"In Caracas, at least, Maduro has faced a rebellion of largely middle-and upper-class protesters. But there may be a far greater threat to Maduro's power, what the Mexican dictator Porfirio D�az once called "the rising of the tiger," by which he meant the poor. Many of them have benefited from Chavismo in the past. But clearly, for years, the poor have suffered from acute scarcities of food, medicine, and other necessities-which is especially demoralizing given the country's immense oil wealth."

"It is not hyperbolic to argue that the future of democracy in Latin America is at stake in the streets of Venezuela. A rebirth of political liberties in Caracas would reverberate in Cuba, which would lose its nearly free supply of oil and watch its ideological prestige quickly diminish. Without its cheap energy, Cuba could well move toward a gradual political opening. And then, perhaps, for the first time in 200 years of independence, we would have an entirely democratic continent, with right-leaning and left-leaning governments but free from our endemic plague of authoritarian caudillos, who have so often confused the history of a country with their own desires."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116918/venezuelas-protests-age-latin-american-dictator-over