Chávez is afraid to debate as this lady is doing. His ministers are the same.
The Venezuelan government and its media proclaim the opposition are mostly coup mongers (never mind Hugo Chávez is a declared coup monger) and want to topple the government (as Chávez and his followers tried to do in 1992). Chávez says the opposition wants a civil war. The state - which is supposed to represent all Venezuelans - does not allow the opposition to present its view on state media. In Venezuela state media means Chávez propaganda 24 hours a day. Chavismo claims it is the only way to confront the "international complot" against what it calls a revolution.
The current president of Venezuela and his ministers refuse to have an open debate with the opposition.
So far we have only had monologues for years.
How can we make debates happen? The Chavista government will do everything in its power to avoid it, as any other authoritarian government from extreme left or right does.
How do we break the stalemate? Chavismo will say they want debates on the streets between "the people", by which they mean they want to a farce where some of their hard-core followers make enough noise or threaten people. They do not want to have to stand in front of everybody and answer to specific questions in real time.
One of my ideas is to start a campaign throughout the whole country, specially in secondary cities and slums, to inform people how real debates take place in other countries and how Venezuela would benefit from having such debates.
Ps. we are still waiting for PSOE member Miguel Ángel Martínez, one of the vice-presidents of the European Parliament, to answer to our questions. We will keep insisting as long as necessary.
EU functionary Martínez hasn't answered our email after he made quite some statements regarding democracy in Venezuela.
Hier können Deutschsprachige ein interessantes Video der ARD über die Enteignungswelle in Venezuela sehen.
Es ist unglaublich, wie manche Venezolaner sich daran gewöhnen können. Dafür gibt es nur eine Erklärung: absolute Ignoranz, Mangel an Referenzpunkten und Abwesenheit offener Debatten. Ich hoffe, dass wir Venezolaner im Gegensatz zu den Kubanern nicht ganz aus dem Auge verlieren, dass die Normalität etwas anderes ist und dass es etwas viel besseres als unsere Vergangenheit und unsere Gegenwart geben kann - wenn wir es mit eigenen Händen und Köpfen tun.
Immer weniger Landsleute kennen etwas ausserhalb der Chavezkratie. Es liegt an uns, gegen den Geschichtsrevitionismus zu agieren, Informationen über die Realität ausser- und innerhalb Venezuelas kritisch zu diskutieren und freie Debatten überall zu fördern, insbesondere da, wo die Opposition zur Zeit kaum zu hören ist.
In Venezuela gibt es Gott sei dank kein Embargo. Das könnte sich nur Chávez wünschen.
Alberto Müller Rojas, one of the oldest high ranking chavistas and long-standing military honcho, has just announced he is going to retire because he is tired of seeing "more of the same in Venezuelan politics".
"Seldom does the president listen to me", the former military said. "I would say Chavez and I haven't talked in a year". There is something fundamentally wrong in a country when we hear this over and over again. In Venezuela everybody, specially the president himself, thinks that everything has to be dealt with directly between himself and the president. When all this is over, chavistas will say Chávez was prevented from listening and oppos will just say Chávez was not listening to people.
Müller added: "we are changing an internationalism for a nationalistic petite bourgeoisie (sic)". I reckon what Venezuelans have been doing is to replace a dysfunctional, corrupt democracy for a very corrupt autocracy. Venezuela's cargo cult has just grown stronger. The boliburguesía tends to be even flashier than the better off of other times, which is no minor feat.
I would agree with Müller in saying there is nothing fundamentally new in Venezuelan politics. Still, I disagree on important details. Müller remains an unrepentant extreme left-winger with little understanding of/for democracy, pluralism, open debate and competition of ideas. The ones in power have even less of that. Many within the opposition are in a similar situation, even if they may be less divisive.
New Star
At the same time the new Rising Star of Chavismo, Elías Jaua, says the PSUV has cut ties with their former partners, minor party Patria Para Todos (PPT). We were expecting this after Lara's governor, Henry Falcón, decided to leave the PSUV and join, one more time, PPT.
Jaua: his speciality is wearing red shirts.
So far I see very radical thugs in power, some minor thugs or simply miniautocrats in tiny dissident parties and a myriad of opposition parties - their name is legion - that are in reality no real parties but a bunch of cash-strapped organizations without development plans surrounding uncharismatic proto-caudillos with ties to Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia only.
I am not saying that I am not excited about the great perspectives ahead of us, I am rather cautious.
