Venezuelans Face a ‘Perverse Mafia State’

Speaking with WLRN Public Media, VOC Senior Fellow David Smolansky breaks down the current state of Maduro’s grip on Power in Venezuela and what comes next.

“Venezuela is of course a mafia state,” says David Smolansky, who was the opposition mayor of the Caracas borough of El Hatillo until the regime forced him into exile in 2017.

“It’s incompetent at everything — it’s ruined the economy and the oil industry, it’s incapable of building infrastructure — but it’s become very sophisticated in repression.

“So we are facing a very perverse but sophisticated criminal structure,” says Smolansky, who now represents the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential campaign in Washington, D.C.

“And we’ve reached the peak of what civility, diplomacy and politics allow. So now we’re at a point where we ask: What else can we do?”

Smolansky says the answer to that question is, at least for Venezuelans and expats, to keep exerting protest pressure.

Listen to the full interview here.