In 2013, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil insurrection began in Venezuela due to the country's high levels of urban violence, inflation, and chronic shortages of basic goods and services. Explanations for these worsening conditions vary, with analysis blaming strict price controls, alongside long-term, widespread political corruption resulting in the under-funding of basic government services. While protests first occurred in January, after the murder of actress and former Miss Venezuela Mónica Spear, the 2014 protests against Nicolás Maduro began in earnest that February following the attempted rape of a student on a university campus in San Cristóbal. Subsequent arrests and killings of student protesters spurred their expansion to neighboring cities and the involvement of opposition leaders. The year's early months were characterized by large demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and government forces that resulted in nearly 4,000 arrests and 43 deaths, including both supporters and opponents of the government. Toward the end of 2014, and into 2015, continued shortages and low oil prices caused renewed protesting.
2016 saw a wave of protests following the controversy surrounding the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections as well as the 2016 recall referendum. On 1 September 2016, a large number of protesters gathered in Caracas to demand a recall election against President Maduro. Crowd estimates vary greatly — the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democratica estimated that more than 1 million people participated in the march, while the state-run news agency AVN reported a turnout of around 30 thousand. Following the suspension of the recall referendum by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on 21 October, opposition groups began organizing a nationwide protest which took place on 26 October. Around 1.2 million people mobilized in street marches across the country, according to opposition estimates. After some of the largest protests occurred in late 2016, a Vatican-mediated dialogue between the opposition and government was attempted and ultimately failed in January 2017. Concentration on protests subsided in the first months of 2017 until the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis occurred when the pro-government Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela attempted to assume the powers of the opposition-led National Assembly and removed their immunity, though the move was reversed days later, demonstrations grew "into the most combative since a wave of unrest in 2014".
During the 2017 Venezuelan protests, the Mother of all Protests involved from 2.5 million to 6 million protesters. The 2019 protests began in early January after the National Assembly declared the May 2018 presidential elections invalid and declared Juan Guaidó acting president, resulting in a presidential crisis. The majority of protests have been peaceful, consisting of demonstrations, sit-ins, and hunger strikes, although small groups of protesters have been responsible for attacks on public property, such as government buildings and public transportation. Erecting improvised street barricades, dubbed guarimbas, were a controversial form of protest in 2014. Although initially protests were mainly performed by the middle and upper classes, lower class Venezuelans became involved as the situation in Venezuela deteriorated. Nicolas Maduro's government characterized the protests as an undemocratic coup d'etat attempt, which was orchestrated by "fascist" opposition leaders and the United States, blaming capitalism and speculation for causing high inflation rates and goods scarcities as part of an "economic war" being waged on his government. Although Maduro, a former trade union leader, says he supports peaceful protesting, the Venezuelan government has been widely condemned for its handling of the protests. Venezuelan authorities have gone beyond the use of rubber pellets and tear gas to instances of live ammunition use and torture of arrested protesters according to organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, while the United Nations has accused the Venezuelan government of politically motivated arrests, most notably former Chacao mayor and leader of Popular Will, Leopoldo Lopez, who has used the controversial charges of murder and inciting violence against him to protest the government's "criminalization of dissent". Other controversies reported during the protests include media censorship and violence by pro-government militant groups known as colectivos.
On 27 September 2018, the United States government declared new sanctions on individuals in Venezuelan government. They included Maduro's wife Cilia Flores, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, Minister of Communications Jorge Rodriguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino. On 27 September 2018, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution for the first time on human rights abuses in Venezuela. 11 Latin American countries proposed the resolution including Mexico, Canada and Argentina. On 23 January 2019, El Tiempo revealed a protest count, showing over 50,000 registered protests in Venezuela since 2013. In 2020, organized protests against Maduro had largely subsided, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela.
In July 2024, widespread protests erupted across Venezuela following Nicolas Maduro's controversial claim to victory in the presidential elections, which were criticized for lacking transparency and fairness. Demonstrators, both domestically and abroad, challenged the legitimacy of the results, alleging electoral manipulation and repression of opposition leaders. Clashes between protestors and security forces were reported nationwide, with instances of excessive force and arbitrary detentions documented. Venezuelan authorities carried out a brutal crackdown on both voters and demonstrators, including assaults, arrests, and intimidation tactics against opposition supporters. International solidarity protests also occurred in major cities around the world, organized by the Venezuelan diaspora, drawing attention to the growing authoritarianism of Maduro's regime. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, though barred from running, remained a symbolic figure of resistance throughout the protest.
