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A demonstrator reacts when Molotov cocktails hit the ground in front of security forces during protests against election results after Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election, in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.
Venezuelans take to the streets after Maduro claims victory
Thousands of Venezuelans descended on downtown Caracas Monday to protest strongman President Nicolás Maduro’s claimed victory in Sunday’s elections. Independent exit polls suggested that opposition candidate Edmundo González defeated Maduro — an authoritarian who has overseen economic decline in the oil-rich nation — by a sizable margin.
What began as isolated spontaneous outbursts around the capital turned into a major demonstration by the evening. Protesters chanted “They robbed us!” and waved a banner reading “Venezuela, I want you to be free” in Spanish while authorities responded with riot police, tear gas, armored cars, and paramilitaries with firearms. In the eastern city of Cumaná, protesters reportedly tried to reach the national election authority headquarters but were repulsed by National Guard troops.
International pressure: Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was banned from running by Maduro’s government, said Tuesday that Maduro’s “departure is irreversible” after receiving exit polls from 71% of polling places, which she says proves the opposition won beyond all doubt.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said the US had “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” and called on election officials to publicly release “detailed” vote tabulations. For the time being, however, Washington does not plan to revoke the oil export licenses that were meant to incentivize Maduro to hold a fair election.
Blinken’s sentiments were echoed by leaders from Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina, and Guatemala. By late Monday, Venezuela had expelled all diplomats from those countries, plus the Dominican Republic.
What we are watching: It will be surprising if the CNE releases “detailed polling data that dispels international doubts,” says Risa Grais-Targow, an expert on Venezuela at Eurasia Group, but without it, foreign pressure seems likely to grow.
Perhaps more importantly, the will of the opposition and the people to resist what they see as a stolen election will be determinative. We’re watching for protests to continue — and Maduro’s response to become more heavy-handed.
“The military continues to completely support Nicolás Maduro,” says Eurasia Group and GZERO Media president Ian Bremmer. “And that means the willingness and ability to use force to suppress and repress opposition is very high.”
For more on Venezuela’s stolen election, watch Ian’s latest Quick Take here.Colombia hosts meeting on Venezuelan political crisis.
Colombia convenes new Venezuela summit
Representatives from about 20 countries, including the US, gathered in Bogotá on Tuesday as part of the Colombian government’s push to restart talks between Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and the fractious opposition. Neither side has sent representatives, but both say they support the event.
How’d we get here? Several years ago, Maduro, who had mismanaged the economy and rigged his own re-election, was on the ropes. As popular protests swelled, millions fled his country, and fresh US sanctions choked off crucial revenues. But opposition infighting and global demand for oil — Venezuela has more of it than anyone else — kept him firmly in power.
Now, with elections approaching next year, the opposition – along with the US, EU, and most of the region – wants the powerful but unpopular Maduro to guarantee a level playing field. He, however, wants the US to ease Trump-era sanctions. Maduro has shown he can hang on pretty well under sanctions, but he may not want to risk a rerun of the 2018 protests over an overtly unfair vote.
A previous round of talks in Mexico stalled late last year, but Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro is hoping that his good relations with neighboring Caracas will enable him to broker a new deal where others have failed.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro’s not going anywhere. What comes next for Venezuela?
Just four years ago, most observers would have bet good money that Nicolás Maduro’s days at the top were numbered.
In 2018, Venezuela’s strongman president had declared himself the winner after a reelection battle that was broadly considered to be rigged. Maduro’s subsequent crackdown on anti-government protesters made him one of the world’s most reviled and isolated leaders.
It’s now been 10 years since Maduro, the foreign minister at the time, was handed the top job, and his power is more entrenched than ever. How has the Venezuelan despot survived and what might this mean for the country's politics and its people?
Meet Maduro. A former bus driver from Caracas, Maduro got his political training as a young man in Cuba. Upon returning to Venezuela, he became a big shot in the union movement and in leftist politics as a member of the United Socialist Party.
An avid backer of Chavismo – the left-wing populism championed by his predecessor Hugo Chávez – Maduro was tapped to take on presidential responsibilities after Chávez's death in 2013.
Like Chávez, Maduro’s authoritarian predilections were apparent from the get-go. Amid growing popular discontent, in 2015 he declared “Operation Liberation and Protection of the People” (the irony!) to address what he called the country’s growing security concerns. Maduro deployed 80,000 security forces to round up alleged detractors, leading to scores of extrajudicial killings.
