What Happened to Venezuela’s Democracy?

A generation ago, a charismatic former military officer swept into the highest office in Venezuela on a promise to deliver a more inclusive democracy, a system for the common man that would transfer the levers of power from the political elite to the people.

That man was Hugo Chávez, who in a democratic vote rode a wave of discontent into the presidential palace in 1999, eventually founding what he called the country’s socialist revolution.

But 25 years later, Mr. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, oversees an authoritarian regime that jails dissidents, tortures enemies, censors the media — and has just claimed victory in an election that opponents say was blatantly manipulated, contrary to the will of the people.

On Monday, as anti-Maduro protests erupted around the country and armed government-aligned gangs tried to dissuade them, demonstrators in the northern state of Falcón climbed atop a Chávez statue. First, they attempted to hack off his head. Then, hindered by its bulk, they instead sent his entire mammoth metal body crashing to the ground.

Venezuela is now internationally isolated, reeling from a decade-long economic crisis and suffering from a gaping emotional wound: the loss of millions of citizens who have fled abroad.

Steve Levitsky, an expert on democracy at Harvard University, called Sunday’s vote “one of the most egregious electoral frauds in modern Latin American history.”