cero" (zero hour) — the breaking point, when the Maduro government must go.

Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Latin America program at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., said the Supreme Court's 2016 decision was a turning point in what she called Maduro's move toward a dictatorial regime.

"Once he saw he could lose power through an election, he has curtailed all the institutional mechanisms that handle the electoral system," she told ABC News. "Now that they see that they're going to lose elections, they're putting away any means to do them."

But Alexander Main, a senior associate for international policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, disagreed.

"The only thing [the opposition] seems to be able to agree on is that the government needs to go," he said."They're not very persuasive to the general population as a viable alternative to the government, so even if a lot of people are disenchanted with the government, they don't have much confidence in the opposition at all."

Splintered opposition leadership has given rise to small pockets of radicalism, as people grow frustrated with the government's repression of the protests and the lack of change.

Armed with Molotov cocktails, rocks and makeshift shields, groups of opposition protesters have waged war on security forces, throwing tear gas canisters back at the national guard and hurling rocks at pro-government groups. More radical opposition factions were responsible for a July 30 bombing in Caracas that injured seven members of the national guard.

"There are numerous examples historically in Latin America where the closing off of