This leadership style of quashing dissent and jailing political opponents and journalists came to a head after the widely disputed 2018 election, when thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest Maduro’s win, broadly dubbed a sham. The regime’s brutal response to the protests – security forces killed dozens of demonstrators and shuttered independent news organizations – further solidified Maduro’s pariah status in many parts of the world.
The sanctions weapon. The US has used sanctions as a bludgeon against Venezuela since 2006, when the Bush administration banned arms sales to the Chávez regime due to its ties to rogue states, like Cuba and Iran.
But this campaign ramped up a lot during the Maduro years. The Trump administration, in particular, adopted a merciless approach to Caracas, enforcing sanctions that cut it off from US financial markets, essentially limiting its oil sales to the black market and prohibiting purchases of Venezuelan debt.
Venezuela’s economy has since been through the wringer. From once having the highest per capita income rate in Latin America, Venezuela is now flailing. Starved of investment, hyperinflation topped an absurd 65,000% in 2018. The country’s oil output has remained sluggish over the past decade despite the fact that it has the biggest liquid gold reserves in the entire world. Consider that in 1998 Venezuela was producing around 3 million barrels of crude per day – that number slipped to 626,000 in 2020.
To be sure, years of corruption, underinvestment, and mismanagement have also pummeled the petrostate’s economy. In 1997, one independent group claimed that around $100 billion had been embezzled from the state oil company in the preceding 25 years.
Given the heft of Western sanctions, how have Venezuela and Maduro managed to stay afloat?
Who’s isolating whom? Taking a page out of Chávez’s playbook, Maduro has worked hard to cultivate ties with other heavily sanctioned states and US rivals like Iran, Russia, and China, as well as Turkey.
Reflecting its mercantile approach to geopolitics, Beijing has given Caracas billions of dollars worth of loans in recent years in exchange for oil. China has also helped Caracas deliver the goods in violation of US sanctions. Moscow has similarly doled out cash to help keep Caracas afloat.
Maduro has also deepened relations with the US’ forever enemy, Iran, with Caracas sending Tehran billions of dollars worth of gold in exchange for oil, gas, and food. The friendship is deep, with Iran reportedly set to revamp the Paraguana Refining Center, Venezuela's largest, in the near term. Crucially, the overhaul will replace US technology – originally used to build Venezuela's oil infrastructure – with … Chinese and Iranian parts.
Moreover, under Maduro, illicit economies – including trading of illegal drugs, gold, and oil – made up a whopping 21% of Venezuela's gross domestic product in 2021.
The perks of a ”pink tide.” Maduro has benefited enormously from the region’s changing politics. A “pink tide” across Latin America in recent months has seen a slew of leftist governments come to power that are more sympathetic to Maduro’s socialist, anti-imperialist agenda.
“For a long time, diplomacy in Latin America wasn't very ideological because state sovereignty was the most sacrosanct principle,” says Will Freeman, a Latin America expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Governments in the region are now taking a more ideological approach to diplomacy,” resulting in leftist leaders in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and elsewhere wanting to deepen ties with the socialist in Caracas.
A dysfunctional opposition. It’s been a boon for Maduro that the opposition has proven to be lackluster and underwhelming. Many place the blame at the feet of former wunderkind Juan Guaidó.
After the 2018 election, Guaidó, then president of the opposition-controlled legislature, set up a shadow government backed by the West. But critics say Guaidó made no progress in moving the country toward new elections and that he failed to get the military or courts onside. Popular support has also nosedived, with just 6% of Venezuelans polled in Nov. 2022 saying that they’d vote for him.
After Guaidó’s allies voted to remove him from office in December, the former de facto leader said the move would create a “power vacuum” that would only boost Maduro.
And he might have been right: The Biden administration recently moved to ease some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. While this has largely been aimed at boosting production and keeping global prices down amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine that the White House would have felt as comfortable making overtures to the Maduro regime if there was a powerful and popular opposition to deal with in Caracas.
