That's empirically wrong. Also nearly every single Venezuelan who's left the country since Chavez is against Maduro

That might be why they left, no? The ones who stayed presumably tolerate him more.

The ones who stayed are mostly too poor and famished to leave.

any evidence of that?

Yeah, read any newspaper.

And why are they famished? Could it be because of US sanctions and embargoes?

You can't blame America for every single problem people suffer. Cuba was also embargoed and managed to pull off a medical system with a lower infant mortality rate than the USA, and as far as I know nobody starved there to the degree they did in Venezuela.

USA sanctions means Venezuela can't be a Petrostate, that's it. There's nothing stopping the government from organizing state industries in agriculture and mineral extraction as well as distribution to build a hyper localized economy. Hell, they're supposed to be communists, this is supposed to be the whole thing they're meant to be doing anyway.

The state of Venezuela is mostly the fault of Maduro's failed governance, and some of the responsibility lays also on the heads of Venezuelans. I personally believe to pretend it's all America's fault is to engage in a prejudice of low expectations.

approx 8 million, and we are not allowed to vote, which is against the constitution.

No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide, it’s one of the reasons of what happened today.

> No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide

I don't belittle what VE has gone thru and I accept that something awful for you has been removed from the board.

> it’s one of the reasons of what happened today.

I would clarify that the current US leadership has little/no history of taking actions that are genuinely for others' welfare. The admin continually claims it is doing good. It's a continual stream, one after the other. By the time one is debunked (and they are), ten more are issued.

This method is dividing many Americans (by design) between those who believe the stream of claims and those being overwhelmed by the mountain of debunked falsehoods.

Maybe. But there is still popular support; and some of the elections Chavez won, he actually did win.

Irrelevant, Chavez died 13 years ago, a lot has happened and changed. Maduro lost the last election hard, he wrecked the support he inherited back then

True, but that is irrelevant today, they squandered that support and people want a change now.