The main lesson Venezuela’s neo-Marxist administration seemingly has to offer is that its Cuban-inspired community power structures provide a tenacious hold on power, even when oil revenues fall.

The opposition coalition, with its bedrock of middle class support, has been outmaneouvred by institutions biased toward the socialists, while bottom-up revolt tends to manifest itself as mindless looting.

Two recent events suggest the administration’s stock of survival tactics is far from exhausted.