Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Venezuelan Struggle Towards Democratization: The 2017 Civil Resistance Campaign

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America

Part of the book series: Studies of the Americas ((STAM))

Abstract

This study examines how nonviolent protests emerged as a strategic choice for civil resistance against authoritarian rule in Venezuela. This study explores the repertoire of nonviolent methods used in Venezuela during 2017, which included conventional tactics such as mass concentrations, street blockages, and strikes, as well as digital protests and creative demonstrations, plus the historical popular consultation against the spurious Constituent Assembly. Using testimonies from the civil resistance movement participants, the study underscores three dynamics often overlooked: the process of building a collective identity by leaderless crowds, the use of digital communication, and the role of pro-government militias in repressing peaceful demonstrations. The 2017 Venezuelan protest cycle did not achieve its aim of overthrowing the authoritarian regime and restoring the rule of law. Major factors for the movement defeat were the harsh repression combining military and paramilitary repression and the lack of alignment between strategic vision and innovative protest tactics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    National Survey of Living Conditions (ENCOVI) 2017, carried out by the Andrés Bello Catholic University, the Simón Bolívar University and the Central University of Venezuela. Available at: https://www.ucab.edu.ve/investigacion/centros-e-institutos-de-investigacion/encovi-2017/.

  2. 2.

    The trial of the opposition leader Leopoldo López and the military prosecution of 2014 demonstrators occurred while Luisa Ortega Díaz was the Nation General Prosecutor.

  3. 3.

    Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Human rights violations and abuses in the context of protests in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela from 1 April to 31 July 2017. Geneva, August 2017. Retrieved from: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/VE/HCReportVenezuela_1April-31July2017_EN.pdf.

  4. 4.

    This was a short open question. I grouped the responses when they had the same meaning. However, I considered answers such as “to change the government” different from “to overthrow the dictatorship” and answers such as “to recover democracy” different from “to gain freedom”. I decided to maintain these answers ungrouped in order to keep semantic differences that may indicate different political values.

  5. 5.

    All translations of interviews are mine and might be slightly edited to facilitate the readers’ understanding.

  6. 6.

    See https://youtu.be/ijoJDhf0F34 (accessed March 23, 2018).

  7. 7.

    See https://youtu.be/_0pA7YJUgGI (accessed March 23, 2018).

  8. 8.

    Some examples of these songs and videos include Los Dueños De La Calle—Gian Varela Feat, Chyno Miranda and Tony Brouzee, available at: https://youtu.be/TZZH7ZRZTWk, and MASBURROCK—Rodrigore, available at: https://youtu.be/1qhW6F96ov4; Eight Moon Headdress—Felix Martin https://youtu.be/7ePkR14cbKc; Escudos—One Chot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkoC28hvbsk (accessed March 23, 2018).

  9. 9.

    Data obtained from a national poll conducted by More Consulting (http://www.moreconsulting.com.ve/consulting.html) between May 5 and 6, 2017.

  10. 10.

    Ibidem.

  11. 11.

    The Organic Law of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, approved in 2008, divided Venezuela into seven Strategic Integral Defence Regions (Central, Western, Eastern, the Plains, Andean, Guayana, and Sea and Islands).

  12. 12.

    Albaciudad. 2016, December 28. Maduro a las FANB: En 2017 haremos una liberación territorial de las lacras del paramilitarismo. http://albaciudad.org/2016/12/maduro-a-las-fanb-en-2017-haremos-una-liberacion-territorial-de-las-lacras-del-paramilitarismo/.

