Venezuelan ministries - a glimpse (I)

Here you have a glimpse of the thirty-two ministers in Venezuela under Madurism. In dark green, ministers who were military coup mongers in 1992. In light green there is a minister who is the son of such a military. The age field is in red if the minister is a woman. There are really strange ministries. Ernesto Villegas Poljak, for instance, has the ministry for the Revolutionary Transformation of Caracas. In reality that ministry is just a parallel government to deviate the money that should go to the Mayor of Caracas, who is an opposition politician. The strange thing: Villegas is lefty because his parents were communists...communists who were jailed by Pérez Jiménez, a right-winged military Hugo Chávez admired a lot.

As you see, Chavistas feel the need to have separate ministries for air and water transportation and for land transportation or for electricity or for jails. When Chávez came to power he said he would reduce ministries to fight inefficiency and bureaucracy but what he did was to triple their number. Maduro has continued that tradition. At the end this group will say XXI Century "Socialism" came down because of bureaucracy, "a problem of capitalism". That's the way the extreme left react.

Name	Ministry	Age
Yván Eduardo Gil Pinto	Agriculture	41
Reinaldo Antonio Iturriza López	Communes & social protection	40
Delcy Eloina Rodríguez Gómez	Communication & information	44
Fidel Barbarito	Culture	40
Carmen Teresa (Meléndez) Rivas	Defence	52
Rodolfo Clemente Marco Torres	Economy, finance & public banking	47
Héctor Rodríguez Castro	Education	32
Ricardo Menéndez Prieto	Education – university	44
Jesse Alonso Chacón Escamillo	Electricity	48
Miguel Leonardo Tadeo Rodríguez	Environment	52
Félix Ramón Osorio Guzmán	Food	44
Elías José Jaua Milano	Foreign affairs	44
Francisco Alejandro Armada Pérez	Health	48??
Ricardo Antonio Molina Peñaloza	Housing & urbanism	53
José David Cabello	Industries	44
Miguel Rodríguez Torres	Interior, Justice & Peace	50
Jesús Rafael Martínez Barrios	Labour	69
Aloha Joselyn Gutiérrez Núñez	Native American affairs	30
Rafael Darío Ramírez Carreño	Oil and mining	50
María Iris Varela Rangel	Penitentiary	47
Jorge Antonio Giordani Cordero	Planning	73
Hugo César Cabezas Bracamonte	Presidency & follow up	41
Ernesto Emilio Villegas Poljak	Revolutionary Transformation of Caracas	43
Manuel Ángel Fernández Meléndez	Science, technology & innovation	47
Antonio Enrique Álvarez Cisneros	Sports	37
Andrés Guillermo Izarra García	Tourism	44
Dante Rafael Rivas Quijada	Trade	39
Haiman Douwara El Troudi	Transportation – land	43
Hébert Josué García Plaza	Transportation – water air	52
Andreína Tarazón Bolívar	Women and Gender Equality	26
Victor José Clark Boscán	Youth	31

Un país crónicamente disfuncional

Mi abuelo paterno era un campesino pobre con una pequeña parcela de tierra que trabajó durante mucho tiempo para un terrateniente. Su relación laboral era semajante a la que hubo en Europa central durante la Edad Media. Cuando murió el dictador Gómez, amigo de dicho terrateniente, mi abuelo se dedicó a trabajar solo el pedacito de tierra que era destinado para su familia y, de vez en cuando, para los sucesores del terrateniente, pero no tenía que trabajar en las tierras principales del otro. La tierra de Venezuela era tan fértil que la parcelita podía alimentar bien a su familia y vender alimentos para comprar algunas herramientas, productos como el café o la sal y ropa y comenzar a pagar la bicicleta con la que mi padre pudo ir a un liceo a hacer parte de su bachillerato. Una de las cosas que más recuerdo de mis visitas a mis abuelos era ver cómo sembraba caraotas - frijoles negros-, maíz, naranjas y verificaba el corral de las gallinas. Como ya Alexander von Humboldt consiguió ver hace más de dos siglos, la fertilicad de gran parte del territorio venezolano es asombrosa.

Sabemos que desde hace muchas décadas Venezuela ha descuidado su agricultura. Muchos campesinos emigraron, como en el resto del mundo, a las ciudades. Muchas familias consiguieron insertarse en otros renglones de la economía de la nación, pero muchas otras pasaron a ser habitantes marginales de nuestras ciudades.  Venezuela ya antes de la vuelta de los militares al poder tenía que importar tal o cual producto agrícola. Aun así, el país seguía cubriendo más o menos sus necesidades alimenticias.

Las cosas han cambiado de manera dramática. El país tiene que importar más y más cosas. 

Pero mi abuelo jamás habría creído posible que tuviéramos que importar caraotas como lo hacemos ahora. La semana pasada llegaron a Puerto Cabello cientos de toneladas de dichos granos.  Llegaron al mismo tiempo en que llegaron cientos de toneladas de arroz de Canadá, soja de Estados Unidos y carne de Colombia y de Brasil.

