Caracas Chronicles

“When did it all start?” That’s a question not only we as Venezuelans often ask to understand what truly brought us to being the largest displaced population in the world, or the depths of the economic collapse that still sparks analysis and debate. But more often than not—especially if you live abroad—you’ll hear this question over and over again from people abroad, or outsiders. People who don’t have the slightest idea of what the last 10, 15, or 20 years in Venezuela have looked like.

But where do we even begin?

In political science, “democratic backsliding” is a relatively new term, but it captures something we know very well. In one book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a framework that—deliberately or not—mirrors the Venezuelan story with abnormal precision and describes the ABCs of a democracy’s downfall.  This book is written by two American political scientists and has circulated widely since its publication in 2018, obtaining a lot of praise for its accessible explanation of how several democracies have eroded from within.

One of the book’s key insights, and of the broader backsliding literature, is this: democracies don’t usually fall by force or coups anymore; it is not a sudden death. Elected leaders exploit the system’s own legal and institutional tools to gradually weaken it until no force neutralizes them. It kind of rings a bell, doesn’t it? 

Of course, I wouldn’t say that what happened in Venezuela went unnoticed or uncontested, like the authors state—certainly not by those who lived through the changes. But the pattern that Levitsky and Ziblatt describe fits closely with how Venezuela’s institutions changed during the Chávez years, and it is an exceptionally useful tool to explain ourselves.

Venezuela is a warning. It’s what happens when institutions are manipulated for private gains, when norms are weakened, and when trust is replaced with suspicion and fear—and all of these elements can manifest anywhere in the world.

In this “authoritarian playbook,” Chávez is already one of many examples they mention—like Peru under Fujimori and Hungary under Orban. But if we’re looking for a more direct way to answer, “How did a country like Venezuela lead itself into collapse?”, the steps they describe help us break it down.

Also, in my quest for clarity to answer this question, I came across Venezuela: Memorias de un futuro perdido by Rafael Osío Cabrices published last year. This one is not an academic book (and it doesn’t try to be) but it captures something just as vital, putting into words the feeling of what our future was supposed to be but wasn’t, and explains in detail how our backsliding unfolded from a more emotional perspective, all while serving as a complement to Levitsky and Ziblatt’s framework almost line by line.

First things first: Words

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that democratic decline often starts not with action, but with words. Leaders begin by attacking critics, not as rivals, but as enemies.

That sounds even more familiar.

Even today, this remains one of the clearest signs of authoritarian tendencies and a red flag to identify a demagogue. Chávez did this early on and often. And as Osío Cabrices writes, he didn’t just polarize, he redefined who counted as Venezuelan. “Only the people,” and that included “the armed people”—the military—were Venezuela. As simple as this: Chávez was the people, and what wasn’t Chávez wasn’t people. To be chavista was to be Venezuelan, and if you weren’t, you were accused of being unpatriotic, or worse.

This language laid the groundwork for the “us vs. them” logic that corrodes democracies, creates a mutual distrust environment, and makes collaboration impossible. Eventually, it simply justifies exclusion.

Capturing the referees (through institutional control)

Now, the next step, as outlined by Levitsky and Ziblatt, is to capture those institutions responsible for overseeing democratic competition (“capturing the referees,” as they say) including judicial and law enforcement agencies. Authoritarian leaders often seek to subtly co-opt them, placing loyalists in key positions and undermining their independence, making it easier to tilt the playing field.

As a result, there’s a hollowing out of checks and balances from within, where democratic institutions continue to exist in name but are ineffective.

Even if we want to move past the change of rules with the setup of a whole new constitution in 1999, the effects are also clear in specific cases. There’s one name in particular I could mention as an example: María Lourdes Afiuni.

In 2009, Judge Afiuni followed a UN recommendation to conditionally release a businessman held in pretrial detention longer than legally allowed. To this, Chávez reacted by calling her a criminal and demanding a 30-year sentence on national television. She was arrested the next day, and after more than 10 years of reported human rights violations, she was put on probation in 2013. Maria Afiuni is still facing charges to this day—among them “spiritual corruption,”  a term that involves no money at all and that’s almost impossible to explain without sounding surreal.

Her case, along with the over 45,000 Supreme Court rulings issued between 2005 and 2015 that reportedly failed to go against the government, are examples of how the judiciary was used not as an independent check but even as an echo of power.

Neutralize your opponent

Another tactic is to sideline political opponents. Not necessarily through repression alone, which is still the case in Venezuela, but also through legalistic and strategic methods that give the appearance of the rule of law. 

This often extends beyond politicians to include civil society groups and media. These measures reduce political competition while maintaining a façade of democracy. The erosion of toleration becomes evident as legitimate rivals are seen as existential threats and, with time, this climate of control narrows the political arena beyond elections, stifling dissent and even causing self-censorship in different areas of society. This becomes one of the main ways to manipulate electoral processes even before they take place.

Chávez’s communications strategy is a clear example. He didn’t just take over the airwaves; he nationalized the main supplier of newspaper printing materials, he replaced Venezuela’s national news agency with a Bolivarian one, and he turned state TV and radio into his own platforms.

“Only those loyal to the revolution had a voice in state media” wrote Osío Cabrices.

Levitsky and Ziblatt mention RCTV’s shutdown in their book, but the trend goes far beyond: more than 400 media outlets closed between 2008 and 2023.

Reshape the playing field

Lastly, and possibly the key strategy of these steps set out by Levitsky and Ziblatt, is the change to the rules of the game. Leaders move to restructure legal frameworks by amending constitutions to take measures and remove term limits, or modify electoral systems. These changes are typically implemented and disguised in the name of reform or efficiency, and since they often follow formal legislative or electoral procedures, they are more difficult to challenge.

In Venezuela’s particular case, the new 1999 Constitution wasn’t the end of the process but only the beginning. Chávez, riding a wave of popularity, used a fully loyal national assembly to reshape the legal foundation of the country, and the previous 1961 constitution, as flawed as it was, was abandoned completely. This not only gave him a clean slate but also coincided with a natural disaster crisis (the Vargas Tragedy in December 1999) that allowed them to step into the “savior role” for the first time.

As Osío Cabrices puts it: “If the role of the avenger allowed him to rise to power, the role of the savior helped consolidate it.”

Levitsky and Ziblatt warn that when a crisis aligns with a leader willing to dismantle checks and balances, democracy is especially vulnerable.

Come one, come all, we might have an answer

These factors together briefly help explain how Venezuela’s democracy got dismantled while preserving its façade. Chavez centralized power through court-packing and constitutional reform, while changing electoral rules and weakening dissent in the process, all while still claiming popular legitimacy.

This is only a simple summary of how it all came to be, but most importantly, we need to understand that Venezuela didn’t break in one single moment. Other factors helped: the record-breaking income in oil, military support, a lack of international pressure early on…and the result of all together is a system where checks and balances became a facade, and where those in power started to turn increasingly untouchable.

Venezuela is more than our story; it is not that we “come from the future,” but that it is more than an outlier; it’s a case study.

Venezuela is a warning. It’s what happens when institutions are manipulated for private gains, when norms are weakened, and when trust is replaced with suspicion and fear—and all of these elements can manifest anywhere in the world.So, next time someone asks, “When did it all start?” maybe offer them a strong drink first, like Osío Cabrices says in his book. Because understanding it, understanding us, can take time. And explaining it all also means remembering elements we sometimes wish we could forget, but we have to make an effort to make sure that we won’t. We owe it to ourselves to understand and to remember.