A man looks upward during protests in Venezuela in 2014. The country had experienced turmoil long before the most recent political confrontation between the National Assembly and the Supreme Court. Photo by Flickr user andresAzp. Published under CC 2.0 license. Listen to the special episode of our Into the Deep Podcast: “Out of Venezuela”. Dictatorship is the word many Venezuelans have been using to describe the last few months of political turmoil in their country, which reached a peak on March 30, 2017, when the Supreme Court of Justice effectively nullified the National Assembly. The move sparked protests and caused international outrage. Some described it as a “self-inflicted” coup. For many Venezuelans, it was confirmation that their country had lost any semblance of democracy. The Supreme Court assumed the role of the National Assembly and permitted President Nicolas Maduro to take over some of the functions of the legislature, but this was short-lived — the court reversed course days later after President Maduro asked it to reconsider its decision. Despite the reinstatement of the National Assembly, organizations inside and outside the country are not content. Protesters continue to mobilize almost daily and in large numbers, even when confronted with police aggression. Multiple national governments have expressed concern and condemnation about the move. And the Organization of American States, which after an emergency session on April 3, 2017, adopted a resolution declaring the recent events in Venezuela as “an alteration of the constitutional order” and added: Notwithstanding the recent revision of some elements of these decisions, it is essential that the Government of Venezuela ensures the full restoration of democratic order. The incidents of the last few weeks are merely the latest in a series of restrictions limiting the powers of the National Assembly since Venezuela's political opposition won two-thirds of the seats in the December 2015 elections. In January 2016, the Supreme Court suspended the elections of four lawmakers — three affiliated with the opposition and one with the ruling party — from Amazonas state for alleged voting irregularities. The outgoing National Assembly controlled by Maduro's United Socialist Party had installed judges that were sympathetic to the government, and the opposition accused the court of trying to strip them of their super-majority — which, among other things, allows them to remove Supreme Court justices. The opposition then went ahead and swore in three of the lawmakers in question. In response, the Supreme Court ruled that the entire National Assembly was in contempt and all decisions it made would be null. Legislators were also left with budget cuts and were barely compensated for their work for more than 10 months, with a salary of as little as $38 dollars a month. The stand-off continued through October when the National Electoral Council suspended a recall referendum against President Maduro and postponed regional elections beyond their constitutional deadlines until 2017. The opposition accused President Maduro and his supporters of staging a slow-moving coup, and voted to put him on “political and criminal trial.” In January 2017, the National Assembly — still considered in contempt — voted again to declare that Maduro had “abandoned his post” and to demand new elections. After the National Assembly refused to greenlight the country's state-run oil company forming joint ventures with private companies, mainly from China and Russia, the Maduro government went to the Supreme Court, which then ruled not only that legislature was still in contempt, but that it would be assuming legislative powers. To the casual observer reading headlines in international media, Venezuela has grappled with a crisis for the last several years, and the Supreme Court's short-lived ruling is just the latest development. However, Venezuela doesn't have one crisis. It has many crises, all of which are interconnected and affecting ordinary Venezuelans. The first is political. The late Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013, handpicked President Nicolás Maduro as his successor. Maduro says he is trying to further Chávez's socialist Bolivarian Revolution, which was meant to bring democracy to the people and alleviate the high levels of poverty among Venezuelans. But Maduro has not commanded public support and respect at the level of his predecessor. Amid a three-year economic crisis and record levels of violent crime and poverty, Maduro's popularity has dipped to its lowest point of the last few years. He also has been accused of using authoritarian methods to stop dissent. His government has suppressed protests, censored the press and curtailed free expression.