Venezuela: the standoff that never ends
Magna BureauTwo men claimed the presidency. Millions have left. The oil is still in the ground. Venezuela is the crisis the hemisphere learned to live with.
Venezuela has been in crisis for so long that the crisis has become the country's condition. The economy collapsed in the 2010s. Millions fled. The government of Nicolas Maduro survived sanctions, an opposition boycott, a rival presidency, a pandemic and the near-total loss of its oil industry. And then, in July 2024, the country held an election that was supposed to settle something, and instead settled nothing. The electoral council declared Maduro the winner without publishing the precinct-level results that would have allowed anyone to verify the claim. The opposition published its own copies of most of the precinct tallies and said they showed a decisive victory for its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez. Independent analysts who examined the opposition's tallies found them credible. Several foreign governments recognised Gonzalez as the elected president. Maduro was sworn in for a third term in January 2025 anyway. And so Venezuela entered another chapter of the standoff that has defined it for a decade: two claims to legitimacy, one state, no resolution.
To understand how Venezuela got here, start with oil. Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves, according to OPEC and industry estimates, and for most of the twentieth century oil made it one of Latin America's richest countries. Hugo Chavez, who took power in 1999, used oil revenue to fund sweeping social programmes that cut poverty and made him a hero to millions, and a villain to the country's old elite. But Chavez also hollowed out the state oil company, PDVSA, using it as a piggy bank, purging its professionals, and loading it with debt. When oil prices collapsed in the 2010s, the model collapsed with them. Production, which once exceeded 3 million barrels a day, fell to a fraction of that. The country that had imported everything with oil money could no longer import anything at all.
The human consequence is one of the largest displacements in the world. The United Nations estimates nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2015. Most have settled in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile and the United States, and their arrival has reshaped the politics of the hemisphere. Colombia, which hosts the largest number, has oscillated between generosity and backlash. Peru and Chile have tightened entry rules. In the United States, Venezuelan migration became a major political issue, with waves of arrivals at the southern border and a fierce debate over deportations and temporary protected status. The Venezuelan diaspora is now one of the largest in the Americas, and its remittances are one of the few things keeping families back home afloat.