Anne Applebaum: “Machado is in hiding, deep inside a country that is failing. I spoke with her twice late last year, without knowing where she was. A few months before, the country had just held presidential elections. The opposition movement that she leads had won. Even though activists were being picked up off the streets, or simply shot and killed, they had held a primary, run a presidential campaign—Machado herself was barred, so Edmundo González was the candidate—and made sure that votes were counted accurately. Still, even after his definitive loss, Nicolás Maduro, the country’s illegitimate leader, refused to hand over power.”
“Lately, Americans have been hearing little about Venezuela other than drugs and gangs, but the country has long been the home of one of the world’s most impressive grassroots-democracy movements. At this moment, when citizens in many of the world’s most successful liberal democracies are giving up, even questioning whether popular participation in politics has any value, Venezuelans fight violence with nonviolence, and oppose corruption through bravery.”
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