Supporters and opponents of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have clashed for weeks in several cities, and barricades were again present in some neighborhoods.
A Feb. 27 Venezuela protest video and related photos of an attack on a woman by national guard officers were removed from this story and related social media posts. The Your Take content, submitted by a website user, violated USA TODAY’sterms of service
CARACAS, Venezuela — Supporters and opponents of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro took to the streets Thursday to call for peace as the government celebrated the uprising that led to the socialist revolution of the late Hugo Chávez.
Thousands of Maduro supporters, some dressed in Carnival costumes, marched to the presidential palace to commemorate the «Day of the People’s Rebellion» in the western part of Caracas. Thousands of university students rallied in the eastern part to demand the release of detained protesters.
«The people of 25 years ago are the revolutionary people who have built Bolivarian Socialism,» Maduro tweeted during the celebrations, which were presided over by Vice President Jorge Arreaza. Government officials didn’t return phone calls asking where Maduro was. Social media reported that he had lost his voice after a series of rallies this week.
Maduro’s opponents have clashed for weeks with security forces in several cities, and barricades were again present in some neighborhoods in the capital. Protesters are demanding changes to state policies that have led to widespread shortages of basic goods and record high inflation. They also want an end to violent repression of their protests.
Maduro hopes to remind people that it is Chávez’s party, of which he is now the leader, that represents the people’s will. One way he did that was by celebrating «the Caracazo,» or uprising, that began when former President Carlos Andres Perez tried to introduce an economic package in 1989 that included an increase in gasoline prices and bus fares.
Rioting broke out in most of the country. National Guard and security forces were unleashed to put down the unrest. Hundreds died.
Chávez, who died last year, said the uprising laid the foundations of his own movement against the country’s entrenched elite. The day is celebrated as a holiday by pro-Chávez Venezuelans.
But as opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski warned, many of the problems and issues that caused the Caracazo exist today under Maduro.
«We don’t want another social explosion,» Capriles tweeted.
During their rally, students again called for the release of detained protesters and changes in government policies. Student leader Juan Requesens vowed to keep up the pressure on the government and brushed aside Maduro’s extension of the Carnival holidays.
«They want us to demobilize,» Requesens said, referring the president’s decree. «Maduro is wrong. We are going stay in the streets. We’re not going to leave our democratic fight for six days at the beach.»
National Guardsmen later launched tear gas as some students left the rally and tried to block the main east-west highway in Caracas. At least 15 students were injured, according to El Universal.
Violent protests were reported in other sections of Caracas and other cities.
On Wednesday night, Capriles and other opposition leaders boycotted a national peace conference convened by Maduro, saying that it was a sham because the government was continuing its suppression of student protests.
«The majority of the country wants peace but they want a sincere, transparent and effective dialogue,» Capriles tweeted. «Is this the dialogue that the government wants?»
Maduro called the conference to end nearly a month of protests that have claimed 15 lives and left scores wounded in the South American country.
Arreaza convened a similar peace conference Thursday night with businessmen.
Arreaza, who is married to one of Chávez’s daughters, said the government wants dialogue but added that its goal is to create a socialist economy.
He reminded participants that Chávez had earlier said that the revolution had passed the point of no return, seemingly ruling out any concessions in the economic sphere.
«This is the socialism that we want to construct with the private sector,» Arreaza said.
Venezuela is suffering from soaring inflation, which is expected to be even higher than last year’s 56% when it was the highest in the world.
Food shortages are common, and crime is rampant.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament called on Maduro to rein in pro-government armed groups, or «colectivos,» and called for the immediate release of all those arrested since the rioting began.
Venezuela’s opposition has played into Nicolás Maduro’s hands
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Filling the void left by a charismatic leader is always a challenge, and Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has struggled to command the authority of his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez. The burden of succession has proved all the more onerous as it has fallen to Maduro to address the difficult decisions that were deferred or bypassed by Chávez, who died a year ago.
Among the challenges bequeathed to Maduro, who assumed the presidency by a razor-thin majority in elections last April, two have been pressing: an appalling problem of crime and corruption that has propelled Venezuela into the top 10 of global corruption and homicide indices; and a dysfunctional economy.
Crime and corruption are longstanding, inherited by Chávez from the politicians of the old regime who sought to remove him in the failed coup of 2002. They were exacerbated by constant ministerial turnover and the government’s failure to engage with these issues as social and institutional problems, rather than facets of capitalism that would fade under Chávez’s model of 21st century socialism.
