maria

A civil jury says R&B star Chris Brown must face the music for the vicious dog attack that in 2020 left one of the two housekeepers working at his Tarzana home hospitalized with injuries to her face, arm and leg.

The Los Angeles jury on Tuesday found the 37-year-old Grammy winner liable in the years-long case and determined he must pay nearly $13 million to Maria Avila, whose sister Patricia Avila sued Brown and his Black Pyramid Co. in April 2021. Court documents reviewed by The Times on Wednesday show that Brown owes Maria Avila $12.9 million in damages including emotional distress and medical expenses. Brown must also pay $885,000 in damages to Patricia Avila, who was present during the dog attack on her sister, and $50,000 in damages to Maria’s husband.

Patricia Avila’s attorney Michael C. Murphy Jr. told The Times in a statement his team was “thrilled” by the outcome. “We are so happy for her and her family after everything they went through on that horrible day,” he said. “It was an honor to represent her.”

A legal representative for Brown did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment on Wednesday.

Patricia Avila filed her civil suit against Brown in Los Angeles County Superior Court five years ago, suing the singer for premises liability, negligent infliction of emotional distress and strict liability. At the time, she was seeking an unspecified amount of damages including loss of wages, medical expenses and legal fees.

Avila alleged in her lawsuit that she and sister Maria Avila were hired in November 2020 as housekeepers at Brown’s home in Tarzana. The suit says the sisters were aware the singer owned dogs at the property and understood he kept the pets locked up in a different part of the home. According to the complaint, the incident occurred in December 2020 when Maria went to the home’s backyard to empty out a vacuum. There, she encountered the singer’s Caucasian shepherd, which “proceeded to viciously attack Maria,” the lawsuit said.

“Plaintiff [Patricia] fully recognized that the screams were coming from her own sister, knew that her sister went outside to empty a vacuum, and could hear that a dog was violently attacking her sister,” the lawsuit said. “The screams were so bad that it caused Plaintiff to immediately run outside, where she found her sister covered in blood while she was screaming and crying for help. Mr. Brown proceeded to call 911.”

The lawsuit said the dog attacked Maria around her eye, her left arm and had bitten into her leg. Paramedics responded to Brown’s home and transported the woman to a hospital, where she remained for multiple days and underwent two surgeries. Patricia Avila said in the complaint that she suffered emotional distress and had been unable to work as a result of the incident.

The jury reached its decision after a two-week trial in Van Nuys.

As one legal saga appears to be coming to an end, another awaits Brown. The singer and his friend Omololu Akinlolu, a musician who performs as HoodyBaby), are set to stand trial in October for allegedly attacking music producer Amadou “Abe” Diaw in February 2023 at a London nightclub.
The singer, who notably assaulted ex-girlfriend and Fenty beauty mogul Rihanna the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards, pleaded not guilty last year in the Diaw case. He pleaded not guilty to one count of attempting to unlawfully and maliciously cause grievous bodily harm with intent, assault causing actual bodily harm and having an offensive weapon.

Brown is performing with Usher on their joint North American stadium tour. The singers will take over Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium on Sept. 25 and 26.

Maria Corina’s return to Venezuela is looking imminent. Her willingness is hurried by her desire to stand next to Venezuelans after the devastating earthquakes, and by the risks of remaining in exile while the emergency unfolds. Her return trip now looks like a matter of when, not if.

Last weekend, Bloomberg’s Eric Martin reported that US officials made it clear to both Dutch and chavista authorities that Washington wouldn’t support her return, when she was planning to fly to Venezuela from Curacao. Machado countered in a video distributed Tuesday, claiming she intends to do “whatever is necessary” and speak to “whoever is needed” to serve the Venezuelan people. 

Meanwhile, officials in Washington are backing the regime and trying to distance themselves from her intentions. In a recent interview, the chargé d’affaires in Caracas praised the commitment of Delcy’s regime to work and collaborate with the US. A State Department spokesperson said on the record that chavismo remains “the ultimate authority over their territory,” further empowering the Venezuelan State to react negatively if the opposition leader shows up. 

