Under the current Venezuelan Constitution President Maduro can dissolve the National Assembly if it infringes on the interests of the country or the people.
Looking at this chart published in the Venezuelan United Socialist Party newspaper Cuatrofdigital we can see that only a small amount of Chavistas actually switched sides in the December 6th legislative election. The Chavista voters who did this or who abstained were expressing a protest against the way the United Socialist Party and government have been functioning (or dysfunctioning). They did not consciously decide that they favor neoliberalism and United States domination of their country. President Maduro would be within his rights and acting responsibly to take any action up to and including dissolving the National Assembly and calling the people into action to defend the revolutionarmy process.
Two Venezuelan citizens were taken prisoner in Haiti on November 11th , brought in manacles to New York City and presented with charges of violating United States drug laws outside of the United States. It seems to me that the hypocritical United States government could be aiming for a "Panama - Noriega scenario " against Venezuela. I've posted several times my belief that no Latin American person should suffer for the fake, phony, hypocritical and racist US Drug War.
I imagine that the President of Venezuela might decide not to comply with any US demand for extradition of any Venezuelan even if the National Assembly were to order compliance with such a demand. It could be seen as an act against the interests and sovereignty of the country were the Assembly to do something like that.
Correction:Weds. Dec. 9, 5:55 am New York time: The opposition took 57 % of the popular vote. The Chavista coalition took 43% of the popular vote. The opposition won the popular vote by a margin of 14%, not 20% as was stated in the article.
The people have spoken, and as the expression goes, "The voice of the people is the voice of God."
Almost 75% of Venezuelans over the age of eighteen voted on Sunday night, and after some delay the electoral authority announced the complete results. With 112 out of 167 Assembly seats the former opposition coalition will have the power to re write the Constitution, which they will, launch a recall referendum against President Maduro, which they will unless he resigns first, set up an Assembly Committee to investigate the United Venezuelan Socialist Party, which also is certainly on their short "to do" list.
From what I can see President Maduro, though he conceded the results, doesn't get what happened. He and his way of doing things was repudiated by a margin of 20 percent of the popular vote and his party's power to govern is soon at an end. He now talks of a review of the lessons of the defeat. The time to review is past for him, I'm quite certain. If the members of his party do not press him to resign, with his cabinet the National Assembly will relieve him of his duties this coming May 10th under the current constitution , if not sooner under a revised constitution that they are empowered to write and enact.
The former opposition did not win. The governing (soon to be non-governing) party lost.
It allowed the "economic war" that it complains about to go unanswered. It allows up to this moment a distorted lopsided monetary exchange policy to feed the black market, inflation and shortages. It boasts of the gains that have been largely pissed away: free medical care, that was never in effect in all parts of the country, and which has crumbled where it did exist. An educational system plagued by shortages of everything from desks, to books, to underpaid teachers. A housing program that was not proprttionately bigger than the old regime's, and which in many cases is crumbling, in other cases the buildings taken over by criminal gangs. Over the past 17 years more than 200,000 Venezuelans have been murdered and it was only this year that an effort, or the appearance of an effort was made to do the most basic job that a government has - to reasonably assure the safety of law abiding people within its nation's borders.
United States dollars are sold to multi national corporations and "insiders" at 6.3 bolivars each. There is no effective audit of where these dollars actually go while a black market dollar can be sold formore than nine hundred bolivars today.
Gasoline, much of it imported (!) is sold at pennies a liter, benefiting those Venezuelans who can afford to buy automobiles and of course those whose fortunes are built on smuggling.
Hunger is now once again the lot of the majority of Venezuela's people.
The new bosses in town proved incapable of organizing mass protests against these conditions because they do not have a real dedicated mass following. They have voters fed up with President Maduro.
Five million Venezuelans voted for Chavista candidates in spite of everything. I'm hoping a new leadership steps forward. If the revolution is to stay alive it will have to fight outside the halls of the National Assembly. That's been lost. The new crew will be looking to bring in the IMF, genetically modified organisms, and privatization at pennies on the dollar.