Francisco de Miranda was born on the 28 of March of 1750. He travelled from Venezuela to the United States, from Cuba to Morocco, from Spain to Russia and left a series of wonderful diaries about what he saw and the people he met. He also wrote a lot about concrete measures for Venezuela's development.
He fought as an officer in North America, in Europe, where he became a general in the French Revolution and finally in Venezuela, where he led the independence movement for some time, until he was betrayed by Simón Bolívar, who would later become Venezuela's Semi God. Miranda would die in a Spanish prison in 1816.
I have written a little bit about Miranda here. If you want to rediscover Europe of the late XVIII century, you should get hold of Miranda's diaries.
Francisco de Miranda was one of the generals whose names are printed on the Arch de Triumph in Paris.
Venezuelas politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Lage erschwert sich von Tag zu Tag und die Venezolaner sehen noch nicht ein, wie gefährlich es werden kann.
Gestern konnten wir in El nacional über einige der neuesten Umfragewerte von Datanálisis lesen. 1300 Menschen wurden Ende Februar befragt. Der Umfrage zufolge soll die Popularität des venezolanischen Militärführers und Präsidenten um 4% gesunken sein und nun "zwischen 40% und 50% liegen". Das ist immer noch sehr hoch, wenn man in Betracht zieht, dass Chávez schon seit 1999 an der Macht ist.
66% der Bevölkerung denkt, dass es schlecht mit Venezuela geht. Das heisst, dass zumindest 6% bis 16% der Venezolaner denken, dass es mit Venezuela schlecht geht und trotzdem den Caudillo unterstützen.
Ferner sagt die Studie, dass die Anzahl der Menschen, die in den Septemberwahlen für Regierungskandidaten stimmen wollen, genauso gross ist, wie die Anzahl der Menschen, die für Oppositionskandidaten sind.
Der Vorsitzende der Oppositionspartei Primero Justicia, Julio Borges, stellte Ende März einen Plan fürs Land vor, der als Kern die "soziale Marktwirtschaft" hat. Das ist nicht verwunderlich: Primero Justicia wird von der CDU unterstützt. Die soziale Marktwirtschaft ist etwas, was Deutschsprachige sehr gut kennen und womit viele Leute sich anfreunden können. Ich selbst finde viele positive Punkte dabei. Wie viele Venezolaner können aber etwas damit anfangen, wenn
ihr Bildungsniveau so niedrig ist?
die meisten Menschen denken, dass Venezuela ein reiches Land ist und dass man nur die Reichtümer anders verteilen muss?
keine Gruppe weiss, wie viel sie selbst geben müssen, um sozial verantwortlich zu sein?
Venezuela seit fast 100 Jahren vom Erdöl gelebt hat?
die meisten Venezolaner von der Opposition kaum erreichbar sind, kein Kabelfernsehen, oder Internetzugang haben und nur, wenn überhaupt Boulevardzeitungen lesen?
die meisten Oppositionsführer aus Caracas, Maracaibo und Valencia stammen, in diesen Städten bleiben und die Denkweise von 70% der Venezolaner kaum kennen?
die meisten Venezolaner niemals das Land verlassen haben und kaum wissen, wie schlecht Venezuela nun wirklich abschneidet, was Bildung, Gesundheit und vor allem Kriminalität betrifft?
die venezolanische Regierung bereit ist, sehr kurzfristige populistische Massnahmen zu treffen, um ihre Chancen für die Wahlen zu erhöhen, auch wenn diese Massnahmen mittelfristig sehr schädlich für die meisten sein werden?
die ganze Wahlkommission und die Justiz dem Caudillo völlig untertänig sind?
die Regierung alle Medien beherrscht (im Gegensatz zu was Chavez-Fans im Ausland sagen) und die ganze Zeit Propaganda gegen die Opposition führt?
Die Spannung wird weiter zunehmen. Die Opposition hat noch nicht gelernt, wie sie neue Gruppen erreicht. Die Regierung wird immer mehr Repression verwenden. Die Opposition, die Vereinigten Staaten, die Marsmännchen, alle anderen werden als Sündenbock benutzt werden. Die Regierung, die kaum Resourcen verwalten kann und trotz Petrodollars immer wieder in finanziellen Schwierigkeiten kommt, wird einfach mehr und mehr enteignen. Die Oppositionsführer werden über Privateigentum sprechen. Damit werden sie aber kaum andere Menschen erreichen, als die, die schon überzeugt sind: die anderen haben sehr wenig zu verlieren, ausser Zukunftsperspektiven, sie sie nicht für möglich halten. Die Opposition braucht andere Themen, die alle Menschen ansprechen, so dass sie sich alle vereinigen, um nicht mehr gegen die Wand zu laufen.