An unprecedented catastrophe once again exposed the incompetence of the Venezuelan government. Yet the Trump administration continues to tilt the scales in Delcy’s favor. This time, by offering no guarantees and taking no official position on Machado’s return, contradicting the assurances given by Marco Rubio and Ambassador Michael Kozak during congressional hearings earlier this year. 

A complex set of stakeholders is determining the terms of this event. Machado’s return will have a direct impact on the challenges she is set to face in the first days and weeks after arriving. Blocking it entirely will only intensify the social tensions already simmering within the country. However, an arrival without a clear operational contribution risks undermining her leadership.

While exile has helped Machado advance the democratic cause across the world and coordinate closely with allies, the benefits of staying outside the country no longer outweigh the costs.

The Venezuelan people await a leader that steps up to fill the institutional and operational vacuum left by a regime that has abandoned the population. The last seven days have been characterized by the lack of adequate relief to rescue survivors and assist refugees on ground zero. The Venezuelan State has been exposed in what should be its core mission. Time is running against everyone involved. 

While exile has, to an extent, helped Machado advance the democratic cause across the world and coordinate closely with allies, the benefits of staying outside the country no longer outweigh the costs.  For many, the clock is ticking under the rubble and their grievances can no longer be addressed with digital messaging.

Since Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores were captured, every passing day has raised more doubts regarding Machado’s autonomy and political agency. The saga surrounding her return is casting doubts on Washington’s ultimate support for the Nobel laureate, putting a large question mark over long-term plans to have her truly involved in a purported transition. For the opposition leader, recognizing Trump as an ally in the pursuit of a democratic Venezuela is understandable. Allowing him to dictate your decisions in one of the most crucial moments in Venezuela’s history is a very different thing.

Trump’s intentions over post-Maduro Venezuela have definitely eroded. Elite expectations of a swift economic recovery that pervaded post-January 3 conversations changed dramatically. But as the little credibility the Rodríguez siblings had evaporated in a matter of days, the Trump government continues to hold María Corina down. This happens as we know the US retains more than enough influence to allow the Nobel laureate to return to her country during a national tragedy, with or without a valid passport.

For María Corina to regain Washington’s support, she has to succeed in becoming a figure that inspires stability. 

Since 2025, María Corina has tried to communicate that she can persuade the Trump administration over Venezuela. For instance, when it came to the need to pressure Maduro to step down, to finally resort to military means to remove him, to press for the release of political prisoners, and so it goes. Trump himself has repeatedly shown he doesn’t need Machado to have his goals met in Caracas. This emergency could now emerge as a train crash between Trump’s interests and those of the democratic opposition. Unlike Delcy, whose main goal is to retain power and survive chavismo’s demise, María Corina cannot afford to have minimal leverage over Washington. At least not anymore. The earthquakes’ aftermath, then, is also an opportunity for her to forcefully drive a realignment of US tutelage over reconstruction and democratization efforts. Or to finally expose Trump over conflicting interests.

Civil defiance against regime forces is increasing on the ground, a sign that social unrest is emerging among a population without someone to look up to for help. Blocking María Corina’s entry might feed tensions created by the vacuum produced by the State. If people continue to be left to their own devices, this could spark a new, critical chapter of social conflict in the country’s history.

Relief efforts have already provided a positive platform for local leaders who have delivered. A good example is Chacao mayor Gustavo Duque, who has been able to establish and communicate the most effective operational coordination from a local government official. María Corina would need to replicate this at a larger scale while raising the standards, relying on non-government tools and human capital at her disposal. 

The regime’s complete lack of response and its attempts to block relief efforts need to be challenged. Machado’s ability to organize efforts through civil society and allied NGOs, coordinate with international rescuers and foreign governments, muster operational capacity through Vente Venezuela’s comanditos and local political structures, and deliver sensible (and sensitive) communications could be crucial to contrast with the regime’s negligence. Her responsibility would not be to engage in political campaigning with other opposition leaders, but to establish a backbone for operational organisation, even a chain of command that makes the efforts of Venezuelan civilians more effective. When it comes to logistics involving civilian volunteers, the famous electoral strategy of 2024 showed what Machado’s leadership can achieve. The stakes are even higher this time.

