David Smilde is a WOLA Senior Fellow and the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University. He founded the WOLA Venezuela Politics and Human Rights blog and curated it from 2012-2020. He has lived in or worked on Venezuela since 1992, and has researched Venezuela for the past 30 years. He has taught at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Universidad Católica Ándres Bello. He is currently working on a book manuscript called Venezuela’s Transition to Illiberalism: Hugo Chávez and 21st Century Socialism, 2007-2012.
Venezuela is now suffering severe gasoline shortages as the United States has cracked-down on fuel-for-oil swaps as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign. While Venezuela once refined all of its gasoline and even exported it, over the past ten years it has become...
During an April 1 press briefing on the U.S. response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump announced new deployments of ships and aircraft to the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, describing the move as necessary amid the pandemic due to the “growing threat...
This is essentially the same proposal that was being discussed last summer as part of the Norwegian-mediated negotiations, with one big difference. Coming less than a week after indicting the heads of every major branch of the Maduro government, it would seem the Trump Administration is trying to hard-wire who they think should not be part of a transition. This was a main point of contention during last summer’s negotiations with the U.S. reluctant to endorse any transition plan that allowed Maduro to preside over new elections.
Whenever something big goes down in Venezuela I can count on a call from Ian Masters of Background Briefing. He's got a great sense of the issues and what's important. In this interview we talk about how to make sense of the U.S. Department of Justice's indictments of...
A multitude of voices have suggested the need for sanctions relief or international support for Venezuela, given the vulnerability of its population and health system to the COVID-19 pandemic. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet,...
Disasters are always a challenge but frequently provide authoritarian governments with opportunities as the de facto power they wield suddenly becomes much more important to the population and its neighbors. Maduro has indeed been able seize the political spotlight from Juan Guaidó and gain some implicit international recognition from Colombia.
While the opposition’s top-line political strategy is street mobilization, it is simultaneously pushing to improve electoral conditions while not making any public commitments to go to legislative elections.
While corruption and organized crime are thriving amid Venezuela’s political and economic crisis, previously unpublished U.S. government drug trade monitoring data suggests that Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S.-bound cocaine. In “Beyond the...
The ever more brazen attacks on opposition concentrations and marches (see our coverage of Guaidó’s attempt to return to the legislative palace in January, and Guaidó’s return from abroad last month) would seem to be aimed at undermining Guaidó’s ability to re-mobilize the population. He has called for a new opposition march to the Legislative Palace on March 10.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned the Geneva-based Rosneft Trading SA, a subsidiary of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, for allegedly helping the Maduro government evade sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector. The US will freeze any assets that Rosneft Trading SA and...