As elections in Venezuela approach in May, major swaths of the opposition are boycotting, as the possibility of armed intervention by neighboring countries looms.
For Maduro, while strengthened momentarily, the challenge will come from confronting not these protests, but the ones that may yet to come when opposition hardliners leave the streets.
With few exceptions, most international media coverage of the recent protests in Venezuela gives little sense of the response from the popular social movement actors who support the Maduro government but operate independently from it.
Blogger Francisco Toro claimed in the New York Times that Venezuelan "government pressure ensured that no broadcast media carried coverage" of a speech made by opposition leader Henrique Capriles. But the two largest private media outlets did in fact cover the event.
What you're seeing is a portrayal of Venezuela as some kind of a chaotic economic basket case. But when you look at the macroindicators, inequality has been reduced so drastically that it's now the lowest in Latin America.
Since the death of Hugo Chávez in March of 2013, new Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his government have received critiques from its traditional opposition and from new critics as well.