The 23 enero district is an historic bastion of Chavismo. This Sunday it barely elected an anti Chavista to the National Assembly.
That's me standing in front of a mural of Presidents Chavez and Maduro right outside the wonderful zoo in Merida last year. The Barrio Adentro free clinic just outside the picture was locked shut on a weekday afternoon as are most.
It's sad news, and we don't know yet just how big this loss to Venezuela's governing coalition was. Election officialsare still picking up the pieces. The final numbers aren't in as I write. The opposition definitely carried 99 seats 12 more than they needed to take a simple majority. The United Venezuelan Socialist Party and its allied groups in the Grand Patriotic Pole definitely took 46 seats. 22 seats are still considered too close to call. More to come when the final numbers become public and the initial public negotiations take place.
I love you. Please do not jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Venezuela may be on the brink of making what I believe would be a tragic mistake.
Due to many factors including incompetent leadership, the collapse of the price of petroleum, that has been a goal of United States policy, corruption and impunity, Venezuelans have been suffering.
Shortages of basic staple foods, medicines, medical equipment and necessities like toothpaste have been a problem in recent years and many Venezuelans are quite angry with their President Maduro although they honor the memory of the late leader Hugo Chavez.
May I humbly add my outsider viewpoint ?
The Bolivarian movement and political revolution has been about your country and Latin America asserting an independent role in world affairs. It's been about giving a voice that is heard and not ignored to the poor, the working class, the indigenous and the Afro-descended people. It's been about safe and decent places to live in, ending extreme poverty and illiteracy.
In some of these goals it's made great progress, in others it has not.
There are National Assembly elections coming soon - December 6. If Chavistas abstain, or worse, vote for the opposition, or for an "alternative " like Marea Socialista they'll be making a big mistake. The PSUV has made big mistakes but the MUD opposition has no good, pro working people plans at all. They are hoping for Chavista voters to make some big mistakes in punishing President Maduro and allowing the opposition to take power to completely sell out Venezuela and its people. Please if you must punish President Maduro and his government you're only going to punish yourself if your decide to deliver this punishment by giving the National Assembly to the opposition.
An old English expression: Don't cut off your nose just to spite your own face.
PS: Marea Socialista probably has valid points about a missing stolen large amount of money, and they might be right that they were wrongfully expelled from the PSUV. Helping the opposition take power probably will not help win redress and justice. Its a dangerous game, playing with fire.
Here's the rub: When the right defeats the left they often exterminate the left.
Sure, so why not talk would have, could have, should have and maybe ought to?
So wait a minute, he's saying that enormous reponsibilities were given to people who have not the slightest technical training and abilities, nor revolutionary credentials nor morals? YIKES!
So then, it's not just the Empire and its stateless creole oligarch puppets! ? How was anyone to know!?
This is a television spot produced for the ongoing legislative election campaign. Youthful Chavistas tell whoever needs to know that they are an organized battalion and that the Chavista movement is going to triumph "como sea", or "by any means necessary. "
In order to hold on to a majority of the National Assembly the Chavista coalition needs to win 45% of the vote. Just as in the United States the electoral system gives more weight to rural votes than to urban votes. Ironically the system gives more weight to legislative election votes to citizens in pro Chavista strongholds while in the United States the system gives more weight to rural predominantly white states and districts, favoring the Republicans. This is why New Hampshire has the same two United States Senatos as does California with millions of more citizens than New Hampshire. More Americans voted for Democratic Congressional candidates yet the Republicans dominate Congress.
Surely the United States government and media see the hypocrisy of criticizing the Venezuelan government and system. But I want to go further here.- Chavism was evolved through efforts to improve the lives of the poor and to open up political activity and effectiveness to the disenfranchised majority. In the United States it's widely acknowledged that 99 % of the people have no effective input on policies that affect them. Chavism also was about Venezuela and other underdeveloped resource exporting countries taking charge of their resources and getting the best possible prices for them. It's certainly produced a mixed scorecard . It's undoubtable that the United States mobilized considerable resources to end dependency on imported oil and that among the goals was the important campaign to weaken Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, and to collapse their economies. President Maduro can be critcized for a lot of things but he's not lying when he points to economic warfare. Knowing all this does one willingly put the future of one's country, its sovereignty and future up to a vote? More likely one would fight like a wildcat win, lose or draw on the vote, for right against wrong.