In 2013, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil insurrection began in Venezuela due to the country's high levels of urban violence, inflation, and chronic shortages of basic goods and services. Explanations for these worsening conditions vary, with analysis blaming strict price controls, alongside long-term, widespread political corruption resulting in the under-funding of basic government services. While protests first occurred in January, after the murder of actress and former Miss Venezuela Mónica Spear, the 2014 protests against Nicolás Maduro began in earnest that February following the attempted rape of a student on a university campus in San Cristóbal. Subsequent arrests and killings of student protesters spurred their expansion to neighboring cities and the involvement of opposition leaders. The year's early months were characterized by large demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and government forces that resulted in nearly 4,000 arrests and 43 deaths, including both supporters and opponents of the government. Toward the end of 2014, and into 2015, continued shortages and low oil prices caused renewed protesting.
2016 saw a wave of protests following the controversy surrounding the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections as well as the 2016 recall referendum. On 1 September 2016, a large number of protesters gathered in Caracas to demand a recall election against President Maduro. Crowd estimates vary greatly — the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democratica estimated that more than 1 million people participated in the march, while the state-run news agency AVN reported a turnout of around 30 thousand. Following the suspension of the recall referendum by the National Electoral Council (CNE) on 21 October, opposition groups began organizing a nationwide protest which took place on 26 October. Around 1.2 million people mobilized in street marches across the country, according to opposition estimates. After some of the largest protests occurred in late 2016, a Vatican-mediated dialogue between the opposition and government was attempted and ultimately failed in January 2017. Concentration on protests subsided in the first months of 2017 until the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis occurred when the pro-government Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela attempted to assume the powers of the opposition-led National Assembly and removed their immunity, though the move was reversed days later, demonstrations grew "into the most combative since a wave of unrest in 2014".
During the 2017 Venezuelan protests, the Mother of all Protests involved from 2.5 million to 6 million protesters. The 2019 protests began in early January after the National Assembly declared the May 2018 presidential elections invalid and declared Juan Guaidó acting president, resulting in a presidential crisis. The majority of protests have been peaceful, consisting of demonstrations, sit-ins, and hunger strikes, although small groups of protesters have been responsible for attacks on public property, such as government buildings and public transportation. Erecting improvised street barricades, dubbed guarimbas, were a controversial form of protest in 2014. Although initially protests were mainly performed by the middle and upper classes, lower class Venezuelans became involved as the situation in Venezuela deteriorated. Nicolas Maduro's government characterized the protests as an undemocratic coup d'etat attempt, which was orchestrated by "fascist" opposition leaders and the United States, blaming capitalism and speculation for causing high inflation rates and goods scarcities as part of an "economic war" being waged on his government. Although Maduro, a former trade union leader, says he supports peaceful protesting, the Venezuelan government has been widely condemned for its handling of the protests. Venezuelan authorities have gone beyond the use of rubber pellets and tear gas to instances of live ammunition use and torture of arrested protesters according to organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, while the United Nations has accused the Venezuelan government of politically motivated arrests, most notably former Chacao mayor and leader of Popular Will, Leopoldo Lopez, who has used the controversial charges of murder and inciting violence against him to protest the government's "criminalization of dissent". Other controversies reported during the protests include media censorship and violence by pro-government militant groups known as colectivos.
On 27 September 2018, the United States government declared new sanctions on individuals in Venezuelan government. They included Maduro's wife Cilia Flores, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, Minister of Communications Jorge Rodriguez and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino. On 27 September 2018, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution for the first time on human rights abuses in Venezuela. 11 Latin American countries proposed the resolution including Mexico, Canada and Argentina. On 23 January 2019, El Tiempo revealed a protest count, showing over 50,000 registered protests in Venezuela since 2013. In 2020, organized protests against Maduro had largely subsided, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela.