The National Assembly under Hugo's control decided to create a new order, as if they did not have enough: the Order of Revolutionary Martyrs. This new medal will be awarded to people (i.e. chavistas) who have made an "outstanding contribution to the construction and defence of socialism in all fields". This was announced when a group of chavista deputies placed a flower arrangement at a monument to guerrilla fighter José Manuel Saher, a man who fought against the democratic governments of the sixties.
The deputies declared they did it also in honour of the fights carried out by native Americans - never mind the government haven't given pemones or yekwanas, guaraos or karinas the lands they demand- and in honour of all those who suffered under the dictatorships of Juan Vicente Gómez and Pérez Jiménez - never mind Hugo is becoming more and more like the former one and he has openly and repeatedly expressed admiration for the latter. 2)
The first link of this post is a video where Hugo is giving a new award, the Medalla del Libertador, to Aleksandr Lukashenko. The Belarussian dictator says "what has been done for Belarus today here (he does not say what in this clip)...that...no one has ever given our country such a present...and I want to promise you, dear Hugo -yeah, he calls Hugo Hugo too! - and I also give my promise to the whole Venezuelan people, that we will correspond to this big present of the Venezuelan nation. I promise you here, on Venezuelan soil...that we will do anything you tell us for your country, for the defence of your sovereignity and for the maintenance of the security and independence [of the nation]".
Hugo of Sabaneta keeps taking away powers from any form of elected government that is not under his control. As Venezuelans rejected his proposals in the 2007 referendum to create parallel regional governments and to introduce the figure of special "vicepresidents" (i.e. viceroyals) to regions, Hugo decided to push through said proposals anyway by using special powers given to him by his Assembly.
Now Hugo created a Federal Council to have a better control over the states. Although most municipalities have mayors that are pro-regime, around 45% of Venezuelans live in municipalities with opposition governments (never mind those goverments have less and less to do by the day).
Elías Jua, vicepresident and one of the key figures of the regime, has just announced what mayors are going to represent each state in this new Federal Council.
You can see the municipalities of those mayors in the map I created here: the winner takes it all and all those representatives are absolutely loyal to the former coup monger. The reddish areas have chavista mayors, the blueish have oppo mayors and the yellowish "discidence mayors". The green spots represent the mayors now in that council. They are all in the reddish regions. They will manage a lot of the moneys Hugo decides to give back to the states. The oppo mayors will have to beg to them.
In the following months you will see how chavismo will use any legal and illegal measure to prevent the opposition from gaining many deputies in the National Assembly, how it will bring electoral fraud to new levels of sophistication and how it will, eventually, emasculate the National Assembly to prevent the opposition from gaining any power there.
The Carter Centre, mostly IT illiterate, thought fraud was when you had soldiers pointing at you with an AK47s, telling you how to vote. They did not see that in Venezuela, so they thought things were kosher and they keep being as they were in 2004. Things are a wee bit more sophisticated than that, as the Smart Machines and the weird paper trails have shown.
Today the former coup monger and current president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, is in Barquisimeto's military airbase for the reception of 6 Chinese war airplanes.
The Chinese ambassador is with him. The planes are of the K8W type, a variety of a Hondu. Venezuela will get 12 more of those planes in December. Each plane costs between 3 and 3.5 million dollars. 3.5 times 18 is equal to 63 million.
The head of state said "Venezuela has to become a military power to be a world power at all". This is no joke.
Today I also read in Notitarde about the children in my region. Take the ones in the Franciso de Miranda "school", in municipio Libertador, part of the electoral circuit the government created in January within the latest gerrymandering session. There are 193 children with no desks and no books. The kids now use articles from magazines and newspapers as support material. They have no classroom either. They have classes under the sky, just as my dad used to in the early forties of last century. At least my dad had to share his only teacher with less classmates. The teachers now are young women from the Misión Sucre who don't get money but help the children out of concern for them. Our Jefe and Pueblo in person is in Maracay getting the planes that will make Venezuela a super power.
Libertador is a municipality in the state of Carabobo. It is, together with neighbouring Southern Valencia to the East, the Western part of the very key electoral district created on the government's last gerrymandering round. The party winning the majority there in September 2010 will get three extra deputies at the National Assembly.
There are several municipalities with that name in Venezuela, the name a product of Venezuelans' obsession with military figure Simón Bolívar. This Libertador municipality is located where the Battle of Carabobo took place.
