Two men claimed the presidency. Millions have left. The oil is still in the ground. Venezuela is the crisis the hemisphere learned to live with.
Published 14 October 2026 · 06:00 GMT
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.
The July 2024 election was supposed to be different. The opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running and threw her support behind Gonzalez, a retired diplomat, had mobilised a formidable observation effort. The government had signed the Barbados Agreement in 2023, promising a competitive election in exchange for sanctions relief. Turnout was high. The opposition's precinct observers collected copies of the tallies, the actas, from a large majority of polling stations. The electoral council, controlled by government loyalists, announced a Maduro victory within hours, with a narrow margin, and never published the detailed results. The opposition published its actas online. Analysts who examined them, including the Associated Press, found they pointed to a wide Gonzalez victory.
The international response split along familiar lines. The United States and several European and Latin American governments said the results could not be verified and recognised Gonzalez as the elected president. Brazil and Colombia, led by leftist presidents who had hoped to mediate, pressed for the publication of the actas and never got them. Russia, China, Cuba and Iran congratulated Maduro. The Carter Center, which had observed the election, said it could not be considered democratic. The episode was a masterclass in how modern authoritarianism works: not by cancelling elections, but by holding them and controlling the count. The government kept the forms of democracy and discarded the substance, and the opposition was left with evidence that convinced everyone except the people with the guns.
Gonzalez left Venezuela for Spain in September 2024, after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Machado remains in hiding inside the country. The government has arrested opposition figures, journalists and activists in waves. The standoff echoes the 2019 duel between Maduro and Juan Guaido, the opposition leader whom dozens of governments recognised as interim president. Guaido's claim eventually faded, the recognition was withdrawn, and Maduro remained. The lesson the government learned from that episode is that survival is victory: outlast the international attention span, and the crisis becomes the status quo. The lesson the opposition learned is harder to state, because it has not yet found an answer to the central problem of Venezuelan politics: how to dislodge a government that controls the army, the courts, the electoral council and the oil revenue.
Venezuela's oil is both the government's lifeline and the world's leverage over it. The United States has used oil sanctions as its main instrument of pressure, tightening them when the government cracks down and easing them when it negotiates. The pattern has produced a cycle: sanctions relief in exchange for electoral promises, followed by a crackdown, followed by reimposed sanctions. The Biden administration eased sanctions after the Barbados Agreement, then reimposed them after the government barred Machado. The Trump administration has pursued its own version of pressure, with a focus on deportations and oil. Each swing has been denounced by the other side as proof of bad faith, and each has left the Venezuelan people, who bear the cost of both sanctions and mismanagement, worse off.
The argument over sanctions is one of the most contested in Latin American politics. Critics of sanctions, including the Venezuelan government and its allies, argue that they have deepened the humanitarian crisis and entrenched the regime by giving it an external enemy to blame. Defenders argue that the collapse preceded the sanctions, that the government's corruption and mismanagement are the primary causes, and that lifting sanctions without conditions would simply fund repression. The truth, as usual, is mixed: sanctions have hurt, and the government's mismanagement hurt first and more. What is clear is that sanctions have not achieved their stated goal. Maduro is still in power, and the oil still flows, to China, to India, to anyone willing to buy it at a discount.
Venezuela's crisis is not only domestic. In 2023, the government held a referendum asserting its claim to the Essequibo region, a territory of some 160,000 square kilometres administered by Guyana, which makes up most of Guyana's land area. The claim dates to the nineteenth century, but its revival coincided with the discovery of vast oil reserves off Guyana's coast. Guyana has taken the case to the International Court of Justice, which Guyana says has jurisdiction, and the court has ordered Venezuela to refrain from altering the status quo. The dispute has drawn in the United States, Brazil and the Caribbean, and it remains a live risk: a government that needs a nationalist distraction has a territorial claim ready to hand.
And yet Venezuela is not a static picture. The opposition, for all its setbacks, has shown a capacity to mobilise that few authoritarian governments face. The diaspora is politically engaged. The military, the ultimate arbiter, has stayed loyal, but loyalty purchased with corruption and impunity is a wasting asset. The economy has stabilised at a low level, with dollarisation and a partial easing of controls bringing a fragile normality to Caracas. The question that hangs over Venezuela is the same one that hangs over every durable authoritarian standoff: whether change comes through negotiation, through collapse, or through the slow erosion of a regime that has already lost the argument and is running on coercion alone.
Western coverage, from Reuters, the Associated Press and the BBC, frames Venezuela as a democracy and migration story: a stolen election, a brave opposition, a regime sustained by repression and oil, and a migration crisis that reaches the US border. Sanctions are covered as a policy tool with a contested record.
Eastern coverage, from Russian and Chinese state media, frames Venezuela as a sovereignty story: a government resisting American regime change, sanctions as economic warfare, and the opposition as a proxy for Washington. The 2024 election is covered as a legitimate victory, the actas as a fabrication.
Global South coverage, from Latin American and African outlets, reads Venezuela as a cautionary tale about oil, empire and the left: a country that tried to use its oil wealth for social transformation, was punished for it, and then destroyed itself through corruption and authoritarianism. The emphasis is on the human cost, the migration crisis, and the failure of regional mediation.
