Venezuela: What’s Next? Venezuela is again in the news. It has become an annual event. As Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s handpicked successor, clings to power, the true dictatorial nature of the regime is finally revealed.

Most English language analyses of the current situation in Venezuela start by taking news reports at face value, ignoring a valid saying about politics in Latin America: “What you see is never what’s really going on.” This is particularly true when applied to savvy Leninists like those ruling in Cuba and Venezuela.

To understand current events in Caracas, and to analyze the scenarios likely to develop in a country once considered amongst the richest in the world, some myths about the Chavista regime need to be debunked.

The first myth is Hugo Chávez’s supposed enormous popular support.

Chávez initially won the presidency with 54% of the vote. That was the high point of his popularity. For subsequent elections, he perfected a system of voter intimidation and manipulation of voter rolls, but even then he was never able to reduce the opposition’s support below an average of 40 to 45 percent of the total vote. In truth, Chávez lost the support of most Venezuelans long before his death.

During his initial, successful run for president, Chávez was asked point blank in several TV interviews whether he was a communist; his reply was purposefully (and sarcastically) identical to the one given by Fidel Castro to Princeton University students during his visit to the USA in 1959: “I am a humanist.”

Years later, on consolidating total power in his own hands, Chávez again emulated Fidel and confessed to being “a convinced follower of Marxist-Leninist ideology.”

The myth remains among many in American academia that Chávez was simply another Latin American populist in the mold of Juan Domingo Perón. He was not. He was a convinced Marxist who could quote entire passages from Lenin.

Thus, during the first four years of his presidency, he concentrated his efforts in changing the constitution, packing the Supreme Court with his cronies, installing soviet-style political commissars in army units, and changing the national identity card and the electoral system to ensure his reelection through manipulation of voter rolls.

During this first stage, Chávez was not interested in antagonizing the private sector or the business community. He had enough on his plate, and knew he could not tackle all enemies at once. Just as Hitler’s final destruction of the Jewish middle class during Kristallnacht did not occur until five years after his ascension to power in Germany, in Venezuela, Chávez reassured the business community that he was not really interested in their demise. They were enemies he would eliminate later.

Throughout this period “Chavismo” seemed very similar to Argentina’s “Peronismo.”

In September, 2001, Chávez began his offensive for the Second Stage of the Process for the Revolution, as Chávez called his march toward a totalitarian state.

That month he openly broke with the United States by calling the American bombing of Afghan targets “an act of terrorism equal to 9/11.” He then proceeded to pass 49 laws directed against the private sector.

These laws eliminated private participation in the oil business, allowed for confiscation without payment of private lands, suspended constitutional guarantees for business owners, and established “military security zones” in major metropolitan areas. This measure was a de facto confiscation of prime real estate in Venezuela’s major cities.

At the same time, Chávez launched an all-out attack against the country’s independent labor unions, persecuting and even imprisoning several prominent leaders.

By the end of 2004, Chávez had embarked in an unstoppable march to acquire the “commanding heights” of the Venezuelan economy, having destroyed the independent labor movement (its leaders were mostly imprisoned or fled into exile) and controlling most of the mass media outlets in the country.

Between 2008 and 2009, Chávez entered the Third Stage of The Process. He nationalized the holdings of international corporations in all sectors considered essential by his Cuban advisers: telecommunications, mining, steel, construction materials, oil and oil services, energy generation, distribution and transmission, gas, agricultural services, and even glass manufacturing companies.

The twin myths of Chávez’s enormous popularity and lack of ideology protected his image internationally. With a friendly press blind to the true nature of the regime, a modern day communist dictator was widely accepted as a legitimate ruler.

By the time of his death in 2013, Chávez had achieved most of what he set out to do. A mediocre opposition totally lacking a strategic vision posed no problems. Moreover, as Chávez himself boasted several times, he had “infiltrated them to the core.”

His aim was never to turn Venezuela into another Cuba economically. Chávez knew well that he needed the private sector to keep goods on the shelves and to avoid Venezuela becoming economically irrelevant in the way Cuba has become.

His relation to the Castro brothers was one of a comrade in arms and colleague. He needed the Cubans to provide security and repression expertise, and they needed him to keep the Cuban people fed. Chávez’s aim was to supplant Fidel as the new leader of the International Left, and he knew he needed an economically strong Venezuela to do so.

