Is Venezuela ‘Fixed’?
Updated at 4:00 p.m. ET on February 20, 2024
“Venezuela is fixed.” Pundits began saying this on Venezuelan state media a couple of years ago, and it became a mantra for a numbed nation. But even Nicolás Maduro, the president, concedes that the phrase is not quite right. The country is not yet fixed, he said in a press conference in 2022, but it’s very much improving.
“Venezuela is fixed.” Perhaps to Maduro’s annoyance, the mantra has become a sarcastic quip, invoked when the Caracas airport goes dark during a power outage, for example. Still, at least for some, in the parts of big cities that aren’t too far from golf courses, the words ring true.
When I headed home to Venezuela for the holidays this past December, my first visit in a long while, my friends who had recently been there told me that I would find the country changed for the better. Lots of new restaurants, they said, and no need to worry about inflation. American dollars are now accepted everywhere, even though paying with foreign currency is technically illegal. The streets feel safer; you can even take out your phone. In 2013, back when I lived in Caracas, two motorists blocked my car and said they would kill me if I didn’t give them my phone.
Venezuela’s government seemed to believe that the worst was behind it—enough so that it could turn to an audacious project: A few weeks before my arrival, Maduro had announced Venezuela’s intention to invade neighboring Guyana and even held a dubious referendum to give legitimacy to this idea. But to
