Soldiers loyal to Hugo Chávez distributed cornmeal in Caracas on Monday. By ensuring that Venezuelans have the chief ingredient o f hallacas, the country's traditional Christmas meal, Venezuela's president showed that he knows how to keep his supporters on side.
It also illustrates a stark new reality in the country. The hopes of opponents of Mr Chávez - that their stand-off with his government would end in his departure or, at least, in fresh elections - are receding.
As a crippling strike by opposition-aligned managers at Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state-owned oil company, enters its fourth week on Tuesday, shipments from the world's fifth-largest exporter have reduced to a trickle.
Yet even as domestic fuel supplies become extremely scarce, Mr Chávez is as defiant as ever.
"Christmas without Chávez, they thought. No chance," he said at the weekend, basking in his political resilience on Aló, Presidente, his weekly television programme. "Chávez has not gone, neither is he going."
When the strike began, few observers expected it to last very long. In April, it took less than a week before a strike by businesses, unions and PDVSA managers led to a military-backed coup that ousted Mr Chávez for 48 hours.
The odds seem stacked against the president. Recent polls suggest that at least 60 per cent of Venezuelans - poor as well as rich - oppose his rule. [Yohise: When did they poll Venezuela's poor???] But Mr Chávez retains strong support among the 30 per cent of the population who are fiercely loyal to a man they regard as a boy from the barrio made good.
More critically, Mr Chávez has managed to keep the military on his side, largely because since April he has purged it of senior officers who might launch a coup against him, or at least placed perceived loyalists in command of key army garrisons.
Retaining control of the armed forces has enabled Mr Chávez to keep petrol supplies flowing to the domestic market - albeit at a trickle. This week, oil workers and crew loyal to the government seized the Piln León, a strike-bound tanker, releasing 280,000 barrels of petrol on to the market.
Coupled with modest imports from Latin American neighbours, it is a strategy Mr Chávez could use again to ensure that the petrol supplies within Venezuela never completely run out.
The result is that Mr Chávez is on top of the crisis, even if the situation remains dire and could deteriorate further. There are signs that public support for the strike is starting to slip, as ordinary Venezuelans become increasingly frustrated at the disrupting effect it is having on their daily lives.
But waning support is not likely to bring the strike to an end. "Both Chávez and the opposition have not been rational in dealing with this crisis," says Miguel Diaz, director of the South America Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The debate is being driven by the extremists on both sides."
So there are few signs that Venezuela's crisis will be resolved speedily. But having displayed his formidable political will in the face of a strong and determined domestic opposition and international pressure, it seems unlikely that Mr Chávez will go quietly.
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