The Year of Hope and Fear

It was an extraordinary year with an open ended balance. Here’s how it unfolded through our reporting and analysis.

1. Breaching Barbados

The Maduro regime began 2024 with blatant disregard for the agreements reached in Barbados and Doha with the Biden administration. These agreements outlined electoral conditions for minimally free elections in exchange for a suspension of sanctions on PDVSA and other state-owned companies. While the government signed new contracts to export oil to the U.S. and Europe, Maduro launched attacks on close collaborators of María Corina Machado. This included the broad daylight abductions of Henry Alviarez and Dignora Hernández by masked agents, along with arrest warrants for other Vente Venezuela militants.

Cristóbal and Sebastián Cáceres considered it necessary to clear the air from chimeric expectations from any foreign chivalry. Tony recorded the circumstances around Maria Corina’s ban.

2. A Tsunami of Hope

Citizens took a leading role in the campaign, accompanying the opposition leader in motorcycle caravans and offering her establishments and services in towns ravaged by migration and the humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, the CNE, under Amoroso and Quintero, imposed a tight electoral schedule and scheduled elections on Hugo Chávez’s birthday.

The curve from apathy to the sudden success of the opposition primaries and the Machado campaign was steep and sometimes overwhelming. The hunger for change was way more than a political cliché. Tony went to a rally in La Victoria, while Jeudiel analyzed the phenomenon from a distance.

3. Blatant fraud, an uprising and unbridled terror

The overwhelming triumph of Edmundo González was meddled with a tale of fraud and unbridled terror. Clavel explained how the electoral rebellion spread to Arco Minero. We assembled the big story of 28J, followed by an account of the unprecedented state violence.

While part of the opposition was under siege and paid a horrendous price for what it did to chavismo, along with the entire Venezuelan society, the man who got 70% of the votes left for Spain.

4. The two amigos fail as Edmundo goes to Spain

Watching the blood running and the defeated autocrat stealing the election, Lula wanted to accumulate points for a Peace Nobel Prize and Petro tried to test his lefty friendship with Maduro. Both ended up deeply humiliated by Maduro.