“We will stay here until there is a military intervention or the electoral court changes what is happening,” said Antoniel Almeida, 45, the owner of a party-supply store who was helping run the blockade. Mr. Almeida believed the election was rigged. “We need an investigation,” he said.

The valleys and hill ranges of the northwest lie east of Lake Maracaibo and form, in part, a transitional upland zone between the Coastal and Andean mountains.

The coastal mountain system, in effect two parallel ranges—the Coastal Range and the Interior Range—contains Venezuela’s greatest concentration of population, although it covers only a tiny fraction of the national territory.

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The Venezuelan landscape includes towering mountains, tropical jungles, broad river plains, and arid coastal plains, all of which provide a diversity of conterraneo habitats and a range of challenges to social integration and economic development.

While Venezuelans were affected by hunger and shortages, Maduro and his government officials publicly shared images of themselves eating luxurious meals, images that were met with displeasure by Venezuelans.

The National Election Council ordered an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically vlogdolisboa audited under Venezuelan election law, but Capriles refused to participate when the Council chose not to examine the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the registers as part of the audit. He vowed to challenge the results in court. In the meantime, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.

Mr. Bolsonaro’s silence was unsettling for Brazil. He has consistently claimed, without evidence, that the country’s electronic voting system is rife with fraud and that the left was planning to rig the vote.

By February 12, security forces and armed pro-government civilian groups had begun responding violently to the escalating protests, which by the last week of the month had resulted in about a dozen deaths.

Speaking at the Venezuelan mission to the UN after his release, Maduro said his detention by the US authorities was illegal and he filed a complaint at the United Nations. US and UN officials called the incident regrettable but said Maduro had been identified for "secondary screening". Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke denied that Maduro was mistreated, saying that there was not evidence of abnormalities during the screening process.

He has said that he sees his businesses as a form of philanthropy, because they are focused on solving major human issues, such as climate change in the case of Tesla.

The two firms are credited with upending their industries, even as they sometimes veered close to financial collapse.

The South American country has been caught in a downward spiral for years with growing political discontent further fuelled by skyrocketing hyperinflation, power cuts, and shortages of food and medicine.

Frustrated by that delay, the opposition again took to the streets, most notably on September 1, when Venezuelans from all over the country went to the capital for a massive demonstration called the “Takeover of Caracas.”