Aporrea is a pro Socialist Venezuelan website that critcizes but also supports the Chavista government. It broke the story (in Venezuela) about the two nephews of the President of Venezuela who were arrested last Tuesday for allegedly trying to smuggle 800 kilos of cocaine into the United States. That Aporrea carried the story straight from US sources in itself is news.
I have said here that if it were up to me not one more Latin American cop, soldier, prosecutor, judge, journalist or innocent bystander would die for the United States' phony drug war. Recently there has been an increasing crescendo of accusations in the USA that the Chavista government has turned Venezuela into a "Narco State", an international drug smuggling hub. My first reaction is "pot, kettle, black. " I do not know if President Maduro's nephews are guilty or are being framed. Either has some credibility. If they're guilty, then they can be blamed for trying to make money by sending cocaine, a harmful and illegal drug to the population that risks jail and worse to get their hands on it- the drug consuming American people. They also would be guilty of opening Venezuela up for attack on Venezuela by providing a pretext, as phony and hypocriticalas it be.
Chomsky compares Venezuela to South Korea and Venezuela's president Nicholas Maduro wants to talk with Chomsky. They ought to share watching this ten minute video. Did Chomsky know that renting 300,000 mercenaries to the United States to rape and murder Vietnamese was a big factor in South Korea's "miracle"?
A couple of weeks ago Noam Chomsky gave an interview to perfil.com that has, I think, cut many Venezuelans to the quick.
Now, personally this is one of the toughest writing assignments I've ever given myself. Chomsky is an icon of the left. I count myself on the left too. So many ill willed rightists attack him that anyone who draws a line between Chomsky and himself can be accused of being a rightist who is really attacking the left. On top of that much of the left adores the memory of Hugo Chavez and idealizes Venezuela that I want to choke rather than agree with any of Chomsky ' s attack on the status quo of Venezuela. Yet, through personal connection I've fallen in love with Venezuela and care too personally and deeply to not tell the truth.
Venezuela's situation is a mess. I've written about it here. Chomsky says the problem is corruption. Well, true- the corruption in Venezuela is monumental.
Having the world's largest oil reserves and having had year after year of high oil prices just like Chomsky says, the country has made no progress towards the goals of food sovereignty and industrial development.
Chomsky says that the legacy of Chavez is disaster. Hugo Chavez, the same man who waived Chomsky ' s book during a speech to the General Assembly and urged one and all to read this man's writing. That same Chomsky now calls the legacy of the same now dead President a disaster.
Chavez's hand picked successor Nicholas Maduro, clearly hurt, invited Chomsky to Venezuela to talk, look around and find out that he's wrong.
I wish I could advise President Maduro to shave his mustache, disguise himself as a cross country trucker and travel from Caracas to the Colombian border like I did a year ago. But he should take Chomsky with him, maybe disguised as his helper. They should take three weeks, not three days like I did, and they should park the truck in a score of town and village squares, strike up conversations, accept invitations to dinners and knock on the locked doors of Venezuela's free medical clinics. They should visit some hospitals and chat with patients and staff.. Of course this is a fantasy. It could never happen. Too bad
And Chomsky should shut up about comparing Venezuela to South Korea. You see its true South Korea was once dirt poor and now it's a prosperous industrial powerhouse while Venezuela was once never an industrial powerhouse but was rich in a distorted lopsided sort of way and is now poor in a lopsided and distorted way.
South Korea is rich due to decades of brutal forced march Stalinesque primitive accumulation. Renting out 300,000 mercenaries to fight America's war in Vietnam helped too. Also having a nationalized banking system. It's also due to following policies opposite of the IMF and World Bank. Protectionism, not Free Trade. FIVE YEAR PLANS, not deregulation. Magnates threatened with jail, not overseas shopping sprees.
