In reacting to the protests in Venezuela, the biggest Western media outlets have drafted a charmingly simple narrative of the situation there. According to this story, peaceful protesters have risen up against a government because of shortages, high inflation, and crime. They have taken to the streets and been met with brutal repression from a government that also controls the media.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t take much digging to take down this narrative. First, while there have been some peaceful opposition marches, the daily protests are anything but peaceful. In fact,\u00a0about half<\/a>\u00a0of the daily death toll from Venezuela that we see in the media \u2013 now at 41 \u2014 are actually civilians and security forces apparently\u00a0killed by protesters<\/a>. A much smaller fraction are protesters alleged to have been killed by security forces. As for the media, state TV in Venezuela has only about 10 percent of the TV audience; the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0recently had\u00a0to run a correction<\/a>\u00a0for falsely reporting that opposition voices are not regularly heard on Venezuelan TV.\u00a0They are on TV<\/a>, even calling for the overthrow of the government \u2013 which has been the announced goal of the protest leaders from the beginning. These are not like the protests last year in Brazil, or the student protests from 2011-13 in Chile, which were organized around specific demands.<\/p>\n Of course the increased shortages and rising inflation over the past year have had a political impact on Venezuela, but it is striking that the people who are most hurt by shortages are decidedly not joining the protests. Instead, the protests are joined andled by the upper classes<\/a>, who are least affected.<\/p>\n In fact, the protests really got going largely as a result of a split within the Venezuelan opposition. Henrique Capriles, who lost to Ch\u00e1vez and then Maduro in the last two presidential elections, was considered too conciliatory by the more extreme right, led by\u00a0Leopoldo L\u00f3pez<\/a>\u00a0and Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. They decided that the time was ripe to topple the government through street protests. Both were involved in the 2002 military coup against then President Ch\u00e1vez; Mar\u00eda Corina Machado evensigned the decree<\/a>\u00a0of the coup government that abolished the elected National Assembly (AN), the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong: I am not defending the jailing of L\u00f3pez or the Venezuelan AN decision to expel Machado, just as I would not defend the French government\u2019sprosecution<\/a>\u00a0of far-right politicians for Holocaust denial, or the proposed banning of the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece. But we should be honest about who these Venezuelan opposition leaders are and what they are trying to do.<\/p>\n The\u00a0strategy<\/a>\u00a0of Venezuela\u2019s extreme right is to make the country ungovernable, so as to gain by force what they have been unable to win in 18 elections over the past 15 years. It is clear from the statements of Brazil\u2019s former president Lula da Silva and current president Dilma Rousseff that they have no illusions about what is going on in Venezuela. It is now 50 years since Brazil\u2019s coup brought in the military dictatorship that put them in prison, but they can remember what a coup looks like. So, too, can the other governments of South America, who have made similar statements. But they have also offered to\u00a0mediate<\/a>\u00a0between the government and any opposition leaders who are willing to participate in a dialogue. This process looks encouraging so far. Let\u2019s hope so; that is the only way forward in Venezuela.<\/p>\n _____________________________<\/p>\n Mark Weisbrot<\/em>\u00a0is Co-Director of the\u00a0Center for Economic and Policy Research\u00a0and co-writer of Oliver Stone\u2019s documentary \u201cSouth of the Border.\u201d\u00a0He is also President of Just Foreign Policy (www.justforeignpolicy.org<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n This article originally appeared in\u00a0<\/a>Folha de S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n