Coromoto’s testimony is one of many you hear in Caracas these days, a week after the US military attack on the Venezuelan capital which concluded with the capture of Maduro. The event, other Caracas residents recount, felt like a repeat of what they experienced on 4 February 1992, when the city was also bombed – not by the US, but by Hugo Chávez’s military officers, who had risen up against the existing democratic system. The structure in place at the time of Chávez’s strikes had taken many years to achieve and consolidate – just over three decades in the past century.