WOLA Senior Fellow and the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University
David Smilde, curator of the blog, is a WOLA Senior Fellow and the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University. He has lived in or worked on Venezuela since 1992. Professor Smilde has researched Venezuela for the past twenty years. He has taught at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Universidad Católica Ándres Bello. From 2010-2012 he was the Chair of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association.
He is currently working on a book manuscript called Venezuela’s Transition to Socialism: Politics and Human Rights under Chávez, 2008-2012. He is co-editor of Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics and Culture under Chávez (Duke 2011).
The opposition’s current problems are indicators of a conjuncture in which they need to decide, on multiple fronts, whether they are a temporary parallel government that seeks to dislodge Maduro through maximum pressure in the short-term, despite the costs on the Venezuelan people and the inevitable scandals involved in working through improvised institutions; or whether they are going to seek sustainability and prioritize the well-being of the Venezuelan people by reaching some sort of modus vivendi with the Maduro government, despite the costs of tacitly recognizing it.
U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams suggested that there would be no change in U.S. strategy. “No, we don’t have a plan B. We have a plan A that we think will work.”
The highly-anticipated opposition march on Saturday, November 16 in Caracas was sizeable but significantly smaller and with less energy and optimism than those in the first quarter of the year. National Assembly President Juan Guaidó’s stated strategy is to increase …
Analysts suggested another interpretation that was not picked up by opposition leaders. that the sequence of events showed the wisdom of going to elections even when they are unfair, given their potential to unleash a sequence of events that can lead to a transition.
Since 2017 the unpopular Maduro government has found a way to win elections without stealing them outright. By having an electoral council that openly demonstrates bias and generates rejection among the population, it can divide the opposition among those who promote abstention and those who mobilize participation.
Residents of Petare, one of the largest popular barrios in Latin America, protested for two days against the operations of the Special Actions Force of the Bolivarian National Police (FAES) in their neighborhoods. The protests came ten days after a …
On Friday, September 27, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution creating an independent investigative body to look into human rights violations and crimes taking place in Venezuela since 2014 (extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and …
The United Nations General Assembly in New York provided a new space for Venezuela’s parallel realities, with Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó’s diplomats representing the country in competing spaces.
