Caracas Chronicles

Over the past decade, Venezuela’s opposition leadership became fixated on the idea of Legitimacy as the key factor sustaining Maduro’s rule. The main debates—both public and behind closed doors—among analysts, lawyers, and political advisors revolved around which actions to take or avoid, depending on whether they reinforced the regime’s illegitimacy or inadvertently helped restore it. This became the measuring stick for opposition strategy and was seen as the compass guiding how and when Maduro might eventually fall.

But the reality is, no matter how many countries recognized Juan Guaidó as interim president, or how many now recognize Edmundo González as the rightful winner of last year’s presidential election, or reject the legitimacy of any given vote—it simply hasn’t moved the political needle for a regime that survived international isolation. One year after the fraudulent election, Chevron is apparently being granted a license renewal as if nothing ever happened.

And in a way, nothing did.

The chavista leadership found a workaround to personal sanctions by shifting their investment strategies, from stashing capital abroad to domestic investments. Sanctions on the oil industry and international trade only worsened the economic crisis already triggered by state mismanagement, embezzlement, and the 2015 crash in oil prices. But they didn’t spark a popular uprising. The long-expected “new Caracazo” never came. Not in 2014, not in 2017, not in 2019, nor last year. Nor did sanctions render the country ungovernable.

Chavismo learnt how to adapt, instead, experimenting with economic strategies and launching an unexpected wave of liberalization. They granted concessions to foreign capital—not just from Arab or Asian countries, but also from the West—that no democratic government would dare to offer. So, what was the point of focusing so much on chavismo’s legitimacy?

Sure, the legitimacy argument has served to sanction chavista actors and claim legal control over foreign assets. But as a political tool, it has failed to drive real change. The theory embraced by some opposition lawyers and advisors was straightforward: the force of law comes from its legitimacy—that is, the justification or reasoning that individuals, collectives, and foreign states apply when deciding whether to obey the law, and by extension, the state that emerges from it. But this is just idealism. Not in the utopian sense, but in the philosophical one. It assumes that the power of law comes from ideas, when in fact it comes from something much more concrete, the force of the actor that enforces that law. The state, basically, which is not a product of law but its necessary precondition.

So chavismo made a strategic bet: To marry the boliburguesía with traditional business elites, including former opposition-aligned business leaders and, eventually, foreign investors.

An ordinary Venezuelan won’t skip a visit to SAIME to renew its passport just because Maduro’s state isn’t legitimate. They won’t ignore a fine or tell a police officer they have no authority because the state they serve is illegitimate. They’ll go to SAIME because only the state can issue a valid passport. They’ll obey the officer because he still carries the weapon that makes his authority real.

And this understanding—shared by the average Venezuelan—is also shared by domestic and foreign business interests, actors know that only the state can guarantee the conditions necessary for trade and enterprise, regardless of its legitimacy. It’s a reality also grasped by other countries, and only sometimes understood by the opposition leadership.

So instead of asking whether the regime is legitimate, we should ask about its materiality: How has Maduro managed to create a situation in which his laws are law, his rules are order, and that the everyday order feels normal in Venezuela?

A new pact between elites

Let’s begin by distinguishing two groups with different roles and interests. First, we have the Civic-Military Bureaucratic Clique—the top officials in the executive and armed forces. They’re not a monolithic block, and tensions and rivalries do persist among them. But they are cohesive enough to know that if they fracture, they’ll likely all fall from power—bringing severe personal risks to their freedom and safety. This group, crucially, does not depend on others to stay in power.

Chavismo no longer needs the support of Venezuelan or foreign capital, nor mass popular backing. It has proven it can survive even in extreme isolation. This gives the clique a significant degree of autonomy from other economic, social, and political actors, both inside and outside the country. But while they can survive, they cannot indefinitely sustain a normal situation in which their laws function and their power is widely recognized, which explains several displays of frustration interrupting daily life, like protest cycles and acts of rebellion against the regime’s security forces.

The regime’s isolation is also the country’s isolation. Isolation does deepen the economic crisis, disrupts daily life, requires constant enforcement through force, and ultimately generates frustration and resistance.

That’s why this clique needs a Ruling Class to manage the economic and social flow of daily life. They need someone to keep business going and keep society moving, so that the burden of violent enforcement doesn’t become too heavy. Repression can hold things together, but it’s costly in economic, social, and psychological terms.

Chavismo’s Civic-Military Clique serves the Ruling Class by keeping the poor in check and preserving the conditions of “normality” that investors require.