“Venezuela is fixed.” Not quite. Feeling emboldened by Maduro’s staying power, some Venezuelans have adopted the slogan “Venezuela is fixed” — a tongue-in-cheek reference used in the country when conditions mildly improve. They point to the fact that the International Monetary Fund recently predicted that Venezuela's economy will grow by 6% this year, while the poverty rate decreased for the first time in seven years.
But the current political dynamic is more a result of “broad disillusionment and disengagement from politics,” says Freeman, adding that “Maduro has not become popular by any stretch of the imagination.”
What’s more, the humanitarian situation remains grim. Half the country lives in poverty, down from 65% in 2021, giving rise to one of the world's biggest refugee crises in recent years. Venezuela is also one of the world’s most unequal states, with the wealthiest Venezuelans 70 times richer than the poorest. It’s for this reason, Freeman says, that what we've seen is “more of an economic recovery on the surface” only. The foundation remains rotten.
What now? Maduro’s political future is as secure as ever. But there’s no quick fix for Venezuela's economy or its people. Indeed, it’ll take years of investment and billions of dollars to modernize the country's energy infrastructure in order to boost output. And while other petrostates are looking to diversify their economies, Caracas is a million steps behind.
And what about the vote next year? “The elections will be very unfree and very unfair,” Freeman says, adding that “Maduro will steal them if he needs to, though he may not need to if the opposition remains this divided.”
For now, at least, Maduro, often derided as “the bus driver” from Caracas, is likely feeling pretty good about things.
A graph comparing Venezuela's GDP per capita with the average price of crude oil.
The Graphic Truth: Economic turmoil in Venezuela
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and tough US sanctions since the Maduro regime came to power in 2013 has meant that the petrostate has failed to benefit from its vast reserves of liquid gold.
While high oil prices under the Chavez regime in the early 2000s gave a boost to Venezuela’s middle class, US sanctions first imposed in 2006 – and significantly ramped up under the Obama and Trump administrations – have cut Caracas off from US financial systems.
Economic hardship is rife, with a staggering 50% of people living in extreme poverty. Pervasive hopelessness has also led to one of the worst migrant crises in the world.
In a bid to offset a global energy crisis in 2022 as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration began lifting some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector. So how are things faring? We look at GDP per capita and corresponding oil prices since 1999.Stories we overlooked in 2022
A handful of stories – the war in Ukraine, China’s zero-COVID policy, and US elections – have dominated much of the media coverage this year. Meanwhile, many other crucial global stories have been woefully undercovered. We take a look at four of them.
Venezuela: The challenge of migrating again
Since strongman President Nicolás Maduro responded with an iron fist to widespread protests in 2014 over shortages of goods and sky-high inflation, Venezuela has been subject to more severe US economic sanctions that have put its already-struggling economy on life support. (One of the first sanctions was imposed by the Bush administration in 2006 over Caracas’ failure to crack down on drug trafficking and terrorism.)
As a result of the economic and political crises gripping the country, more than 7 million Venezuelans have fled since 2015, making it one of the world’s largest migrant crises. For those who stayed behind, their quality of life is abysmal: Joblessness is rife, the medical system is in tatters, and more than 67% live in extreme poverty. Meanwhile, most of those who fled sought refuge in Latin America, mainly in Colombia, where they have struggled to find jobs – forcing many women to resort to sex work or even to sell their hair to survive.
But 2022 brought fresh challenges for Venezuela's migrant population. Global inflation has disrupted Latin America’s gig economy, which many Venezuelan migrants rely on to get by. As a result, thousands have been forced to uproot their lives – again – resulting in new migration routes to North America.
Consider that in the first 10 months of this year, Venezuelans accounted for 70% of people who trekked through the Darien Gap, a perilous crossing between Colombia and Panama that’s submerged in dense jungle and swarming with drug cartels and guerrilla groups. The US recently lifted some sanctions on Venezuela's oil sector in a bid to offset losses from Russia. But Washington is still a long way off from reaching any agreements with the Maduro regime that would rescue Caracas’ economy.
Afghanistan: No reprieve for Afghan women
If 2022 was the year that the world stood with Ukraine, then 2021 was about standing with the people of Afghanistan after the Taliban swept to power at lightning speed.
