The Venezuelan opposition has transmitted this very same message, repeatedly, to the government’s deaf ears. Despite sophisticated tactics by the government to repress the vote and to outspend rivals, the opposition has achieved impressive electoral showings. Maduro came close to losing the presidential election in April. And while the opposition did not perform as well in the December 2013 regional elections, it still managed to win in the all-important urban areas. But this did nothing to show the government that it needed to change course or even listen to opposition perspectives. Maduro’s response to the rather unimpressive elections in 2013, for instance, was to pledge more of the same.
The students have ended this complacency. They have reminded the government that sectarianism in Venezuela is no longer acceptable in a country where half the population has major objections to government policy — that there is a price to pay for ignoring alternative views.
I suspect that most of the protesters would like to see regime change in Venezuela, but that is not their tactical objective. They are not so naive as to believe that one of the most entrenched regimes in Latin America would fall simply because of student demonstrations.
Rather than changing the regime, the students have focused on unmasking it. They have succeeding in showing the world that the government’s natural instinct is to repress. Once the protests got underway, the students realized that their acts offered the government a stark choice: negotiate or repress. The protests thus became an opportunity to test the government’s rhetoric, started in 2012, that the Chávista revolution is all about the love between the people and its leaders.