The left eye of Julio Borges, a deputy in the Venezuelan National Assembly from the opposition party, Primero Justicia, is the best symbol of the way things are going in Venezuelan politics. When I interviewed him two weeks ago, he had a deep purple stripe under his eye, as if he were an athlete wearing a streak of eye black to avoid being dazzled by the sun. But his stripe was the result of a blow from the fist of another deputy—Michelle Reyes, a member of the Chavista Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, or P.S.U.V.—who caught him by surprise on Tuesday, April 30th in a Chavista assault that left eleven members of the opposition injured, including Borges and María Corina Machado, who ended up with a fractured nose.
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