Caracas Chronicles

Dear friends,

While 2024 was a slow burn, it is likely that 2025 will come at us really fast. This doesn’t mean that we’ll see a conclusion to our Venezuelan predicament any time soon, but we will see movement rather quickly. After the July 28th elections, which were preceded by seven long months of tricks and traps by the Maduro administration, the winning opposition was subject to political violence and the population that voted against the ruling party was intimidated by different means. A campaign of mass detentions and forced disappearances along with the militarization of large cities can go a long way. Maduro went from denying political violence to bragging about it on social media. Fear is the name of the game. 

With president elect Edmundo González in Spain, the local strategy led by Maria Corina Machado called for laying low and saving strength until January 10th, the date of the oath of office.

The government has been preparing for January 10th with more intimidation and promising a coronation for Maduro and a reform of the state that will likely (once again) try to bring about the communal state or some other form to ensure that chavismo will never have to organize an election it can lose. They have continued their campaign of forced disappearances and media control. They’ve forced hundreds of journalists to exile and now promise a ban on TikTok and possibly other social media platforms. And now they have been posting “wanted” posters of Edmundo all over airports and border checkpoints as if no one knew the face of the man who beat Maduro almost 70 to 30.

The opposition has been establishing a narrative “that something is going to happen in this town,” at some point implying that Edmundo would be in Venezuela to take the oath of office. Now, the strategy is focusing on looking for traction to get people to the streets and a Latin American tour that will bring Edmundo to several allied countries before January 10th.

It’s the year of anything goes, and we’ve been preparing for it.

Beyond January 10th, anything goes. There are no more buffers for chavismo or the opposition, the Trump administration will be in office shortly thereafter with a different foreign policy agenda, and there will be more pressure over the international community to lock a position regarding the Venezuelan presidency and their relationship with the country. 

It’s the year of anything goes, and we’ve been preparing for it. Just like we did for the July 28th coverage we’re going to rely on our X account for breaking news and on Instagram for reach. The core material you will find on the website. We are also working on a new section that we’ve been testing for a while, The Local Dispatch that we’ll be rebranding as El Dispatch. El Dispatch will shed light over underreported news that go to the heart of what’s going on in  the country. But now we will be expanding its reach. It will be bilingual and available on social media and via Whatsapp. 

We will continue to collaborate with other media outlets and help them reach English speaking audiences and we’re working to expand our collaborator base, not only with voices within the country but also from abroad—looking for a balance between those who are close to the news and those who can speak freely about them. 

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There is a shared feeling amongst all Venezuelans that something will happen in the coming weeks. Be it driven by the government’s military paranoia or by the opposition’s hopeful speech. Let’s just hope that someone with their head and heart in the right place actually does have a plan.

In the meantime, we’ll be here to give context and help try to channel verified information so it doesn’t happen like in that story attributed to García Márquez, where an old lady has a premonition that something horrible is going to happen to the town, and word spreads that someone thinks something horrible is going to happen to the town, and folks start saying that someone said something horrible was going to happen, and everybody assumes something horrible is going to happen, and they end up burning down the whole damn town before something horrible happens, but too late, in fact something horrible happened to the town. Like wildfire. A viral reaction. The contagion of stupidity.