Eduardo Serrano: The Man Betting ‘Normal’ Can Save Venezuela—and Maybe the World’s Diesel Habit
Eduardo Serrano and the Curious Case of the Vanishing Nation-State
By Diego “Still-Has-a-Passport” Morales, Dave’s Locker International Desk
CARACAS—While the rest of the planet was busy deciding whether World War III should be fought on TikTok or in a shipping lane, Eduardo Serrano did something almost quaint: he tried to govern. The 48-year-old former industrial engineer, ex-bass player, and current Venezuelan presidential hopeful (one of six, if you count the guy who registered from exile with a Zoom background of Miraflores Palace) is not, on paper, the stuff of global tremors. Yet diplomats from six continents, hedge-fund wizards nursing crippling sovereign-bond hangovers, and crypto bros who still believe electricity is free have all started Googling his name at 3 a.m.—the international bat-signal that someone, somewhere, may finally tip the first domino in the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running slow-motion collapse.
Why should a Moldovan day-trader or a Singaporean logistics drone care? Because Venezuela’s misery has metastasized into the world’s most efficient misery-export program: 7.8 million refugees (give or take the ones who slipped across a jungle and were eaten by cartel spreadsheets), oil sanctions that reroute tankers like drunken Uber drivers, and inflation rates that make the Weimar Republic look fiscally Presbyterian. The country is a case study in how to weaponize incompetence until it becomes a geopolitical WMD. Enter Serrano, who promises—wait for it—“normal.” Not great, not utopian, just normal: grocery shelves, passports that work, courts that occasionally pretend the law exists. In 2024, that pitch is practically psychedelic.
The international implications are deliciously ironic. Washington, having sanctioned itself into a corner, now needs a Venezuelan partner who can both sell heavy crude and refrain from calling the State Department a “pack of hyenas in skinny jeans.” Brussels, fresh out of Russian diesel, eyes Caracas the way a vegan eyes an ethically problematic cheese board. Meanwhile Beijing, whose state banks hold about $19 billion in Venezuelan IOUs scribbled on ideological napkins, quietly rehearses the imperial art of debt-for-oil swaps without looking too neocolonial. Everyone wants Serrano—or any breathing adult not currently indicted—to succeed, the same way arsonists root for the fire department once the flames reach their own hedge.
Serrano’s résumé is comically overqualified for the job of “country starter-kit.” He once built a valve factory that actually produced valves—revolutionary in a nation where factories mostly produce emigration. He reads macroeconomic papers for fun, a habit that in Venezuela ranks socially between taxidermy and serial arson. His campaign slogan, “Primero, que funcione” (“First, make it work”), is so aggressively pragmatic it sounds subversive. Crowds love it; chavista hardliners denounce it as “neoliberal sorcery”; the opposition’s old guard suspects it’s a CIA deepfake. In other words, he must be onto something.
The dark punch line is that Serrano could win the election scheduled for July and still lose the country. The electoral council is run by people who think Excel is witchcraft, the supreme court believes separation of powers is a Netflix genre, and the military has retirement plans that hinge on narcotics futures. If Serrano prevails, he inherits a state held together by WhatsApp rumors and the world’s most ironic oil reserves—black gold under a golden arch of failure. If he loses, the refugee wave will crest somewhere near the Darién Gap, and European populists will blame their next housing crisis on yet another Latin soap opera gone septic.
Global markets, ever the sentimental fools, have already priced in a 37 % probability of “Venezuelan rebound” by Q3, which roughly translates to “ten hedge funds will make obscene money while the rest of us watch Instagram reels of empty Caracas supermarkets.” The UN, bless its heart, has pre-positioned 200 tons of emergency bureaucracy just in case.
And so we wait, sipping our single-origin coffees, to see whether Eduardo Serrano becomes the guy who rebooted a nation or merely the latest contestant on “Who Wants to Be an Ex-President?” Either way, the world will keep spinning—on an axis greased, of course, by Venezuelan crude that may or may not reach your local gas station depending on the mood swings of nine guys in epaulettes. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does have a sense of humor darker than a blackout in Maracaibo.
