Status Check

President Nicholas Maduro

In case you did not know (and you would be easily forgiven for not knowing given how little coverage it gets), Venezuela is on the brink of a full scale fall of the Soviet Union style collapse. The underlying history of causes for this collapse are numerous and complicated and deserve a whole separate article, but what is not up for debate is that an inflation rate of almost 1000% has devalued their national currency, The Boliver, to the point of being worth far less than the paper it is printed on. What is not up for debate is that there are national shortages of almost every consumer staple, from things like toilet paper and tampons, to flour and rice and milk. What is not up for debate is that starvation has begun to set in and the nation, as a whole, lost 17 pounds on average last year. What is not up for debate is that basic medical supplies have begun to run out and that infant mortality, maternal mortality, and malaria cases skyrocketed last year. What is not up for debate is that crime is utterly ubiquitous with Venezuela second only to Honduras for highest murder rate in the world.

And one regime has held power through this entire calamitous decline, a regime that has responded by growing increasingly Dictatorial in their efforts to stay in power despite plummeting national support.

The Chavista government under the control of President Maduro has, in the past few years, suspended national elections, declared the entire Congress (the only branch of government that is not controlled by the Chavista regime) to be in contempt and therefore nullified, and this very week is set to convene a Convention to rewrite the Constitution to give the Executive Branch even greater control.

Resistence via Politics and Protest

Protestor uses heavy glove to pick up tear gas canister and throw it back at the Military Police

The Venezuelan people have showed remarkable dedication to a political and nonviolent solution in the face of all of this. Last year an attempt to oust Maduro via legal political means was made, leveraging the Venezuelan Constitution's recall petition process. The process demands that if a large enough percentage of the population signs a petition to recall the President, that a recall vote must be held. The petition made the rounds, with more than enough of the population signing on for a recall vote, a vote which the administration did not allow to happen. The legal process was followed to the letter, the requirement were all met, and the administration refused to allow the recall vote to take place. As you can imagin, Maduro defying the legally sanctioned process to have him recalled incensed the people greatly and the country has been in a constant state of protest for more than 100 days in outrage over that action. Despite massive large scale mobilization of the citizens for constant marches and rallies, and despite constant tear gassingm brutality, and the occasionally shooting death at the hands of the military, the citizens have yet to revolt, no open violent or armed conflict has occurred between protestors and the military to this point. Just last week the citizenry of Venezuela staged what might be the largest example of passive nonviolent civil disobedience in modern western history. Approximately 7 million Venezuelans across 90 plus countries self organized and held a national election on their own, since the government has suspended all official elections, and voted by an overwhelming margin to not consent to having the Constitution Amended.

Of course the regime has paid it no heed, and is continuing forward this week with their plan to amend the Constitution to grant themselves greater power.

So What Comes Next

I want to be very clear and careful here, I am no war monger. I do not wish death and violence upon any people. I want, desperately, as do all of the Venezuelan people, for the Chavista Regime to consent to legal political process and be removed by electoral means. However, at this point, that does not seem likely to occur, as numerous repeat attempts to do so have only resulted in the indefinite suspension of elections and the nullification of the Congress.

So what options does that leave the people? They may either accept defeat, accept the complete usurpation of their Republic by a Dictatorship, and learn to live with starvation and despair as the new normal.....or escalte into full blown revolt.

Now human beings are able to endure much, able to adapt and tolerate incredible circumstances, but history tells us there is one thing a people simple cannot endure, starvation. A people may have their rights and liberties trampled on, they may have their civic lives run into the ground, and they can learn to live with it. However a people simply cannot live with starving to death. Without fail, when the people starve, they will eventually revolt. When they are being starved by a regime that also displays manifest contempt for democracy and the laws of the land, the people revolt with a fervor.

In my summation, if there is not a radical concession of some kind by the Chavista government in the near future, civil war will come to Venezuela. And again, I cannot stress this enough, I do not wish that upon the nation. The people are largely unarmed. A revolt by a civilian population against a modern military would have a catasrophicly one sided death toll, and I do not even know if the people could possibly win such a battle. What I do know is history, and what signs fortell violent revolt. I cannot help but see the stage being set here.

So Why Should we in the USA Care?

Two days ago the neighboring country of Columbia reported that 24 thousand Venezuelans crossed into their nation. It is no secret that young people are fleeing the country in droves, with any family of means sending their child abroad. Venezuelan ex-pat communities are springing up all over the western world. If the nation of Venezuela erupts into full blown civil war, then we here in the Americas will have a massive refugee crisis right in our back yard. Unlike the Syrian refugee crisis, which is half a world away and left the US free from much of the refugee burden, this will be happening 6 hours away by airplane, right on the other side of the gulf. This will hit all of the Americas, and hit us hard.

So it is in the best interest of everyone, even if basic empathy of concern for human suffering don't motivate you, to see the Venezuealan solution resolved peacefully and internally, rather that erupting into a mess that will splash onto us all. The governments of the Americas, our own included, should expert as much political and economic pressure as possible to convince the Chivasta government to peacefully relinquish power. That would be the best possible course for the hemisphere.