Once again, Nicolás Maduro claimed a dubious victory in a presidential election and violently suppressed protests—but in 2024, many poor and working-class voters, long loyal to his regime, turned against him.

If it is true that history does not repeat but rhymes, the poetic muses in Venezuela must surely be singing. Over the weekend of November 16–17, 2024, authorities released 225 people from jails throughout the country. It was a coda of sorts to a wave of protests that followed July’s presidential election pitting deeply unpopular incumbent Nicolás Maduro—vying for a third consecutive six-year term—against Edmundo González Urrutia, a unity candidate representing long-splintered opposition factions. As with other high-stakes elections in recent Venezuelan history, the vote itself proceeded largely without incident. But in the days that followed, thousands took to the streets to reject what they viewed as brazen election-stealing by the Maduro government, which claimed victory despite overwhelming evidence of a crushing opposition win.

If it all seems familiar, it is. In the 25 years since Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s popular and polarizing mentor, first swept into power at the head of a movement that promised to remake Venezuela as a more equitable nation, opponents of what came to be known as chavismo have repeatedly protested poll results in the streets, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. Historically, these opponents have comprised the nation’s middle and professional classes. They have also borne the brunt of the mass arrests and deadly repression that have often followed anti-government protests. The repressive force has increased as Maduro, lacking his predecessor’s popularity, charisma, and financial wherewithal, has made staying in power by any means his primary aim since first taking office in snap elections after Chávez’s death in 2013.

But rhyme is not repetition, and the November prisoner releases broke important ground, reflected in the makeup of those set free. Most hailed from the nation’s poorest sectors, long the core of chavismo’s support; most had been arrested for protesting the election results; most were in their twenties or even younger, a generation that has known nothing except life under chavista rule; and most reported having been subjected to physical or emotional abuse, treatment hitherto reserved for high-profile political opponents. Perhaps most tellingly, those released amounted to barely a tenth of the number arrested in the days following the July vote, indicating not only the scale of post-electoral repression, but also its particular intensity against a population once imagined as the chavista movement’s last bastion.

Despite echoes of the past, the election and the popular reaction highlighted an unprecedented dynamic in recent Venezuelan history. Never before had popular sectors been at the forefront of explicitly anti-government protests closely linked with the country’s mainstream opposition. In crushing them, Maduro loudly announced his intent to remain in power indefinitely, come what may.

Teasing differences from what might otherwise seem to be similarities is more than an intellectual exercise in this case. As Donald Trump returns to the White House, it may be tempting to expect a reprise of what his first term wrought for Venezuela. Then as now, an unpopular government in Caracas clung to power through rigged elections and outright violence. Then as now, an opposition movement emboldened by foreign support was poised to regroup in exile. Then as now, Trump administration officials sought to oust Maduro through punishing sanctions that would plunge the country into a humanitarian crisis and push millions to resettle abroad. But as with the July protests, key distinctions lie below the surface, shining light more on history’s rhymes than on its repetitions.

In retrospect, perhaps the most surprising feature of the July election results and their aftermath is that they seemed to catch everyone by surprise, not least the Maduro government. In the six years since Maduro’s last reelection, Venezuela had undergone historic upheavals. In 2017, the Trump administration announced sweeping sanctions targeting Venezuela’s oil industry, already reeling from years of mismanagement and corruption. The sanctions helped drive the country’s oil output and revenues to historic lows. Meanwhile, severe international restrictions on the Venezuelan banking sector, coupled with the government’s reckless money printing, spurred already galloping inflation into hyperinflation. The currency became worthless, and the economy nearly ground to a halt. Shortages grew widespread. Poverty and malnutrition skyrocketed. Food riots broke out nationwide. It was the worst economic collapse in Latin American history.

Maduro thus faced the presidential election in 2018 as a weakened incumbent. Energized and sensing victory, his opponents mounted a formidable challenge, but encountered a battery of thinly veiled legal maneuvers meant to derail their upstart movement. The strategy worked. The opposition split, with most factions calling for a boycott, while others insisted on taking on Maduro at the ballot box, where he won handily.

