The endgame in Venezuela
The country is on the brink of a social explosion that only a negotiated transition can prevent
AT 9.30am on a Thursday six Venezuelans wait for a guided tour of the former military museum that is now the mausoleum of Hugo Chávez, the country’s populist president of 1999-2013. Across the road around 120 people are queuing for food at government-controlled prices from a state-run supermarket. The food queue starts at 3am. “Sometimes there’s food and sometimes there isn’t,” one would-be shopper says.
In this district of Caracas, once a Chávez stronghold, his aura is fading amid the struggle for daily survival. Long gone are the days when he used a massive oil windfall triumphantly to impose his “Bolivarian revolution”, a mishmash of indiscriminate subsidies, price and exchange controls, social programmes, expropriations and grand larceny by officials. The collapse in the oil price has exposed the revolution as a monumental swindle.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The endgame in Venezuela"
More from The Americas
Why Ecuador risked global condemnation to storm Mexico’s embassy
Jorge Glas, who had claimed asylum from Mexico, is accused of abetting drug networks
The world’s insatiable appetite for Canada’s maple syrup
Production is booming, but climate change is making output more erratic
Elon Musk is feuding with Brazil’s powerful Supreme Court
The court has become the de facto regulator of social media in the country