Venezuela: Oiling Up Diplomacy

Welcome back to the Round Room for Season 2! In this episode, the all-new Round Room team put together an episode on the recently eased sanctions imposed on Venezuela. As Venezuela's economy mainly relies on oil, the petrostate has fallen into an unfortunate economy which has furthered living poor conditions for many Venezuelan citizens. Additionally, as President Nicolas Maduro raises tensions in the country's election race, many residents have been faced with unfair election results and a questionable future for the country's government. More recently, the United States has eased its harsh sanctions which were imposed on Venezuela as the economy worsened and Maduro's party became stricter. Could this improve the relationship between the two countries, or will Venezuelans be the victims of unfairness? Listen to our new episode to learn more. This podcast is hosted by Monica Rivera Sosa and Natalie Vasileff. We would love to thank our writers who put together the script for this episode: Iselin Bratz, Haley Clough, Hank Jones, and Melanie Pozo. We would also love to thank our fact-checker for this episode, Paloma Castrillo. And, of course, we would additionally love to thank the Round Room's sound editor, Aadi Sinha. To keep up with podcast updates, please follow @theroundroompod on Instagram. Sources for this episode: 1. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis 2. https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Venezuela 3. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-imposed-sanctions-venezuela 4. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10715 5. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67153460 6. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-easing-venezuela-oil-sanctions-response-election-deal-official-2023-10-18/  7. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/10/20/lake-maracaibo-venezuela-oil-spill-hair-proyecto-sirena/ 8. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-easing-venezuela-oil-sanctions-response-election-deal-official-2023-10-18/   9. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-67153460