https://www.wsj.com/articles/many-po...sts-1492680607
Quote:
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Until the slums rise up, Mr. Maduro will likely hang on, analysts say.
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Many slum residents in Caracas and across Venezuela, however, say they are only vaguely aware of the protests and too busy trying to survive to worry about changing the government.
More than four in five Venezuelans say they don’t earn enough to meet basic needs and three-quarters say they have lost an average of 19 pounds of weight last year, according to the Encovi survey by Venezuela’s top three universities.
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The lower classes have also been instrumental in giving the opposition alliance a record two-thirds congressional majority in the last electoral contest, held in December 2015. Polls show the poor would hand the government a drubbing in any vote held this year.
Yet that growing disillusionment hasn’t translated into organized protest, said pollster Luis Vicente León. Part of the reason, he added, is the opposition itself, whose predominantly upper-middle-class leaders have ignored the slums for years, believing they can oust Mr. Maduro or his predecessor Hugo Chávez by marching in opposition strongholds or triggering a coup.
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Without support in the shantytowns, many opposition supporters fear the current protests will end like the previous wave of unrest in 2014, when three months of demonstrations in middle-class neighborhoods left 43 people dead—without achieving any political change. The failure of those protestshas demoralized and fractured the opposition alliance for years.
“For the masses to come out, they need to feel that they are at a point of no return,” said Félix Seijas Jr., director of pollster Delphos. “We’re still some ways away from that.”
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It sounds like the people most badly hurt by the current state of affairs are apathetic toward any solution that involves working within Venezuela's political system, because even the organized opposition doesn't offer them any help. The only remaining options are to rebel, leave, or starve, and this article is leaning toward "starve."
Meanwhile, the protests continue, seemingly unabated....
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Last edited by BrokenSwitch; 04-20-2017 at 08:56.
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