References

  • Ackerman, Peter, and Jack DuVall. 2000. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict, 113–174. London: St. Martin’s Press/Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ackerman, Peter, and Christopher Kruegler. 1994. Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ackerman, Peter, and Hardy Merriman. 2015. The Checklist for Ending Tyranny. In Is Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? ed. M. Burrows and M.J. Stephan. Washington, DC: The Atlantic Council.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agarwal, Sheetal D., W. Lance Bennett, Courtney N. Johnson, and Shawn Walker. 2014. A Model of Crowd Enabled Organization: Theory and Methods for Understanding the Role of Twitter in the Occupy Protests. International Journal of Communication 8: 27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Álvarez, Ángel E. 2008. Venezuela: ¿La revolución pierde su encanto? Revista de ciencia política (Santiago) 28 (1): 405–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ananyev, Maxim, Galina Zudenkova, and Maria Petrova. 2017. Information and Communication Technologies, Protests, and Censorship. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, W. Lance, and Alexandra Segerberg. 2015. The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics, Handbook of Digital Politics, 169. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Böhmelt, Tobias, and Govinda Clayton. 2017. Auxiliary Force Structure: Paramilitary Forces and Progovernment Militias. Comparative Political Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414017699204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Böhmelt, Tobias, Andrea Ruggeri, and Ulrich Pilster. 2017. Counterbalancing, Spatial Dependence, and Peer Group Effects. Political Science Research and Methods 5 (2): 221–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Canelón-Silva, Agrivalca Ramsenia. 2014. Del Estado comunicador al Estado de los medios. Catorce años de hegemonía comunicacional en Venezuela. Palabra Clave 17 (4): 1243–1278.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cañizález, Andrés. 2014. The State in Pursuit of Hegemony Over the Media: The Chávez Model. In Media Systems and Communication Policies in Latin America, ed. M.A. Guerrero and M. Márquez-Ramírez, 157–177. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carey, Sabine C., Neill J. Mitchell, and Will Lowe. 2013. States, the Security Sector, and the Monopoly of Violence: A New Database on Pro-Government Militias. Journal of Peace Research 50 (2): 249–258.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casanova, R. 2009. La revuelta de los estudiantes venezolanos del 2007. El levantamiento político de una generación. Cuadernos del CENDES 26 (70): 99–123.

    Google Scholar 

  • Castells, Manuel. 1997. Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Somerset, NJ: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaguaceda, Armando. 2015. Regímenes políticos y procesos desdemocratizadores en Nicaragua y Venezuela. Perfiles Latinoamericanos 23 (45): 5–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chaguaceda, Armando, and María Isabel Puerta. 2015. “Quo vadis Venezuela”: De la democracia delegativa al autoritarismo del siglo XXI. Revista Mexicana de Análisis Político y Administración Pública 4 (1): 175–202.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chenoweth, Erica. 2017. Trends in Nonviolent Resistance and State Response: Is Violence Towards Civilian-Based Movements on the Rise? Global Responsibility to Protect 9 (1): 86–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria J. Stephan. 2011. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Drop Your Weapons: When and Why Civil Resistance Works. Foreign Affairs 93 (4): 94–106.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corrales, Javier, and Michael Penfold. 2015. Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gohdes, A.R. 2015. Pulling the Plug: Network Disruptions and Violence in Civil Conflict. Journal of Peace Research 52 (3): 352–367.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstone, Jack A. 2014. Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Isidoro Losada, Ana María. 2015. Estrategias territoriales de control político en Venezuela. Iberoamericana 15 (59): 157–170.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jácome, Francine. 2013. El papel de la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana en el nuevo contexto político venezolano: Implicaciones para la seguridad regional. Bogotá: FES Publikation.

    Google Scholar 

  • King, Mary Elizabeth. 2018. The Ethics and ‘Realism’ of Nonviolent Action. In The Oxford Handbook of International Political Theory, ed. Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley, 273. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lander, Edgardo, and Santiago A. Rodríguez. 2017. Venezuela: un barril de pólvora. Nueva Sociedad 269.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lang, John C., and Hans De Sterck. 2016. A Hierarchy of Linear Threshold Models for the Spread of Political Revolutions on Social Networks. Journal of Complex Networks 4 (3): 426–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.

    Google Scholar 

  • López Maya, Margarita. 2011. Democracia participativa en Venezuela (1999–2010): orígenes, leyes, percepciones y desafíos. Caracas: Fundación Centro Gumilla/Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (Temas de Formación Sociopolítica).

