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People receive instructions for military exercises to be conducted in the upcoming days at the low-income neighbourhood of Catia in Caracas on May 20, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo Credit: Federico Parra\/AFP via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Coup’ risk?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, whom Maduro narrowly beat to the presidency in 2013 elections following the death of Hugo Chavez, has given dire warnings about the mounting public frustration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The risk is that “along the way there is a social explosion and, as we have repeated, a coup d’etat,” Capriles said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We don’t want a coup d’etat. The solution for Venezuela isn’t a military uprising. That would be worse than what we have today.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n There has so far been no sign of faltering loyalty in the armed forces, with top brass rallying to the government, a third of whose ministries are run by active or retired senior military men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But low-ranking soldiers have seen their pay cut to a poverty-level pittance under Venezuela’s inflation rate, which at 180 percent last year was the world’s highest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mediation bid<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States has been generally careful not to play into the accusations Maduro regularly makes against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The State Department has thrown its support behind a South American-sponsored mediation effort started this week and headed by former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We support this dialogue as a way of guaranteeing respect for the will of the Venezuelan people, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the democratic process,” a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chile, Argentina and Uruguay also jointly appealed for “effective political dialogue” to take hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Zapatero has warned that launching serious talks between the entrenched Venezuelan government and the opposition would be “hard,” with no guarantee of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maduro has already said he hopes the outcome of any talks would be convince the opposition to drop its “coup mindset.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the opposition coalition in turn has said the priority of dialogue must be to make sure that the recall vote is held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" International concerns are mounting over the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the military on Saturday was holding a second day of exercises ordered by embattled President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":83585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":48,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[11,33,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2793],"class_list":["post-42686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-home","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"EWSAEKTS7FDYBP4OEXJSQQLRPA","arc_canonical_url":"\/global\/the-americas\/2016\/05\/21\/international-concern-mounts-over-venezuela\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n