In Venezuela, the avalanche is cracking...
Something is cracking in Venezuela. Something is different. And it sounds like the start of an avalanche.
It's starting to feel like a historic day for Venezuela.
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) February 2, 2019
Yet it's not the scary violent change event you might expect.
It's more - and more - like a Velvet Revolution.
Across the country, hundreds of towns, the kind that never hold demonstrations - demonstrated against the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro - calling on it to just leave. Here's the big emblem of it in what's probably Caracas.

Libertad! pic.twitter.com/8njRP7xKCs
— Diego E. Arria (@Diego_Arria) February 2, 2019
But here's the kind of places it's also taking place in, which the Venezuelan state-controlled press isn't reporting:
We're seeing protests even in relatively small places like Santa Barbara del Zulia, on the southern end of Lake Maracaibo. Pop = around 100K.#NotJustCaracas https://t.co/qJVI9huMDl
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) February 2, 2019
#NotJustCaracas
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) February 2, 2019
This is San Juan de los Morros. Not exactly an oligarch hotspot. https://t.co/nAGeS79DHp
#NotJustCaracas
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) February 2, 2019
This is San Juan de los Morros. Not exactly an oligarch hotspot. https://t.co/nAGeS79DHp
Yet demonstrations alone, at the end of the day, are nothing new for Venezuela, whose demonstrations against its socialist regime have been so big over the past 20 years they've been called 'avalanchas.'
There's one very important difference, pointed out by Caracas Chronicles:
Yesterday's was not violent.
In the past, an anti-regime demonstration has always meant someone or other getting assalted or shot by organized Chavista motorcycle goons or else the Venezuelan military. It's meant hundreds of people hauled off to Chavista dungeons, where, yes, some disappear, and others are tortured, and none get due process.
This time, the men with guns and Molotov cocktails are ... staying away.
Absolutely stunning videos coming in from all around Venezuela.
— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) February 2, 2019
It's not just Caracas and Maracaibo and the other big cities. It's the kind of small, rural cities where no one has ever protested these last 20 years.
No tear gas anywhere. No arrests anywhere. Maduro dare not.
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