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.
Last week’s grounding of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane in Europe, after U.S. officials apparently suspected whistle-blower Edward Snowden of being on board, caused an uproar in Latin America. If the U.S. government was seeking to intimidate Morales and other Latin American leaders who might consider harboring Snowden, its strategy has completely backfired.
In the wake of a close electoral race launched hastily after Hugo Chavez’s death in March, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro finds himself facing a nation taut from the reactionary smoke-and-mirrors conflict surrounding the legitimacy of his 1.8% margin victory.
President Hugo Chávez was larger than life, stirring hope and controversy while helping to change the political trajectory of Venezuela and Latin America. His death raises pressing and difficult questions: what will become of his political project at home? What are the prospects for regional integration in his wake? How will the United States respond to a post-Chávez landscape?
President Hugo Chávez was larger than life, stirring hope and controversy while helping to change the political trajectory of Venezuela and Latin America. His death raises pressing and difficult questions: what will become of his political project at home? What are the prospects for regional integration in his wake? How will the United States respond to a post-Chávez landscape?
