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Nicolás Maduro appeared to be enjoying the inauguration of a gleaming new baseball stadium on the outskirts of Caracas last month. Dressed in a national team tracksuit, Venezuela’s revolutionary socialist president grinned as he pitched balls for the cameras and tried his hand at batting.
State media broadcasts about the stadium’s inaugural tournament, the Caribbean Series, carried clips of a presenter speaking English with an American accent hailing it as a “total and unexpected success” — one which raked in up to $23mn in sales and created 20,000 jobs.
But in Venezuela, appearances can be deceptive. The “overseas news report” trumpeted by state media turned out to be a fake, its presenter created with the help of artificial intelligence and his American accent synthesised, according to the Venezuelan watchdog Cazadores de Fake News.
Maduro, who is rarely seen among crowds following a failed drone assassination attempt in 2018, had inaugurated an empty stadium devoid of spectators on February 1.
On the other side of the city, real crowds have been gathering in recent weeks. But their activity does not make the evening news. In the historic central district, public sector workers have been protesting against their salaries, worth just $11.14 a month, barely enough to buy a McDonald’s Happy Meal in Caracas. José Antonio Cadiz, a 19-year-old health worker, marched clutching a replica kidney in his hand. “That’s all we Venezuelans have to eat,” he said. “Offal.”
Maduro, 60, governs a once-wealthy country whose oil-rich economy has been destroyed by years of mismanagement. More than one in five Venezuelans has fled abroad, triggering the worst humanitarian crisis in the Americas in modern times.
“We thought at first that because he was a working-class president, we would be represented,” says protester Ana Rosario Contreras, president of the Caracas Nursing Association. “Maduro has become the worst enemy of the working classes because today we live in extreme poverty.”
But as Maduro approaches the tenth anniversary of his accession to the presidency on March 8, he remains very much in control, using both old-fashioned repression and more modern techniques such as AI-generated media content.
Maduro will pass this milestone despite the best efforts of many western leaders. Three years ago, the US and several other governments declared Juan Guaidó, the head of the national assembly, as the legitimate president in an attempt to oust Maduro. However Guaidó’s shadow government has been wound up, leaving the western governments who backed him without a strategy other than grudging acceptance of Maduro.
Maria Ángela Holguín, who dealt with Maduro as Colombia’s foreign minister from 2010-18, says that governments everywhere — in the US, the EU, Latin America and Venezuela’s own opposition — have underestimated him. “He’s no fool, he’s well-advised and he’s been helped by the stupid mistakes made by his enemies.”
A former bus driver and union activist who received political training in Cuba, Maduro has proved a wily survivor. His socialist government, placed under sanctions by the US and the EU, has drawn closer to its key allies: Russia, China, Cuba and Iran. As well as the military, he has powerful non-state backers: illegal gold miners, cocaine traffickers and Colombian Marxist guerrillas, according to US officials.
Given the failure of the campaign of “maximum pressure” waged by former president Donald Trump to force him from power, efforts are now focused on trying to cajole Maduro into negotiating free and fair presidential elections next year. Progress has been minimal.
“Maduro has failed to engage in negotiations because he feels he’s in a better position and can play the negotiations long,” says Michael McKinley, a former top State Department diplomat. “If you’re Maduro, you are thinking there’s not much I need to do in terms of concessions for some time to come.”
The risk is that another term in office for Maduro could open the prospect of Venezuela remaining an authoritarian state with a failing economy for years to come, reminiscent of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. However observers are cautious about predicting a different political outcome.
“The current strategy on Venezuela hasn’t worked, so we have to try something else,” says Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow at Chatham House who has been leading a project to promote dialogue on Venezuela’s political future. “The Guaidó government was a failure but it did provide a rallying point which no longer exists.”
An economy in freefall
When Venezuela’s charismatic leader Hugo Chávez realised at the end of 2012 that he would not survive his two-year battle with cancer, he selected Maduro as his heir. Less than three months later, on March 5 2013, Chávez’s death was announced, ending 14 years in office. Maduro became the new face of chavismo. The choice surprised some. Maduro was loyal and affable and had served as foreign minister and vice-president but lacked his mentor’s charisma and personality cult.
