The neoliberal right of South America has won the elections in Argentina and Peru in two and a half years, has annulled the possibility of Evo Morales re-appearing in Bolivia, has blocked the peace agreement in Colombia and has defeated Dilma Russef of Brazilian power. Some, interestingly, call it cycle change, but they're too big words because it doesn't take into account Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba and some progressive governments that are in power. However, there is no doubt that the wind does not blow in favour of leftist governments. And of course, Venezuela and Chavism are not safe. The country is experiencing a social, economic, political and military crisis that has not been known for a long time.

The serious economic crisis in which the country has joined, deepening the price of oil, has meant that a large part of the population cannot reach the end of the month. In the last four years, the opposition that was divided has been strengthened and criticisms of certain sectors on the left have been multiplied by a number of decisions taken by the Maduro Government. The usual pressure on international financial power, the media dependent on multinationals, neoliberal governments with economic interests in the United States and Venezuela, with Spain at the forefront, has been exacerbated against Chavism. Venezuela has lost two powerful “friends” after Brazil and Argentina became the hands of neoliberal forces. The Venezuelan oligarchy has reinforced the economic blockade and almost every day there are protests, incidents and attacks on the streets...

How did we get here?
Since Chávez won the elections in November 1998, attempts to overthrow Chavism, including the 2002 military coup d’état, have been ongoing. But the current trial contains more elements.

Chavism won all elections until April 2013. In the latter, the first times after Chávez's death, there was a qualitative leap, because the opposition was about to win the elections: The difference between the opponent Henrique Capriles and Nicolás Maduro was reduced to 1.60%. Faced with the weakness of Chavism, the opposition organised violent street riots in February 2014. The "Guarimbas" left 43 dead and 500 wounded, while the rest were released by the police. The Government resisted the aggression and one of the opposition leaders, Leopoldo López, was tried and imprisoned on charges of organizing these disturbances. International right-wing forces made López one of the main arguments for opposing the Government of Venezuela by considering Nicolás Maduro a political prisoner. Among others, the Government of Spain and the CAV Parliament called for their release. It was useful in increasing international pressure against the Government.

The image of Chavism deteriorated and the opposition, led by Capriles, put the December 2015 elections in the spotlight. It was the first time I won. The Bureau of Active Unity (MAN), which brings together all the political groups that make up the opposition, won two-thirds of the seats of the National Assembly (AN) – the Venezuelan parliament. Since then, clashes between the executive (government) and the legislature (an) have been ongoing. The Supreme Court of Justice has annulled the laws passed by the An since January 2016, by "disregard authority" before the Assembly. The Electoral Board suspended in October 2016 the process of organising a referendum on the dismissal of the president, considering that during the collection of signatures the opposition committed a fraud. In March of this year all the powers were suspended to the Assembly and the Supreme Court took them over for about three weeks. The government postponed the 2016 regional elections and adopted a new rule to register political parties, marginalising small critical groups with the government. Criticism was no longer just on the right.

The opposition has denounced the "coup d'état of the government" and the "violation of the Constitution", and the international news agency and mainstream media has managed to enclose the conflict on international agendas. The Government ' s image has deteriorated in the last year and a half, and the Government ' s intention to negotiate with the opposition, supported by the Pope and former President of several international countries, has been in vain. In 2017, a strong opposition to the country plunged into a serious political and economic crisis could hardly have had the opportunity to take the situation further. It was the turn of the military and economic war.

Dozens
of deaths and hundreds of wounded From early April to 22 June, 75 people have died according to official figures, other sources speak of 94 and the opposition uses other numbers. Who is the victim of the political conflict and who is not, is a battlefield in Venezuela. Data, the reality is that since the beginning of April protests have happened, turning the streets into a permanent battlefield. In mid-May, the Ministry of Defense mobilized 2,000 soldiers and brought another 600 to the border with Colombia, the state of Táchira, which has always been very conflicting.

The 21-year-old murder of Orlando Figuera demonstrated the cruelty of the situation. Opponents who protested on 20 May at Altamira Square in Caracas set him on fire with a knife and killed him in the street. He died within 15 days.