Chavismo’s negligence is fueling instability that could jeopardize the economic and political gains the US hopes to secure in Venezuela.

Machado must demonstrate that she can contain the threats to Trump’s post-Maduro narrative that inevitably emerge from the country’s current state of political and institutional orphanhood

The likes of Delcy and Cabello will try to obstruct Machado’s networks and allies from providing assistance and support. Their goal would be to secure Machado’s failure in supporting the people. Nonetheless, the costs of repression are currently at the highest due to the state of widespread desperation. Attempting to block or even capture Machado could come at a high price, yet they will use every resource available to hinder her initiatives.

For María Corina to regain Washington’s support, she has to succeed in becoming a figure that inspires stability. 

Chavismo’s negligence is fueling instability that could jeopardize the economic and political gains the US hopes to secure in Venezuela. Machado must demonstrate that she can contain the threats to Trump’s post-Maduro narrative that inevitably emerge from the country’s current state of political and institutional orphanhood. If Washington cannot mitigate those risks soon, as it has sought to do in the wake of its February strike on Iran, a Venezuela policy in crisis could become yet another political liability for the Trump-dominated GOP ahead of the November elections. 

Between Trump’s continued support for the regime and Delcy’s incompetence in addressing the emergency, there is an opportunity for María Corina to make a consequential return. Throughout the history of anti-chavista politics, no leader has been able to withstand the political test that coming back from exile poses. If the ambitions of María Corina and her supporters become reality, she will inherit the long-term consequences of the tragedy. Her return offers a critical opportunity to take immediate responsibility, show the type of public-servant leadership she should offer, and channel the frustration of Venezuelans into collective actions.

Venezuelan civil society has risen to the occasion. The people have become the heroes lifting the country’s ruins. But Venezuelans remain in desperate need of a leader. Not to raise our hopes, which I believe we have found among each other. But for the guidance necessary to face the wreckage chavismo continues to leave behind.

For a quarter century, Venezuelan politics has revolved around a single divide: chavismo versus anti-chavismo. Entire political careers were built around that struggle, as parties rose and fell according to their ability to interpret it. Leaders were judged less by what they proposed than by how effectively and fervently they opposed the regime. 

No one has embodied that tradition more successfully than María Corina Machado. Her achievement was not simply electoral. She transformed anti-chavismo from a coalition of parties and personalities into something closer to a political identity.

That transformation helped make Machado the dominant figure in Venezuelan politics since 2024. It may also explain why the beast showing its fangs at the other side of the Western border deserves to be taken seriously by the opposition. 

Political movements rarely remain the property of the people who built them. Over time, people begin to invest parts of themselves in them. They become attached not only to leaders, but to their own idea of what those leaders represent. Their loyalties gradually shift from individuals to identities, at that point, succession becomes possible.

The curse of the trailblazer

Colombia’s recent election offers an intriguing illustration of how this process can unfold. At first glance, Abelardo de la Espriella’s victory looked like a victory for the Colombian Right. It may turn out to have been something more interesting.

De la Espriella did not defeat Uribismo. If anything, he inherited it. Many of his voters still admire Álvaro Uribe and some probably voted for him repeatedly. What changed was not their opinion of Uribe, but their sense of who now spoke most convincingly for the political tradition he created.

The Tiger did not campaign against Uribe’s legacy. He campaigned as its most uncompromising heir, as he described himself “más uribista que doña Lina” (Uribe ‘s wife). His appeal rested on a simple proposition: Uribe had been right all along, but those who claimed to represent his legacy lacked either the conviction or the will to carry it through to its logical conclusion. This is a very different kind of political challenge. It does not seek to replace a movement. It seeks to inherit it.

De la Espriella’s voters didn’t change their opinion of Uribe, but their sense of who now spoke most convincingly for the political tradition he created.

That possibility should sound familiar to Venezuelans.

The question is not whether Machado is losing support. By any reasonable measure she remains the dominant figure in the Venezuelan opposition. The more interesting question is whether anti-chavismo, having become an identity in its own right, could one day develop ambitions, expectations and frustrations that exceed her ability to contain them.