President Maduro should probably sit down with Colonel Jose Martin Raga, Nicmer Evans, and Chavista former leaders who never rode the gravy train. Maybe also invite losing Presidential candidate Capriles and some reasonable oppositionists. After December 6 elections, of course.
Since February, when I came back from a three month visit to my wife's homeland, Venezuela I've been thinking about and writing about Uber and its impact on my life. When I left for Venezuela in November 2014 I had been taxi driving basically 6 nights a week. The garage had so many more drivers than cars that I had to commit to that schedule just to assure that I wouldn't be sent home instead of being assigned a taxi to work with.
Shape up at New York City's taxi garages pre the mass Uber recruiting of taxi drivers was like something out of "On The Waterfront " which helps you to understand Uber's initial successful raid on the taxi fleets. Uber pushed their luck though, I think with the fare cuts and boosts in their take. Along with the lower non-surge fares and no tip option policy Uber attracts less desirable customers. These people are ignorant of Uber's dodgy business practices, abuses of drivers and fascistic "Mussolini's March On Rome" approach to political and regulatory impediments or worse, they "get it" and they approve.
Anyhow, the drivers seem to be drifting back to the taxi garages. I noticed some of the Gubers on the Saturday night of the nation wide Uber strike. Drivers outnumbered cars at the garage.
But this past Saturday I had another aha!! moment. I like to listen to classical music radio WQXR 105.7 fm. For the past few weeks no passengers have crudely demanded that I "put on some tunes. "
I've got to say that I have been feeling extra stupid for being had by the official Venezuelan story of its deportations of around 1500 Colombians awhile back.
Two Venezuelan soldiers and a Venzuelan civilian had been shot by Colombian paramilitaries while the Venezuelans had been engaged in an anti smuggling operation near the Colombian border. It's beyond argument that there was and is a serious problem for Venezuela's policy of providing cheap subsidized food, toiletries, medicines and gasoline to its people. Subsidized goods were and are being diverted and resold for higher prices in Venezuela and lots in Colombia too. Venezuelans contend with standing in long lines as they try to find milk, chicken, medicine and famously toilet paper. Drivers slept in their cars and trucks while waiting to get gasoline - this happening in oil producing regions of the oil exporting nation.
So President Nicolas Maduro decided to take strong action. He closed busy border crossings. He ordered deportations supplementing his recently initiated crackdown on violent crime.
The narrative went like this: Over a thousand Colombian illegal residents were deported on a lawful case - by - case basis from the squatter settlement located a stone's throw away from the Colombian border known as La Invasion.
Venzuelan authorities had uncovered a dungeon where kidnapped victims were held for ransom, a brothel staffed with underage girls, and other evidence of massive lawlessness.
So, being sympathetic to Venezuela and its travails and being no friend of Venezuela's right wing US backed opposition, I blogged about it and I defended the deportations. Imagine my surprise, chagrin, and embarrassment when I read in Venezuela Analysis that the deported Colombians are coming back, courtesy of the same government that had deported them and said such nasty things about them. Yes, they're coming back to apply for legal residency in Venezuela. 😠😲🙉🙈🙊
I am writing this as an American who's spent time in Venezuela amongst regular people who were and are engaged in their life struggles. I care about these my friends who treated me with kindness and hospitality, and whose country, Venezuela, I have a special fondness for.
Well I don't know if pictures in the mass corporate Zionist media are staged. Were it to turn out so I wouldn't be amazed. Looking at the pictures I couldn't help but be reminded of the Hollywood tale of a false flag operation, a CIA-Hollywood production.
Do you remember the Kuwaiti baby incubator hoax? Almost the same except that a million or so people ended up dead.
Reading of the global concern for around a thousand deported Colombians and supposedly five thousand more who are said to have self-deported had been among five million or so residing in Venezuela I couldn't help but ask why and how five million Colombians are living in Venezuela in peace as legal residents and even as citizens.
