Venezuela has been polarized almost since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, but last Sunday’s stolen presidential vote shows the rift has changed. Previously, it was between middle- and upper-class citizens who opposed Presidents Chávez and Nicolás Maduro and those leaders’ base, the poor. Now the rift is between a majority of citizens and Maduro’s discredited, autocratic government. Residents from the poor neighborhoods that ring Caracas are pouring into the capital to protest alongside the city’s better-off residents. To suppress them, Maduro and his government are unleashing their security apparatus, and as of Wednesday, government security and militia forces had arrested hundreds of protesters and killed more than a dozen people.
Venezuela has been polarized almost since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998, but last Sunday’s stolen presidential vote shows the rift has changed. Previously, it was between middle- and upper-class citizens who opposed Presidents Chávez and Nicolás Maduro and those leaders’ base, the poor. Now the rift is between a majority of citizens and Maduro’s discredited, autocratic government. Residents from the poor neighborhoods that ring Caracas are pouring into the capital to protest alongside the city’s better-off residents. To suppress them, Maduro and his government are unleashing their security apparatus, and as of Wednesday, government security and militia forces had arrested hundreds of protesters and killed more than a dozen people.
This is not a “civil war,” as Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab recently attempted to portray it—at least not in the traditional sense of citizens against fellow citizens. Instead, we are seeing the rising up of citizens against a government that, according to credible exit polls and opposition tallies of more than 80 percent of the ballots, stole an election from a popular presidential candidate, Edmundo González. There is no hard evidence to support the claim of the National Electoral Council (CNE)—packed with Maduro loyalists—that Maduro was reelected with 51 percent of the vote, to González’s 44 percent. And what’s certain is the division and turmoil revealed this week after the election are inimical to the social capital, stability, and predictability needed to rebuild the country’s battered economy.
Venezuelan citizens lined up for hours to cast their vote in Sunday’s presidential election. This demonstration of renewed faith in democracy followed decades of declining participation in voting, owing, in part, to the opposition’s abstentions. In preelection public opinion polls, more than 80 percent of registered voters said they wanted political change, and an almost equal number expressed an intent to vote. But Maduro never had any intention of allowing himself to be voted out of power.
Before and after, his government has displayed a refusal to adhere to standards of electoral transparency. Several months before the balloting, the CNE disinvited an election observation mission from the European Union. Days before the vote, Venezuelan authorities refused to allow ex-presidents from Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, and Panama to fly to the country observe the elections. And after governments from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay questioned the results, the Maduro government announced that it would shutter those countries’ embassies in Caracas. The willingness to break diplomatic practice has shocked the foreign-policy community, especially in Venezuela’s own neighborhood; solidarity and dialogue are firmly ingrained in the region’s diplomatic DNA.
Of course, fellow autocratic governments in China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, and Russia immediately recognized Maduro’s win. For some of them, like China, the reasons are in part financial—Beijing wants to keep its access to Venezuela’s oil. For others, it is more out of solidarity in defying international scrutiny of human rights and elections. Meanwhile, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the EU, and the United States among others are calling on the government to release the paper ballots. But if the CNE never turns over the paper trail or if the evidence is demonstrated to be falsified, what those governments will or even can do is unclear. (A majority of governments denounced Maduro’s last election in 2018 as fraudulent with little effect, but since the opposition had boycotted the contest, the claims carried less import.)
Protests are likely to grow in the coming weeks, and the likelihood of broad international isolation—what one pro-government investor said at a recent conference in London would be just “some turbulence”—now looks more like a crash. Investors who bought distressed bonds after Venezuela defaulted on its debt are watching bond prices drop after rising in the weeks before the election. Energy companies in the United States and Europe that benefited from the U.S. liberalization of sanctions are now facing a possible return of those sanctions, and as Britain, the EU, and the United States discuss how to best punish the government and individuals within it for failing to meet Venezuela’s commitments under the 2023 Barbados Agreement to hold free and fair elections, there will likely be more targeted personal sanctions, too.
None of this bodes well for Maduro’s ability to maintain even his limited base of popular support, which includes corrupt businesses, politicians, and security officers. Further repression will likely follow. While China and Russia have pledged their support for the Maduro government, neither has the capacity to keep Venezuela’s battered economy afloat.
Whatever happens to Maduro’s government, the chaos and the economic pain it will inflict likely spell the end of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Bolivarian project that Chavez founded in 1998. There was a slim, perhaps unrealistic, hope among international diplomats and observers that more forward-thinking members of the government and party would consider their political future in a democratic Venezuela should a popular uproar follow a stolen election. That hope has vanished. For the majority of Venezuelans who supported González and had their hopes dashed, the PSUV will be associated with theft and cruelty, even more so than in the past. The legacy of Chavismo will be remembered for this.
The situation in Venezuela cries out for international mediation to restore order and defend the rights of Venezuelan citizens. The center-left governments of Colombia and Brazil could be well positioned to convene such a process.
But next steps are deeply unclear. Nor is it obvious after the Maduro government cut ties to neighboring governments that dared to question the results whether Brazil and Colombia would be able to maintain ties to the strategically thin-skinned PSUV regime should they criticize it.
The violence in recent days committed by state security forces and pro-government private militias—the colectivos—should preclude the government from staying in office, even if the opposition is declared victorious and is constitutionally sworn in on Jan. 10, 2025. Oddly, the Maduro government has called for a national dialogue. But an immediate change of government is necessary, if even a transitional government. That will first require understanding that instead of simple political polarization or even a civil war, a government has instead waged war on its own citizens and their popular will.
The post Don’t Call What’s Happening in Venezuela a Civil War appeared first on Foreign Policy.
