Venezuela, where clashes erupted this week between security forces and demonstrators protesting food shortages, power blackouts and political gridlock, may be headed toward an all-out popular uprising that could lead to the overthrow of its government this year, senior U.S. intelligence officials said. “You can hear the ice cracking,” an intelligence official said. “You know there’s a crisis coming.” Disaster is pending in Venezuela at the same time the Obama administration believes that it has vastly improved U.S. standing in Latin America, compared with the days when political and economic turmoil in the hemisphere was blamed, sometimes with reason, on either interference or disregard by Washington.