High inflation and shortages are the result of an overbearing state that is intended to frame the socialist economy. In the early 2000s price and exchange controls had logic in the context of private-sector lockouts, massive capital flight and the need to ensure access to high-price goods and services for the poor – Chávez’s core supporters. But the rationale for their retention has long expired.
Instead of addressing the root causes of these problems, Maduro has tinkered at the edges. This is partly because he doesn’t want to be perceived as betraying Chávez’s legacy. High oil export prices have helped him, but the opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática – MUD, an alliance led by Henrique Capriles – has increased the political pressure on Maduro’s government.
At first Chávez’s successor appeared to have time on his side, facing no significant challenge to his six-year term aside from the possibility of a recall referendum permitted by the constitution in 2016. But in recent weeks students savvy in the use of social media have launched a wave of destabilising protests. The initial mobilisation focused on the government’s failings on crime, corruption and the economy, but this quickly morphed into demands for la salida – the exit – of Maduro. This brought students into alliance with elements of the hardline opposition of Leopoldo López and Maria Corina Machado, committed to removing Chávez and now Maduro by any means. Like the student movement, the anti-regime radicals have benefited from foreign funding, largely from the US and designated as «democracy assistance».
López and Machado were defeated by Capriles in opposition primaries, but they rejected Capriles’s willingness to enter into dialogue with Maduro on public safety following the murder in January of Mónica Spear, a former Miss Venezuela. Fearing that he had lost ground in the grassroots anti-government movement, Capriles moved behind the protests. This may prove to be his, and not Maduro’s, undoing: as happened in the 2002 coup, anti-government leaders have not acknowledged the widespread opposition to violence, disruption and disorder, and the protests are now petering out.
Particularly damaging for the protest movement, and accounting for the reluctance of many journalists to cover events in the country, was the circulation via social media of fabricated images of alleged brutality by the National Guard – including claims of sexual violence tweeted by one local actress – subsequently revealed to be doctored pornography, or abuses carried out by the Egyptian, Bulgarian and Chilean police. These efforts to internationalise support and inflame opinion ignored the ordinary Venezuelans who support the democratic process, and who mostly back Maduro.
Venezuela faces serious economic and security challenges. These need no exaggeration, and Maduro recognises that they can only be addressed through a national dialogue. An initial peace conference convened at the end of February was boycotted by the radicals and Capriles, but attended by lower-profile opposition figures. They, rather than Capriles, may prove to be the beneficiaries of the popular frustration with Maduro, who for now finds his position strengthened.
In Chávez’s big shoes, Maduro stumbles
View Photo Gallery — Demonstrations continue in Venezuela: Dueling demonstrations of pro- and anti-government protesters have been taking to the streets since Feb. 4 in a sign of the deep polarization of this oil-rich but economically and socially troubled country. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/demonstrators-snarl-traffic-in-venezuelan-capital/2014/02/24/46277896-9d92-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_gallery.html
By Laura Tillman and Nick Miroff, Published: March 3 E-mail the writer
“Maduro, resign now!” they roar.
“There is no reason to believe Maduro is in an unstable situation,” said Gregory Weeks, a Latin America scholar at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “The military has declared itself behind him and has not wavered in that regard. Unless they were called in for intense repressive measures, it is hard to imagine any scenario where military leaders would revolt.”
Protests and crackdown
Maduro, 51, long ago gave up the rock career, working as a bus driver and union leader before ascending into the ranks of Chávez’s inner circle through steadfast loyalty. Despite getting Chávez’s death-bed endorsement, Maduro was elected in April by a margin of only 1.5 percentage points, narrowly beating opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
It was a weak start to his six-year term, which stretches to 2019, and critics say he has been trying to overcompensate for it ever since.
Venezuela protests rage on; ally criticizes President Nicolas Maduro
Gov. Jose Vielma Mora tells a radio station that Venezuela’s military displayed ‘excess’ in responding to disturbances.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Protests continued Monday across Venezuela amid growing reports of police repression and scarcities of basic goods, which provoked rare public criticism of President Nicolas Maduro by a political ally.
Jose Vielma Mora, governor of the western state of Tachira, the scene of street violence and protests, told a radio interviewer Sunday night that the military had displayed «excess» in responding to the disturbances.