The municipality is 558km2. That is about 23.6 per 23.6 km. It is very densely populated for Venezuela: it has anything from 180000 to almost 300000 people. We don't know exactly how many are there. In Venezuela you have to give your ID number if you buy a book or a mixer legally, but there is no real control of who lives where, specially in poor areas.
There are several "hallmarks". You have
the Campo Carabobo, which is a memorial for the famous battle, a place for military parades and visits from school children
the state prison
the largest landfill or rubbish dump of the state and one of the largest in Venezuela
Venezuela's Prisons
The prison in Libertador (actually 3 in 1) is an example of Venezuela's prisons. They were built in 1959-1963 and were built for 1200 people. They have at least 3024 persons now. The state spends less than 2 dollars for each prisoner per day, whereas the US and Europe spend more than 50 dollars. Last year 106 prisoners were injured in fights or any other act of violence and 53 were killed. That is 1 out of 57 prisoners. There is a complete report about the situation at the site of the Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones, when it is not down.
Venezuela's Rubbish Dumps
Venezuela's environmental record is horrible, even if capital consumption is not as high as in the US or Europe. The big problem we have is that we are processing our rubbish as we were doing two hundred years ago, when most rubbish could degrade easily and our population was just 1/30 of what we have now.
In a country as Belgium or Germany one tone of rubbish is mostly recycled, the fumes completely filtered, the heat reprocessed, plastic, glass and a lot more is taken out of the rubbish through safe procedures, a lot of the rest is transformed into material to be used for road construction and at the end you get one kilogram of useless rubbish that gets stored in special areas. In Guásima, you throw everything into dumps, wait until the poor or just some illegal "recycling teams" take with their bare hands reusable batteries, some plastic, some (some) glass and then you burnt it all. You then push it further into the ground. There are some areas with some "isolating material" that should prevent that toxic waste from getting into the groundwater, but the whole process is a joke. The rubbish of more than 1.5 million people of an industrial city end up here.
Every second week or so there are big fires that last for a couple of days. Mothers have to take their kids inside their homes, hope for the wind to turn in the other direction. Thousands of people have breathing or skin problems.
For more than a decade the people of this municipality have been asking for external help but nothing happens: the national government ignores everything, the different municipalities keep fighting each other and politics always gets the upper trump. Everybody accuses the others of not contributing to solve the issue.
Last year a new dump field nearby was built for 20 million Bs (which seems suspiciously little), with one collection area where the rubbish is also squashed to reduce its size and two areas for depositing toxic waste over a rather primitive "geomembrana" or protective shield to prevent leackage into the underground. The mayor hopes to open it up in mid 2010, but she is still waiting for the national government to give them the control of it. Until 5 municipalities with the vast majority of the state's population use the site without giving much for it.
Meanwhile, the pollution is so high that it is spreading: the underground water ends up going into Southern Valencia and from there into the Valencia Lake.
Murder in the Land of Freedom
Approximately 200 persons died in the 1821 Battle of Carabobo fighting for Venezuela's independence. in 2006, 175 people were murdered in this municipality. In 2007, there were 177 murders. In 2008 there were 214 people who got murdered here. Last year, there were 232. The municipality has one of the highest murder rates in a country that as a whole the highest murder rate of South America. Bogotá and Medellín are almost Swedish compared to this.
Below you have the total amount of murders in the municipality month by month. Remember the region is around 23.6 km x 23.6 km large. The red column is December (I got the data from Notitarde, which got it from the state police).
Public Resources in Libertador and Southern Valencia
There is not a single general hospital for the Libertador population. There is actually not a single general hospital even for most of Southern Valencia, with half a million people. All these regions are served by one single general hospital, the Hospital general de Valencia, which is also the hospital for central and northern Valencia and many other regions.
Public schools are incredibly overcrowded in this and neighbouring areas. There are many pupils who do not have books ore even desks. There are no real public libraries. If you speak Spanish, read this about a school there.
Work
Most people living in Libertador have to go somewhere else to get a job, any job: some work in construction, some work in the service sector mostly as unskilled workers. A huge amount of people are just street vendors. There are just a few minor industries around.
The Political Zoo
Libertador makes up, together with several parishes of the Valencia municipality, the newly gerrimandered mega-electoral district the chavista regime concocted for securing three deputies. Below you see how the results for the 2008 election of the Libertador Mayor. There is a ridiculously large amount of parties, something unique to Venezuela and perhaps Somalia. If several opposition parties actually merged or disappeared, the result would be much more than the sum of the resulting votes. Several of Valencia's parishes in this new district have much more support for the alternatives to the regime. Still, if people voted as they voted in 2008, we would not win that circuit.