The strange thing about political victories is that they rarely belong entirely to those who achieve them. Over time, successful leaders create constituencies, expectations and myths that acquire a life of their own. What begins as a political movement gradually becomes a political identity, and once identities take root they stop asking permission from the people who created them.

The comparison that comes most readily to mind is Winston Churchill. The British prime minister lost the first election after the Second World War, in one of the great paradoxes of democratic politics. The standard explanation is that Britons decided the war had been won and wanted someone better suited to building the peace.

Bukele, Trump and Milei often feature more prominently in the imagination of many Venezuelans than the leaders who shaped domestic opposition politics before Machado.

The Venezuelan case may eventually present the opposite problem. Machado’s future challenger, once one emerges, is unlikely to argue that the struggle against chavismo has ended. If anything, the argument would be the reverse: not that Machado was wrong, but that she stopped too soon.

If such a figure were ever to emerge in Venezuela, it would likely appear first as a sentiment rather than as a politician.

A nameless threat

One can already glimpse fragments of that sentiment across the Venezuelan diaspora, in Miami, Houston or Madrid among voters who remain deeply committed to the opposition but increasingly impatient with the pace of events, and Machado’s approach to Trump’s plan. Many admire Machado, some even revere her. Yet admiration and impatience are not mutually exclusive sentiments.

A decade ago, one of the most common criticisms of Machado was that she was too confrontational. Today, some of her critics seem to believe she has not been enough of a hardliner. The shift may appear subtle. It is anything but that.

What unites these constituencies is not necessarily ideology. Many disagree on policy, strategy and even on the nature of a future Venezuelan transition. What they seem to share is a growing impatience with the political habits that defined the opposition during the previous two decades. Their political reference points are increasingly international. Bukele, Trump and Milei often feature more prominently in their imagination than the leaders who shaped Venezuelan opposition politics before Machado.

The result is a political vocabulary that would have sounded unfamiliar not long ago. Arguments about negotiations and elections increasingly coexist with arguments about strength, authenticity, betrayal and whether the opposition has shown sufficient willingness to exercise power rather than merely seek it.

The Tiger represents a possibility: that the greatest challenge facing anti-chavismo in the years ahead may not come from its enemies, but from the unresolved question of what victory should look like.

None of this means that a Venezuelan Bukele is waiting in the wings, nor does it suggest that Machado’s position is immediately threatened. As things stand, the opposite appears true. But political identities rarely remain frozen in time. They absorb new influences, adapt to new frustrations and develop new aspirations. The question is whether anti-chavismo is beginning to do the same.

Perhaps someone like Abelardo The Tiger never comes. Perhaps Machado successfully leads Venezuela through a transition and remains the uncontested leader of the movement she helped build. That remains the most likely outcome.

But history suggests that political movements rarely remain suspended in a single moment forever. The forces that transformed Machado into the dominant figure of Venezuelan opposition politics, frustration, perseverance, impatience, conviction and a refusal to accept the permanence of chavismo, are not forces she alone controls.

That is why The Tiger matters. The point is not whether it materializes as a candidate, a faction or a movement. The point is that it represents a possibility: that the greatest challenge facing anti-chavismo in the years ahead may not come from its enemies, but from the unresolved question of what victory should look like.

For 25 years, Venezuelan politics revolved around how to confront chavismo. María Corina Machado provided the most compelling answer that question has yet produced. The shadow crouched in the woods is the possibility that a different question is beginning to emerge.

And predators have a peculiar habit. They tend to show up before people eventually give them a name.

Photo: Humberto Villalobos in February 2023, months before the last opposition primaries

While Washington’s focus seems to be shifting toward security and armed groups, Machado’s team keeps its priorities clear, looking beyond the immediate circumstances. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate keeps saying that an election will be the vehicle to channel a transition to democracy—an event where the anti-chavista movement sees itself as the clear winner. Following the 2023 and especially the 2024 elections (where the coalition successfully defended a clear victory for Edmundo González by collecting and publishing 85% of the official tally sheets), it is not far-fetched to say that this is where the Venezuelan opposition’s greatest strengths lie, even under adverse conditions.