The violent side of the conflict has gained prominence in recent months. The member of the research group Part Hartuz of the UPV/EHU Luismi Uharte knows the reality firsthand and it is clear that the right wing for violence is becoming more and more evident. He has highlighted three main actors: “Paramilitaries, who have been in Venezuela for some time but have recently taken more presence in the city; some police from neighborhoods and towns in the hands of the opposition and Pagan criminals”. According to Huarte, this strategy combines targeted killings with attacks on public infrastructure – hospitals, public transport, schools, food distribution centres, sabotages against electricity supply and others.

Bilbaíno activist Mikel Zuluaga has lived in Venezuela for many years, and has linked the issue of insecurity with opposition in the UK. “Through pay-related crime, the opposition, organised in the same way as the Mara groups in El Salvador, is fostering the sense of insecurity on the street. And that kind of chaos, in itself, is very profitable for the United States. Although the Chavista Government has not been brought down, Mariano Rajoy’s Executive is keen to resolve the internal conflict. Imperialism knows very well that Venezuela has been the heart of the resurrection of the peoples of Latin America and that they have enough chaos to deactivate it, they do not need a clear triumph of the opposition that they support. The opposition is not homogeneous, it is an accumulation of many groups and for the future it will be very difficult to perpetuate in the elections.”

The French-Argentine journalist in Venezuela, Marco Teruggi, has published in his blog the 90 fatalities recorded until June 19 of this year. "Eight are killed by the security forces, but over the rest the right is not responsible and systematically accuses the government of the consequences of the disturbances caused by the opposition itself. It's no coincidence, it's a strategy. They want to polarize society through the denial and destruction of the ‘other’ (Chavism). Society is losing the tools to speak.”

As an indication of the aggressiveness, during the drafting of this report several opponents have stolen a helicopter from the Police and have attacked the Court of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior in shots and grenades. In the video in which the military Oscar Pérez acknowledges the authorship of the attack, Fernández Díaz has called for the government to be brought down by arms. It has not been the only call to the coup d'état across the country. Leopoldo López from prison or his wife, Lilian Tintori, who recently met with Mariano Rajoy and Donald Trump, have encouraged “to rush the army against the government.” The two are the most significant faces of Popular Will.

At the same time as relations with Cuba were weakening, Barack Obama proclaimed Venezuela as an enemy to U.S. national security. Subsequently, the decision has come to put political and economic pressure on Venezuela, through the Organization of American States (OAS), as they did with Cuba in 1962, until its expulsion from the OAS.

In Venezuela, in general, the Army has today shown great loyalty to the Government, ignoring the coup history of South America. However, the Army is not the only official armed group in the country. In the last decade, the government created popular militias and tens of thousands of citizens received military training. They are joined by political groups with military experience in many neighborhoods. These groups have shown their "willingness" to "cope with internal and external interference" of the organization. And in Venezuela there are all kinds of weapons.

The living conditions of the citizens, the worst enemy
of the Government, is the strongest enemy of the Government to lose power, an economic crisis that is increasingly unsustainable for the citizens. In recent years, inflation has risen steadily, at almost the same rate as the country ' s debt. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the economy will contract at 7.4 per cent and that inflation will reach 720 per cent as of the year.

There is no political democracy without economic democracy. Meeting the needs of citizens and laying the foundations for it to remain so in the future, two challenges that are the first objectives of any democratic government. The former is achievable, but the latter is revolutionary in South America and Central America, where all countries have not yet managed to free themselves from the slavery of the colonial economy. The dependence on raw materials is almost total in most cases, they are slaves to the price of what they export. In Venezuela, that servitude is called oil.

The transformation of the economic structure imposed for centuries is very difficult, but it cannot be said that it was not chavism, since the attempts for industrialisation and food sovereignty have been blunt, among others. They call it "sowing oil." But the reality is very crude: the weight of oil in GDP has not regressed, it is above 90%. And it seems difficult to be able to turn that around now that the economic situation is worse than in previous years.

Most of Chavez’s significant social changes have been due to the income from the high oil price. In 2008 the price of the barrel was $130, currently around 40. One of the consequences has been the increase in the country ' s debt, which has not wanted to cut public spending by the Government.