In July 2024, widespread protests erupted across Venezuela following Nicolas Maduro's controversial claim to victory in the presidential elections, which were criticized for lacking transparency and fairness. Demonstrators, both domestically and abroad, challenged the legitimacy of the results, alleging electoral manipulation and repression of opposition leaders. Clashes between protestors and security forces were reported nationwide, with instances of excessive force and arbitrary detentions documented. Venezuelan authorities carried out a brutal crackdown on both voters and demonstrators, including assaults, arrests, and intimidation tactics against opposition supporters. International solidarity protests also occurred in major cities around the world, organized by the Venezuelan diaspora, drawing attention to the growing authoritarianism of Maduro's regime. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, though barred from running, remained a symbolic figure of resistance throughout the protest.
Chávez, an anti-American politician who declared himself a democratic socialist, enacted a series of social reforms aimed at improving quality of life. According to the World Bank, Chávez's social measures reduced poverty from about 49% in 1998 to about 25%. From 1999 to 2012, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), shows that Venezuela achieved the second highest rate of poverty reduction in the region. The World Bank also explained that Venezuela's economy is "extremely vulnerable" to changes in oil prices since in 2012 "96% of the country's exports and nearly half of its fiscal revenue" relied on oil production. In 1998, a year before Chávez took office, oil was only 77% of Venezuela's exports. Under the Chávez government, from 1999 to 2011, monthly inflation rates were high compared to world standards, but were lower than that from 1991 to 1998.
While Chávez was in office, his government was accused of corruption, abuse of the economy for personal gain, propaganda, buying the loyalty of the military, officials involved in drug trade, assisting terrorists such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, intimidation of the media, and human rights abuses of its citizens. Government price controls put in place in 2002 which initially aimed for reducing the prices of basic goods have caused economic problems such as inflation and shortages of basic goods. The murder rate under Chávez's administration also quadrupled during his terms in office leaving Venezuela as one of the most violent countries in the world.
On 5 March 2013, Chávez died of cancer and Nicolás Maduro, who was vice president at the time, took Chávez's place. Throughout the year 2013 and into the year 2014, worries about the troubled economy, increasing crime and corruption increased, which led to the start of anti-government protests.
First demonstrations of 2014
Demonstrations against violence in Venezuela began in January 2014, and continued, when former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles shook the hand of President Maduro; this "gesture... cost him support and helped propel" opposition leader Leopoldo López Mendoza to the forefront. According to the Associated Press, well before protests began in the Venezuelan capital city of Caracas, the attempted rape of a young student on a university campus in San Cristóbal, in the western border state of Táchira, led to protests from students "outraged" at "long-standing complaints about deteriorating security under President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez. But what really set them off was the harsh police response to their initial protest, in which several students were detained and allegedly abused, as well as follow-up demonstrations to call for their release". These protests expanded, attracted non-students, and led to more detentions; eventually, other students joined, and the protests spread to Caracas and other cities, with opposition leaders getting involved.
Leopoldo López, a leading figure in the opposition to the government, began leading protests shortly thereafter. During events surrounding the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, Lopez "orchestrated the public protests against Chávez and he played a central role in the citizen's arrest of Chavez's interior minister", Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, though he later tried to distance himself from the event.
Corruption
In a 2014 survey by Gallup, nearly 75% of Venezuelans believe corruption is widespread in their government. Leopoldo López has said, "We are fighting a very corrupt authoritarian government that uses all the power, all the money, all the media, all the laws, all the judicial system in order to maintain control."
Corruption in Venezuela is ranked high by world standards. Corruption is difficult to measure reliably, but one well-known measure is the Corruption Perceptions Index, produced annually by a Berlin-based NGO, Transparency International (TNI). Venezuela has been one of the most corrupt countries in TNI surveys since they started in 1995, ranking 38th out of 41 that year and performing very poorly in subsequent years. In 2008, for example, it was 158th out of 180 countries in 2008, the worst in the Americas except Haiti, in 2012, it was one of the 10 most corrupt countries on the index, tying with Burundi, Chad, and Haiti for 165th place out of 176. TNI public opinion data says that most Venezuelans believe the government's effort against corruption is ineffective, that corruption has increased and that government institutions such as the judicial system, parliament, legislature and police are the most corrupt. According to TNI, Venezuela is currently the 18th most corrupt country in the world (160 of 177) and its judicial system has been deemed the most corrupt in the world.