Latin America
What the Heck Is Going on in Venezuela? (Could the Maduro Regime Fall?)
Photograph by Raul Arboleda/AFP via Getty ImagesLeopoldo Lopez, an ardent opponent of Venezuela’s socialist government facing an arrest warrant, surrounded by supporters in Caracas on Feb. 18
“I’m telling you, you’re a coward, Maduro. You won’t break either me or my family.”
So Leopoldo López tweeted on Feb. 15 after Venezuelan police raided his home. The unofficial head of Venezuela’s newly active opposition movement, López, 42, was addressing President Nicolas Maduro, who has been in office since April 2013, following the cancer-related death of his mentor, Hugo Chávez. Three days before, Maduro issued an arrest warrant for López, charging him with terrorism and murder after gunmen opened fire on a thousands-strong antigovernment demonstration as it was dispersing in Caracas. Maduro’s people say protesters, led by López, initiated the violence. The demonstrators say the authorities opened fire to scatter the crowd, and killed three. After that, López went into hiding and took to Twitter and YouTube to rally Venezuelans fed up with shortages of basic goods, from toilet paper to cooking oil. Then, on Tuesday, he reemerged to lead another opposition march in Caracas, and was arrested. Before he was detained, López tweeted again: “The change we want is in every one of us. Let us not surrender. I will not!”
Something more serious than material shortages has been prompting Venezuelans to take to the streets; they also resent the mounting repression of any who dare speak out. The three protesters shot during the demonstration were young students, and died on Venezuela’s Youth Day. The vast majority of those in attendance were between 18 and 25 years old. Most came of age when Chavismo, the ideology espoused by Chávez, was already in crisis, and its leader ailing and increasingly unpopular. For many, Chávez’s choice of Maduro, a lackluster National Assembly deputy, was an insult. And now the question is being asked: Can Maduro be thrown out? Is López aiming for a coup? He and another fast-rising opposition leader, María Corina Machado, have tried it before.
Maduro won the presidency in 2013, but the election left Venezuela more politically divided than it’s been in years. When Maduro took to the campaign trail in March, he had a double-digit lead on his rival, Miranda State Governor Henrique Capriles, a centrist. But Maduro soon squandered it, defeating Capriles with 50.7 percent of the vote—a margin-of-error “victory” that Capriles, alleging fraud, contested to no effect in Chavista-stacked courts. With new presidential polls not scheduled until 2019, it looked as if Maduro’s grip on power was secure. But then the shortages started, possibly owing to shortages in hard currency. Almost everything in Venezuela except oil is now imported.
Maduro and his entourage took to blaming them on U.S.-backed “fascists” and a “parasitic bourgeoisie” plotting to overthrow him. (On Feb. 17, Maduro’s government demanded that three American officials working in the U.S. embassy leave the country because they had been recruiting students to take part in protests.) The economy began crumbling, with inflation hitting 56 percent, the budget deficit soaring by almost 50 percent, China cutting back on its lifeline $20 billion loan, and Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgrading Venezuelan bonds to junk status. The bolivar fuerte (or “strong bolivar,” as Chávez had the currency renamed) weakened precipitously against the U.S. dollar, and dropped, on the black market, from roughly 8 to 1 (at Chávez’s death) to now 87 to 1. Maduro’s response? State intervention that has worsened matters, making it harder and harder for the private sector, on which Venezuelans rely for food, to operate.
Sporadic protests have plagued Maduro’s government from the beginning, but the murder, in January, of a beloved television star and beauty queen, Monica Spear (along with her British husband), proved a turning point, highlighting Venezuela’s status as one of the most homicide-afflicted countries on earth and sparking demands that the government protect its citizens. “I want to live in a normal country. We’ve got to get these locos out of power,” said Nelvis, a former state employee now active in opposition marches who did not want her last name published.
As the demonstrations gathered steam this winter, Capriles did the unthinkable and shook Maduro’s hand, a gesture that cost him support and helped propel López back into the spotlight, which he now shares with Machado. López and Machado, 46, backed a failed 2002 coup attempt against Chávez, and both have since suffered violent assault. López’s aunt was shot at an otherwise peaceful rally, and his bodyguard was shot to death. Machado has been the target of repeated assaults by thugs reputedly linked to the Chávez regime.
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