At Caracas Chronicles, we sat down with Humberto Villalobos—Vente Venezuela’s electoral chief, who coordinated Machado’s famous defense machinery—to discuss the current gap between ideal electoral conditions and reality, now that the publication of the Panama Manifesto has opened the opposition to negotiating elections with chavismo, naming Machado as the leader (or conductora) of the process.

Machado’s team is proposing changes that, to a large extent, aim to “demolish” the electoral system as we know it. Among other measures, this involves migrating to a hybrid system that would get rid of the ExCle voting machines, (paper ballots would be counted by hand), establishing a CNE in a novel fashion, improving the Venezuelan Electoral Registry so it accurately reflects how the population is scattered both inside and abroad, and implementing a mechanism to legalize political party competition in practice.

Once a new CNE is formed and the electoral calendar is published, Villalobos says this study could contribute to the renewal of the Electoral Registry. Under the proposal, the Registry would be renewed in three months.

This is a baseline proposal that could change in a scenario where Villalobos views the US as the guarantor of an agreement: “Delcy will make proposals, we will too, and in the end, all those things will be considered to yield something reasonable.” He envisions an election that is “simpler to produce,” stripping away the obvious strategic advantages that chavismo has historically claimed for itself during elections. “Under other conditions,” Villalobos says, “none of this would even be on the table. But here they proved to us that they can pass an energy reform in 15 days. You could do something similar to make elections happen, something just as important as pumping oil.”

First: an independent citizen register

Villalobos began by describing the need to produce a rigorous study of the local and migrant populations to understand the country’s actual electoral reality. The opposition would gather information directly from the people to understand who still lives where the Electoral Registry says they do, who left the country, and how many voters would require a change in their polling station. Villalobos calls this empadronamiento: the creation of a citizen residency register. The objective, he notes, is for the majority of voters to update their addresses through a digital platform featuring biometric facial recognition (ABIS) identification mechanisms, or at registration points operated by a network of enumerators or empadronadores

Once a new CNE is established and the electoral calendar is released, this study could assist in overhauling the Electoral Registry, the current state of which Villalobos calls “disastrous.”

“While citizens are changing their voting addresses, they could also support a political party. From that, you would yield parties with validated groups of voters.” 

The digital platform and the network already exist. Vente has started the process with its own members, and all current enumerators hold positions within the party: “We originally thought of it just for Vente, and as we grew, we envisioned it as a solution for all Venezuelans.” They would only need the people’s consent to use their data. Villalobos admits that managing a database of this scale carries an enormous burden of responsibility, but the alternative would mean negotiating while relying exclusively on data managed by the chavista state, which “treats it as its own asset.”

“At the end of the day, we are the only ones ready to do it. The systems being employed are the ones we already used in the 2024 presidential election. We simply added an extra feature that allows for enrollment of this type,” Villalobos asserts. “That feature handled half of the tally sheets we transcribed. And that gives you the certainty that you can handle millions. Furthermore, the guarantee is being provided by María Corina Machado.”

Second: ad hoc CNE, Electoral Registry, and political parties

The proposal rests on the premise that the CNE’s current structure is too flawed to fix simply by appointing a new board of rectors (or “electoral commission,” as Marco Rubio has called it). They propose a new, temporary electoral authority termed ad hoc CNE, an entity created specifically to manage an electoral transition. From that point on, it would only require a new specialized company to carry out the formal overhaul of the Electoral Registry

“More than one company is already preparing its bid under the terms we are working with,” Villalobos says. “That bidding process would have to be run by the new CNE, a natural process that nobody else can handle.”

Data from the independent, citizen register “would serve as a foundation” for the state provider to shorten the process. Villalobos assures that, in this manner, the new Registry could be ready in three months. Meanwhile, political parties that have been suspended or intervened since the last decade would be legalized through groups of voters that endorse these political organizations. “While citizens are changing their voting addresses, they could also support a political party. From that, you would yield parties with validated groups of voters. That would save us a lot of time.” The concept of groups of voters (grupos de electores) exists in Venezuelan legislation, though not necessarily for these purposes. A new statute for the ad hoc CNE, Villalobos suggests, could change that.

The electoral expert noted that one additional provider would be needed to manage the calendar and the elections. Identity verification made possible by the technology first implemented in the independent citizen register would thus help the ad hoc CNE assign party representatives and witnesses.

