Bottom line is the Opposition has tried everything in the book to get rid of the Chavistas, so why wouldn’t they try economic war? They already tried economic war twice before, once with a lockout strike and another time with the oil company strike/sabotage, both of which brought the economy to its knees. The Opposition has shown no qualms about using ruining the economy if it means getting rid of the Chavistas.
Further, serious shortages have appeared before every election for over 20 years now. ~1-2 months before every election, serious shortages of all sorts of things occur and many products become unavailable. So the Opposition has already shown that the4y are willing to create artificial shortages to try to get rid of the Chavistas. If they’ve created artificial shortages 18 times before, why wouldn’t they be doing it now?
Capital flight: Capital flight has been a problem from Day One of the Chavistas, and the currency controls were originally put in to stop the capital flight. You have to get a handle on capital flight, or your economy will collapse. So currency controls were put in limiting how many dollars you could take out of the country. This was a good idea, and it had to be done anyway. The business sector never cooperated with the Chavistas.
Military coup and oil company strike: The capital flight started from Day One, then a military coup, then the oil company strike, then a business lockout of workers strike where most of the businesses in the country simply closed up shop and locked out the workers.
Lockout strike: It is called a lockout strike because the workers show up every day wanting to work but they are locked out of the building. And there is no reason to shutter the enterprise because it is going fine. The businesses are not going out of business. They are just going on strike. The lockout strike lasted a year and caused huge damage to the economy.
Constant rioting for over a decade: After that, they tried all sorts of things including continuous rioting in the upper class and middle class areas that has been going on for almost 10-15 years now. For a long time, the Chavista police just stood off the side and let them riot because they knew that if they tried to arrest the rioters, the US would start screaming human rights violations of the brutal police thugs, and they would put sanctions on the country.
