Across Latin America, economic growth has stalled, social tensions are on the rise, and political systems are under strain. And one country is suffering more than any other: in Venezuela, worsening economic and political crises, mostly of the government’s own making, threaten the stability of the state with the world’s largest oil reserves.
Ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for December 6, Venezuelan President Nicolas Máduro, who took office after the death of Hugo Chávez in March 2013, is cracking down on opposition figures and engaging in reckless saber rattling with Venezuela’s neighbors Guyana and Colombia. The government is nervous that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) could lose its majority in the National Assembly for the first time since Chávez came to power in 1999, with the opposition more united than in past campaigns. But whatever the outcome of the election, political stability will not come to Venezuela in the foreseeable future.