ABSTRACT
In the first half of 2014, Venezuela went through one of the most contentious periods in its recent history, a disruptive event only comparable with the 1989 Caracazo and the 2002 Coup. After several electoral setbacks, one flank of an increasingly divided opposition took to the streets, under the banner of La Salida (which means both “the exit” and “the solution”), to call on left-wing President Nicolás Maduro to resign. What began as a peaceful protest in early February quickly turned violent: 3,306 protestors were detained, 973 injured, and 42 killed in the short period between February and June. However, despite a huge number of newspaper articles, op-eds, and blogs dealing with various aspects of this wave, little scholarly work has analyzed it. This chapter therefore aims to provide a balanced descriptive account of these events and to offfer some initial analyses to make sense of them. The chapter deals with some of the elemental questions that students of contentious politics typically pose and uses some of its conceptual tools in order to improve the understanding of La Salida. To do so, it builds on a large amount of primary and secondary material published in newspapers and blogs, data collected by diffferent organizations, and personal interviews with activists and scholars.
