A couple of days before the Presidential elections in Venezuela Caracas Chronicles published my interview with Anatoly Kurmanaev. I’m happy with how the interview turned out, but found that fitting everything into a 1200-or-so-word article challenging. There’s so much more to say about implications for journalism and society of a liberal democracy that no longer…
Chatting with my friend Arturo a while back he mentioned that the bank ATMs were limiting people to 10,000 bolívares in withdrawals. This problem has multiple problems, as every problem in Venezuela does. So first, let’s look at that number. It seems like a lot, right? I remember back about ten years ago or so when…
We’re into the third month of the popular uprising in Venezuela and despite exhaustion on both sides (one can presume as much, and there are definite indications of it) this uprising isn’t going away. The opposition, which makes up some 70-90% of the country, depending on which polls you look at and how you…
This is May Day in Venezuela. “Happy” May Day. It’s time to celebrate the Venezuelan people who will no longer tolerate a dictator. They have my support… Witness how they “welcome” the dictator’s military:
(Note: I’ve been away from my blog for a while for personal and creative reasons. In that time the Bolivarians have taken further steps toward an outright judicial dictatorship. They were forced to take one step back when the world reacted to the TSJ (Venezuelan Supreme Court) Ruling 156 in which the court “assumed functions” of…
How’s that for a jumbled headline of non sequiturs? Or, at least apparent non sequiturs. Let me explain myself. First of all, Margarita López Maya is coming to the San Francisco Bay Area in early March to present at Stanford and also at the World Affairs Council in Santa Rosa. AND ALSO at the Niebyl-Proctor…
(Note: A version of this piece was posted at www.libcom.org) The first victims of a riot are the rioters. That’s what the people of Bolivar City in Venezuela are learning right after the riots that took out 90% of its grocery stores in a matter of hours the weekend of December 16-18. Since 80% of…
And I mean no one is saying it, at least not in English in the United States. It’s the most obvious fact about the Chavistas, Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian project, and it may also be the most important thing to say about the current crisis in Venezuela. Javier Corrales hasn’t mentioned it,…
Photo Gustavo Esteve The “Bolivarian Revolution” declared by the late Hugo Chávez a process to bring about “participatory protagonistic democracy” completed itself and came to an end yesterday, October 20, 2016 as it moved definitively into a dictatorship. As Frank Muci put it over at Caracas Chronicles, “the charade is over.” Now the only democratic process…
As I write, the “Taking of Caracas” is just hours away. The united opposition to the Bolivarian government has called on the people of Venezuela to gather in Caracas for what it hopes will be an ongoing protest. It’s a rather extreme measure, forced on the Venezuelan people due to the intransigence of the Bolivarian…