Poor Colombians have no human rights in Colombia! Farmers and ranchers pay paramilitaries to chase them off their land. Union activists turn up dead.
Why and how could insurgent groups function for fifty years if things were even reasonably fair in Colombia? Where's the love for poor Colombians living in Colombia?
I don't know if there have been legal violations of process in the deportations of not. Two things though I do know:
Smuggling and other activities harmful to Venezuelans and Colombians residing in peace in Venezuela had been going on with increasing harm being done.
Also, paramilitarism, an unwelcome import to Venezuela, the same that makes a mockery of human rights in Colombia itself threatens all law-abiding people in Venezuela, be they citizens, legal residents, tourists, business travelers, foreign students or even people who are not legally in the country but otherwise law abiding.
It has not been the practice of the Venezuelan government to round up and deport undocumented immigrants en masse nor to threaten to do so.
It's reported that the lines at stores and pharmacies and the shortages of food, medicine and personal hygiene products are abating. This would suggest that the border closure and deportations had a good effect. I would suppose, as Venezuelan Army Colonel Raga said, there's much corruption in Venezuela. I think just about everyone who lives in Venezuela or who follows the situation there knows that. So, perhaps, in some way the shutting down of the border puts the ball in those individual's court. The President, after all now has the issue of smuggling and paramilitaries front and center. By the way, Colonel Raga names several names. I have no way of forming an opinion about them and if I did, I'd keep it to myself. That's stuff that Venezuelans will sort out.
Venezuela has undertaken a feat that has never happened before: Becoming a socialist country not born in violent revolution or war.
Looking around the world many people see that capitalism is kaput as far as being able to meet the needs of a growing number of billions of human beings on this earth yet the global capitalist class, yearning for a world without people (except for themselves) is weaponized in horrible ways that couldn't be imagined less than a hundred years ago. If Venezuela could cut the Gordian knot it would bring hope to millions around the world.
Venezuela is in an emergency situation and it called for emergency measures.
Venezuela is a nation of around 27,000,000 people that is dependent on oil exports for most of its government revenue and foreign currency needed for importing almost everything that's consumed in the country.
Since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 the government has made efforts to assure all Venezuelans have their necessities met. In spite of serious problems with corruption and inefficiencies and instability caused by the determination by the United States to overturn the government utilizing various means including the funding of opposition groups the living standards of the poor and near-poor were improving overall until the recent months since the collapse of oil prices. Venezuela has a complex monetary system that was intended to stop capital flight and facilitate the import and sale of low cost staples, medicine and personal hygiene products. It worked more or less well until the recent oil price collapse.
Neighboring Colombia has suffered through decades of insurgency and repression and its economic policies are neo-liberal. These factors have resulted in a large and growing Colombian population of around five million people living in Venezuela, where they've been afforded resident and citizen status.
Given the availability of cheap food, personal hygiene products and nearly free gasoline, as well as a wrinkle in the monetary system that's not hard to game Colombians as well as others have been involved in smuggling of contraband. Millions of people inside Colombia survive by informal work in the transportation and sale of items meant to go to people in Venezuela.
Venezuelans have been suffering long lines at stores where they don't always get the cheap items that they are looking for. Inflation is also eating away at the socialist type programs and living standard gains.
Last week three Venezuelan soldiers were shot while engaging in an anti-contraband operation at the border. That incident apparently was the straw that broke the camel's back. President Nicolas Maduro ordered the closure of the border and deportation of Colombians believed to be involved in contraband activities.
Some commentators have likened these steps (around 1,000 deportations out of a population of around 5,000,000) to the Nazi persecutions of the Jews. President Maduro is widely being compared to racist US demagogue Donald Trump. Trump brands all Mexicans as criminal and calls for revocation of citizenship of hundreds of thousands of people who are born in the United States and who are US citizens according to the constitution. Clearly the comparison to Nazism is outrageous and false as is the comparison of President Maduro to Donald Trump.