The World Justice Project moreover, ranked Venezuela's government in 99th place worldwide and gave it the worst ranking of any country in Latin America in the 2014 Rule of Law Index. The report says, "Venezuela is the country with the poorest performance of all countries analyzed, showing decreasing trends in the performance of many areas in relation to last year. The country ranks last in the surrender of accounts by the government due to an increasing concentration of executive power and a weakened checks and balances." The report further states that "administrative bodies suffer inefficiencies and lack of transparency...and the judicial system, although relatively accessible, lost positions due to increasing political interference. Another area of concern is the increase in crime and violence, and violations of fundamental rights, particularly the right to freedom of opinion and expression."
Economic problems
According to the 2013 Global Misery Index Scores, Venezuela was ranked as the top spot globally with the highest misery index score. In data provided by the CIA, Venezuela had the second highest inflation rate (56.20%) in the world for 2013, only behind the war-tornSyria. The money supply of the hard bolívar in Venezuela also continues to accelerate, possibly helping to fuel more inflation. The Venezuelan government's economic policies, including strict Price controls, led to one of the highest inflation rates in the world with "sporadic hyperinflation", and have caused severe shortages of food and other basic goods. Such policies created by the Venezuelan government have hurt businesses and led to shortages, long queues, and looting.
The Heritage Foundation ranked Venezuela at 175th of 178 in economic freedom and was classified as a "Repressed" economy in its 2014 Index of Economic Freedom report. Steve H. Hanke of the Cato Institute believes that "State-controlled prices - prices that are set below market-clearing price - always result in shortages" and that "The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union". More than half of those interviewed in a Datos survey held the Maduro government responsible for the country's current economic situation and most thought the country's economic situation would be worse or just as bad in the next 6 months of 2014. President Maduro has blamed the economic troubles on an alleged "economic war" being waged against his government; specifically, he has placed blame on capitalism and speculation.
An Associated Press report in February 2014 noted that "legions of the sick across the country" were being "neglected by a health care system doctors say is collapsing after years of deterioration". Doctors said it was impossible "to know how many have died, and the government doesn't keep such numbers, just as it hasn't published health statistics since 2010." Health Minister Isabel Iturria refused to give the AP an interview, while a deputy health minister, Nimeny Gutierrez, "denied on state TV that the system is in crisis."
Violent crime
In Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes. In the first two months of 2014, nearly 3,000 people were murdered – 10% more than in the previous year and 500% higher than when Hugo Chávez first took office. In 2014, Quartz claimed that the high murder rate was due to Venezuela's " growing poverty rate; rampant corruption; high levels of gun ownership; and a failure to punish murderers (91% of the murders go unpunished, according to the Institute for Research on Coexistence and Citizen Security)." InsightCrime attributed the escalating violence to "high levels of corruption, a lack of investment in the police force and weak gun control".
Following the January killing of actress and former Miss VenezuelaMónica Spear and her ex-husband in a roadside robbery in the presence of their five-year-old daughter, who herself was shot in the leg, Venezuela was described by Channel 4 as "one of the most dangerous countries in the world", a country "where crime escalated during the administration of former President Hugo Chávez and killings are common in armed robberies." The Venezuelan Violence Observatory said in March 2014 the country's murder rate was now nearly 80 deaths per 100,000 people, while government statistics put it at 39 deaths per 100,000. The number of those murdered during the previous decade was comparable to the death rate in Iraq during the Iraq War; during some periods, Venezuela had a higher rate of civilian deaths than Iraq, even though the country was at peace. Crime had also affected the economy, according to Jorge Roig, president of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, who said that many foreign business executives were too scared to travel to Venezuela and that many owners of Venezuelan companies live abroad, with the companies producing less as a result.
The opposition says that crime is the government's fault "for being soft on crime, for politicizing and corrupting institutions such as the judiciary, and for glorifying violence in public discourse", while the government says that "capitalist evils" are to blame, such as drug trafficking and violence in the media.