Colombia’s Uribe on Venezuela: ‘Tyranny has established itself’

Ex-president says Maduro regime has put the country at risk of becoming another Cuba

During his two terms as president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe was the US’s closest ally in Latin America, railing against the revolutionary socialist government in neighbouring Venezuela.

Now, with the Venezuelan opposition in disarray and its leader, Juan Guaidó, having failed to unseat Nicolás Maduro as president, Mr Uribe said that US sanctions against Caracas have not worked and he fears Venezuela is fast becoming another Cuba.

“Tyranny has established itself,” Mr Uribe told the Financial Times in a video interview from his wife’s family ranch near Medellín.

“When my generation was young, every year we’d say ‘this year the Cuban revolution will fall’ and it never fell,” said Mr Uribe, still Colombia’s most powerful politician at the age of 68. “It stabilised and we’ve lost three generations. It pains me to think history might repeat itself in Venezuela.”