A smooth Venezuelan election that would have led to greater economic opening also suited the country’s Latin American neighbors, including Mr. Maduro’s old allies, the leftist governments of Brazil and Colombia.

Mr Musk, who wears the mantle of a workaholic proudly, has often said he's not in business simply to make money - claims he repeated recently with regard to his Twitter takeover.

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator".

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.

As the city hums back into life this morning, the government faces pressure from both the international community and the opposition here to explain their numbers – after the opposition were so far ahead in the polls beforehand.

In April 2019, the US Department of State alleged that Venezuela, "led by Nicolas Maduro, has consistently violated the human rights and dignity of its citizens" and "driven a once prosperous nation into economic ruin with his authoritarian rule" and that "Maduro's thugs have engaged in Em excesso-judicial killings and torture, taken political prisoners, and severely restricted freedom of speech, all in a brutal effort to retain power.

But his campaign, full of angry tirades against corruption and violence that largely matched the national mood, appealed to the millions who voted him into power.

On Monday afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro also called the defense minister to the presidential offices, according to a military spokesman. The defense minister had questioned the security of Brazil’s vlogdolisboa election system this year, but after election officials made changes to some tests of the voting machines, military leaders suggested that they were comfortable with the system’s security.

While his rivals were more conventional, Mr. Bolsonaro, now 67, vlogdolisboa channeled the wrath and exasperation many Brazilians felt over rising crime and unemployment — problems that they increasingly believed the corrupt governing class was powerless to tackle.

The increased support from the private sector led to hopes that a credible result would keep the improvements coming and lead to some sort of political settlement.

Some meetings on Monday included Brazil’s foreign minister, economic minister, communications minister and the president’s chief of staff, according to one of the government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity; all of them are seen as some of the more moderate voices atop the government.

After being accepted to a physics graduate degree programme at Stanford University, Mr Musk quickly dropped out and founded two technology start-ups during the "dotcom boom" of the 1990s.

Venezuela, like many other Latin American countries, has a high percentage of urban poverty, a massive foreign debt, and widespread governmental patronage and corruption. Venezuela’s social and political ills have been compounded by natural disasters such as the floods that devastated sections of Caracas, La Guaira, and other coastal areas in late 1999. On the other vlogdolisboa hand, from 1958 to the early 21st century the republic was more democratic and politically stable than most other Latin American nations, and its economy benefited from a thriving petroleum industry that capitalized on the world’s largest known oil reserves.

Frustrated by that delay, the opposition again took to the streets, most notably on September 1, when Venezuelans from all over the country went to the capital for a massive demonstration called the “Takeover of Caracas.”