At the time, Taliban officials said they would safeguard women’s “Islamic right” to study and work. But unsurprisingly, 18 months later that message has proven hollow. Life under Taliban rule has again proven intolerable for Afghans, particularly for women and girls. The Taliban has banned girls aged 13-18 from attending school, and more recently forbid women from attending university, prompting sporadic protests. Women have also been banned from working for nongovernment organizations, while public spaces in Kabul, the capital, are also off limits to Afghan women.
What’s more, Afghanistan’s economy is in tatters as the Taliban remains cut off from the bulk of its foreign reserves, which are mostly held in US banks. As a result, food insecurity is widespread, and the security situation is also spiraling as ISIS-K, a Taliban rival, feels emboldened to wreak havoc. As long as the Taliban remains in charge, Washington is unlikely to unlock any funds.
Rohingya: Stranded at sea
Around a million Rohingya – a Muslim minority long persecuted by the military and political elite in majority-Buddhist Myanmar – have fled to neighboring Bangladesh since 2017, after Myanmar’s military perpetrated a massacre against them. Since then, Rohingya refugees have languished in squalid conditions in Cox’s Bazar, a sprawling tent city for refugees, where violence, gang rape, and murder are rife.
In the meantime, many Rohingya have preferred to try their luck at sea, getting into rickety boats in hopes of reaching Malaysia, which opened its borders to stateless Rohingya in 2016. But 2022 has proven one of the deadliest years at sea for the Rohingya, according to the UN. Case in point: For more than a month, a vessel with at least 160 Rohingya aboard, including children who have gone weeks without food, was stranded in the Andaman Sea, while another is presumed to have sunk earlier this month with 180 Rohingya on board.
Meanwhile, negotiations between the Bangladesh government and Myanmar’s military dictatorship – which resumed earlier this year after a hiatus – on the potential voluntary repatriation of Rohingya have not proven fruitful.
Yemen: The forgotten war
Photos of Yemeni children are difficult to stomach – the protruding ribs and sunken faces. But after eight years of war, we don’t see many of these images in the media these days.
While fighting between the Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Saudi-backed government ebbed this year as a result of a ceasefire, the two sides failed to reach an agreement in October to extend the truce. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation remains dire: At least 17 million Yemenis are food insecure, and 2.2 million children under five have required medical care for malnutrition this year.
What’s more, as GZERO's Alex Kliment previously wrote, international attention for Ukraine has drawn humanitarian resources away from Yemen, making it harder to finance aid missions there. As of October, just 47% of the UN-led Humanitarian Response Plan for Yemen had been funded by the international community. With longtime land and sea blockades preventing humanitarian shipments, stalemate remains the most likely scenario in 2023.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Why Washington is chatting up Nicolás Maduro again
You can isolate some of the oil-rich strongmen all of the time, or all of the oil-rich strongmen some of the time, but that’s about it these days, as Joe Biden is quickly learning.
Last week, it emerged that the White House is exploring ways to relax certain sanctions against the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro. Under a proposed deal, Washington would allow US oil major Chevron to resume exporting oil from the country while Maduro, for his part, would agree to restart talks with the opposition about free and fair elections.
As a reminder, a 2018 crisis brought on by Maduro’s repression and economic mismanagement drove millions of Venezuelans abroad. It also landed the country under “maximum pressure” financial and energy sanctions from the US, which were designed to squeeze Maduro — the heir to “21st Century Socialist” Hugo Chávez — from power.
Spoiler: it failed. Maduro and his cronies stuck it out, aided by a fractious opposition that squandered the confidence of its foreign backers. Now things are looking up for Maduro.
The Ukraine war is, of course, exacerbating a global energy crunch. And with the West seeking to isolate one oil superpower – Russia – Washington has had to look elsewhere for help bringing down prices.
Last week’s OPEC+ decision to cut production by 2 million barrels per day was a slap in the face to Biden. Washington had urged its eternal frenemies the Saudis to boost output to ease global price pressures and punch a hole in Vladimir Putin’s war chest. All of that has suddenly cast Venezuela, owner of the world’s largest oil reserves, in an even softer light as a longer-term option for getting more barrels back onto the market. The country once pumped as much as 3.5 million barrels daily before mismanagement and sanctions wrecked the industry. Today’s output is barely even 700,000 barrels.
And it’s not just the global context that’s changed, according to Risa Grais-Targow, a Latin America specialist at Eurasia Group. “The entire region is basically leftist now,” she says, “or it really will be when Lula wins in Brazil, so there's just no coalition there behind the US policy stance on Venezuela anymore.”