He has not needed them. Repression and censorship have been key tools for the Maduro regime. A 2019 United Nations report documented a “shockingly high” number of suspected extrajudicial killings, numbering several thousand. The International Criminal Court is investigating after determining that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that crimes against humanity . . . have been committed in Venezuela”.
Under Maduro, independent media have been persecuted, political parties taken over or shut down, opposition politicians jailed, congress sidelined and the judiciary bent to the government’s will.
By silencing his critics, Maduro has survived a series of disastrous decisions on the economy. The year he took power, Venezuela’s GDP was $373bn, making it Latin America’s fourth-largest economy behind the much bigger nations of Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.
Yet the nation’s finances were in a perilous position. Chávez had used an oil boom to fund a costly spending spree, embarking on giant construction projects in Venezuela and subsidising oil deliveries to woo Caribbean and Central American allies. Inflation was taking off. But instead of fixing the economy when he came to power, Maduro focused on shoring up his political base.
From June 2014 the world price of oil, the backbone of the Venezuelan economy, fell sharply and the country plunged into recession. The government imported banknotes by the planeload, triggering hyperinflation.
Rather than dismantling exchange controls or cutting government spending, Maduro doubled down on his brand of socialist economics. By 2018, Venezuela’s GDP had shrivelled to just $45bn, according to the IMF, making it one of the poorest countries in South America. Shortages of food, medicine and basic living items were widespread. Power cuts, water shortages and gang violence added to the misery.
“It’s hard to find another country which has contracted that much without a war or a natural disaster,” said Asdrúbal Oliveros, head of the Caracas consultancy Ecoanalítica. “The years of Maduro have been the worst in Venezuelan economic history.”
Despite inflation nearing 14,000 per cent, Maduro won re-election in 2018 in an election boycotted by the opposition and denounced by the US and the EU as a sham. President Trump imposed ever-tighter economic sanctions, cutting Venezuela off from the US financial system and banning US nationals from dealing with the state oil company PDVSA as part of a campaign of “maximum pressure”. Oil production nosedived.
In January 2019, Venezuela’s opposition-controlled National Assembly launched a drastic intervention. It declared its head, Guaidó, to be Venezuela’s interim president, citing a constitutional clause allowing him to take power in the absence of a legitimate head of state.
Guaidó’s slogan was “Yes we can” and his youthful telegenic appearance prompted comparisons with Barack Obama. He named an “interim government” and designated “ambassadors” overseas, as well as shadow boards to oversee billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets held abroad.
The Trump administration, along with a host of right-leaning Latin American nations, swiftly recognised Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Maduro accused Washington of trying to stage a coup and broke off diplomatic relations. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets. Maduro’s days seemed numbered.
Bridge to nowhere
For Oscar Vásquez, a Venezuelan businessman living in Colombia, the start of 2019 felt like a turning point. Vásquez fled Venezuela in 2016, eventually settling in Cúcuta — a city just across the border from his home in Táchira state. He set up a business selling a mango ice cream snack out of a street cart. Now he has a couple of outlets in the city.
Like many Venezuelan emigrants in Cúcuta, Vasquez was standing on the nearby Simón Bolívar International Bridge in February 2019. The US and Colombia had announced that they would send a big humanitarian aid convoy across the border, daring the Venezuelan military to stop it and hoping this would induce soldiers into abandoning Maduro.
Three Latin American presidents arrived to watch and Guaidó, now recognised as Venezuela’s interim leader by more than 50 countries, evaded a travel ban and slipped across the border to join them.
But Maduro’s forces had blocked the bridge with a shipping container and a tanker. As the trucks tried to advance, his forces launched tear gas. Protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails and in the chaos, two trucks caught fire and scores of people were injured. The humanitarian operation was abandoned.
“We went to the bridge that day to bring down the Bolivarian dictatorship, but it was a dream that ended quickly,” says Vásquez four years later. “It was a demonstration of what a dictatorship really can do. The regime was saying: ‘We’re drowning but we don’t need any help.’”
Two months later, Guaidó appeared outside a military base in Caracas calling for an uprising. Thousands of demonstrators came on to the streets but the military held firm, police cleared the protests with tear gas and the revolt quickly fizzled.
It later emerged that the rebellion was part of a secret plan to induce several key figures in the Maduro government to switch sides. In the event, only the head of the secret police defected. Others held firm, leading to speculation that the plot had been infiltrated by the Cuban intelligence team which works for Maduro.
