Succession, special election, and faltering economy
When Chavez died on March 5, it was the husky, mustachioed Maduro who made the announcement to the country. Earlier he had accused Venezuela’s “imperialist” enemies of having poisoned Chavez. While interim president, Maduro ran against
Capriles
in the special election on April 14 to choose a president to serve out the remainder of Chavez’s term. Maduro won the razor-close contest, capturing nearly 51 percent of the vote over just more than 49 percent for Capriles, who was quick to make
allegations
of voting irregularities and to demand a full recount. Instead, the National Election Council chose to conduct an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically audited under Venezuelan election law, though Capriles refused to participate in the audit and announced that he would undertake a legal challenge to the election results. Nevertheless, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.
Maduro sought to bring his deeply divided country together, but during the first part of 2014 middle-class citizens in many Venezuelan cities took to the streets to protest his government. The country’s shantytown residents, however, stood with Maduro, and the military and police mobilized in support of him. By May the demonstrations had
waned
. Even the imprisonment of Leopoldo Lopez, the leader of the hard-line faction of the opposition, brought only limited protest. Emboldened, in July Maduro’s government incarcerated several high-profile critics.
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Three groups within the
chavismo
movement competed for influence: (1) leftist civilians with strong ties to Cuba, (2) military officers who had taken part in the failed coup of February 1992, and (3) regional leaders with strong local support. Maduro landed on the side of the leftist civilians, as evidenced by some of his prominent dismissals and appointments.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan economy struggled mightily, largely as a result of depressed world oil prices. Moreover, the output of Venezuelan
crude oil
consisted of an increasingly high proportion of
viscous
petroleum, which was more costly to refine than the highly coveted sweet light crude. The economy was also burdened with declining industrial production and falling non-oil exports?the result, according to some observers, of the government’s failure to adequately invest in the industrial sector and its ideologically driven nationalization of industries such as electricity and steel. Inflation ballooned, registering among the highest levels in the world. As import capabilities shrank, shortages of staples such as toilet paper, milk, and flour, as well as certain medicines, became more and more widespread.
Against that
backdrop
Maduro was quick to focus on a long-standing dispute with
Guyana
over a portion of that country claimed by Venezuela since the 19th century, which intensified in May 2015 with the discovery of oil offshore of the contested region. A shooting incident near the Colombian border in August 2015 and accusations of smuggling led Venezuela to close the border and deport some 1,400?1,500 Colombians living in Venezuela. In September tensions eased, and the expelled ambassadors of the two countries returned to their posts, after Maduro and Colombian Pres.
Juan Manuel Santos
, meeting in Quito,
Ecuador
, agreed to progressively normalize relations between their countries.