Monday5 August 2019 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 15FT BIG READ. LATIN AMERICA
Juan Guaidó and his backers in Washington had hoped to swiftly dislodge Nicolás Maduro from power.
But as the political stalemate in Caracas drags on, the implosion in the economy is gathering pace.
By Michael Stott
special efforts are made to keep fuel,
power and water supplies going and a
vague semblance of normality endures.
Moisés Naím, a writer who was a Ven-
ezuelan minister in the 1990s, says there
are two scenarios. “One is that the cur-
rent situation becomes perma-
nent... The stalemate continues and
you have Libya on the Caribbean, a
nation with two rival governments each
supported by a different international
coalition.” He adds: “The other scenario
is some kind of imperfect, hard-to-swal-
low agreement for elections and the
elections taking place.”
Asked about the failure of the April
uprising, Mr Guaidó smiled and
changed the subject. Instead, he stuck
closely to a script: the country is behind
him andsooner or later, his campaign of
non-violent protest will succeed.
“If we look at it rationally and do a
checklist... of all the elements needed
tosubstitute a dictatorship and have a
transition: popular support, institu-
tional support, access to
resources... international support, the
state of the armed forces, capability to
mobilise... well, we have them all, or
the majority of them,” he explains.But a lethal combination of repression
and daily privation is sapping the will of
a once-feisty population. Mr León
points to survey numbers indicating the
Venezuelan state of mind. Almost half
feel sadness, 41 per cent anxiety, 35 per
cent rage, 31 per cent mistrust and 27
per cent frustration. Most of the emo-
tions are passive, he explains: the people
are in deep shock.
And the Chávez myth dies hard, as
evidenced by polls suggesting that up to
a fifth of Venezuelans still consider
themselves supporters. On a hilltop
overlooking central Caracas lies a mili-
tary fort from whichChávez launched
his first attempt at taking power, a failed
military coup in 1992. Now it is a mauso-
leum for his outsized tomb guarded by
four soldiers.
Daxis Mosquera, a lawyer who volun-
teers her services to escort visitors, bris-
tled at the suggestion thatChávez, “the
greatest man who ever lived” was
merely buried there. “The supreme
commander is not buried,” she
explained. “He is superimposed.”
With his legacy still superimposed on
Venezuela, there are few immediate
signs thatChávez’s heirs will be dis-
lodged from power any time soon.Nicolás Maduro’s government might
seem isolated in the west but it has
plenty of support around the globe.
China, Russia, Turkey, Cuba, Iran and
much of the developing world stand
behind it; Venezuela is president of
the nonaligned movement of 120
nations.
Havana plays a central role. In
return for regular shipments of
Venezuelan oil, Cuba provides an
estimated 2,000 intelligence officers
(“the central nervous system of theregime”, as one US official describes
them) as well as Mr Maduro’s personal
bodyguards.
Russia provides military equipment,
defence advisers and oil investment via
state-controlled energy company
Rosneft. China builds Venezuela’s buses
and, according to a Reuters report,
Chinese telecoms group ZTE has a key
role in producing the electronic
“fatherland card”. This controls access to
the subsidised monthly food boxes
distributed by the government upon
which millions of poorer Venezuelans rely.
Turkey has provided strong diplomatic
support to Mr Maduro and sells
Venezuela food, as well as acting as a
conduit for gold mined from the AmazonInternational backing
From Beijing to Moscow,
Maduro’s global alliesT
he man backed by the west-
ern world to save Venezuela
from dictatorship and eco-
nomic ruin is running late.
A charismatic 36-year-
old former student leader with more
than a passing resemblance to Barack
Obama, Juan Guaidó israllying support
in the rural Andean foothills, his
progress slowed by enthusiastic crowds
of supporters. Weary of two decades of
Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution,
families line the streets to glimpse the
man who is challengingChávez’s heir,
President Nicolás Maduro.
As Guaidó’s convoy of armoured SUVs
approaches a square in the town of
Valera, sirens blaring, the emotion rises.
A lanky, white-shirted Guaidó descends
from his car and fights his way through
the crowd, aided by a phalanx of body-
guards sporting @juanguaido T-shirts.