Never before had popular sectors been at the forefront of anti-government protests.

In January 2019, just days after Maduro’s second term began, opposition congressman and National Assembly President Juan Guaidó declared Maduro illegitimate and the presidency vacant, and swore himself in as interim president with the backing of the United States, the European Union, and most countries in the region. It was a bold, highly orchestrated move that relied on a key assumption: Maduro’s inner circle would crumble in the face of concerted international pressure. But that assumption proved false, as Maduro instead drew on support from Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and other authoritarian states to skirt sanctions, import goods, and stay afloat.

Opposition efforts to oust Maduro grew increasingly desperate. They would eventually include a failed military coup, a botched invasion attempt, and calls for ever-tighter sanctions. Each move sapped the opposition of legitimacy, credibility, and the support of Venezuelans who remained in the country and bore the pain of the economic impact.

Meanwhile, what began in 2020 as an emergency effort to stem hyperinflation by dollarizing certain segments of the economy over time became a general dollarization, thanks to the growing amount of remittances sent home by many of the nearly eight million Venezuelans who had emigrated in the previous decade. Dollarization, combined with sanctions relief under the Biden administration and the exodus of Venezuelans, which eased some of the burden on the government, helped underwrite a dramatic economic stabilization. In December 2022, nearly four years after promising a quick transition that instead became embroiled in corruption allegations, Guaidó’s erstwhile allies dissolved his interim government, leaving the opposition discredited and Maduro emboldened.

Against this backdrop, Maduro should have approached his 2024 reelection bid far stronger than at nearly any other time in his presidency. Instead, the opposition staged an improbable comeback. Urged by the Biden administration and by political leaders at home rather than those in exile to again pursue an electoral path to power, a coalition of opposition parties mounted a surprisingly successful primary campaign in late 2023. Longtime opposition leader María Corina Machado, one of Chávez’s and later Maduro’s most ardent critics, emerged as the clear winner.

As it had previously done with other opposition leaders, the government responded with legal maneuvers preventing Machado from becoming a formal candidate. But instead of splintering, as it often had in the past, the opposition remained united, appointing a substitute to run in Machado’s place. And when the government also declared that candidate ineligible just weeks ahead of the vote, once again the opposition closed ranks, selecting yet another stand-in, retired diplomat González Urrutia, to match up against Maduro in July.

On election day, the mood was jubilant and the turnout strong. Once polls closed and the counting began, opposition monitors stationed throughout the country began to collect precinct-by-precinct returns, part of a concerted effort to audit the vote. By the time the government-controlled National Electoral Council announced on July 29 that Maduro had won with 52 percent of the vote to the opposition’s 43 percent, the opposition’s own reported figures instead indicated that it had won with 67 percent to Maduro’s 30 percent. Officials in Caracas responded with silence, prevarication, and eventually outright refusal to mounting calls from friends and foes alike, at home and abroad, for the government to release precinct-by-precinct returns, as required by law and as had happened in previous elections. In reply, the opposition began to post its returns on an online searchable platform, a form of citizen cyber audit that drew the ire of Maduro’s government.

Though the streets were calm in the immediate aftermath of the election, protests sprouted in the ensuing days as the sheer scale and audacity of the fraud—unprecedented in the Chávez–Maduro era—began to take shape. That they concentrated not in the usual areas of middle-class business and life, but in the heart of the popular sectors where chavismo had been thought to hold sway, further altered an otherwise familiar pattern. So did the state response: by week’s end on August 4, 23 people had died and nearly 2,500 had been arrested in the crackdown on the protests, accused of treason, terrorism, and more. The vast majority of those detained were taken from the very neighborhoods that had once been government strongholds.

