have ahead in the world. And then, Carlos, we really wanna thank you for appearing on WTF with us. This was a really great conversation. Lots of insights into what's going on in Venezuela and just, you know, that spirit that you mentioned of the Venezuelan people, of their ability to resist and come together in the face of such great adversity. Well, thank you very much. So it was a pleasure to be able to talk to you and hopefully, you know, we'll move. Hopefully we can find ways to increase these efforts and diplomacy and, you know, so that we can once again have a stronger, more fruitful relationship and bridges with the people of the United States. Thank you so much. It looks hopeful in this particular moment. We're all kind of... Well, I think that, you know, things are, we have to take things always one step at a time to be realistic and to... But we always act with hope as our guide and, you know, because we need to believe that things are going to develop into more positive ways. So, you know, we always march towards a positive horizon. Thank you again. I'm so happy you had time for us today. Always a pleasure to see you and talk with you. So I wanna remind our audience that you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. We broadcast every Wednesday evening on CodePink YouTube Live at 7.30 p.m. Eastern. And also don't forget to catch CodePink Radio broadcasting every Thursday morning, 11 a.m. Eastern on WBAI out of New York City and WPFW out of Washington, D.C. Thank you, everyone. And we'll talk with you next week.