We need to change that. This is going to be very difficult, particularly as the Proyecto Venezuela party prefers to let everybody sink than to cooperate and lose their opportunity to be candidates. This is going to be very difficult, as the other parties are not trying to analyse the needs of the people in those areas and do not spend time there. They are getting votes from Libertador and Southern Valencia mostly because in spite of themselves. Only a few courageous Venezuelans working for the opposition - some people I know - are spending a lot of time in those areas listening to people's needs and talking about proposals.
What you see above is a Scolopendra gigantea. They are almost everywhere in Venezuela.
I love mountaineering and trekking. When I arrived in Europe and went on trekking trips with Northern friends, they would ask me: why are you always looking at the stones and earth like that? I realised I was doing exactly what I had learnt to do in Venezuela as a wee child: always check out for poisonous snakes or insects before putting a hand in or on any spot. Of course, in Northern Europe you have to watch out for loose stones and the like, but you don't really have to be as cautious as in Venezuela when it comes to avoiding small animals. In fact, even at my home, which is in a city but right next to a mountain, I would always check shoes or boots I had left outside by pressing them through before putting my feet in. Poisonous ants were always hard to spot.
My brother forgot the drill once and he got stung by a scorpion. It was extremely painful for him and had he been smaller it could have been fatal.
Scolopendrae gigantea eat, among other things, tarantulas. You would not like to put your toe into a shoe with one of them inside. They can easily reach a foot long or long for your foot. Well, you would not want the tarantula either.
Dies ist ein Teil der ARD-Sendung Expedition Humboldt, die Ende 2009 ausgestrahlt wurde.
Leider ist hier der Anfang der Sendung nicht zu sehen, wo man die Proteste gegen die Regierung, das Personenkult um den Präsidenten, die Wiedersprüche der sogenannten "Revolution" und die Erzählungen der Chaima-Indianer sieht.
Ich kann allen, die sich für Venezuela interessieren, die Reise in die Äquinotialgegenden des Neuen Kontinents ganz herzlich empfehlen.
Vor etwa zwei Jahren hat die venezolanische Regierung hochposaunt, dass man das Institut für Indigene Sprachen errichten würde. Bis jetzt steht das alles nur auf Papier, es gibt kein Geld dafür...und wie zu Humboldts Zeiten bleibt vom Papier wenig übrig, wenn auch nicht mehr "wegen der beständigen Verheerungen der Termiten oder weißen Ameisen".
I have mentioned it in some posts: those consuming cocaine in the North are right now responsible to a big extent for financing the very murderous drug bands in Latin America. Northern countries (or rich ones, as Australia is in this group as well) can accuse Latin American countries of not doing enough to curb the production and export of cocaine, but they are doing much less in curbing their consumption. The current international legislation on drugs, largely supported by the rich countries,is only good for drug dealers. One wonders if organisations insisting on keeping that legislation as it is (in Europe, in the US and at general level at the UNODC) are infiltrated. There is such a thing as the law of supply and demand, guys!
Many thousands of people in Latin America are paying with their lives every month caught in the middle of the cocaine wars financed with dollars and euros...money that ultimately comes from drug users.
Belgian Tom Boonen tested positive for cocaine 3 times
French Richard Gasquet took also cocaine "parce que c'est cool".
US Michael Irvin also took cocaine
and so are doing many millions of hijos de papá y mamá in the rich countries.
This post is about the Bolivarian militias and Venezuelans in general. This is about Venezuela's future or lack of it.
Some weeks ago I was listening to a BBC programme about the Basij, the paramilitary militia used by the Iranian regime to oppress its population or, as the Basij and the regime say, to "defend the revolution". I could not stop thinking about Venezuela.
The BBC interviewed people who had been victims of the Basij and also a former Basij. The stories were gruesome and although they were nothing really new, they kept being shocking. The human rights situation in Iran is as grim as ever.
There are important differences between Venezuela and Iran. One of them is religion. Venezuelans usually have a rather light view on religion. They are mostly Christians, sort of. They don't tend to mix politics with religion, even if the current president keeps telling them about how Christian he is and how socialist Jesus was. Venezuela, unlike Iran, was a democracy before the so-called revolution arrived. It was a highly dysfunctional democracy, but a democracy all the same. People were used to speaking out very loud about. As I said on an earlier post, there was no real culture for civilized debate. Still, there was a start.