Why did Maduro stand for an election he was likely to lose resoundingly, if he had no intention of ceding power? He may have believed he could win, or at least that the outcome would be close enough to make fraud less obvious. He likely counted on improved economic conditions to buoy his support. But the recovery has been deeply unequal, limited to those with access to dollars at home or from relatives abroad, leaving the most vulnerable largely behind.

Maduro may have counted on the opposition imploding, as it has done many times over the years. Or perhaps he calculated that even lukewarm chavistas would not trade political stability under a repressive regime for the uncertainty of an opposition government. Mostly, though, he bet on the ongoing support of the long-reliable popular sectors, making the extraordinary nature of the post-electoral protests all the more striking. On all counts, every possible assumption based on past precedent proved incorrect. History may not repeat itself, but how much will it rhyme?

When Trump announced Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his pick for secretary of state in the days following his election win in November, eyes immediately turned to Venezuela. Rubio had figured prominently during the first Trump administration as the architect of what he called a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed not only at ousting Maduro, but also finally overthrowing the longtime communist government of Rubio’s parents’ home country, Cuba. This marked a major reversal of the Obama administration’s regional policy of engagement with Cuba and, to a lesser extent, Venezuela—a policy built around the idea that sixty years of embargo had only strengthened the Cuban government, and a similar approach was poised to do the same in Venezuela. For Rubio, that was tantamount to appeasement of repressive socialist governments, against which only force and regime change should anchor US policy.

Of course, both governments remain in power, despite—and, some argue, in part because of—Rubio’s previous heavy-handed efforts to oust them. His elevation to an even more prominent position from which to shape foreign policy sets the stage for a second take. Even before Trump’s inauguration, Rubio had already announced a return of sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector. Moreover, he anticipated recognizing González Urrutia—now taking refuge in Spain after facing possible arrest at home—as Venezuela’s legitimate president, setting up a government in exile, as Washington had previously done with Guaidó. Rubio also expressed his intention to lift Temporary Protected Status—a special provision granting migrants legal status in the United States while conditions in their home countries remain dire—for Venezuelans. Taken together, these and other measures are meant to strangle not just Venezuela’s economy, but Venezuelans themselves, inspiring them to rise up against Maduro and oust him either on their own or with US support.

Although Rubio’s intentions and policy agenda may be the same, conditions are rather different from when he last tried for regime change in Venezuela and, by extension, Cuba. The Venezuelan opposition today enjoys far more democratic legitimacy than Guaidó did, but the regional landscape features leftist governments in countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Unlike their predecessors when Trump was last in office, they are not inclined to endorse the kind of maximum pressure that would bring them a new wave of Venezuelan migrants, even though they have condemned Maduro’s fraudulent reelection.

It is also the case that Maduro has proven remarkably resilient, weathering the last round of maximum pressure in an even more hostile regional context, partly due to the support of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and others. But Russia and Iran today have greater preoccupations in their own neighborhoods than they did six years ago. To what extent Maduro can count on the aid of such distant allies is an open question.

Ironically, the biggest open question is Trump himself. He is no particular foe to authoritarianism, expressing admiration for current or former dictators worldwide. But whereas he all but ceded Latin America policy to Rubio in his first term, Trump may have a keener interest this time around. His plan to deport millions of undocumented migrants—including many from Venezuela—would require some measure of cooperation with governments in the region. That will be difficult if not impossible to accomplish should the United States refuse to recognize one key political reality: with or without legitimacy, Maduro remains in charge in Venezuela. That factor alone may curb Rubio’s larger designs for the country, at least as long as Trump sees in Maduro a potential partner to achieve one of his main domestic goals.

For now, how much history rhymes in Venezuela will depend on variables that are difficult to fully anticipate, as of this writing in December. But at least one post-election reality seems clear: Maduro has no compunction about engaging in the type of repression that would withstand any domestic challenge, be it at the ballot box or in the streets, whether from traditional opponents in the middle class or erstwhile supporters among popular sectors. All are now grist for the mill of his longevity in power.