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Pressure is piling up on Nicolás Maduro, the president - or many would say dictator - of Venezuela. So has he finally reached the end of the line? Well, one sign to support this is that the often divided and fractious opposition appears to have unified around Juan Guaido.
The 35-year-old congressman was elected in December as president of the National Assembly and declared himself interim president of Venezuela on January 23rd. His justification for that may be questionable, but what matters is that the US immediately recognised him, along with Canada, Brazil, Colombia, and a score of others.
On top of that, the US has put sanctions on PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, effectively ending US imports of Venezuelan oil. This is a huge blow to Maduro. More than half of Venezuelan oil is sold to the US, and it is almost the only oil that Venezuela sells for cash. Much of the rest goes to Russia and China as payments for billions of dollars of loans.
This is an enormous squeeze. Venezuela imports pretty much everything, paid for with oil dollars. But PDVSA has been packed with government cronies. Most of the assets of foreign oil companies have been nationalised or stolen, along with most of the rest of Venezuela's private sector. And oil production is less than a third of what it was when the Bolivarian revolution began in 1999.
On top of all this, there are pretty clear threats from the US and others that military intervention cannot be ruled out. US President Donald Trump has also been tweeting his support for protesters against Mr Maduro.
So the outcome is deeply uncertain. Mr Maduro has already survived a huge drop in oil revenues in the past few years. Venezuelan oil can still be exported through third parties. So although revenues will fall, they won't stop altogether.
The key factor now is the military. Some of them may be fed up with Mr Maduro. But they are unlikely to have much time for Mr Guaido, who they see as a radical. So while many in the opposition would like a clean break, others favour a more moderate transition, similar to what happened after the Pinochet regime in Chile.
The trouble is that unlike Chile, Venezuela is in a humanitarian crisis that looks likely to get much worse. And there is no guarantee that cool heads will prevail.
