Dinorah Figuera Returns From Exile to Negotiate the Transition: What's at Stake for Investors in Venezuela

The thaw between Washington and Venezuela runs on two tracks. The economic one —licenses that reopened oil, mining and aviation— moved first and is tangible. The political one —a negotiating table between the 2015 opposition and the ruling-party National Assembly, backed by the State Department— was set up this week with the return of Dinorah Figuera. The key for investors: a general license is an instrument revocable by executive decision; its permanence is, in practice, being tied to the progress of that negotiation. Capital is being committed before the political track delivers its first measurable result, and the table excludes the figure with the most recent electoral mandate.

Dinorah Figuera, who heads the National Assembly elected in 2015, returned to Venezuela on June 18 after eight years abroad —the last ones in Spain, before that sheltered in the French embassy in Caracas. She did so, as she stated on arrival, at the invitation of the U.S. State Department. That same day she met with U.S. chargé d'affaires John Barrett and with Jorge Rodríguez, president of the ruling-party Assembly. From that meeting came a concrete agreement: to form a technical and political working table to define an agenda and a roadmap toward what both sides described as an orderly, sustainable and inclusive democratic transition. The immediate stated objective is the appointment of a credible National Electoral Council (CNE) as a precondition for future elections. Both sides also committed to an orderly, progressive and inclusive process, with concrete, verifiable milestones to measure progress.