“If I have to descend to hell to finish
off this dictatorship, I will do it with the
blessing of you all,” he bellows from the
back of a pick-up truck. “Venezuela will
be rescued, whatever the cost. I ask you
to trust in the route we have set
out... an end to the usurpation, a tran-sition government and free elections.”
Minutes later, Mr Guaidó finishes his
speech and his convoy roars off, sirens
wailing, to his next appearance in a gru-
elling 14-hour day. Meanwhile the
crowd returns to a daily struggle for sur-
vival: queues for petrol, power cuts,
intermittent running water and salaries
paid in near-worthless currency.
That day in Venezuela’s western state
of Trujillo was an apt metaphor. Despite
strong popular support, ample bravery
and international backing, Mr Guaidó’s
“people power” revolution is also
behind schedule.
Having failed so far to dislodge the
Maduro regime, both Mr Guaidó and his
backers in Washington, Europe and
Latin America face difficult questions.
Although he remains by far Venezuela’s
most popular politician, it is not clear
how long Mr Guaidó can keep his frac-
tious opposition coalition together and
his supporters enthused.
For the Trump administration in
Washington, the issue is whether it now
needs to start thinking about aplan B for
Venezuela. And while thepolitical stale-
matein Caracas drags on, the implosion
in the economy and thehumanitarian
disasteris only gathering pace.
“Venezuela is in a state of perverse
equilibrium,” says Luis Vicente León,
director of Datanálisis, a polling and
market research firm in Caracas. “We
are in a catastrophic deadlock where
neither side can defeat the other but
their conflict can destroy the country.”The best-laid plans
Hawks in Washington had initially
promised a quick win, portraying the
fight against Mr Maduro as part of a
wider battle to rid the Americas of
socialism. “The Troika of Tyranny in
this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and
Nicaragua — has finally met its match,”
national security adviser John Bolton
said in Miami last November.
The plan went as follows: newly
elected head of the opposition-control-
led National Assembly, Mr Guaidó
would launch a public bid to topple Mr
Maduro, a Cuban-trained former bus
driver with a fearsome reputation for
economic mismanagement, corruption
and authoritarian rule.Other nations
would back him, crowds would mass
and the regime would fall.
On January 23, before a huge crowd in
the streets of Caracas, Mr Guaidó pro-
claimed himself interim president cit-
ing an article in the constitution allow-
ing the head of parliament to take power
in the absence of a properly elected
president. He was quickly recognised by
Washington, then the EUand most
Latin American countries.
But there was no easy victory. Mr
Maduro denounced what he termed a
US-inspired coup plot and — publicly
backed by senior figures in the military
— remained in power.
Amid the humanitarian crisis, Mr
Guaidó tried a different tack the follow-
ing month. Addressing Venezuelans
from across the border in Colombia, he
promised to send in a convoy of mostly
US-supplied aid and appealed to theremove Mr Maduro.
The uprising was over almost as soon
as it began. Mr Guaidó’s message
sounded improvised and less than clear.
Why, Venezuelans asked, was he pro-
claiming a putsch from outside a mili-
tary base and not inside? One high-
ranking official, Manuel Cristopher
Figuera, the head of the feared intelli-
gence service, did defect. But the troops
again stood firm behind Mr Maduro,
riot police quickly put down scattered
protests and Mr López took refuge in the
Spanish ambassador’s residence.Failed uprising
Now, six months after proclaiming him-
self interim president, Mr Guaidó is feel-
ing the pressure. Independent polling
shows he remains by far Venezuela’s
most popular politician but his support
has slipped. He has been reluctantly
forced into Norwegian-brokered negoti-
ationswith the Maduro government,
talks which have yielded littleand
which he had promised to shun.
While the situation is inherently
unstable and could change at any time,
analysts say that neither Mr Guaidó nor
Mr Maduro seems ableto deliver a
knockout blow. “Maduro is not popularbut he is effective,” says a senior western
diplomat in Caracas “He controls an
apparatus of repression and while he
may not know how to govern, he has one
weapon that works — repression.”Dramatic economic crisis
In the meantime, the stalemate is
destroying what is left of Venezuela’s
economy. An oil power so wealthy it
boasted aConcorde service to Paris in
the late 1970s has deteriorated so dra-
matically that more than 4m citizens
have fled. Twenty years of mismanage-
ment have lent Venezuela’s economic
data an outsize, almost absurd dimen-
sion. The central bank says inflation hit
130,060 per cent last year. The economy
has shrivelled to less than half its former
size in the space of a few years. The
effect of tightening US sanctions this
year has only added to the pain.
Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezuelan
former minister and Guaidó backer,
describes it as the biggest economic col-
lapse in human history outside of war or
state failure, more than twice the mag-
nitude of the Depression.
Queues for fuel outside the capital can
stretch around blocks and along the side
of highways. Drivers sleep inside their
vehicles during a wait to fill up which
can last two days and nights. When they
reach the pumps, guarded by armed
police, the precious fuel is dispensed
free of charge: hyperinflation has ren-
dered the officially fixed fuel price so
low that there is not a banknote small
enough to pay for a full tank.
The Organisation of American States
estimates that if the exodus continues at
its current rate, 8m Venezuelans will
have left their homeland by the end of
next year, around a quarter of the popu-
lation and a larger number than left
Syria during its civil war.
For those who remain, protest against
the Maduro regime is increasingly dan-
gerous. Michelle Bachelet, the UN high
commissioner for human rights,
reported last month that nearly 7,
people had been killed in the past 18
months in confrontations with security
forces, and said many appeared to be
extrajudicial executions. The govern-
ment flatly rejected the report.
Mr Maduro and his ministers rarely
appear in public these days, preferring
stentorian communiqués in robust rev-
olutionary language. Interview requests
to senior officials were not answered.
Amid the crumbling economy, US
officials insist that Mr Guaidó’s victory is
a question of time.
“The pressures keep growing and we
are helping that along,” says one senior
official. “I don’t see how they can sur-
vive. I really cannot believe they make it
to the end of the year.”
That is not necessarily how it feels on
the streets of central Caracas, whereregion. Iran is another strong backer.
While most Latin American nations
have sided with Mr Guaidó, leftwing
governments in Mexico and Uruguay
have maintained ties with Mr Maduro.
The other key to the regime’s
survival is the Venezuelan talent for
improvisation. Statistics of plunging
food consumption suggest that mass
starvation is imminent. In reality,
though part of the population suffers
severe malnutrition, many poorer
citizens have found ways to survive:
scavenging rubbish dumps, tearing
fruit from trees in streets and parks,
growing their own vegetables and
tapping the growing diaspora abroad
for money.Venezuelan refugees flee to
neighbouring countries
Refugees (millions) Colombia Peru Chile Ecuador OtherSources: UNHCR; Keith Fray; IMFVenezuela’s recession is deeper than
any other in recent history
Gross domestic product, rebased from pre-recession peak Russia ( )
Zimbabwe ( )Greece ( )
Venezuela ( )
Forecastmilitary to allow it in. The troops stood
firm and the convoys never entered.
By now, excitable talk of a possible US
military intervention to overthrow Mr
Maduro was fading and Washington had
opted for a “maximum pressure” strat-
egy of ever-tighter sanctions. The meas-
ures began under Barack Obama, tar-
geting regime officialswith travel bans
and asset seizures for human rights
abuses. They were greatly extended
under Mr Trump to hit the Venezuelan
economy, progressively halting trading
in Venezuelan debt and securities, gold
and oil as well as blocking central bank
transactions.
With each turn of the screw, the Vene-
zuelan economy was ground down fur-
ther but the message remained the
same: one more push and Mr Maduro
would be gone.
Following weeks of street protests and
rallies and frustrated by the continuing
deadlock, Mr Guaidó raised the stakes
further at the end of April. At dawn, he
appeared outside a military base in
Caracas with one of the country’s best-
known opposition leaders, Leopoldo
López, who had escaped from years of
arrest. Mr Guaidó appealed directly to
troops in a video message to rise up andJuan Guaidó’s
campaign to
push out Nicolás
Maduro from
the presidency
has so far failed.
Left, a child
carries empty
bottles to a
water tap in
Caracas— FT
montage, Rafael
Hernandez/dpa‘Maduro is not popular
but is effective. While he
may not know how to
govern, he has a weapon
that works — repression’
4m
Number of citizens
who have fled the
country because of
the economic crisis130,
Annual inflation rate
in 2018, although it
has fallen this year7,
UN estimate for
people killed by the
security forces in the
past 18 monthsVenezuela’s deadly stand-off
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