Chávez’s brand of socialism was carefully modelled after those of Islamic dictatorships, like Gadddafi’s Libya. Totalitarian control of the “commanding heights” of the economy with the private sector allowed to function within strict parameters.

On Chávez’s death things changed in Venezuela. Maduro inherited absolute power, controlling all levers of the state, a muzzled or nationalized press, and armed forces that had become the leader’s Praetorian Guard.

Lacking Chávez’s brain-power and charisma, however, Maduro became completely dependent on Cuban advice. The relationship changed; Havana became an imperial capital and Caracas merely the viceroy’s seat of power.

Maduro’s first vice-president was Chávez’s son in-law, a true Marxist fanatic with a degree from Cambridge University, and now an obscure and ruthless operative trained by Havana. They both knew that merely tweaking electoral rolls and voting machines would not win them elections à la Chávez. Maduro’s subsequent vice-presidents have also been aware of this fact.

Chávez passed away before the destruction of Venezuela’s oil industry caused by his policies became evident. Maduro compounded the problem by delegating economic planning to those closest to Havana, thus causing the complete collapse of the entire economy, and becoming unbelievably unpopular in the process.

Where Chávez needed to simply skim a few votes here and there to turn a 4 to 5 point electoral loss into a victory, Maduro would have to perform a miracle to win given his deep unpopularity. He knows there is no scenario under which he or the Chavista PSUV party could claim an electoral victory.

Maduro obtained his post for two reasons: unquestionable personal loyalty to Hugo Chávez, and Raúl Castro’s conviction that he was the most likely Chavista leader to keep receiving instructions from Havana. Unfortunately for Maduro, he was far from being the most powerful Chavista leader domestically in Venezuela. Thus, Maduro has been shackled from two sides.

On the one hand, he must bribe and cajole the corrupt generals in Venezuela’s army, turning a blind eye to their involvement in drug trafficking and turning over to them, for their profit, the control of Venezuela’s food imports and the management of foreign exchange allocations.

On the other hand, he is completely dependent on Cuba’s advice and support, which brings Venezuela’s economy ever closer to the Cuban model, compounding its collapse and making it impossible to recover.

Thus, we arrive at the current predicament. The Venezuelan constitution has various escape clauses from a failed and unpopular government. A recall referendum is an established right, included in the text of the constitution drafted by Hugo Chávez to diminish the fears that he’d become president for life when he proposed, and obtained, the elimination of term limits. The dates at which other elections must be held— gubernatorial, municipal and presidential— are literally set in stone and cannot be legally changed.

Having lost control of the National Assembly, Venezuela’s congress, in the last election which the regime allowed, Maduro has used a rubber-stamp Supreme Court, presided by a convicted felon, to annul any possibility of elections, of any kind, for the time being.

More recently, Maduro used the Supreme Court to effectively close the National Assembly. It is evident that Maduro is intent on clinging to power.

If he were to allow elections and try to use Chávez’s old tactics, the fraud would be all too evident, weakening him further. Elections are out of the question, and he is egged on by two groups that, although not allied, have the same interests: the narco-generals in the Venezuelan army and the Cuban government. Elections in Venezuela would endanger the corrupt generals, and Cuba would risk famine after losing its Venezuelan lifeline.

If the international community and the Venezuelan opposition do not devise an effective strategy together, the only thing we can expect is Venezuela to slide further into rogue state status.

Venezuela’s oil production will continue to slide and, given Maduro’s dependence on the advice of hard core Cuban-trained Marxists, the Venezuelan economy will continue its unstoppable downturn, breaking all records for a country not at war.

A strategy for producing a change in Venezuela needs to concentrate on three areas:

• A. Recognizing Cuba’s involvement in the country and making the Castro regime pay a price for its intervention.
• B. Making sure that the loyalty to the regime of military and civilian leaders who do not benefit directly from drug trade is extremely costly, and:
• C. Keeping the pressure on Maduro domestically so that leftist propaganda cannot help him recover his image internationally.

It is in this manner that Venezuela may have some hope of returning to democracy, with the international community’s continued efforts in securing free elections.

Article originally appeared on Panampost.com

Article originally appeared on Today Venezuela and is republished here with permission.