This is Iran
This is Venezuela
This is Venezuela
The Venezuelan regime could not change that overnight and it did not want to do it. The new government did not want to alianate at an early stage potential supporters abroad and in Venezuela. They let international observers go to Venezuela. They let them see how Globovision was telling day in, day out about how dictatorial the regime was. A dictatorship just doesn't do that. The chavista government wanted foreign observers to see the very harsh criticism of a few national newspapers. Government officials know most international observers ignore how many persons could actually watch those TV stations or how many normaly read those newspapers.
Globovision is a Potemkin village for the Venezuelan government. It broadcasts its very critical view but it can only reach a tiny minority. In reality we can say Venezuela now is no longer a democracy. It is not a Belarus nor an Iran, but it is not a democracy. The opposition can bark, but the rope is short. And here I go to Venezuela's similarities with Iran:
both countries have governments that claim to be revolutionary,
both governments are cooperating very closely
both governments refuse to have an open, fair debate with the opposition (they insist the debates are taking place everywhere)
both governments use anti-US feelings to rally people around themselves and to distract from domestic problems
both governments rely heavily on oil exports and
both governments know developed nations rely on those exports to move their engines
I will also mention other similarities that English-speaking news outlets fail to mention:
urban, well-educated people are highly disconnected with the rural areas
rural areas as well as those living in secondary cities have very little sources of information beyond the official media
The development of the so-called "Bolivarian" militias is a worrying phenomenon.
One of the British journalists started to mention the typical characteristics of many of those Basij in Iran. The similarities were clear, even if not surprising. Most members of the Iranian militias
are of rural or sub-rural background
are poor
have very limited education
feel forgotten or despised by the rich and the well-educated urbanites
are deeply religious
Many of them want a real job and access to education.
Venezuelans are, as I said, not that religious. Their believes have nothing to do with becoming a martyr and going to heaven in martyrdom. Still, many of those who are still supporting the government and are not part of the high "caste" of boliburgueses have the same characteristics as the members of Iran's militias. About half of Venezuela's population, by official numbers work in the informal sector. That informal sector is not so much "electrician working without receipts" but rather "street vendor selling foreign toys on the streets". Many are depending on some sort of scholarship for doing almost nothing. The vast majority have a very low level of education.
While most (definitely not all) opposition leaders keep bickering in the posh areas of Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia about who will be the candidate there, people elsewhere are left unattended. Many are craving to listen politicians about an alternative to the current regime. Most national leaders of the opposition just remain in a couple of cities. If some go elsewhere, they just do it very briefly, give their talk and go away. They do not listen.
While the regime is losing popularity, the opposition is not gaining ground outside the 3 main urban hubs, not even in the dormitory cities around those urban hubs. It is not easy: the opposition does not have the financial resources the government has and when it has tried to reach people in places in new places, its people have been brutally attacked. Still: it must keep trying and it must do it as a united front. The opposition needs to put down roots in those areas.
Meanwhile, the chavista regime wants to increase control there. It knows it cannot survive in an atmosphere of pluralism and civilized debate. Its leaders come mostly from those non-urban areas where the current opposition is weak, so they know how to use the situation of people living there. Not only do they have the access to petrodollars to pay for training, they give those people a feeling of belonging. They provide fun. They give them a mission. They let them feel important and they wash their brains. They talk a lot about Bolivarianism almost as a religion, - never mind their image of Bolivar is absolutely ahistorical. They know how to tell stories that lull.
Some people within the opposition underestimate the danger of those paramilitary groups: the first pictures of those militias show people holding rifles the wrong way, pretending to use weapons that are not loaded and the like. But people forget: it is much easier to learn how to destroy than to learn how to build.
The opposition will sooner or later discover the rural and above all the secondary urban areas. They have to: almost half the population lives in those secondary urban areas. The thing is how it will be able to compete and campaign fairly there. The opposition will find networks of people who think to be defending some revolution even if they are just defending a reactionary regime. The opposition will find people who have been brainwashed but who feel they have been taken seriously for the first time in their lives. The opposition will find armed people, people who have a salary as guerrilla. They will find people with a contradictory ideology, but an ideology all the same, more than what most opposition parties can claim to have.
The whole situation is very sad. The government is spending large amounts of money and time in training Venezuelans to become guerrilla fighters against their own compatriots and a US intervention. Instead it should be training them to become mathematicians or farmers, electricians or mechanics specialists.
