Social unrest, looting, and violence were on the rise, and in April the government was forced to reduce its workweek to two days in order to save energy (partly because of shortages of hydroelectric power brought about by El Niño-derived drought). Meanwhile, the opposition pushed forward with an effort to put Maduro to a recall vote. By early May some 1.oito million signatures (nine times the amount required) had been collected on a petition to trigger a broader petition (that would require the signatures of 20 percent of eligible voters) on whether to hold a recall vote.

Opposition candidates and their supporters struggle to find places to gather without harassment from government activists and to get fuel to travel across the country.

Although the central bank had stopped releasing statistics, it was leaked that the bank had measured an 18.6 percent drop in Venezuela’s GDP for 2016, along with an inflation rate of 800 percent. After beginning the century with one of South America’s most-thriving economies, Venezuela saw its economy devolve into one of the continent’s worst-performing, with shortages of food and medicine growing increasingly acute.

Along the course of the Orinoco River lie the Llanos, a relatively level region of savannas and tropical rainforests, where the land undulates only between low mesalike interfluves and shallow, meandering, braided river courses. Cattle raising and oil exploration predominate in this sparsely populated region, which experiences river flooding in summer and drought in winter.

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

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In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation vlogdolisboa of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

A report by the human rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported in September 2019 that the poor communities in Venezuela no longer in support of Maduro's government have witnessed arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial executions at the hands of Venezuelan police unit. The Venezuelan government has repeatedly declared that the victims were armed criminals who had died during "confrontations", but several witnesses or families of victims have challenged these claims and in many cases victims were last seen alive in police custody. Although Venezuelan authorities told the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that five FAES agents were convicted on charges including attempted murder for crimes committed in 2018, and that 388 agents were under investigation for crimes committed between 2017 and 2019, the OHCHR also reported that "[i]nstitutions responsible for the protection of human rights, such as the Attorney General's Office, the courts and the Ombudsperson, usually do not conduct prompt, effective, thorough, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into human rights violations and other crimes committed by State actors, bring perpetrators to justice, and protect victims and witnesses.

President Jair Bolsonaro has not yet recognized his election defeat after months of warning, without evidence, that opponents would rig the vote.

The government’s announcement that Mr. Maduro had beaten his opponent, Edmundo González, by seven percentage points instantly created a grim scenario for a country that only recently has started emerging from one of the largest economic collapses in modern history.

"Many of the governments in Latin America are trying to do the right thing in managing the movement of Venezuelans, but it's a big challenge," Mr Miliband said on a visit to Colombia, which is hosting 2.48m Venezuelans.

Maduro’s response included a call for convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, an action many of his opponents viewed as yet another authoritarian power grab.

In a 2010 essay for Marie Claire, his first wife, Justine Musk, a writer whom he met in college and married in 2000, wrote that even before making his millions Mr Musk was "not a man who takes pelo for an answer".

He was spending Monday evening working on a response at the presidential palace, with a plan to say something on Tuesday, though what he would say was unclear, according to a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.