Venezuela June 3 (Socialism, highway to hel)
Posted by sender47 9 years, 11 months ago to Government
Difficult weeks, well... months. When the world cup starts it will have been 5 months since the start of the protests. Some days there is more violence, some less.
The last 2 weeks where rough to me, I was pretty sick, just a flu, but a strong one. Supposedly I should have taken antibiotics, but there are none to be found, so it took me more than expected to recuperate. The scarcity each time is worse, food, medicine, even soap (There is no water in my house it has been rationed). None to talk about the state of the hospitals and clinics, no material for most of the tests, patients have to find everything by themselves: needles, cotton, alcohol, antiseptics, even suture material. Surely if an epidemic would strike Venezuela in these moments, hell would break loose.
People have to make not hours but days of line, if they want to buy food in state runned markets. An investigation was made by a group of the Ultimas Noticias newspaper, it took them 3 days to buy what could be found of what is known as canasta basica alimentaria (a list of 50 basic foodstuff)... Of course, it was censored, and the angry journalists that made it where promptly fired (or invited to resign), so they posted it on social networks.
Violence is every day growing, yesterday the mother of a friend was kidnapped, brought to the cota 905 (a dangerous barrio), completely robbed and menaced that they will kill her family if she reported the crime, this is not a banal menace in Venezuela as most of the criminals are also policeman .
The government live in its own world, every day they do accusations of magnicide, coup d’état, and so on, nobody really believes them, they have been doing the same since Chavez got to power more than 15 years ago. They always say they have proofs, but that is only for TV and radio speeches, in reality they never present a thing. Nevertheless they use this to accuse opposition leaders (and of course USA, they never miss a chance to say everything is a conspiracy from the White House), they put them on trial, never get to convict them, but that doesn't mean that once they put them in jail, they will never free them, the trials never end, the judge never appears so the trial is postponed... indefinitely. Yes, by law they can’t go more than 2 years without a sentence, but... what is law for this regime, they do as they please, they are at the same time, all powerful, and completely weak, as they have created numerous armed gangs that control the country, and of course interest conflicts rapidly appear. The last Judge that freed a political prisoner even if he passed 3 years without a sentence was imprisoned (Maria Lourdes Afiuni).
Lastly, as the government has complete control of the currency exchange, ultimately they are the ones that has to pay to the outside... This has produced enormous debts and as a consequence the creditor companies, stop working in the Venezuelan market. This is the case of airlines, each day there are less flights, and if there are you have to buy the ticket outside, so if you don't have way to buy a ticket outside, an airplane is not an option. BTW the government says that they are not going ot of Venezuela because of the debt, but because of the World Cup (according to that the airlines have been doing that since 2 months .-.)
I remember 10 years ago, people saying, that Venezuela would be able to maintain socialism/communism, because of the oil… Well, the country with the biggest reserves of oil, in the middle of the biggest oil boom, that has received more money in the last 15 years, than everything since the time it was a Spanish colony, became in 15 years from a country with problems, but still in the top of development in Latin-America, to an absolute failure, a den of corruption and violence.
Lately I have started to considerate Venezuela a failed state.
The last 2 weeks where rough to me, I was pretty sick, just a flu, but a strong one. Supposedly I should have taken antibiotics, but there are none to be found, so it took me more than expected to recuperate. The scarcity each time is worse, food, medicine, even soap (There is no water in my house it has been rationed). None to talk about the state of the hospitals and clinics, no material for most of the tests, patients have to find everything by themselves: needles, cotton, alcohol, antiseptics, even suture material. Surely if an epidemic would strike Venezuela in these moments, hell would break loose.
People have to make not hours but days of line, if they want to buy food in state runned markets. An investigation was made by a group of the Ultimas Noticias newspaper, it took them 3 days to buy what could be found of what is known as canasta basica alimentaria (a list of 50 basic foodstuff)... Of course, it was censored, and the angry journalists that made it where promptly fired (or invited to resign), so they posted it on social networks.
