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This week on Vice:

the rise of a dictator in Venezuela.

- That's a member of parliament? - Yeah.

There is no fear anymore. This is a citizens' revolution.

And you can feel it on the streets.

Today the instructions are for all the protesters

to stay in separate groups across the city,

to make it harder for the National Guard to break them up.

Go, go, go!

We are not animals!

In recent weeks, the crisis in Venezuela

has frequently been in the news.

This resource-rich nation,

with the largest proven oil reserves on Earth,

is on the verge of total collapse.

Hyperinflation, widespread food shortages,

and one of the highest murder rates in the world,

has fueled almost continuous daily protests across the country.

Much of the anger is directed at President Nicolás Maduro

and his ruling socialist party.

Critics say Maduro's authoritarian regime

is guilty of large-scale corruption

and involvement in narcotrafficking.

Earlier this year,

President Maduro announced his intention

to rewrite the nation's constitution,

in what is widely seen

as an attempt to consolidate power.

With tensions escalating, Vice sent both Suroosh Alvi

and Ben Anderson to Caracas to cover the crisis.

So, in Caracas now, they're protesting

four out of the seven days of the week.

There is no fear anymore. This is a citizens' revolution.

And you can feel it out in the streets.

People aren't afraid. They're ready to fight.

Since the anti-government uprisings

exploded this past spring,

Venezuelans have been demonstrating in the streets

for over a hundred days.

More than 100 have been killed and thousands more injured.

And the more the protesters defy the authorities,

the more aggressive the police get trying to break them.

I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's happening.

Wait, wait, wait!

Venezuela is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

The economy has been destroyed by hyperinflation.

In the last 12 months alone,

the inflation rate rose over 1,000 percent.

And it's projected by the IMF to rise more than 2,000 percent

in 2018.

As Venezuela's currency

has cratered in value,

the cost of importing the most basic goods has soared,

making food and other essentials

both scarce and unaffordable.

Ordinary people are really suffering.

Um, and they're fighting back...

Veteran journalist Phil Gunson,

who's been covering the region for almost 40 years,

has witnessed firsthand the events

that have brought Venezuela to the brink.

What caused the current situation

with chaos reigning in the streets?

Now that the economy has collapsed,

the issue on the streets is not an issue of ideology.

It's not people out on the streets saying,

"We want capitalism instead of socialism."

It's people out on the streets saying, "We want to eat."

This food shortage is widespread.

Over the last year,

three-quarters of the population

has lost an average of almost 20 pounds.

People are genuinely...

dying of hunger, in some cases.

Twelve percent of children

are suffering from acute malnutrition in Venezuela.

This is the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world.

It's absolutely unforgivable.

Oil is the foundation

of the Venezuelan economy,

accounting for half the government's revenue.

So, the nation's economy, and fortunes,

rise and fall with the price of crude oil

on international markets.

Venezuela is well over 90 percent dependent

on oil income for its foreign earnings.

The society has come to rely

on this economic cycle of boom and bust

that's inherent in oil.

And it's created a society in which, um,

there's very little planning for the future,

corruption is kind of...

at least to a large extent, tolerated.

By the late 1970s,

oil had made Venezuela the richest country in South America.

But over the coming decades, persistent corruption

funneled the nation's wealth into the hands of the elite.

The result was profound income inequality

that set the stage for a socialist revolution

led by Hugo Chávez.

Chavez was a larger-than-life figure,

messianic, a figure who was loved,

not just as a politician, but revered as a saint

by millions of people in Venezuela.

Chavez made government a spectacle.

Every Sunday, he staged marathon TV broadcasts

that sometimes ran up to eight hours,

on his show, Aló Presidente.

On top of announcing government business,

such as nationalizing agriculture

and telecom industries,

the show featured special guests,

dance numbers, and prize giveaways.

But while he was giving away appliances,

the economy, and specifically

the oil industry, was crumbling.

The problem is that, the economic underpinnings of what he was about,

um, were not really viable.

The legacy of Chavez's disastrous economic strategy

is the heart of today's crisis.

We flew to Lake Maracaibo,

epicenter of the country's boom-and-bust economy.

This is one of the largest oil basins in the world.

Over 30 billion barrels of oil

have been pulled out of this lake

and the estimates range that there are still

somewhere between 19 and another 40 billion barrels of oil

still left down there.

Ulises Albornoz worked for the state-run oil company,

Petroleum of Venezuela, or PDVSA,

and experienced the effect of Chavez's policies firsthand.

One of Chavez's first moves to change the oil industry

was replacing the PDVSA board of directors

with political allies.

Much of the PDVSA workforce was outraged

and took to the streets.

In response, Chavez fired seven

of the company's top executives live on TV.

In the end, Chavez fired 18,000 PDVSA employees

and replaced them with more politically loyal workers

who knew next to nothing about oil production.

So, basically, Chavez fired half of the...

almost half of the 40,000 employees

of the state oil company.

18,000 people. And you were one of them?

Yeah.

Got it.

In addition to the incompetence

of the Chavez loyalists who run PDVSA,

corruption has been a major factor

in the decline of the oil industry.

Billions have been stolen in recent years,

creating a new and very rich socialist elite.

With oil production at all-time lows,

Venezuela's economy is now much more vulnerable

to the ups and downs of the global market.

Venezuela is acutely vulnerable

to a fall in the price of oil,

which, as we know, tends to be cyclical,

and it tends to be severe when it happens.

And essentially,

what Venezuela's living on now

is less than half of the oil price

that it had a few years back.

The oil money ran out more or less at the same time as Chavez died.

So, simultaneously, they lost a large amount of income,

plus, the guy that held the whole thing together.

