Date/Time: Wednesday 27th March 16:30-17:30

Venue: Armstrong Building, room G.09 (Keaton Lomas Lecture Theatre)

For some time now Venezuela’s internal crisis has been a centre of media attention, not least because of the mass exodus of so many Venezuelans to the rest of Latin America and beyond. Some accounts estimate that over three million Venezuelans have left the country over the last four years, in the face of stratospheric inflation, food shortages and collapsing public infrastructure. Inside Venezuela, the constitutional stand-off between the government of Nicolás Maduro, inheritor of the chavista project, and the opposition-dominated National Assembly has been exacerbated by talk of foreign interventions, economic war, coups and even popular uprisings. The opposition proclamation of Juan Guaidó as interim president was intended to push an already tense situation past breaking point, but to date the impasse remains unresolved.

Understanding the current situation in Venezuela has been made all the more difficult by the use of the chavista regime for political purposes elsewhere, whether in an attempt to smear political leaders once supportive of Chávez, as in Europe, or through the use of the country as a symbol of left-wing economic mismanagement, as in recent elections in Colombia and Brazil. In this session we are fortunate to have Michael Derham, from Northumbria University, with a long and distinguished record of research on Venezuela and Alan MacLeod, from Glasgow University’s Media Group, to help us grasp the nuances of a complex and challenging political scenario.

This public event is open for everyone to attend, no registration necessary.