Because the Colombian government doesn't care about its own people many are in dire straits with the loss of contraband trade.
There is a humanitarian crisis in Colombia and those who claim to care ought to be organizing relief and pressing for international aid for the Colombian people.
Venezuelanalysis.com/putanalysis/11462 Things are hard in Venezuela. There's no serious doubt about this. Inflation is at record levels- in fact it's been months since the National Bank has published statistics. Venezuela's government is a self proclaimed socialist one and opponents of the government and its ideology of Chavismo say that Venezuela is a case study of the impossibility of improving the lives of the majority through a collectivist system.
Shortages of staples and medicines, as well as personal hygiene products such as toilet paper and toothpaste force people to wait on long lines, at the end of which they might or might not find what they're looking for.
What seldom gets mentioned is that neighboring Colombia, which does not claim to be a socialist country in any way, (quite the contrary) is also mired in economic malaise. In truth many of the same causes are at play and the two countries fates are tied together like Siamese twins.
Venezuela is a major global petroleum producing and exporting nation. Columbia is not a petroleum power on the scale of Venezuela, but petroleum production and the production and export of commodities are important to Colombia.
Commodity prices in general and petroleum prices perhaps most of all have been falling rapidly lately. Venezuela in particular experienced a petroleum boom that allowed the Chavista government to expand socialist type programs like subsidized food and housing, even while capital was draining out of the country and food self sufficiency as well as industrialization remained as slogans and goals towards which little if any progress was made.
Living standards of Venezuelans have deteriorated over recent months. But as Venezuela has sneezed, Colombia has caught a cold, or maybe pneumonia. You won't find lines for food and other necessities in Colombia, as the market rations food and the government doesn't subsidize food prices like the Venezuelan government does (or more recently, as the Venezuelan government tries to do.)
According to the Venezuelan government around thirty percent of the staples, personal hygiene products and medicines it subsidized is smuggled into Colombia, where it is sold for more than the subsidized price but less than the market price. Poor Colombians have come to depend on the smuggled goods coming from Venezuela. Thousands of Venezuelans and Colombians, (4 - 5 million of whom live in Venezuela) make their livings from the trade in smuggled goods. An end to this trade would be catastrophic for thousands, maybe millions of people on both sides of the border. Yet along with the lucrative trade in smuggled gasoline (Venezuelans get gasoline for their cars virtually for free,) the contraband trade is bleeding Venezuela and also disrupting legitimate business in Colombia.
Aggravating the contraband goods trade is the black market in dollars. Venezuela's government makes available dollars for importation of staples and medicines at the price of 6.3 Bolivares fuerte per dollar. Other importers are supposed to get dollars for 12 Bolivares fuerte. On top of this there exists a supposed market driven legal exchange called SIMADI that theoretically makes dollars available to Venezuelans for a moving price that's currently around 190 Bolivares fuerte per dollar.
Historically it's been large businesses, many of them foreign owned multinational corporations, that get the cheap dollars. People who are called "plugged" also get these cheap dollars and use them fraudulently on the black market, which presently pays out over 600 Bolivares fuerte per one dollar. According to the Venezuelan government then, someone who earns 6,300 Bolivares fuerte has earned $1,000 while those Bolivares fuerte are fetching around ten dollars on the black market. The opportunity to steal is flagrant. Around $300,000,000,000 (yep, three hundred billions of dollars) have found new homes outside Venezuela over the course of the past ten years while workers are keeping their children alive with Arepas (a Venezuelan corn flour bread) and sugar water instead of milk.
Smugglers convert the Colombian pesos they get for dollars as well. This makes the sale of millions
of dirt cheap litres of Venezuelan gasoline incredibly profitable. There are virtually no legitimate gas stations in the Colombian border region.
I'd have thought that if any news outlet would cheerlead an opposition protest in Venezuela and inflate its attendance it would have to be a Fox News affiliate. Yesterday was the day that the splintering Democratic Roundtable coalition of numerous opposition parties was to hold rallies in the capital city of Caracas and in state capitals across the country. It fizzled. A few dozen adherents showed up in Caracas and the rallies in the other cities apparently were too pitiful to mention.
