The Accidental Face of Venezuela's Opposition

[brooklynite]

The Atlantic:

In 2003, Lilian Tintori was perhaps best known as the kite-surfing champion of Venezuela. She did a stint on a survival-themed reality show, lent her face to public-service billboards warning against drunk driving, and hosted radio and television shows. She was a celebrity in her home country, famed for her looks and charisma.

But since the arrest of her husband, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, during widespread protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro last year, she has become an entirely different kind of celebrity: the accidental face of Venezuela’s beleaguered and often divided democracy movement. Lopez remains locked up in Ramo Verde military prison, on the outskirts of Caracas, and the government is seeking to keep him imprisoned for 10 years on charges including arson and conspiracy. In recent months, other leading opposition figures have been arrested and indicted, or lost support.

Enter Tintori. Four months after Lopez’s arrest, Tintori wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post disavowing any desire to become a politician. With more than a year of campaigning for her husband’s release behind her, she told me recently that she still doesn’t see herself that way. “Leopoldo is the politician,” she said via Skype. “I’m a human-rights activist, a Venezuelan, a mother, and a victim myself, and I’m very close to the victims of my country, to those who’ve had their husbands killed and their brothers imprisoned. I’m just one of the Venezuelans raising my voice and standing up for the rights of Venezuelans.”

Those rights have atrophied since Maduro came to power in 2013 via contested elections with only 50.6 percent of the vote compared with his challenger’s 49.1 percent. Maduro was the anointed successor of Hugo Chavez, who took office in 1999 and died in 2013, shortly after beginning his fourth term as president. Chávez may have initiated Venezuela’s protracted political crisis, but the current situation in the country is unprecedented. With a shockingly high violent-crime rate, an inflation rate of 68.5 percent (the highest in the world, according to Bloomberg), widespread food and medicine shortages, and ever-more-frequent water cutoffs and power outages, Maduro has seen his approval rating drop from 55 percent to 25 percent, according to a survey conducted in March. (Even eight out of 10 Chavistas—supporters of Chavez’s highly personalized socialist, anti-imperialist governance—are sick of him or his policies.) Maduro’s term is supposed to last until 2018, but given the country’s worsening political and economic crisis, events may change that.

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Seems like a thinly veiled plea for a coup.

From the Atlantic. Who would have thought?

[okaawhatever]

2. Only someone who is in denial about the failure of socialism in general, and Maduro in particular,

would make a comment like that.

There is no doubt that if there is a coup in VZ people like you will blame the US/Obama/Capitalism while ignoring the fact that rampant inflation, unavailability of goods and political oppression are the triggers.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. Who let you out of ideologue class early?

If Maduro fails to govern effectively, defeat him in the next election.

[okaawhatever]

5. His country may not last that long. Never mind that any serious candidate may "disappear" nt

[geek tragedy]

6. hard to defeat someone in an election when they throw all of your candidates in prison nt

[betterdemsonly]

15. Because the American media is so reliable

and America never supported RIGHT WING dictators in South America. Yeah Pinochet never happened. The Honduran government is so so democratic.

[okaawhatever]

18. LOL compared to VZ's press, Fox news is honest and open. The US supporting right wing dictators

has nothing to do with Maduro.

[hack89]

9. He has jailed all his opponents

might be hard to have a fair election.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

12. They're in jail because they're coup-plotters.

And we absolutely know they're coup-plotters because they're in jail!

Or so the theory goes.

[betterdemsonly]

33. What right have you to prognosticate on a country u don't know

much about by your own admission?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

34. Prognosticate means to predict the future.

[Wilms]

4. As if the US wasn't involved in the coup against Chavez.

We're gonna run out of countries to democratize.

[FSogol]

7. Except that Chavez wasn't deposed in a coup, he died and was replaced by his VP.

[betterdemsonly]

14. The fact that it was not successful doesn't change the fact that

it happened.

[Wilms]

21. Check history. You missed an event. n/t

[FSogol]

26. ALCOA!

[okaawhatever]

11. Oh FFS The US warned the opposition and told them we wouldn't support extra constitutional.

means of removing Chavez from power. We warned Chavez of the plot.

Typical Chavez apologist. Yeah, the US got Chavez to change the laws, ally with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Cuba and Qaddafi, change the textbooks to Cuban textbooks, put his people in important posts when they didn't have the expertise (oil co.) and talked him into doing things that saw his popularity plummet 50%. LOL. Dang we're good.

[Wilms]

22. Aware of that claim.

But I am referring to the support the US gave the opposition, not what was claimed to have been done.

As for the rest of your post, I did read it twice and have no idea what you seem to be saying I supposedly said.

