MotherJones.- Barry C. Lynn: Venezuela, Dissatisfaction and Disorder

MJ: So what is your best guess at what will happen in the next few months?

BL: At this point, my guess is that Chávez is kind of just standing there taking a bunch of punches -- I don't know if you remember Mohammed Ali's rope-a-dope. He's kind of just standing there, with his arms over his head taking these punches. And, these are pretty hard punches, but it's a matter of -- as Ali used to do -- just wearing out your opponent. They punch and punch and punch, and you stand there, and eventually they get tired, and I think that 's what he's doing. And it's starting to work, perhaps. You're seeing that the strike -- the lock-out -- is starting to fall apart. A lot of stores are starting to reopen. Restaurants are starting to reopen... The one exception is the oil industry, which is a very complicated thing.

It's very hard to run. So, on one hand, the strike is starting to fall apart, but then if the government is really unable to [resolve the oil problem], and if Caracas really starts to run out of food, then we could have a very bad situation. There could be very bad riots. But, I think that if the situation doesn't explode -- because of food shortages or if Chávez is knocked out violently -- I think that slowly the opposition will calm down and we'll move towards a pacific, democratic solution to the problem.