As if to underscore the point, Colombia, the US’ closest ally in the region, recently elected its first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro. One of his first steps was to reestablish ties with neighboring Venezuela, which his center-right predecessor had cut. (You can see GZERO’s full interview with Petro here.)
Would sanctions relief really change things in Venezuela? It would give the regime a fresh revenue stream, as Chevron has joint ventures with the state oil company, PDVSA. And signaling a thaw in US-Venezuela ties would help Caracas sell its oil to China and other Asian buyers at something closer to full price – for years, PDVSA has had to sell to them at knockdown rates over fears that the US might impose financial sanctions on any countries that buy from Venezuela.
What’s more, a deal could also lead to the US unfreezing some of the Maduro government’s funds pending a pact with the opposition to spend the money on humanitarian relief. Although the IMF sees Venezuela’s GDP growing 6% this year, it has fallen more than 80% over the past decade. More than a quarter of Venezuelans remain undernourished, according to the UN, and migrants continue to flee the country in large numbers.
Will Maduro actually make real concessions? A return to talks with the opposition probably isn’t hard for Maduro to agree to, says Grais-Targow. The bigger question is whether he’d really accept a free and fair election in 2024. Until now, the government has used all kinds of legal tricks to tilt the field in its favor, and the opposition boycotted the vote entirely in 2018.
Maduro is powerful but not necessarily popular. In regional elections earlier this year, opposition candidates did surprisingly well, even in some Maduro strongholds. In a truly free and fair vote – which the government hasn’t allowed in years – the opposition might stand a chance if it were able to unify behind a single candidate.
To underscore the point, earlier this week, after Venezuela’s opposition announced it would do just that in 2024, the president immediately announced that he might move the general election up to 2022, just to throw his opponents off balance.
All of that puts the question back in the White House’s court. How much is it willing to concede to a Venezuelan strongman who is suddenly approaching Tío Sam and the opposition from a position of relative strength? With the global energy crunch set to last for the foreseeable future, who really has whom over a barrel?
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Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop capitalism"
Colombia is Latin America’s longest-standing democracy, but it’s never elected a leftist president … until now.
Gustavo Petro swept to power by a slim margin in June, thanks largely to young Colombian voters. What do they want from him? Change.
It won't be easy. Petro wants to provide free university education and health care, to end oil exploration, and to tax the rich. Will he deliver?
On GZERO World, Colombia's new leader sits down with Ian Bremmer in his first American interview to talk about his plans for Colombia's future, his views on the War on Drugs, and how he'll handle relations with Venezuela and the US.
Also in this episode of GZERO World: an update from John Kerry on the Biden administration's climate agenda.
- Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro: Biden team aware the war ... ›
- Will Colombia really elect a leftist? - GZERO Media ›
- Petro at the Pinnacle: Colombia's new president takes office ... ›
- From stunted capitalism to economic growth in Colombia - GZERO Media ›
- Who is Colombia's new president? - GZERO Media ›
- How to solve Colombia's cocaine problem - GZERO Media ›
Chilean demonstrators take part in a rally against migrants and delinquency in Iquique, Chile, on January 30, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Chileans protest Venezuelan migrants, US rent on the rise, Myanmar coup anniversary, Benefits of Brexit
4,000: More than 4,000 Chileans demonstrated Monday in the northern city of Iquique against migration from Venezuela in response to a video of Venezuelan criminals attacking Chilean police at a checkpoint. Chile, one of South America’s wealthiest states, has seen a recent influx of migrants fleeing Venezuela’s deteriorating economy.
40: Pandemic-related economic disruption upped rent by as much as 40 percent in some US cities last year, forcing thousands to find alternative living arrangements. Many local rent freezes and eviction moratoriums have expired, leaving lower earners vulnerable to homelessness and subsequent health risks.
1,500: Around 1,500 people have been killed since Myanmar’s military staged a coup one year ago. Against the backdrop of sustained popular resistance, political stalemate persists, and the generals continue to quash all dissent.
100: The UK government has released a new 100-page Benefits of Brexit report, outlining “how the EU is taking advantage of the UK leaving the EU.” This comes as London is preparing new legislation that will override some EU laws that remain in place.