As of 2020, news reports describe a loosening of many socialist/redistributive economic policies—price and currency controls, stringent labor laws—by the Maduro regime, along with an rapprochement with members of the capitalist community—especially Lorenzo Mendoza of the iconic Empresas Polar conglomerate who is no longer denounced as a “thief,” a “parasite” and a “traitor.” Changes such as the return of agricultural land and "dozens of companies" to private management have allowed the government to survive economic sanctions (though economic production and employment is still greatly reduced), and have proceeded in exchange for an abandonment of political opposition by Mendoza. Another result of the economic liberalization is that erstwhile socialist allies of Maduro's rule who began to protest corruption and the "extravagant lives flaunted by the government’s cronies in supermarkets stocked with expensive imports and luxury car showrooms", have become victims to the same security apparatus that have attacked Maduro's opponents on the right—they have been denounced as traitors, arrested (leaders of the Communist and Tupamaro parties), beaten and sometimes assassinated (the fate of radio host José Carmelo Bislick).