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2014. Venezuela: The Political Crisis of Post-Chavismo. Social Justice 40 (4): 68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugo-Ocando, Jairo, Alexander Hernández, and Monica Marchesi. 2015. Latin American Struggles | Social Media and Virality in the 2014 Student Protests in Venezuela: Rethinking Engagement and Dialogue in Times of Imitation. International Journal of Communication 9: 22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Masullo, Juan. 2017. Making Sense of “La Salida”. Challenging Left-Wing Control in Venezuela. In Global Diffusion of Protest, ed. Donatella della Porta. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moro, Alessandro. 2016. Understanding the Dynamics of Violent Political Revolutions in an Agent-Based Framework. PloS One 11 (4): e0154175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mourão, Rachel R., Magdalena Saldaña, Shannon C. McGregor, and Adrian D. Zeh. 2016. Support for Protests in Latin America: Classifications and the Role of Online Networking. Social Sciences 5 (4): 58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Panzarelli, Alexandra. 2012. Valoraciones de la democracia en el socialismo del siglo XXI: Venezuela. En Alvarez, Ángel y Francisco José Virtuoso (coord). Valoraciones de la democracia en Venezuela y América Latina. Caracas: Centro Gumilla.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pilster, Ulrich, Tobias Böhmelt, and Atsushi Tago. 2016. The Differentiation of Security Forces and the Onset of Genocidal Violence. Armed Forces and Society 42 (1): 26–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poell, Thomas, Rasha Abdulla, Bernhard Rieder, Robbert Woltering, and Liesbeth Zack. 2016. Protest Leadership in the Age of Social Media. Information, Communication and Society 19 (7): 994–1014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Puyosa, Iria. 2015a. Networked Social Movements: From the Emotional Trigger to the Propagation of Ideas for Political Change. Chasqui. Revista Latinoamericana de Comunicación 128: 197–214.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015b. The @PlzaResistencia Camp in the 2014 Cycle of Protests in Venezuela. IDP. Revista de Internet. Derecho y Política 21, 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2015c. Political Control on the Internet in the Context of a Hybrid Regime. Venezuela 2007–2015. Revista Teknokultura 12 (3): 501–526.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puyosa, I. 2018. Chavism Information War Strategies on Twitter. Observatory of Disinformation and Propaganda in Latin America. http://obserlatinf.org/.

  • Puyosa, Iria, and Armando Chaguaceda. 2017, November. Five Political Regimes in Latin America, Internet Freedom and Mechanisms of Control. University of Gothenburg, Varieties of Democracy Institute: Users’ Working Paper No. 12.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruijgrok, Kris. 2017. From the Web to the Streets: Internet and Protests under Authoritarian Regimes. Democratization 24 (3): 498–520.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sandoval-Almazan, R., and J.R. Gil-Garcia. 2014. Towards Cyberactivism 2.0? Understanding the Use of Social Media and Other Information Technologies for Political Activism and Social Movements. Government Information Quarterly 31 (3): 365–378.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Santos, Miguel Ángel. 2017. Venezuela: Running on Empty. LASA Forum: 58–62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schock, Kurt. 2005. Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in Nondemocracies. Vol. 22. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spaiser, Viktoria, Thomas Chadefaux, Karsten Donnay, Fabian Russmann, and Dirk Helbing. 2017. Communication Power Struggles on Social Media: A Case Study of the 2011–12 Russian Protests. Journal of Information Technology and Politics 14 (2): 132–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2017.1308288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Uzcátegui, Rafael. 2014. Movilizaciones estudiantiles en Venezuela. Del carisma de Chávez al conflicto en redes. Nueva sociedad 251: 153–165.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Central de Venezuela, Quito, Ecuador

    Iria Puyosa

Authors
  1. Iria Puyosa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. FLACSO Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

    Cécile Mouly

  2. University of La Salle, Bogotá, Colombia

    Esperanza Hernández Delgado

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Puyosa, I. (2019). Venezuelan Struggle Towards Democratization: The 2017 Civil Resistance Campaign. In: Mouly, C., Hernández Delgado, E. (eds) Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05033-7_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation