With  background of abortive attempts at change of government by quasi-legal means, criteria for a successful revolution are discussed in (1/23/2019) Revolution in Venezuela, Redux, and (8/7/2017) Revolution in Venezuela. The  missing element has been the lack of sanctuary in which to organize. Sanctuary can be geographic;  urban as with the French and Russian revolutions, or rural, as with Indochina,  or take the form of secret societies, with the 1952 Egypt revolution and the Arab Revolt as examples.

Up to this point, sanctuary has been inadequate.  (CNN) US officials secretly met with Venezuelan military officers plotting a coup against Maduro states that there was a request encrypted radios. The ground knowledge resulting in decline of the request might have elements such as:

• Strong-arm centrality, without proven popular support for the actors.
• Unsavory elements among the actors, such as narco-military associations.
• Lack of sanctuary, which is why encrypted radios were thought so crucial by the actors. Too crucial, in fact; a successful example of a secret society in action, with no “high tech” at all, is the partisan action in Vienna at the close of World War II, resulting in the mostly peaceful handover (not liberation!) of the city to Soviet troops (Toland, The Last 100 Days, Part 3, ISBN 0-8129-6859-X)

(CNN) Violence flares at Venezuela’s border; Maduro breaks off relations with Colombia includes a video from Cúcuta, Colombia, at the border with Venezuela. Nick Robertson explains why mass defections have not yet occurred: Political power in Venezuela is about who controls the bread line.

In Redux, I wrote,

As Venezuela’s oil output drifts towards zero, the subsidy to the rural poor will vanish. As a sanctuary most of the country will become available.

While the above requires that Venezuela’s batteries discharge completely before revolution can progress, it may now be catalyzed in the border regions, with military elements defecting wholesale to whoever can feed them. This is why Maduro fears the aid.

Is this the first revolution with the bread basket in the vanguard? Probably, though prior to the 2011 Egypt Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood built their base by providing social services, including food.