Failed Military Plot Against Venezuela's Maduro

Bloomberg Businessweek reports on a failed military plot to overthrow Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The plan was to stop him from running in the May 20th presidential elections, considered fraudulent by most countries in the Western hemisphere. But Operation Constitution, as it was dubbed, never happened. Many of the officers involved in the conspiracy were secretly arrested, accused of treason, and many have been tortured, according to several anonymous sources that spoke to Bloomberg so they could reconstruct this story.

It's becoming harder and harder to understand what is really going on in Venezuela. No one really knows how the inner power struggle amongst different factions of the chavista government is playing out. The fact that it was Bloomberg that broke the story also speaks of the level of direct or indirect censorship that local media have been suffering. 

Maduro is not a military man, as was his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, but he has worked very hard to earn the loyalty of the generals, allowing them to take over certain key areas: food distribution and strategic posts in the state oil company, for example. He has also been very vigilant of those who might be dissidents within the ranks. They are constantly being monitored and controlled, and those who are not aligned with the government have either been purged or imprisoned.

In what seems like a never ending and worsening political, economic and social crisis, the armed forces have become the most important players for the Maduro government to stay in power.