Consider the real problems the population of Venezuela is facing -rampant crime, inflation so high that the national bank hasn't even published statistics in half a year, shortages of staples, personal hygiene products, medical equipment and medicines you'd suppose that a call for protest from established political parties would get a response in a nation of 27 million people.
On top of this oppoflop an opposition legislator Ricardo Sanchez and two well known opposition activists, Carlos Sanchez and Andres Avelino have broken with the opposition and signed up to be pro government candidates for the Assembly.In the election scheduled for December 6.
On top of this Copei, the once mighty half of a two party duopoly system that had prevailed in Venezuela for the forty years before Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela's politics upside down has been kicked out of the leading opposition coalition after one faction went to court to unseat another.
On the Red side, Marea Socialista, a former faction of the ruling Socialist Party, which says that it was expelled without due process, has been denied the right to run its own candidates because, according to the election officials, Marea Socialista isn't a proper name of a political party. Marea Socialista has been campaigning for a transparent people's audit to find out where $250,000,000,000 in oil money has vanished to and take legal action to claw it back.
In fact, it's hard to understand how Venezuelans are making it at all.
Let me give you some background. I spent the months of November, December and January in Venezuela. I lived with friends and family (by marriage.) These are ordinary, everyday people who are not very political. Above is a little video I made at a cousin's house that he was still building with his own hands on a small piece of land not too far from the border city of San Cristobal. I stayed with him for three weeks.
Now, the money situation in Venezuela is a bit odd and some people will not easily believe this post, because many good and progressive people idealize Venezuela, and thought very highly of the late President Hugo Chavez. I am one who never called myself a Chavista, but yes I felt and still feel that Hugo Chavez's intentions were to uplift the poor of Venezuela most of all, and to aid the poor everywhere. I thought and still think he made serious mistakes some of which his successor continues to maintain. I'm not going to be a typical first world radical sectarian who knows what Venezuela has to do. I know that through struggle and with no strings attached help they can find a road forward.
Venezuelans line up in hopes of getting basic necessities.
Frequently they take what they find, not necessarily what they set out to get.
+++++++++++++++++
Venezuela's monetary policy sets several values for the national currency, known as the Bolivar fuerte The base official exchange rate is 6.3 Bolivares fuerte (Bs.f) to the dollar. When you read a statement that the minimum wage is "over a thousand dollars a month" the exchange rate being referred to is this 6.3 Bolivares to the dollar rate. The minimum wage in Venezuel today is 7,421.71 Bolivares fuerte per month, or $1,178.05 a month. Wow, that's $272 a week, right?
It's quite a bit higher than the minimum wage in neighboring Colombia, where it's $241.15 a month plus another $27.70 transportation subsidy.
A Big Mac comparison would change that notion. A Big Mac Combo in Caracas is 476 Bs.f divide that by 6.3 to find out how many dollars it costs a Venezuelan: $75.55!
Now a tourist who availed himself of the legal Simadi rate (198 Bs.f to the dollar) gets a pretty good deal on that Big Mac: $2.40! In New York City that varies around $8.00. But wait. There's a parallel illegal market for dollars in Venezuela. Now last November we were looking at 120 Bs.f. last month it was over 300 Bs.f.. I checked the website Bolivar in Cucuta that reports on the currency exchange rates in the border city of Cucuta, Colombia. According to it, this morning you could have bought 552 Bs.f with one Yankee dollar. You do the math.
4 rolls of toilet paper in Caracas (if you found toilet paper) 70 Bs.f
1 pack of American filter cigarettes 185 Bs.f
Update October 27, 2015- 820 Bolivar to the dollar. Venezuelan minimum wage to increase thirty percent.
"Whoever has a fridge they do not need, put it out in the village square. Whoever has a truck, a fan, or a cooler they do not need, give something away. Let's not be selfish. I demand you do it...