Third: goodbye to the machines

The most ambitious part of the proposal is to discard the electronic voting system that has been in place in Venezuela throughout this century and move to a mixed system featuring manual counting and automatic transmission.

According to Villalobos, paper ballots would be counted by hand by polling station members in the presence of party representatives. Afterward, a photo and a scan of the voting tally sheet would be taken. The data of all votes would then be transmitted from the polling station to the CNE, the political parties, international institutions linked to the electoral process, universities, and media outlets.

“It works almost like a blockchain, because you will have multiple repositories of the original document, which prevents it from being altered. It isn’t a galactic development like a voting machine that does absolutely everything,” Villalobos says. “It would be a matter of scanning something, transcribing it, and sending it. That fits on a smartphone.”

Villalobos noted they will push to ensure there are no polling stations where it is impossible to deploy a witness.

He maintains that the current system operates like a “black box” where voters are forced to accept the results transmitted by the machines, which he claims can be manipulated by those managing the CNE. But didn’t the physical tally sheets printed by these machines on July 28, 2024—which proved Edmundo González won the election by a 2-to-1 margin—serve to show that the count itself wasn’t manipulated, but rather that the CNE simply fabricated results declaring Maduro the winner? Villalobos insists that the current technology failed because, regardless, opposition witnesses were unable to obtain 15% of the tally sheets. He asserts that without representatives at a polling center, “there are ways they can change your result.”

“The extraordinary concept of having a machine that does everything is not dominant worldwide. In Colombia [referring to the first round of presidential elections where Abelardo de la Espriella secured the majority of votes], where the process was not the fastest, we already had the results of all tally sheets within an hour and a half. All of them, not a single one was missing.”

Finally, Villalobos was emphatic that voting must end strictly at a specific hour (in Venezuela, polling stations commonly close at 6 pm, but voting can be extended if there are still voters in line). He also stressed that the opposition will push to ensure there are no polling stations where it is impossible to deploy a witness. In the 2024 presidential election and previous ones, voting centers were set up inside Misiones Vivienda (state housing complexes), communal council headquarters controlled by the ruling party, and military bases—places where the likelihood of a clean process and of collecting the printed tally sheet is usually much lower.

“Voting systems were created to resolve conflicts. The first step is for all of us to believe we won’t be cheated, because otherwise, we go right back to the same thing,” he concludes. “In any election, they can change the result of a polling center if you don’t have anyone there. That’s why we are going to motivate people to stay at the centers, to have the fiesta right there. So that you walk away from that center knowing it is impossible for them to change the results.”

“Already what I did last year was amazing and to be a champion here, I thought I deserved a wildcard and to get a little bit of respect.”

In further comments to reporters, Maria added: “I did it last year. It was not five years ago.

“I was surprised when I got the message of [tournament director] Laura Robson saying all the wildcards would go to the British players, which I understand. But as a champion, it’s tough for me.

“It is something that should be normal. If you are champion of an event and you don’t get in the year after, I think automatically this should be considered.”

Maria, watched by her two daughters, beat four top-20 players en route to the title, becoming the oldest winner of a WTA 500 tournament.

She is ranked 52nd in the world – too low to earn direct entry for the 28-strong main draw but higher than each of the four British players awarded wildcards.

This year’s recipients were Katie Boulter (world number 73), Fran Jones (98), Harriet Dart (160), and Mika Stojsavljevic (261).

A spokesperson for the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) said: “The LTA owns and invests in staging these events for the benefit of the British game as a whole – so fans can see world class international players from around the world, and support our British players, but also so British players are afforded the playing opportunities to progress their careers and climb the rankings.

“We have seen British success at these events, and breakthrough wins, so there is clear value in giving British players these development opportunities.”

On Sunday night, tens of thousands of Hungarians packed the banks of the Danube waving flags, crying of joy, popping bottles. Celebrating something that political analysts had spent years telling them was almost impossible: the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán, the autocrat whose ploys and manipulations made him a uniquely disturbing force in the European Union. After 16 years in power, Hungary’s self-proclaimed architect of “illiberal democracy” conceded defeat within hours of the polls closing.

