Last Monday, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council announced that the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, had comfortably won the national election and another six years in office. Most Venezuelans don’t believe it.

Researchers associated with the opposition offered evidence that suggested they have good reason not to, specifically that an opposition candidate, Edmundo González, actually beat Mr. Maduro by more than 30 percentage points. Independent analysts who reviewed the evidence said the researchers’ methods appeared sound and their evidence credible.

Furthermore, their evidence matches an independent exit poll by Edison Research that projected Gonzalez winning overwhelmingly with 65 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 31 percent. Tellingly, the government-controlled National Electoral Council has still not released the digital receipts from the election even though the deadline has expired. The opposition claims the regime simply needs more time to forge the vast quantity of paperwork.

Maduro’s authoritarian friends quickly accepted Maduro’s “victory.” Russia, China and Iran have all congratulated the president, as have hemispheric allies Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia.

But even some traditional allies are hesitant. Left-wing governments in the region’s biggest countries—Brazil, Mexico and Colombia—are demanding proof of his win. Christopher Hernandez-Roy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington commented, “I think the three of them have realized that the level of fraud is just so astronomically huge that nobody in their right mind can believe this result.” The Carter Center, which deployed observers to the election, said that it “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.”

The Canadian government is calling on Venezuela to release the detailed results, as is the U.S. and the European Union. The U. S., Peru, Argentina and Uruguay have recognized González as president.

The Venezuelan government is reacting as might be expected. It has broken off diplomatic relations with seven Latin American countries who have implied there was fraud in the vote count. Opposition headquarters have been raided, poll workers across the country have been arrested and there are unconfirmed reports that an arrest warrant has been signed for González.

Rumours are rife about Madura’s friends coming to his aid. Francisco Santos, former vice-president of Colombia, claims that China is helping the Maduro regime make counterfeit versions of the paper receipts produced by voting machines. The Chinese helped Venezuela produce its “fatherland card,” a digitized ID card the government uses to track its citizens. Venezuela is heavily indebted to China and has had to offer Beijing generous concessions of its resources to service the debt.

Numbers of Cubans are also showing up. Apparently the regime is concerned about the loyalty of the middle commands of its army, to say nothing of concerns about Maduro’s security. One suspects the Cubans see their role as control as much as protection.

All of this is depressing to witness. Venezuela once had one of the most well-established democracies in Latin America. Indeed it’s a double loss. When Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, established his Bolivarian revolution in 1999 it held great promise. Known as Chavismo it offered a form of democratic socialism that promised to bring equality to a country whose great wealth had been grossly misappropriated in favour of a small middle and upper class. Now both democracy and Chavismo have collapsed as the country sinks into autocracy, corruption and poverty.

Some eight million Venezuelans have fled their country—the Bolivarian revolution turning into the Bolivarian exodus—creating one of the world’s greatest refugee problems. Hyperinflation, food and medical shortages, severe crime and authoritarian government have forced them to seek refuge elsewhere.

This is a tale all too common in Latin America—revolutions, quiet and otherwise, initially showing great promise and then declining into corrupt, inefficient autocracies. Under Chavez and Maduro, Venezuela has become a classic case of the region’s curse.