Millions signed up for membership in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
Chavez said: "If I were to end up with only five people out of those five million, I'd be happier...
"I only want to be accompanied by true socialists."
He did say these things (the sequence might be off.) Hugo Chavez dreamt of a country and a world without poverty, racism and oppression. In 1989 he was a Lieutenant Colonel and paratrooper in the Venezuelan army. Of humble background Chavez, at the age of 17 had entered Venezuela's military academy. Soon be found himself assigned to fight Castro backed guerrillas. As I understand it he came to sympathize with them under the influence of his brother Adan.
On February 27, 1989 a rebellion of the poor broke out over IMF sponsored "reforms" that included increasing the cost of gasoline and transit fares.
The President, Carlos Andres Perez, also known as CAP, had been elected as democratic socialist successor to Jaime Luschinsky. CAP.had run for President on an anti IMF platform. Like today the country was in crisis precipitated by a decline in petroleum prices. Like so-called socialists in our time, CAP ditched his campaign persona, became "responsible" and initiated austerity measures that especially hurt the poor.
The poor rose up in protest especially in and around Caracas. A massacre ensued. It's disputed how many people were killed by the police and military but it is probably to be reckoned in the thousands.
Chavez and fellow soldiers like Diosdado Cabello plotted to overthrow the government which had done this and was hated by the poor and mainly non - white majority.
On February 4, 1992 the soldiers made their move with some civilian allies.
Five groups moved towards their assigned objectives. Chavez's group had the most important task - to capture CAP. They were foiled and taken prisoners. Chavez was allowed to go on television to urge the others to surrender. This television appearance made a hero of the brown skinned soldier with the voice of a man of the people.
Eventually the government felt compelled to release Chavez.
In 1998 the two main parties, Democratic Action roughly analogous to the US Democrats and the Christian Democrats, the approximate analogue to the Republicans were discredited and out of steam. Chavez was elected carrying 17 of 26 States, with 56% of the vote. Turnout had been 63%. If Hugo Chavez is remembered for one thing it might be his tendency to say exactly what he was thinking. No one who saw his first appearance at the United Nations will forget him complaining about the odor of sulfur left behind by US president George Bush.
I'm blogging about this stuff because I feel a connection to Venezuela. My wife is from there and I recently spent three months in Venezuela, for a lot of that time in a rancho that was under construction by a relative. People who follow world events know that Venezuela is going through hard times. In fact Venezuela's going through tribulations similar to the events that led to the Caracazo uprising and massacre. Oil.is down, corruption is rampant, and the two main parties, one the Socialists founded by Chavez and the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable are seemingly estranged from the people and largely discredited.
I often say that foreigners should keep their noses out of the business of Venezuelans yet I care so deeply it's hard for me to follow my own rule. Venezuela's I guess I will just say that I believe that there is a road ahead, that the country and people have great resources so I will refrain from saying exactly what I am thinking.
According to Venezuelan Defence Minister Padrino Lopez the cocaine. laden small atircraft that crashed into Colombian waters on a trajectory from Venezuela had been fired upon and hit by a Venezuelan defense forces plane last Wednesday.
Venezuelan authorities notified Colombia that the plane was headed to Colombian airspace. The plane had originated in Central America, and had been loaded up with the cocaine at a remote makeshift airstrip inside Venezuela. Venezuela has a lengthy border with Colombia characterized as remote, of mountainous terrain with heavy forest cover. Colombia, is a US aligned country and is where 300 tons of cocaine were harvested last year. Venezuela has no commercial scale cocaine farming but is used as a transit point by Colombian drug gangs. Millions of Colombians live in Venezuela.
The United States, whose Drug Enforcement Administration agents were recently said by the US Justice Department to have been provided with prostitutes paid for by Colombian drug gangs, is now "investigating" several leaders of Venezuela's government for drug trafficking and money laundering.
Clearly the cocaine at question originated in Colombia, where corrupt US DEA agents have been supervising "anti drug" activities while enjoying the company of prostitutes paid for by Colombian drug gangs over the past few years.
