Beginning on April 1, anti-government demonstrators have staged daily protests across Venezuela that continue to devolve into violent clashes with riot police, leaving thousands arrested, hundreds injured, and 66 dead. Opposition activists are protesting against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, blaming him for a crippling economic crisis that has caused widespread food shortages for years. The head of the Venezuelan military has warned troops not to commit "atrocities" against protesters, while Maduro’s government continues to work toward rewriting the constitution, defying those accusing him of clinging to power...READ MORE

Venezuela's attorney general Luisa Ortega Díaz distanced herself further from President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government on Thursday by filing a legal challenge to his call for a new constitution. Diaz filed an appeal to nullify the constituent assembly, scheduled to convene later this summer to rewrite the constitution, as unconstitutional and unrepresentative of Venezuelans. At a news conference, she called the presidential decree illegal "because it is the sovereign people who have the power" to demand a revision...READ MORE

Why, then, has Maduro taken such a suicidal path? Much has to do with incompetence. Himself a former bus driver, with some courses in agitprop taken in the schools and agencies of communist Cuba as his sole intellectual background, Venezuela’s current leader has little idea of how an economy works. What is more, one could hardly find someone with a proper training in economics among those who assist him in formulating and implementing the country’s economic policy.Indeed, Maduro has given most of the country’s key economic posts to both high-ranking military officers and key leaders of the Chavista movement with no economics background whatsoever. The reason behind that move seems to be none other than to buy their loyalty: in a country submitted to insane price and foreign-exchange controls as is Venezuela, the scope for government figures to derive a personal profit from bribery and trafficking is immense. According to retired General Cliver Alcala (a critic of the regime), food has become a better business than drugs...READ MORE

A plywood shield in one hand, a gas mask over his face, Victor Ortega marched down the middle of the four-lane elevated highway, his eyes fixed on the front lines. Up ahead, the Venezuelan army and police had sealed off the street. A large armored vehicle, known as the “whale,” anchored the military blockade, with riot troops fanned out to the rear. Behind Ortega, thousands of protesters slowed down, awaiting the inevitable. Any minute, the day’s melee would begin...READ MORE

Explosive protests against Venezuela’s government have left dozens of people dead in various clashes on both sides of the political divide. Hundreds more are injured as the ailing nation wades through the worst economic crisis in its history. Police have jailed thousands of people in just two months of demonstrations, and some 1,300 remain behind bars today. The unrest shows no sign of stopping...READ MORE

The list of Nicolas Maduro’s failings is long, and Venezuelans know it; over 80 percent of them oppose him. And it's not just Venezuelans. The rest of the world has also discovered —at last!—his despotic, corrupt, and inept character. And yet … Maduro doesn’t really matter. He is simply a useful idiot, the puppet of those who really control Venezuela: the Cubans, the drug traffickers, and Hugo Chavez’s political heirs. Those three groups effectively function as criminal cartels, and have co-opted the armed forces into their service; this is how it is possible that every day we see men in uniform willing to massacre their own people in order to keep Venezuela’s criminal oligarchy in power...READ MORE

Shots ring out, and plumes of teargas arch towards the protesters. Some shelter behind wooden shields; other return the gas canisters or throw Molotov cocktails. After a few minutes, the first wave returns to the crowd, coughing and spitting – and a new cohort rushes forward to take their place...READ MORE

The country is a human rights disaster of poverty, corruption, misery and epic mismanagement ... READ MORE

Venezuela, under the incompetent and increasingly violent rule of President Nicolas Maduro, is showing signs of problems that far surpass what could be considered normal unrest in a developing Latin American country. Health care has collapsed; worse, Venezuelans are showing signs of widespread national hunger...READ MORE

Venezuelans have taken to the streets in their tens of thousands over the past seven weeks in anti-government protests that have left at least 43 demonstrators dead and hundreds injured. They show no signs of abating...READ MORE