Chaos has dominated the streets of Venezuelan cities since July 29 after it was announced that current leader Nicolás Maduro had won a third term in the country’s presidential election, an outcome that has been met with widespread skepticism.
There have been reports of 11 deaths from police clashes with demonstrators and at least 700 arrests amid widespread claims of election fraud.
Protesters aren’t the only ones challenging Venezuela’s election results. The Atlanta-based Carter Center announced on July 30 that it can’t “verify or corroborate” the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) results. The Carter Center signed a memorandum of understanding with Venezuela’s CNE in March, which stated that the group would be allowed to observe the election process freely; 17 Carter Center experts and observers were deployed and based in Caracas, Barinas, Maracaibo, and Valencia.
“Venezuela’s electoral process did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages and violated numerous provisions of its own national laws,” the Carter Center said in a statement. “The election took place in an environment of restricted freedoms for political actors, civil society organizations, and the media. Throughout the electoral process, the CNE demonstrated a clear bias in favor of the incumbent.”
The Organization of American States also disputed the CNE’s election results, stating, “Throughout this entire electoral process, we saw the application by the Venezuelan regime of its repressive scheme complemented by actions aimed at completely distorting the electoral result, making that result available to the most aberrant manipulation.”
A report by the Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation noted that the CNE announced that it had processed 80 percent of the results within hours of the polls closing and declared Maduro the winner without providing details from polling stations or publishing the official tally sheets. The agency also observed math errors in the results published on the CNE’s official channel.
Supporters of the opposition party and its leader, Maria Corina Machado, stated that her party has proof that Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela lost the July 28 general election. Machado said 73 percent of the accessible votes showed opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the election winner, with more than twice as many votes as Maduro.
In a televised address, Maduro condemned the post-election protests and accusations of voting fraud. He blamed the chaos firmly on the opposition party and accused them of inciting violence.
The White House also responded to Venezuela’s election results.
“We continue to call for Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release full, transparent, and detailed voting results, including by polling station,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in an official statement. “This is especially critical given that there are clear signs that the election results announced by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council do not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people as it was expressed at the ballot box on July 28.”
How Venezuela Got Here
The country’s more than decade-long economic spiral can be traced to a political move that fueled initial success under a different regime. The current ruling party was established by Hugo Chavez, who was elected president in 1998. Following its promise to use the country’s rich oil reserves to reduce poverty, his administration took control of the state oil company in 2004 after crippling worker strikes occurred from 2002 to 2003.The initial results of Chavez’s party taking control were positive. Poverty and unemployment dropped drastically between 2004 and 2007, according to the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
However, a Council on Foreign Relations analysis found that Chavez’s decision to fire experienced oil industry workers after the 2002–2003 strikes “gutted the company of important technical expertise.”
A study published in Resources Policy noted that Venezuelan oil production began to steadily decline starting in 2006. At the same time, Chavez began offering subsidized oil to other politically aligned countries in the region. Chavez’s presidency witnessed the government’s debt more than double amid diminished petroleum reserves.
Maduro came to power in 2013 after a special election to determine a new leader upon Chavez’s death. Since then, Venezuela’s economy has continued to decline, resulting in a steep devaluation of its currency, a lack of foreign currency, food shortages, and soaring levels of poverty.
Venezuela relies heavily on oil exports for income and foreign currency. A Natural Resource Governance Institute analysis stated that the oil sector is responsible for up to 70 percent of the government’s income. So when the drop in global oil prices hit in 2014, the petrostate’s economy continued sinking under Maduro’s stewardship.
U.S. sanctions on oil exports, which began under President Donald Trump in 2017, also were reinstated by President Joe Biden in April this year.
Regional Effects
The sharp economic decline under Maduro has had a devastating effect on the lives of Venezuelans. Since 2017, households living in poverty have topped 90 percent, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.As of 2023, more than 7 million Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries under the current regime because of the shattered economy. Many of them are arriving as refugees to the U.S. Southwest border.
In fiscal year (FY) 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered 266,071 Venezuelans at the southern land border with Mexico. This represents a considerable surge from the previous two years. So far, the number of Venezuelan encounters at the Southwest land border for FY 2024 stands at 262,739.
In November 2023, the Center for Strategic and International Studies called the ongoing exodus of Venezuelan nationals the “largest displacement crisis in the world,” with refugee numbers exceeding those in Syria and Ukraine.
