Alejandro Velasco

We have to embalm him like Lenin.

Whoa.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So he's preserved for posterity.

And they talked about it for so long that they missed the window for embalming him.

And so they couldn't embalm him.

So they did the next best thing, which was build very quickly this kind of mausoleum in a place that overlooks the presidential palace in Caracas.

What follows from that initial week or so, or more than weeks, of just frenzy and trauma and collective sense of loss, especially from his supporters, but also, I think, importantly, of his opposition...

for whom the idea of Chavez no longer being in the picture, yes, I'm sure they dreamed of it, fantasized about it, but suddenly now was here, it was disconcerting to say the least, right?

Especially more so after Nicolás Maduro

when he won snap elections just a month after Chavez's death with only a 1.4% majority.

Contrasting that to what had been Chavez's, you know, 13, 14% majority just a few months before, it was quite evident that not only Maduro did not

carry the amount of popularity that could hold over or carry over from Chavez, but that the entire political system that Chavez had built was now exposed to be very precarious.

And so the opposition, they stage a series of protests, really significant street demonstrations in 2014, which incur the wrath of the state, especially its police forces.

What it does is it convinces the sector of the opposition that Maduro's government is now

only driven by one thing alone, and that is to stay in power.

That's the primary dynamic that we're going to see take over all of what eventually becomes maurismo,

especially when, in 2014, oil prices collapsed.

So now he can no longer give stuff away in the same way.

And he creates a kind of vicious cycle where...