The meeting was due to take place at Casa Rosada, the Argentine presidential palace, on Saturday, January 4, against a backdrop of growing tensions between Buenos Aires and the Chavist regime in Caracas. Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who claims to have won the July 28, 2024, presidential election against Nicolas Maduro, was due to be received by Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, six days before Maduro’s January 10 inauguration. “Our tour of Latin America begins. First stop: Argentina,” announced the 75-year-old opposition leader on X on Thursday, January 2. Gonzalez Urrutia was then due to travel to Uruguay to meet the outgoing center-right president, Luis Lacalle Pou.

The former Venezuelan ambassador to Argentina (1998-2002) claims to have won the July 2024 election with 67% of the vote. Maduro, for his part, is claiming victory for a third consecutive term, but the “Bolivarian” government has not published the official electoral statements, as demanded by the opposition, which is contesting the official results. The European Union, the United States, and several Latin American countries, including Argentina, do not recognize the victory of the successor to former president Hugo Chavez.

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