The protests in Venezuela show a broad movement of people who are reaching the end of their tether amid inequality.
Chavez´s Bolivarian Revolution coincided with progressive movements throughout Latin America, whose common aim was to address the region’s dependence on oil and minerals that were largely under the control of global capital. After a decade in which Venezuela had been subjected to extreme austerity programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Chavez was hugely popular with the majority of the population who had suffered the consequences of these programs.
The Missions, as state’s social programs were called, seemed to offer alternative structures for popular power. The PSUV, however, suggested a different highly centralized command model. The grassroots organizations that in many ways had carried Chavez to power were incorporated into the party to win support for the decisions of the party, but there was little communication in the opposite direction.
In 2013 Chavez died under mysterious circumstances. The public mourning was genuine. His foreign minister, Nicolás Maduro, emerged as his replacement, though the electoral support he received did not match Chavez’s. Maduro, who insisted that he would continue to build the “socialism of the 21st century,” was a key figure in a new political and economic bureaucracy, which included the military and many of the original Chavista leaders.
In January 2019 — after Maduro won reelection in a widely disputed 2018 presidential election — Juan Guaidó, the speaker of the National Assembly, claimed the presidency, despite the fact that there had been no democratic process to elect him; it was simply his turn for the chair of the Assembly.
The Biden administration slowly began to reengage with Maduro’s government through prisoner exchange agreements and formal talks beginning in Mexico chaired by Norway. It also gave permission to Chevron-Texaco to conduct joint projects with PDVSA, and later organizing a first prisoner exchange in 2022. The impact of war in Ukraine on the oil market has also opened avenues for further talks with Maduro, and the EU has also initiated negotiations.
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