Skip to footer

How can Venezuela resolve its political crisis? Six views.

Venezuela has been rocked by more than four months of anti-government protests and violent police crackdown. Dozens of Venezuelans have died and thousands have been arrested. But resolving the crisis still seems out of reach. Here are six perspectives on Venezuela's search for a peaceful path forward.

The community organizer

Andrew Rosati
Community leader Yelitza Borges in her Caracas, Venezuela barrio of Antímano.

  • By Andrew Rosati Correspondent

Name: Yelitza Borges
Job: Community leader in the Caracas slum of Antímano
Way forward: Recognition of the democratically elected president

Yelitza Borges calls the recent wave of protests here "the same old story," citing similarities to demonstrations leading up to the 2002 coup, which briefly ousted former President Hugo Chávez. Ms. Borges says it's clear the opposition's only goal is to remove President Nicolás Maduro from office. Many, including two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, still don't recognize Maduro's presidential victory, claiming fraud.

This is problematic for Borges and other Chavistas because the leader was democratically elected. "Without recognizing Maduro as president, the country will only continue to stay divided," Borges says. "The opposition has to recognize that a socialist is still in power.

"Without doing so," she says, "we can't begin to bridge our divisions."

She acknowledges, however, that government supporters need to meet opposition supporters half way. "Some of the people most affected by the government's programs have become the most intolerant," she says. "It's because they have the most to lose."

If politicians can make it clear that gains made under the Chávez administration won't be discarded during political negotiations, government supporters may be more inclined to listen to the opposition, she says.

3 of 6
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.