Opinion & Analysis

Venezuelan author and journalist Jose Roberto Duque reflects on Thursday’s live broadcast “peace talk” between the Venezuelan government and the opposition in Miraflores presidential palace.

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Nate Silver, who became famous for his use of polling data to accurately project U.S. elections, launched a new blog – FiveThirtyEight.com last month.  It’s been off to a rough start, Paul Krugman wrote soon after its launch, “[S]loppy and casual opining with a bit of data used, as the old saying goes, the way a drunkard uses a lamppost — for support, not illumination.” I leave it to the reader to decide whether the FiveThirtyEight article on March 17 by Dorothy Kronick on Venezuela fits this description.

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After over a month of violence explicitly aimed at ousting the Maduro government, major media outlets and governments in the North Atlantic are blind to the bad faith of the opposition.

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What has to be done to put an end to the violent escalation in Venezuela? 

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The violent anti-government protests that shook Venezuela in February have once again thrust the issue of the pace of change into the broader debate over socialist transformation. Radical Chavistas, reflecting the zeal of the movement’s rank and file, call for a deepening of the “revolutionary process,” while moderate Chavistas favor concessions to avoid an escalation of the violence. The same dilemma confronted the socialist government of Salvador Allende in the early 1970s, but under different political circumstances.

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“Lights out! Whoever doesn’t turn out their lights will have their apartment stoned!” The cry rang out at 9pm, and residents of a set of apartment blocks near the center of Mérida, a provincial capital in the Venezuelan Andes, shuttered down for the night. 

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