Venezuela’s Fate Is in the Hands of Its Army, Protests alone have never forced regime change.

Originally published in Persuasion

On Monday night, nationwide popular protests turned deadly in Venezuela. The day before, as far as independent observers can tell, a bigger-than-ever majority had voted against Nicolás Maduro, the strongman socialist president who took over from Hugo Chávez in 2013. But on Sunday evening, Maduro declared himself reelected. What many suspected to be true has now been confirmed: the Chavismo era is quickly dying. The question is whether Maduro will allow a new political era to begin.

The opposition has good reason to cry foul. The Venezuelan electoral authority officially announced after midnight on Monday that Maduro had obtained 51% of the vote, while his opponent Edmundo González—a 74-year-old former diplomat unknown to the country until this past April—won 44%. The announcement only provided a final number, not the breakdown by polling place that is usually released. In the absence of the disaggregated data, outside observers such as The Carter Center, which had a team deployed in the country to verify the results, denounced the validity of the official tally.

Then, in the hours that followed, opposition poll watchers claimed to have obtained snapshots of 73% of the tally receipts from Venezuela’s 30,000 voting machines. The tallies showed the opposition had won 70% of the votes at those polling places, and several outside exit polls roughly confirmed this result. Opposition candidate González—and his massively popular ally María Corina Machado, who was banned by the authorities from running for public office—urged Maduro to accept the results and step down.

The government’s brazen attitude toward the election results, and the respect Machado has earned across social classes throughout the country, delivered an inevitable clash as soon as the competing tallies were announced. This week police forces have seemed overwhelmed and the National Guard has barely held the line, while the army is still in their barracks. Meanwhile, paramilitary pro-government colectivos have gone on rampages shooting at protesters, widely documented by social media.

At least 16 people have been killed, and hundreds more arrested. Angry citizens have torn down Chávez statues in some of the country’s poorest towns and neighborhoods, something many considered unthinkable just a few days ago. Rebellion seems to be in the air.

For weeks, the opposition promised that the will of millions of Venezuelans could not be ignored, even if the election was stolen. This week’s firestorm of anger, from one corner of the country to another, turned that theme into a reality.

Yet the flip side of the opposition’s message remained unmentioned during the electoral campaign: votes alone, even when accompanied by massive riots, have never propelled brand new political eras in Venezuela. Every time the question of regime change has been posed, it’s the armed forces who have tilted the balance of power.

A survey of Venezuela’s history confirms this. The country had its origins in 1830 after a rebellious secession from Gran Colombia. By 1859, civil war had rearranged the political map, bringing about the regime of cunning General Guzmán Blanco. By 1899, another general, Juan Vicente Gómez, alongside the officer Cipriano Castro, established a new era of strongman rulers until 1958.

Rómulo Betancourt, the country’s president after 1958 and the architect of Venezuela’s 20th-century democracy, understood this history intimately. His lifelong struggle against a dictatorial regime eventually bore fruit because he knew that the military, often in conjunction with crafty political operators, has decided the fate of every political era in Venezuela.

Betancourt’s first attempt at regime change involved aligning his party with a putsch by middle-ranking officers against one of Gómez’s successors in 1945. The short-lived Betancourt government was violently ousted three years later, and the Gómez legacy was restored. By 1957, however, the regime was exhausted, and called a nationwide referendum on whether the ruling general should continue in power. In a parallel with today, the result, showing over 80% support for the regime, was marred by fraud. But the next year a coup d’etat led by an admiral in the Venezuelan navy ended the Gómez years for good. Betancourt took advantage of the military intervention, sent the admiral to the back benches, and created his own era with a thriving democratic pact that survived four decades—until the arrival of Hugo Chávez.

The cycle of military intervention culminated in 1998 when Chávez, himself a military officer, sealed his electoral victory after years of proselytizing among army officers. He swiftly remade the armed forces in his movement's image, encouraging the military salute “Fatherland, Socialism or Death,” and expelling all U.S. liaisons from Venezuelan military bases. It signaled the beginning of the Chavista era that now seems finally to be coming to an end.

This history is why a reliable assessment of the Venezuelan military has been the missing piece of the puzzle this election. As impossible as it seems, the opposition’s challenge is to leverage its vast electoral majority and the massive popular anger at the regime to bring on side at least a faction of the armed forces. In this regard, many questions still remain. Has the massive investment made by the Defense Ministry to cement the forces’ esprit de corps around a mythical Comandante Chávez paid off? Do middle-ranking officers feel invested in the regime that has given them such entitlements and privileges?

Unlike Betancourt, who achieved it twice, engaging with the armed forces seems to be beyond the opposition’s concerns, except for standard calls for dialogue. Over the last 25 years, their unwillingness or inability to reach middle-ranking officers has been one of the movement’s critical weaknesses. And so far, the military is holding firm in support of Maduro despite unconfirmed rumors that soldiers are fleeing the country and seeking political asylum in Colombia.

Which is why, for now, the future of Chavismo remains uncertain. It could follow the path of other regimes, experiencing a prolonged decline after its founding leaders are gone, or it could face a swift collapse. But if history serves as a guide, Sunday’s massive vote and this week’s riots have created a vast political opening in Venezuela. If this new generation discovers the willingness—and the means—to win over a faction of the armed forces and seize the reins of a political transformation, a very different future could lie ahead.

Carlos Lizarralde is the author of Venezuela’s Collapse: The Long Story of How Things Fell Apart.