This is why Venezuela’s Maduro is still in power

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CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolás Maduro has had a tumultuous 2019.

He's been locked in a power struggle with 35-year-old Juan Guaidó since January, when the young opposition leader declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president with the backing of 50 countries, including the U.S. He's faced several rounds of sanctions that have crippled the country’s oil sector and sharply exacerbated an already disastrous crisis, making an economic recovery all but impossible any time soon. He's overseen one massive power outage after another, leaving entire neighborhoods without running water for days or even weeks at a time.

Maduro’s opponents do not currently have a grand strategy other than to wait him out.

“What’s the path forward? To insist,” Guaido told VICE News in an exclusive interview. “Perhaps it sounds tired, but when you’re confronting a dictatorship with non-violence, with the constitution, with demonstrations, our great defense, our great chance to advance, is to keep moving forward.” In spite of this, Maduro has remained in power in part by maintaining control of key political institutions, especially the military, through a combination of patronage and intimidation. But he also counts on a hard core of support among the population, which has less to do with Maduro himself than with the legacy of the man who was president before him: Hugo Chávez. Over his 15 years in power, Chávez became a national hero of near-mythic proportions by lifting millions out of poverty: He reduced hunger and extreme poverty by half, nearly wiped out illiteracy, and transformed Venezuela's barrios by supplying them with proper housing and basic goods and services, organizing them politically in the process. And while the catastrophic economic breakdown Venezuela is currently suffering has badly weathered support for Maduro among the poor, many still have faith in the larger chavista project, and don’t see the U.S.-led opposition as a viable alternative.

“Yes, people are disappointed, but even though they’re disappointed, they’re not with the opposition — they’re passive,” said Olga Andrade, a resident of a Caracas barrio. “Because what exactly does the opposition have to offer? How long have they been fighting for this or that, and what have they accomplished? They haven’t done anything.”

This segment originally aired April 17, 2019, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.