THE grim gauges of Venezuela’s protests, now in their fourth month, steadily rise. The official death toll has reached 44. Around 3,000 demonstrators have been arrested, over 1,600 face criminal charges and about 160 are in pre-trial detention. Allegations that detainees have been tortured have brought condemnation from human-rights groups. And the prospect of a negotiated end to the crisis is receding.

In April the moderate wing of the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) alliance and the government of Nicolás Maduro agreed to talks facilitated by the Vatican and foreign ministers of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur). The student movement and the more radical wing of the MUD, led from a prison cell by Leopoldo López of the Popular Will party, stuck to street protests. They said their participation depended on tough conditions, including the release of political prisoners and an end to repression.
On May 13th the co-ordinator of the MUD alliance, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, said the negotiations were going nowhere and announced a suspension of talks. “We discuss the issues, we reach agreements, and there’s no movement,” he said. General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, the interior minister and a former secret-police chief, ripostes that talks are just a façade for what the government regards as a slow-motion coup attempt. “One group plays the violent role, the other the democratic role,” he said this week. “Whoever starts winning the game, the other joins in.”

In fact, the opposition is genuinely divided. “Collaborators” and “traitors” are some of the milder epithets hurled at moderates by radicals who believe the talks were designed merely to buy time and a better image for the Maduro regime. The final straw for the die-hards was a comment by Roberta Jacobson, an American diplomat, who told a Senate foreign-relations committee hearing on May 8th that some in the opposition had asked the United States to refrain from targeted sanctions against government figures as long as the talks lasted. Mr Aveledo was forced into some rather defensive denials.

The room for moderate opposition leaders is shrinking. The talks have failed to achieve the release of a single political prisoner, and more are jailed almost daily. Moves to appoint non-partisan figures to the Supreme Court, the electoral authority and other institutions have yet to bear fruit. Armed pro-government gangs continue to harass demonstrators, as do the security forces. The act of protesting has been turned into a criminal offence. The threat of imprisonment as a coup plotter hangs over every opposition leader.

Mr Maduro, whose popularity rating has plunged to 37% since the protests began, according to Datanálisis, a polling company, has in the past seemed sanguine about the potential for a breakdown in talks. “Anyone who wants to leave the table, let him go,” he said at one point. But his room for manoeuvre will also narrow if the moderates are squeezed out. Much now hangs on a fresh visit by the Unasur troika of foreign ministers—from Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador—which was expected as The Economist went to press. If they cannot nudge the government into even token concessions, another downward lurch in the spiral of violence is likely.

The economy is fast deteriorating. April’s monthly inflation figure is rumoured to be over 5%. Venezuela is in de facto default on around $4 billion just in ticket revenues owing to foreign airlines. The state oil company, PDVSA, owes the central bank $75 billion. The construction industry is at a halt because state-owned firms have virtually stopped producing cement and steel bars. Car sales are down by 90% from this time last year. PDVSA is planning to issue new debt, which will ease the country’s dollar shortage. That will buy Mr Maduro some time; nothing more.