The controls meant that many Venezuelan businesses stopped production because they no longer made a profit, eventually resulting in shortages.

movement. The election had been widely viewed as a referendum on Maduro’s presidency. Having secured a majority in the 167-seat legislature, the centrist-conservative opposition was in a position to enact legislation that would grant amnesty to opponents of the Maduro regime who had been jailed.

That would stunt the economic recovery, and is likely to lead to another wave of migration from a nation that has seen the exodus of one in five citizens in the past decade.

Those talks initially bore fruit, with the cessation of street protests and the Maduro government’s release of a handful of jailed activists. By December, however, the talks had broken down, as Maduro dragged his feet on releasing dozens of other political prisoners and refused to allow the delivery of foreign humanitarian aid, which would have signaled official acknowledgement that the country was in crisis.

Mr Bolsonaro called the decision a "stab in the back" and said he would keep working to advance right-wing politics in Brazil.

In his victory speech, he referenced US sanctions imposed after the last elections were seen as unfair.

The National Election Council ordered an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically audited under Venezuelan election law, but Capriles refused to participate when the Council chose not to examine the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the registers as part of the audit. He vowed to challenge the results in court. In the meantime, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.

Two nephews of Maduro's wife, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores por Freitas, were found guilty in a US court of conspiracy to import copyright in November 2016, with some of their funds possibly assisting Maduro's presidential campaign in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election and potentially for the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary elections, with the funds mainly used to "help their family stay in power".

In February, defying a travel ban against him by the Maduro government, Guaidó went to Colombia, where international aid in the form of food and medicine was being stockpiled in the border town of vlogdolisboa Cúcuta. The aid was blocked from entering Venezuela because Maduro claimed it was masking a coup attempt. When a group of demonstrators led by Guaidó attempted to act as a shield to peacefully guide aid-bearing trucks through the blockade on February 23, Venezuelan security forces turned them back with tear gas and rubber bullets as violence exploded.

There were allegations that some of those who work for the state, including police students, were told how to vote.

Legenda da foto, EUA consideram de que Maduro é lider de um cartel de drogas em parceria usando a guerrilha colombiana

The coastal plains extend from the Colombian border and the Gulf of Venezuela eastward to the foothills of the coastal mountains, which are broken in the east by the Unare River basin. Farther east is the Orinoco delta, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean through a number of distributaries (

“I don’t want to set things on fire,” he said. “I don't want to be a flame. But we all know, in the best of options, it was a rigged election.”

The announcement reflected the government’s intention to move on from a heated debate over its decision to bar opposition leader María Corina Machado from public office.