Violence is every day growing, yesterday the mother of a friend was kidnapped, brought to the cota 905 (a dangerous barrio), completely robbed and menaced that they will kill her family if she reported the crime, this is not a banal menace in Venezuela as most of the criminals are also policeman .
The government live in its own world, every day they do accusations of magnicide, coup d’état, and so on, nobody really believes them, they have been doing the same since Chavez got to power more than 15 years ago. They always say they have proofs, but that is only for TV and radio speeches, in reality they never present a thing. Nevertheless they use this to accuse opposition leaders (and of course USA, they never miss a chance to say everything is a conspiracy from the White House), they put them on trial, never get to convict them, but that doesn't mean that once they put them in jail, they will never free them, the trials never end, the judge never appears so the trial is postponed... indefinitely. Yes, by law they can’t go more than 2 years without a sentence, but... what is law for this regime, they do as they please, they are at the same time, all powerful, and completely weak, as they have created numerous armed gangs that control the country, and of course interest conflicts rapidly appear. The last Judge that freed a political prisoner even if he passed 3 years without a sentence was imprisoned (Maria Lourdes Afiuni).
Lastly, as the government has complete control of the currency exchange, ultimately they are the ones that has to pay to the outside... This has produced enormous debts and as a consequence the creditor companies, stop working in the Venezuelan market. This is the case of airlines, each day there are less flights, and if there are you have to buy the ticket outside, so if you don't have way to buy a ticket outside, an airplane is not an option. BTW the government says that they are not going ot of Venezuela because of the debt, but because of the World Cup (according to that the airlines have been doing that since 2 months .-.)
I remember 10 years ago, people saying, that Venezuela would be able to maintain socialism/communism, because of the oil… Well, the country with the biggest reserves of oil, in the middle of the biggest oil boom, that has received more money in the last 15 years, than everything since the time it was a Spanish colony, became in 15 years from a country with problems, but still in the top of development in Latin-America, to an absolute failure, a den of corruption and violence.
Lately I have started to considerate Venezuela a failed state.
I am especially interested in the armed gangs, as this reversion to tribalism is an irreversible cultural cancer. Eventually, you will probably have to choose one. Hopefully you will be one of its leaders and spokesmen.
Siempre listo para ayudarte con otros Gulcheadores.
The armed Gangs is getting this Mad-Max-like but with bureaucracy. The gov is like the big gang that at the same time needs the smaller gangs that they created to maintain as the big gang.
If you don't have money, people try to live illegally to USA, Colombia or some near island, like Aruba or Trinidad.
My sister make "paperwork" for people to legalize documents ( "" because she just know well what has to be done, what is needed, and when to go). She heard from the officials that this year the legalization request went from 15 to 150 per day.
The gov knows who goes out, as you have to show proof of your expenses if you went to other country. As for the moment they do not care about the people leaving. They just say that the ones fleeing are the bourgeois.
The last one is a though question, in support surely the majority, but the electoral system is rigged, dead people voting, people with more than 30 identities, fake votes and destruction of votes before any verification among many. So there is a part of the opposition that wants to Maduro to resign and or wait for elections expecting to win by so much that would be impossible to say the contrary, and the other part say elections will not work (Fidel has "won" every election for the last 50 years, the same goes for North Korea, so....).
So there are to different positions, but if we go to fire power... then our power is basically 0. There are people in the armed forces, but anyone suspicious is sent to jail, Cubans manage almost everything in the armed forces, and they have +50 years of experience in detecting anyone who could be versus them.
Our best shot seems to be that after Chavez death the different factions in the gov are fighting for the power, so.... if they concentrate in killing each other, with a little of international support, (at least as back up a different government, to not go everywhere demanding that maduro stays in power), and a lot of luck, maybe the part of the medium ranked in the armed forces that are not part of this, could reduce the cubans, narcotraffic, and other factions in the midst of their internal war (support of the people will not lack).