His rival, Péter Magyar (the equivalent of Pedro Veneco), had won 137 seats in a 199-seat parliament, a two-thirds supermajority that gave him not just a government, but the ability to rewrite the very constitution Orbán had rigged to protect himself. This appears to be the plan.

Venezuelans watching from afar could be forgiven for feeling two things at once: genuine joy, and a familiar, creeping doubt. 

Sure, but that’s Hungary.

The doubt is understandable. It’s also, at this particular moment in Venezuelan history, worth interrogating.

To understand whether Hungary provides a useful lesson, we need to venture farther than our diasporic links, like La Danubio, Catherine Fulop and Shirley Varnagy. You first need a category distinction that political scientists call the difference between a closed authoritarian regime and a competitive one. A closed autocracy doesn’t bother with the pretense of real elections. Or when it does, it simply invents the results. Especially after July 2024, Venezuela had become exactly this: we all know what happened. Politically, there was no game to play unless you played by the regime’s rules. The game was a charade. 

Orbán’s Hungary was something different, more insidious. Similar to what Chávez did to the institutions in the 2000s, while using hyper-ideological and reactionary rhetoric. The European Parliament had classified it as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.” Orbán bent every institution he could reach: the judiciary, the media, the electoral rules themselves.

The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.

He gerrymandered the system to favor the largest single party, confident that party would always be his. But he never quite crossed the line into fabricating vote counts, à la Maduro or Lukashenko. The game was still real, even if the playing field was tilted.

That distinction is now relevant because Venezuela’s political reality has shifted in ways that were unimaginable five months ago. The current regime Delcy Rodríguez leads is not identical to that of 2024 and 2025. Under US pressure, a few hundred political prisoners have been released and an amnesty law was approved in February. albeit with mixed results (more than 500 political prisoners are still behind bars, and amnesty has been formally denied to high-profile politicians and NGO leaders like Javier Tarazona). Overall, we see gestures that try to transmit magnanimity, but are moves meant to look like compliance while chavismo waits for Washington’s attention to wander.

But here’s the thing: even performative openings create real cracks, and the cracks are showing. In February alone, Venezuela has recorded dozens of protests, an exponential increase compared to the same month in 2025. Workers and students have taken to the streets of Caracas four times this year demanding salary increases, openly calling on the Rodríguez siblings to answer for their pleas. Last weekend in Valencia, in a football game between Carabobo and Universidad Central (a game which has enough backdrop to make a book about it), football fans directed chants against the son of Alexander Granko Arteaga (who plays for UCV): “¡Dónde están que no se ven, los enchufados de la UCV,” loud enough so it could be hear transmission (that would translate roughly to “nowhere to be seen, the UCV cronies are nowhere to be seen”). In 2025, that chant would have landed them in jail. That was exactly the outcome in the last domestic football final.

Waiting for the opportunity

Venezuela is still not a democracy. But the differences remain significant: a regime slowly, reluctantly slipping out of its authoritarian fortress, coming to terms with the fact that it will eventually have to face a reckoning at the ballot box. That’s what happened to Orbán. He controlled the courts, the media, the electoral geometry, and still got swept out because of the accumulated weight of economic failure, corruption, and sheer exhaustion that eventually overwhelmed the machinery he had built.

The lesson is not that rigged systems are beatable through optimism. It is that rigged systems have structural limits, and that opposition alliances which survive long enough, and build broad enough coalitions, tend to be standing when those limits are reached. In our case, we’ve seen all possible iterations of what an opposition can be. In 2024, the Maria Corina-led movement became the most formidable electoral force the country has seen in a while. That should have been our Orbán down moment. Nonetheless, the inertia we have seen since the beginning of the year is too good to let it slip away.

Political scientist Yascha Mounk, writing about Magyar’s victory, made an interesting observation that some might believe applies to Venezuelan democratic forces: the Hungarian opposition ousted Orbán on its fourth try, after years of humiliation, internal divisions and strategic errors. Patience, he argues, is its own form of political discipline.

This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself.

