Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was once critical of English
English phrases once bothered Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro so much that he urged his State of the Union address audience to phase out words like skatepark and fashion.
But as the White House now ponders whether the U.S. military should strike Venezuela, Maduro is embracing English, singing John Lennon’s Imagine, advocating for peace and dancing to a remix of his latest English catchphrase, “No War, Yes Peace.”
While his turnaround is seen as a sign of desperation by supporters of Venezuela’s political opposition, whose leaders have repeatedly told their backers in Washington that the threat of military action would crack Maduro’s inner circle, months of pressure have yet to produce defections or a government transition.
Behind this knack for staying in power is a system that punishes disloyal associates harshly and allows loyal ministers, justices, military leaders and other officials to enrich themselves.
“The Bolivarian Revolution possesses a remarkable ability: the capacity for cohesion in the face of external pressure,” Ronal Rodríguez, a researcher at the Venezuela Observatory in Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario, said referring to the political movement, also known as Chavismo, that Maduro inherited from the late President Hugo Chávez. “When pressure comes from abroad, they manage to unite, defend and protect themselves.”
Underpinning the loyalty-or-punishment principle are corruption networks blessed by Chávez and Maduro that give the loyal permission to get richer. The policy has vexed previous efforts to unseat Maduro and has helped him and his close associates to skirt economic sanctions, obtain U.S. presidential pardons and claim an electoral victory they resoundingly lost.
Rodríguez explained that prison and torture can be part of the punishment, which is usually harsher for accused wrongdoers with military affiliation. The strategy has been crucial for an authoritarian Maduro to keep control of the military, which he lets traffic drugs, oil, wildlife and myriad goods in exchange for coup-proof barracks.
“This has been a very effective tool because Chavismo has always been able to eliminate those actors who at some point try to rise up, and it has been able to expose corrupt practices from all sorts of actors,” Rodríguez said.
Venezuela’s political opposition, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, had banked on the military’s support to dislodge Maduro after credible evidence showed that he lost the 2024 presidential election.