[okaawhatever]

24. I was referring to the underlying causes of the coup attempt. Chavez made several moves

that created opposition to his administration. I noted a few of them and joked that the US talked him into those things.

[Wilms]

25. Now I get it.

OK. But now you can see the point I made above regarding exporting our brand. Libya and Iraq are a mess. We're (thankfully) taking a different approach, now, with Cuba.

And speaking of Cuban text books. Are you aware of the fantastic rise in literacy during Chavez' terms? And were there screw ups? I'll bet there were. I'm not apologizing nor excusing.

[cali]

10. so Scandinavian countries are failures?

Horse shit.

And I do not support Maduro

[betterdemsonly]

16. There are elections down there. If they win one they

can have the hyper Reagan like government you desire. Eliminate public education and pensions, and all sociall welfare in favor or tax cuts and trickle down. It will be heaven really!

[okaawhatever]

19. Oh, give it up. Maduro is a complete and utter failure as a President. He has hurt the VZ people

and economy immesurably. Maduro has only Maduro to blame.

[betterdemsonly]

27. You don't live there and have no right to make that decision yourself

If what you say is true the VZ people can replace him with someone else. You base your opinions on the embedded media. They do have a long tradition of shilling for right wing dictators like Pinochet. The VZ opposition are a bunch of Ted Cruze types.

[okaawhatever]

28. No I'm basing it on a number of factors. One being 63% inflation, another his tanking approval #

Approval ratings:

August 2014 39%
Novem 2014 24.5% http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/us-venezuela-politics-idUSKCN0JG29T20141202
January 2015 22% http://www.voanews.com/content/venezuela-maduro-approval-rating-lowest-point/2583540.html

[betterdemsonly]

29. voa??????

such and unbiased source. The American media has shilled for Pinochetists and coup plotters in the past and voa is an aknowledged American propaganda outfit. If those polls are true Maduro will lose. The polls have been incorrect in the past. The elections there have been found fair by the UN and Jimmy Carter.

[okaawhatever]

30. Oh please. You're ignoring the other numbers I see. People like you don't fool me for a

second. Of course, you googled to give me a source that disputes these findings, right? Of course you didn't. You're all about propaganda. NO FACTS.

Attack the source when you don't like the facts. Propaganda 101. I see you've been taught well, comrade.

[betterdemsonly]

32. If you're so honest in your motives why can't you just say you want

VZ citizens to vote Maduro out, why the dismissal of simple elections

There are plenty of facts that dispute the US bipartisan consensus of VZ. That consensus has gotten into one stupid conflict after another.

If the Obama branch of the neocons are going to support the stuff they should stop complaining that nobody has arrested Cliven Bundy. Stop complaining about Larry Klaymen agitating for a coup, or Ted Cruze ruining government because that is exactly the sort of shit VZ people have had to deal with.

Obama's done some nice things foreign policy wise but he has never recognized that keeping neocons on at the state department gives them and opportunity to sabotage his efforts. Your political opponants are not going to help you implement policy or give you credibility.

[okaawhatever]

35. I don't want the people of VZ to vote Maduro out. I want the people of VZ to not suffer. Unless

Maduro can right the ship, that doesn't seem likely to happen. He has some serious problems in his country right now, and his blaming everyone but himself isn't helping anything.

[hack89]

8. Maduro is ruling by decree

sounds like there has already been a coup from the inside.

[betterdemsonly]

13. Lincoln ruled by executive order too

Guess he was a dictator.

[hack89]

17. There are fundamental differences

US presidential EOs cannot change or nullify existing law. A president cannot create a new law through an EO. More importantly, EOs can be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Maduro has none of those limitations - he can pass any law he wants with no vote from the legislature.

Maduro got decree powers only after his government removed an opposition legislator through trumped up charges - that was the only way he could get the votes he needed.

[okaawhatever]

20. Not to mention that many of the existing laws are part of the 49 laws Chavez put in place that

began his slide into unpopularity (pre-coup). The people of VZ were afraid then that the changes were going to lead to dictatorial rule.

[Zorra]

23. Don't fret! Money and greed always wins, and before long, the people of Venezuela

will once again be subjects of the global oligarchs who held them in a condition of serfdom and will return them to an even more extreme nightmare state of crushing poverty than they were in prior to Chavez' election.

Isn't that special? The system works!

[bhikkhu]

31. Hardly enough information to form an opinion from

I'd have to know a lot more to come to any kind of conclusion, and, frankly, we have so many problems in our own backyard that are hard enough to keep up with. Maybe that's why there are so many armchair experts on foreign politics - such things seem easier to judge and solve from a great distance, from a perspective (objectively) of general ignorance.