Take the development of the 'Bolivarian' militias and combine them with the Venezuelan soviets, the consejos populares, and you have a recipe for disaster and lost decades.
Obsession with ahistorical Bolívar as main component of Venezuela's pensum at schools (and later on)
Venezuela's education is arguably the worst problem we have. If the general population does not have the right tools for analytical thinking and its leaders are in a similar situation, the country is doomed for failure. The government we have now is not up to the challenge. Right now it is clumsily trying to get rid of the responsability of providing for a solid education at school level. It is putting most of the responsability at university level, as you can read in Spanish El Nacional. The government is simply saying that universities now are discriminating against pupils coming from state schools and that they should simply accept them all and fix things then. It does not want to debate why those pupils are so badly prepared.
The reality is that Venezuelan pupils, specially those coming from public schools, are on average very badly qualified. They are - this is average - the worst of Latin America by far. That is one of the reasons why the chavista government decided to take Venezuela out of international evaluation tests as soon as it came to power and that is why it just prefers to tell Unesco how great Venezuela is doing now. The government propaganda machine then talks to the whole world about the Unesco reports...that are nothing more than reports on hear-saying (primarily from the government).
State universities have been using internal admission procedures to select their students: there are just too many people wanting to go to university and just a tiny minority have the necessary skills to do so. The admission procedures are mostly tests to find out who the most promising are. As public schools are in worse shape than private ones, there is a higher proportion of pupils from private schools getting into state universities. Pupils from private schools make out hardly 20% of all pupils, but they represent over 50% of all students and, in some universities, much more.
On one side we have the government telling universities the government is going to select students and that universities must accept them all and just make up for the low quality by adding "introductory courses". On the other side, most university representatives say they have the right to choose students and if they don't do that, quality will suffer more than it is suffering now. Those university representatives are as selfish and blind as the government. Simply put, everyone is trying to put responsibility somewhere else.
It is incredibly sad that neither students nor university professors know how to bring forward alternative solutions to the government's short-term "solution".
Everybody in Venezuela needs to understand this:
Pregraduate studies in Venezuela are shorter than anywhere in the developed world or even in most developing countries. In Venezuela students have to do one year less than in Chile or Argentina, Peru or Mexico, Colombia or Germany.
Salaries for primary and secondary school teachers in Venezuela are so low that only the saints or those who can't find jobs anywhere else work as basic or secondary school teachers. Right now Venezuela's education budget goes primarily and more than elsewhere to universities. Without a solid basis - id schools -, universities are built upon very wobbly stuff.
It is not good to try to fix up the great deficiencies of poor pupils by simply adding courses at university level. University teachers should be used for higher-level work, whereas pupils should arrive at the university with levels that are at least as good as or better than those in chile or Argentina. Pupils need better teachers and schools before thinking about getting to university level.
If the education minister cannot guarantee that public schools offer the same level of education as private schools, he must resign. We must ask him to resign until he does. Do we want social justice? At the same time as those extra courses are added to universities, the ministry of education should do everything that is required to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas so that pupils from there become as good as those from the posh ones.
Black rats came from Eurasia. They came to America with the European conquista. Still, America (I am talking in the original sense of the word America) has lots of other "native" rodents. One of those rodents is the picure or Dasyprocta fuliginosa. It lives in Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. I have seen a lot of them while wandering in the mountains of Carabobo. Picures were good for dinner in the countryside decades ago. Some people still eat them.
Some ideas about how to fight corruption in Venezuela:
1) create a Corrupedia, the free Encyclopaedia For Venezuelan Corruption that contains information about all corruption affairs reported in Venezuela's history. This encyclopaedia should
keep a given format that gives the looks and feel of an encyclopaedia
document all possible corruption affairs from all parties and individuals, independently from their political views
contain necessary sources documenting the issue
contain information comparing Venezuela with some countries such as: Chile, Norway, Canada and Congo, Haiti and Afghanistan on the other side (see here for further reference).
contain reference articles about mesures carried out in other countries to combat corruption and results obtained
I actually wanted to start, but I have little spare time with this blog and all.
2) Ask opposition candidates to go everywhere in Venezuela, from Maturín to Tucupita, from Charallave to El Tocuyo to propose a Venezuelan version of an idea British politician David Cameron brought forward:
"In a speech broadcast to the rarefied TED conference in California [...], he announced that all government contracts worth more than £25,000 ($39,200) would be published online. Businesses could pore over them item-by-item in an effort to undercut established contractors."
(I never thought I would be promoting an idea from the Tories, but then...what the heck!)
