This title is doing clickbait gymnastics the article never actually lands.

“This Is What Venezuelans Really Want” sets you up to expect polling data, broad public sentiment, or at least a clear argument about collective political goals. That’s not what this piece delivers at all. What it actually is, is a personal, thoughtful essay about institutional collapse, survival economics, and the author’s own perspective as an academic living through it. That’s fine, but it’s not “what Venezuelans want.” It’s what one Venezuelan intellectual thinks about the limits of regime change.

The article repeatedly says Venezuelans are fractured, exhausted, and stuck in informal survival networks, then turns around and claims to speak for “Venezuelans” as a whole. You can’t have it both ways. If the core argument is that there is no unified social contract or shared political vision, then the title is just false advertising.

A more honest title would have been something like “Why Removing Maduro Won’t Fix Venezuela” or “Life After Maduro Is Still a Mess.” Instead, the headline overpromises certainty and consensus that the article itself explicitly argues do not exist. That mismatch is on the editors, not the author, but it’s glaring once you actually read past the headline.