Crisis roiling Venezuela enters new phase with Sunday vote
CARACAS, Venezuela — Despite four months of deadly protests and the threat of U.S. sanctions, Venezuela on Saturday found itself 24 hours away from a consolidation of government power that appeared certain to drag the OPEC nation deeper into a crisis that has entire neighborhoods battling police and paramilitaries while the poor root for scraps in piles of trash.
In the opposition strongholds of relatively wealthy eastern Caracas, teenagers manned barricades of tree branches, garbage and barbed wire torn fromnearby buildings. Clashes with police began Friday afternoon and lasted into the night. The months of violence have left 113 dead and nearly 2,000 wounded.
The rest of the capital was calm. Across the city, residents said they wanted President Nicolas Maduro out of power but didn’t want to risk their lives or livelihoods taking on his socialist government and its backers.
“I have a young daughter, I can’t risk anything happening to me,” said Maria Llanes, a 55-year-old flower store worker who lives in a south Caracas neighborhood dominated by armed pro-government motorcycle gangs.
Maduro called for amassive turnout Sunday for a vote to elect members of an assembly tasked with rewriting the 18-year-old constitution created under President Hugo Chavez. The opposition is boycotting because, it says, the vote called by Maduro was structured to ensure that his ruling socialist party dominates.
“On July 30, the constitutional assembly will happen,” Maduro said Friday at a subsidized housing ceremony. “I’ve been loyal to Chavez’s legacy. Now it’s your turn.”
Washington has imposed successive rounds of sanctions on members of Maduro’s administration, and Vice President Mike Pence on Friday promised “strong and swift economic actions” after Sunday’s vote. He didn’t say whether the U.S. would sanction Venezuelan oil imports, a measure with the potential to undermine Maduro but cause an even deeper humanitarian crisis here.
Opinion polls show that more than 70percent of the country is opposed to Sunday’s vote. But as many as half of all Venezuelans support neither the government nor the opposition — a phenomenon evident in the glum paralysis that has gripped much of the country as protesters and police wage nightly battles. While Venezuelans bitterly complain about shortages of food and medicine, few still respond to opposition calls for protests, a far cry from early demonstrations that sawhundreds of thousands pouring into the streets.
In the eastern neighborhood of Bello Monte, the site of fierce battles with police in recent days, a 54-year-old shop owner named Ricardo watched masked adolescents block a road with trash receptacles as a soot-smeared man picked through their contents for food.
Ricardo, whodeclined to provide his last name for fear of government retaliation, said he felt the Sunday vote meant the last chance for political resolution of Venezuela’s problems was gone.
“Negotiations have come to an end,” he said. “The fight will continue and all of a sudden it could be a lot tougher.”