“The Government has decided to give greater prominence to the private sector, has opted for the neo-developmentalist approach to the expansion of national production,” says the professor of the UPV/EHU asked about government measures to improve the economic situation. These are measures that are causing criticism of critical chavism and criticism from environmental groups. “On the one hand, in Orinoco the field of extraction of gold, iron, nickel, coal and other raw materials has been extended by 100,000 km2. On the other hand, with the aim of attracting more external companies, it has made the conditions for oil exploitation more flexible and has created ‘Special Economy Zones’, establishing the conditions for facilitating external investments.”

In addition, the progressive elimination of State-established price control mechanisms in many commodities has not stabilized prices and access to medicines and food is more difficult for the majority of the population.

According to Zuluaga, in 1998 Chavismo did not start from scratch. "The principles of the oligarchic state they received have not disappeared and directly affect some of the fundamental problems that are being raised. For example, the consideration of power as individual property (‘for what I have won the elections in this town or neighborhood, the treasury is now mine’), corruption and clientelism are also obvious symptoms and especially highlights the ineffectiveness of institutions. Although many sectors of Chavism have tried to eradicate these diseases, they are still there. Otherwise, the continuous movement of people who change from ‘side’, from Chavism to the opposition and in the opposite direction is not understood. Many think that power is theirs and not the people.”

To the economic crisis and its management, another important variable must be added: the economic war. Under the leadership of the Venezuelan oligarchy and international financial power, Huarte says that they have caused negative effects on the daily lives of citizens: “They have manipulated the currency exchange rate in the black market, some groups of the employers have suspended the supply of basic raw materials and reduced production, promoted hyperinflation, tried to choke the country financially and sabotaged monetary transactions to leave citizens without liquidity, among other things.”

Regional elections will be held
at the end of this year, but those scheduled for the end of 2018 will be a milestone, as the president will then be elected. No one doubts that, in the current context, Chavism would lose in any kind of choice, as shown by trends and all surveys. Therefore, if there is no radical change in the political situation, and above all in the economic situation, it is hardly possible to imagine another scenario other than the change of government by the end of 2018.

Can Chavism achieve such a profound change in one and a half years with all the factual powers against it? It seems difficult, but it certainly has to be courageous in the search for qualitative leaps in all areas, especially in the recovery of economic control. The first big bet is the Constituent Assembly.

“We appeal to the Constituent Assembly to seek peace, to defeat the violent and fascists, to change everything that needs to be changed, to renew the revolution and to deal with corruption, bureaucratism and everything that is badly done.” The words of Nicolás Maduro reflect the importance of betting on a constituent process. To overcome the collapse between the legislature and the executive, the Government has initiated the creation of a high-level institutional space. More than 55,000 people have already signed up to participate in the process.

The congress aims to give constitutional status to some social achievements and interesting experiences of Chavism, such as the system of common power linked to direct democracy. These are changes that critical chavism also sees with good eyes, but the process has emerged between criticism and comments from the very beginning. On the one hand, constitutional reform is a great word, and it is customary for the public to ratify it by means of a referendum, but the process has not provided for consultation. On the other hand, the choice by sector and territory of candidates for the Assembly, apart from political parties, has been perceived by many as a government movement to secure the majority.

Journalist Marco Teruggi sees the Constituent Congress as an opportunity for chavism, but not for the party. “The constituent process can be an opportunity to return the conflict to the democratic debate of ideas, to transform Chavism from within and to regain the possibility of returning the majority in the elections through the participatory process. But it can be the last chance.”

The opposition has already stated from the outset that it is not going to participate in the conflict and therefore it seems difficult to resolve the political conflict. In Huarte’s view, good intentions, although there are also serious doubts that it can serve to solve the underlying problem. "Will it help to improve the situation of a citizen who cannot reach the end of the week? People ask for economic decisions.”

Zuluaga also speaks in the same line: “If you can’t get coffee, sugar and flour – some of the basics of Venezuela’s food – citizens will go out into the street. Chavez gave away millions of public homes, it was terrible, but if after that people who have been a Chavista for housing do not have the ability to buy arepa, they will go out to the street. If we are not to act in this way, we must have a very strong ideology. Not all evils can be attributed to imperialism, which is counterproductive for the government. A fundamental change is needed, and to achieve this the impulse of many citizens is essential.”

Time will clear up doubts, but there is much at stake even beyond the country’s borders. The fall of Venezuela in the hands of the neoliberal forces would be a severe blow to the left, which has not many referents in power, and especially to the peoples of America who want to deepen the path of the second independence.