Among Venezuelan citizens, disillusioned by the opposition’s failures, Guaidó’s star waned. A botched attempt by a team of US mercenaries in May 2020 to invade Venezuela and kidnap Maduro added an air of farce. By last year, polls showed Guaidó was almost as unpopular as Maduro.
Meanwhile a wave of elections across Latin America brought new leftwing governments to power who wanted to normalise relations with Venezuela. The Biden administration was keen to move away from the failed Trump-era “maximum pressure” strategy. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted a search for new sources of oil.
In March last year, three top US officials, including Biden’s adviser on Latin America, Juan González, flew to Caracas for talks with Maduro on easing sanctions and freeing American hostages. At the time, Maduro was wanted by the US government for drug trafficking with a $15mn price on his head.
Following the talks, seven Americans were released in a prisoner swap and last November the US allowed Chevron to resume and sell limited oil production from Venezuela.
“The US threw all it had at Venezuela, short of an invasion: sanctions on the leadership, sanctions on Venezuelan oil and the economy, recognition of the interim government, mobilising international support for Guaidó and the withdrawal of recognition from Maduro,” says McKinley, the former top State Department diplomat. “I don’t know what more the US can do at this stage.”
At the end of last year, Venezuela’s opposition bowed to the inevitable and voted to end Guaidó’s interim presidency. “It was an error to destroy it,” Guaidó tells the FT. “It was a very daring tool . . . we managed to align 60 countries from around the world behind us and put a dictator like Maduro on the ropes . . . And what other tools did we have?”
Holguín, the former Colombian foreign minister, takes a different view. “Recognising Guaidó as president was always absurd,” she says. “More than absurd, it was without precedent in international relations. It just helped consolidate Maduro.”
The ‘croupier in the casino’
Ten years after coming to power, Maduro seems more entrenched than ever, helped by the emigration of many of his fiercest critics, divisions in the opposition and a big — though undeclared — shift in economic policy.
Over the past three and a half years, the one-time socialist has taken a free-market turn, embracing the private sector, freeing imports, relaxing price controls and allowing the use of the US dollar. The IMF forecasts that the economy will grow 6 per cent this year, after similar growth last year.
While much of the population remains trapped in poverty, some of Maduro’s cronies have profited handsomely under his leadership. Dubbed the enchufados (meaning “plugged-in”) for their government connections, they have been raking in millions of dollars thanks to their lucrative ties.
The enchufados shop in places like the department store Galería Avanti, where Dolce & Gabbana dresses sell for $1,700. The national restaurant association estimates that in 2022 around 200 eateries opened, mainly in Caracas. Luxury gyms are thriving. “The enchufados know they are the new elite and they bask in that status,” says Lucía, a Caracas resident who did not give her full name.
US officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders insist that Maduro’s regime is more fragile than it seems. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated Maduro’s relationship with Moscow. Venezuela is finding it harder to smuggle its sanctioned heavy crude oil on to Asian markets now that it faces competition from better-quality Russian blends.
“Maduro has not consolidated power,” says Julio Borges, who served as Guaidó’s foreign minister. “He is a survivor but he’s not loved by the country, he’s not admired by the armed forces or by his party . . . He’s like the croupier in the casino who’s dealing cards all the time to keep the game going.”
Washington and Brussels hope that the carrots of more sanctions relief and greater international legitimacy will encourage Maduro into conceding enough reform to give the opposition a shot at winning next year’s presidential election. Few are optimistic this will succeed, but even fewer see an alternative.
“The ideal scenario would be that Maduro and his inner circle were offered a ‘golden bridge’ to leave the country or even remain in Venezuela without being pursued, in exchange for clean elections and some guarantees of political participation for the losers,” says former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos. “But the most probable scenario is that Maduro negotiates a few reforms . . . and then holds managed elections, which he wins.”
Whether he stays in power or concedes, Venezuela has changed. “Even if Maduro were to get on a plane and take 40 of his worst guys with him, the problems in Venezuela are almost unmanageable,” said Pedro Burelli, a former board member of state oil company PDVSA. “You have the [Colombian] ELN and Farc guerrillas, the illegal miners, the drug traffickers and the untrustworthy, criminalised state security apparatus. The country is absolutely screwed up.”
Data visualisation by Keith Fray
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