So chavismo made a strategic bet: To marry the boliburguesía with traditional business elites, including former opposition-aligned business leaders and, eventually, foreign investors. This fusion would form a class capable of overseeing the country’s economic, social, and even moral “normality.” This alliance brought in domestic investments that paid wages, bought supplies from local providers, and reactivated economic circuits in the country’s main cities, creating the appearance that Venezuela had become livable again.

This doesn’t mean everyone was included. Many in urban slums and rural areas remained outside these circuits. But even there, some increase in public investment—cultural activities, recreation spaces—made misery more bearable and everyday life slightly more “normal” for the social base.

What we call the Ruling Class shapes the public’s expectations about Venezuela’s future. It creates business opportunities, defines consumption patterns, and promotes—through a new wave of influencers, podcasts, and entertainment—the culture of the “new” Venezuela.

Behind this class is Chevron’s wallet, but also that of large transnational investors (like those operating in the Orinoco Mining Arc) and other extractive industries, especially in Venezuela’s south and the Amazon. These international capital flows fuel the economic, social, and cultural project of the Ruling Class by sustaining the dollarized transactions and vital imports their enterprises and lifestyles depend on. And this will continue so long as no foreign state is willing or able to disrupt business with chavista Venezuela.

What about the oppressed?

This new version of normalcy allows the middle class, previously declassed by the socioeconomic crisis, to recover some status, and to consider coexisting with chavismo if it means avoiding another decade of suffering. A new wave of apathy spreads: why get involved in politics if it only brings problems?

Some hyper-politicized niches will remain active in party organizing or protests, but the massive middle-class uprisings—like those in Eastern Caracas—may well be a thing of the past unless Maduro’s fall becomes a near certainty.

The most politically active sector in recent years, especially during the July 29 protests, has been the marginalized low-income class. Two factors explain their anti-government reactivation.

First, these groups enter the new economic circuits last, if at all, and with greater vulnerability and exploitation. Second, their prior loyalty to chavismo wasn’t based solely on clientelist benefits. It also stemmed from state terror: a system of fear imposed on the barrios and the interior, using a mix of colectivos, FAES and other coercive arrangements. The mildest form of this was extortion. The darkest, the systematic killing of young men in working-class neighborhoods.

So why hasn’t a new wave of rebellion emerged?

Should the opposition try to break this “normality”? Should it try to disrupt the flow of foreign capital into Venezuela?

Because extreme poverty itself discourages political action when there’s no guarantee of success. Taking to the streets means giving up work for an indefinite time, with no certainty of results. That cost is too high. And there’s no real grassroots organizing: opposition leaders capable of mobilizing them have been jailed, exiled, are in hiding, or have been or killed.

In this context, chavismo’s Civic-Military Clique serves the Ruling Class by keeping the poor in check and preserving the conditions of “normality” that investors require. It’s far cheaper and easier to control poor communities than the middle and upper classes. The state has already built an extensive network of terror in these areas, and repression there carries zero cost in public opinion. The elites won’t notice a shooting in a barrio, and if they do, they’ll shrug it off as a gang-police clash, just another day in the barrio. They seem to care even less about what happens in the countryside, borderlands, or the Amazon.

So the popular classes turn to cynicism. Many avoid politics entirely. Some remain optimistic believing that, with enough hustle, they too can join the middle class, now that business opportunities seem to be returning. Others have no such illusions but still see no alternatives. They focus on surviving each day, treating themselves when possible, and hoping to endure however long this lasts.

Politics is sidelined, either because people believe they can live better no matter who’s in charge, or because they believe they can’t change who’s in charge, so it’s better to adapt. They coexist with the government pragmatically, avoid confrontation, and accept whatever food or financial aid the state provides. But they no longer feel loyalty or gratitude for any of that.

Is there a way out?

Some key questions emerge:

Should the opposition try to break this “normality”?

Should it try to disrupt the flow of foreign capital into Venezuela?

Perhaps. Perhaps triggering a new economic crisis would break the alliance between the Civic-Military Clique and the Ruling Class. But history has already shown that chavismo can survive such crises—and likely would again.

Besides, the only way the opposition could pursue this would be to intensify the discourse around chavismo’s illegitimacy. But foreign capital doesn’t care about that. They will likely keep coming even under Trump. These foreign actors don’t care if chavismo is legitimate. All that matters is whether the Maduro regime can maintain enough stability to support their profits.

So the only viable alternatives must come from within Venezuela. And to organize those alternatives into a true national liberation project, we need to start by understanding the anatomy of the normality that chavismo has created and continues to exploit.