It doesn’t seem like things could get much worse in Venezuela. With a rate of inflation over 700%, relatively high unemployment rate, declining labor force participation rate, and lack of basic staples in the stores, you have to wonder how long it can go on.
But what will happen? Will Venezuela become an unarguable military dictatorship without even the trappings of democracy? Will it just dissolve into chaos? Is there a risk of that spreading?
I don’t know the answer to any of those questions but it really sounds bad there.
This part of the world is not one I studied extensively, but generally these situations don’t end will. At this point I’d guess there will either be a military coup or a violent revolution.
Am a Venezuela resident. All one has to do is look to who is pulling Maduro’s strings, i.e. Chavez and Maduro’s mentors who they both proclaim(ed) as their godfathers, the Castro brothers. If you have seen Cuba, you have seen the country Maduro aspires, unfortunately. Maduro/Chavez put a lot of work into assuring the allegiance of its military over the years, just like Cuba. VE now stands at the final stage of its Cubanization w/Maduro’s latest step to unilaterally create a new constitution with a government run by “collectives”. He has support of less than 20 percent of Venezuelans, but in a communist state it’s all about allegiances of those who have the guns, not the democratic desires of the public. Without foreign intervention, it’s highly unlikely that Venezuela will avoid becoming a uniformly stinking poor Cuba #2.