And it's been downhill ever since.

A month after Chavez's death in 2013,

a bitterly divided nation went to the polls.

Vice President Nicolás Maduro,

a former bus driver,

narrowly won the presidential election

over opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Since then, Maduro has stuck with many of Chavez's policies,

and for the most part has ruled by decree.

Meanwhile, the economy, hunger,

narcotrafficking, and violent crime,

have continued to spiral out of control,

and the opposition to his government intensified.

By December of 2015,

Venezuelans had voted to give control of Venezuela's congress

and national assembly, to the opposition parties.

In response, Maduro called a special election

to create a constituent assembly,

a unique institution with the power

to change the nation's constitution.

Many believe he will use this governmental body

to consolidate his power.

It is this move that has sparked

the intensified protests of the past three months.

Maduro's forces have responded

with mass arrests and violence

that also frequently target

elected officials from the opposition,

including Capriles, his presidential opponent in 2013,

who, with 49 percent of the vote,

lost by less than two percentage points.

We're outside the Justice First office.

The head of the party, Henrique Capriles,

uh, just got beat down by the National Guard here.

And there's still tear gas and clashing going on.

They're about to do a press conference.

Hello, Governor. How are you?

Nice to meet you. Mucho gusto.

Yeah, it's shocking.

After this violence,

what's gonna happen tomorrow?

In the two months after we filmed,

and as the date of Maduro's constituent assembly approached,

the crisis has escalated.

On June 27th, a police officer hijacked a helicopter

and attacked the Maduro-controlled supreme court

with grenades and gunfire.

Only days later, Maduro loyalists

stormed the national assembly, attacking security guards,

journalists, and the lawmakers themselves.

On July 16th, in a show of mass defiance,

more than seven million Venezuelans voted to recall Maduro

in a symbolic, nationwide referendum.

On the eve of this historic vote,

that looked set to transform Venezuela,

VICE went back to Caracas with Ben Anderson.

This is the national assembly, Venezuela's congress,

four weeks after Maduro loyalists attacked the politicians.

Congressman Armando Armas

was one of the lawmakers badly beaten that day.

That's definitely my blood.

I was... my head and this is my hand.

And the risk of physical danger continues.

First vice president of the national assembly, Freddy Guevara,

showed us the death threats he's been receiving on a daily basis.

"Save your money for... to pay the funeral...

of every member of your family."

This is not normal business for a politician.

And there will be a big protest this afternoon.

I'm sure that the protest will increase.

We are not going to step down.

Today the instructions are for all the protesters

to stay in separate groups across the city,

to make it harder for the National Guard to break them up.

Protests have been outlawed

with tough sentences for those who disobeyed.

We've just left the second area, where there's a small protest.

There's hundreds of National Guard on motorbikes.

The National Guard maintained rigid control

of the Caracas streets.

We caught up with Freddy Guevara again,

who said that the upcoming vote was just rubber-stamping

Maduro's drive towards authoritarian rule.

Do you think it's a dictatorship now,

or do you think it will become one on Sunday?

Do you think you might all be in jail on Monday?

President Maduro called this election

to create a constituent assembly,

a 545-seat governmental body

that can override and likely replace the elected congress.

It would also have the power to rewrite the country's constitution

and extend Maduro's reign.

If that weren't enough, the majority of candidates

were hand-picked supporters of Maduro,

including his wife and son.

And there was no option to oppose the move.

With no possible way to vote against

the government's proposed action,

the opposition boycotted the election,

hoping a low turnout at many polling places

would expose the vote as a sham.

Instead, people again gathered on the streets

in the only way they could, to make their voices heard.

But just as demonstrations began to form,

the National Guard followed through

on threats to crush any dissent.

By midday, opposition leaders were regrouping,

trying to decide what to do next.

One motorcycle unit of the National Guard

was attacked with a homemade petrol bomb.

Seven guards were injured.

Intense clashes across the country made this day

the most violent since the crisis began.

By the time the results were announced,

16 people had been killed and dozens more injured.

But Maduro had succeeded

in creating his constituent assembly.

At the opposition headquarters,

Governor Henrique Capriles,

Maduro's presidential rival,

made a statement to the local press.

I'm sure you know what the final result will be.

What will be your response?

Later that night, we headed over to Bolivar Plaza,

in the city center, where Maduro supporters had gathered.

It was predictable that the United States

would cast doubt on this vote.

Much harder to refute

was a claim from the London-based technology firm

that supplied the voting machines used for this election.

The turnout numbers on Sunday, 30th of July,

for the constituent assembly in Venezuela,

were tampered with.

The difference between the actual participation

and the one announced by the authorities

is at least one million votes.

An independent exit poll

suggested the actual turnout was even lower,

with just over 3.5 million people voting.

Less than 20 percent of Venezuela's

19.8 million eligible voters.

The congress met in a last-ditch effort

to stop what looked to be inevitable.

They're calling on the people of Venezuela

to come and defend this national assembly.

The United States imposed additional sanctions

aimed directly at Maduro himself.

Maduro is not just a bad leader,

he is now a dictator.

Maduro immediately played the part

of a typical dictator,

snatching two leading opposition figures...

Leopoldo López, the leader of the Popular Will party,

and Antonia Ledezma, the former mayor of Caracas...

from their homes the following night.

The socialist revolutionaries

who once overthrew an unpopular and corrupt elite,

have become one.

Even parts of the military began to defect.

One of Latin America's most important nations,

in control of the world's largest oil reserves,

has become a dictatorship.

But while Maduro's die-hard supporters celebrate,

athe growing opposition has vowed to continue to fight.

- Synced and corrected by chamallow - - www.addic7ed.com -