Before Hugo Chávez came to power there was the obligation to make tenders in a public way, but this government has almost completely obliterated that. This proposal would not only bring back that but bring in more transparency after the deals are accepted...much more!
Last year Venezuelans found out what deputies were earning. Many of those deputies, like "comrade" Oscar Figuera (Partido Comunista de Venezuela) were getting a little bit over 10000 BsF per month. Back then that was around 3000 euros. Holiday months were not included, just "general expenses". The actual total was higher: they get about 10 months extra salary for "vacation time" and "end of the year" money. That is a quite some money in a poor country, specially considering income tax is way lower than in the US (I don't even mention Canada or Europe). More importantly: that is a lot compared to what primary school teachers in Venezuela earn. The ratio between salaries of deputies and primary school teachers is much higher than in very "capitalist countries" like Germany or Switzerland.
Anyway, we can discuss for a long time aboutn the exact amount Venezuelan deputies need, but the issue I want to bring forward here is the reaction of the president of the National Assembly, Cilia Flores, and what we can do. Ms Flores, one of the president's greatest cheerleaders, threatened regime-critical TV station Globovision with legal punishment for illegally acquiring the information about deputies' salaries. But it seems there was no other way to find out. Flores in her attack went into a lenghty description of the "hardships" deputies have to go through. In a video I show below you can listen to Flores saying, among other things, that "deputies earn relatively little and sometimes have to come to the capital by road" and not by plane, even if [travel by road] is dangerous". Wao! Do we have a civil war? Actually, most Venezuelans feel we do. Never mind many of the deputies actually live in areas that are closer by car than by plane (OK, private helicopters beat them all, but we are not talking about those here).
You can watch that video and read an accompanying article here. It is a governmental site. They showed a journalist of Globovision, but only because the Pcv deputy was explaining his position. Notice in that video that the communist deputy says his whole salary goes to the party, he gets a salary from the party. So? In any case: the party is not Venezuela. And he is one of the most kosher. I am sure the deputies of the PSUV use their salaries for other things.
If you visit the German Parliament, the Bundestag, in Berlin, you can actually get hold of a brochure with information indicating the salaries of the Bundesabgeordnete, the German MPs.
While in Venezuela it is so hard to get information about what deputies are earning at the Asamblea, in Germany there is now a whole discussion about what they are earning outside. This is necessary in Germany, but also in Venezuela.
I think the new deputies of the opposition should push for more transparency. I doubt they will want to do that thinking it would mean to shoot themselves in the foot.
In Der Spiegel you have a flash page where you can find out what deputy of what party has one or more "extra jobs". Even if you don't speak German, take a look at it, click here and there and see how the deputy seats are shown. You can actually learn much more: in what commission what deputies are working in, how old they are, etc.
We need that.
Ps. Please, don't forget to take part in the poll of this month about when el comandante willl cease being head of state in Venezuela!
Do you think Mexico is a failed state? It is probably a mess, but Venezuela is worse, considering it has a murder rate that is several times that of Mexico (and that is not the only parameter in which Venezuela is failing very badly).
Here you have an update of murders in Carabobo. Each colour represents a municipality. There were less murders in February than in January of this year, but that happens every year. Murder rates are not linear functions: there is a huge hike in December (when people get a lot of dosh) and things "stabilize" in February, although since chavismo is in power it stabilizes at a worse level. There were more murders this February tha than in February of last year. The trend is very similar everywhere in Venezuela. I have the state numbers for earlier years, but not per municipality. There were less than 50 murders in that region per month in 1998, still a lot but less than 1/3 of what we have today. Reader Vicente was telling us he believes the horrendous rise of crime in Venezuela, with no comparison in the rest of South America, may be due to some plan by chavismo to scare people...literally to death. You are bound to keep indoors and don't protest if you see life is worth nothing in Venezuela. Is that the explanation? Or simple incompetence? Or a mixture of it all?
Of course we will never know what the regime thinks as the government refuses to answer to specific questions and Venezuela has a presidential system where the president just holds monologues.
And what is my reader's current opinion about how long the president will last in power? Things haven't changed so much. There are a little bit more people who think he will be out before the end of next year but there are also many more who think he will only leave office after 2021. Please, drop by and vote again this month. It just takes a second or two. Thanks!
Ps. I don't get the same amount of people answering every month and these people are everywhere on Earth, so I don't intend this poll to be scientific or something. It is just fun.
_2008.svg.png)
at university level, as you can read in Spanish 