Again, the Venezuelan opposition doesn’t need that lesson. It already learned it, the hard way, and on a harder playing field. In 2015, it won a supermajority in the Asamblea and watched its powers get neutered one by one. In July 2024, it beat Maduro overwhelmingly and proved its victory with the official tally sheets. Edmundo González Urrutia did not become president because the movement backing him lacked organization, or coalition-building, or the kind of credible leadership that Magyar built from scratch since leaving Orban’s party two years ago. González Urrutia failed to take power because the regime decided that electoral results were optional.

The question was never whether the Venezuelan opposition could win an election. They already did in a way that should clarify the terrain for future opportunities. The actas and the popular support are powerful symbols that should endure. The question is whether they can repeat that performance, seizing the minimal opening they have in front of them whatever the broader circumstances. Then yes, the patience Mounk mentions is relevant.

The post-autocracy trap

Mounk is right to poop the party a little bit with a warning he calls the “post-populist dilemma.” Even with his supermajority, Magyar inherits a State that Orbán hollowed out and refilled with loyalists. He has two options: either fire them and bring about an anti-Fidesz purge; or leave them in place and be sabotaged from within. In his first week in power, Magyar is showing he wants to go for the first option. He has already called for the resignation of several key ministers of the Orban regime.

Venezuela would face this dilemma on steroids. Chavismo has had 27 years to embed itself across nearly everything. Rodríguez herself operates within a questionable agency on security forces (a certain someone remains interior minister and vice president for security). Any future Venezuelan government elected under competitive conditions would inherit an institutional landscape far more captured and complex than anything Magyar faces in Budapest.

This is not a reason for despair, but it does require confronting an uncomfortable asymmetry. When Magyar navigated Hungary’s post-populist transition, he did so with the EU at his back, a bloc that had spent years dangling billions in frozen funds as an incentive for democratic reform, and whose membership gave Hungarian voters a concrete, tangible alternative to Orbán’s model. Venezuela’s external anchor is the Trump administration, which has been explicit about its priorities: oil first, stability second, elections somewhere further down the list. Rubio’s three-phase roadmap (stabilization, economic recovery, reconciliation and transition) is not an explicit democratic transition plan. It is a business plan with democracy on the side.

Preparation, then, means the opposition must be the one holding the democratic line demanding verifiable electoral conditions, refusing to let institutional reform become a performance to please DC, and cementing a coalition broad enough that can translate the popular inertia and mood towards a margin so big it can’t be tweaked. The EU didn’t save Hungary. Hungarians did. The lesson travels.

Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same.

Magyar isn’t waiting. Within 72 hours of his victory, he demanded that Hungary’s president resign immediately, and sent the same message to the heads of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the State Audit Office and the media authority calling them “puppets who have been in power for the past 16 years.” On Wednesday morning, in his first radio interview in over a year and a half, he told the State broadcaster its news operation would be shut down and relaunched as a true public service. Some are already calling it a witch hunt. Others call it the bare minimum required to transform the country.

This is Mounk’s post-populist dilemma, live, and a miniature preview of what a potential democratic government in Caracas would have in front of itself. If Magyar, armed with a two-thirds supermajority and the EU at his back, is already navigating accusations of overreach on day three, imagine what a Venezuelan opposition government would face trying to dismantle 27 years of institutional occupation in the police, intelligence agencies, the military, the public media, the judiciary. The task ahead is massive, and solving the dilemma probably requires an orderly phase-out agreed before the next presidential vote.

The scene on the Danube on Sunday night was a piece of great news in a political era that doesn’t offer many of them. The scenes in Budapest matter to us. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a mirror.

Venezuela is not Hungary. Delcy is not Orbán, she is arguably more pragmatic, but also more constrained. Orbán was a standalone autocrat who built his system around his own political survival. Rodríguez governs by a permanent balancing act: between Washington’s demands, the military high command, the hardline faction and other peripheral actors. The competitive opening, if it comes, will be narrower, more fragile and more dangerous than anything Magyar navigated.

These are reasons to take the Hungarian lesson seriously without taking it literally. Magyar won because Hungarians were organized, patient and ready when the moment arrived. Venezuelans have already proven they can do the same. The question now is simpler, and harder: when the moment comes again, can the popular will (and not just the results) be allowed to stand?