La dependencia de las importaciones de alimentos se incrementa cada día. El ministro de Agricultura Felix Osorio, antiguo militar golpista amigo de Chávez,  dice todo el tiempo que estas importaciones son para asegurar la soberanía alimentaria del país. Evidentemente, Osorio sabe tanto de desarrollo sustentable o de agricultura como lo que sé yo de cómo armar un Kalashnikov: nada.

En el primer gráfico que pueden ver aquí presento el crecimiento del PIB de Venezuela al lado de la variación interanual del precio del barril de la OPEP. No es una relación inmediata, se trata de una correlación complicada. Aun así, está claro que sin un aumento constante del precio del petróleo la economía venezolana no solo deja de crecer, sino que comienza a entrar en recesión. Lo único que ha conseguido postergar una y otra vez períodos de recesión ha sido la política de endeudamiento, impresión de dinero y consecuente inflación en que el gobierno de Chávez y luego el de Maduro han metido al país.

El segundo gráfico presenta el nivel en que ha crecido la población, la economía y el precio internacional del petróleo a lo largo del tiempo. El eje de las ordenadas muestra cómo han variado esos parámetros si se considera que 100 es el nivel que tenían en 1998. No normalicé el precio del petróleo, pero aunque lo hubiera hecho, el patrón no cambiaría mucho. Si bien en ningún país se puede esperar un crecimiento 1:1 entre el PIB y el aumento de precio de un producto primario que se exporte, sí se podría esperar un mejor rendimiento de lo que muestra la economía venezolana, ante todo en tiempos de vacas flacas.

El siguiente gráfico compara a largo plazo el crecimiento del PIB de Venezuela con el de Noruega, otro país que depende de gran medida de la exportación de petróleo. Los datos vienen del Banco Mundial.

En teoría Venezuela parece tener varios períodos de mayor crecimiento que Noruega, pero esto significa poco si se tienen en cuenta dos cosas:

• la población de Noruega aumentó desde 1961 de tres millones y medio a  cinco millones de habitantes, mientras que la de Venezuela aumentó de siete millones y medio a unos veintiocho millones: 42% versus 373%. 
• Venezuela, con su mayor crecimiento demográfico, necesita una tasa de crecimiento del PIB más alta. 

Lo más llamativo es ver cómo Venezuela entra con mucha más facilidad en recesión cuando vienen los períodos de baja en el precio del petróleo. Eso es lo que vamos a comprobar de nuevo muy pronto y ahora tan solo bastará con que el precio no suba. En Venezuela los faraones no llaman a su corte a ningún José.

Estoy convencido de que el régimen de Maduro y de los militares quiere que sigan los bloqueos de calles y se produzca más violencia en ciertos sectores de ciertas ciudades. Ya hoy en día podemos escuchar a diversos grupos decir que la escasez y otros problemas económicos, que ya se venian manifestando de manera grave en diciembre y enero, son producto de los disturbios que se han producido desde febrero.

La tensión seguirá en aumento. Maduro tendrá que seguir endeudando nuestro país para importar y distribuir productos que Venezuela ya no produce o que jamás ha producido. Esto no puede continuar así. Algo va a tener que cambiar: cuando se acabe el dinero, Maduro o su seguidor chavista tendrá que recurrir  a más represión y cubanización de la economía o será reemplazado por un nuevo gobierno. Esto último solo será factible si los políticos opositores comienzan a informar a la población como nunca nadie lo ha hecho en Venezuela, con datos claros y completos de dónde está la economía venezolana en comparación con el resto del mundo y de qué medidas se pueden tomar para que las cosas comiencen a funcionar finalmente.

Venezuela's pseudo-revolution and the thing with the crosswords

The obstreperous minister of Information, Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez, just said the government is investigating a newspaper from the central region of Aragua for sending by means of its crosswords secret messages to prepare for a coup. Ms Rodríguez is the sister of Jorge Rodríguez, a radical leftist who was head of the National Electoral Council and who is now mayor of Western Caracas. There you have nepotism and lack of separation of powers in one sentence.

Could be any of our many "revolutionary" ministers

This is not the first time the regime declared it discovered some conspiracy encoded in crosswords of a Venezuela newspaper. Back in 2012, Pirela Pérez, a "philosopher" with a TV programme on the national television, said the Venezuelan "intelligence" had decode a secret message on a crossword. The guy didn't even know Rabat is not a Jewish Holiday but a city in Morocco.

We thought the satire magazine El Chigüire Bipolar had already settled the issue.

The regime must be really all aflutter...at the economy. I will be writing about the economy this weekend.

Putschversuch in Venezuela? (I) updated 2

Es rumorte ein bisschen bei der Luftwaffe

Maduro hat gerade angekündigt, dass drei Generäle der venezolanischen Luftwaffe festgenommen sind, die einen Putsch organisieren wollten. So viele Generäle gibt es aber nicht.

Dies ist seltsam, denn man hatte uns schon mehrmals gesagt, dass die Militärs nun wirklich völlig an der Seite des Madurismus sind.

Ist das wahr? Haben die Kubaner einen Putschversuch gegen Maduro-Kuba entdeckt? Ich bezweifle das. Vielmehr ging es um die Entdeckung einer Sondierung bei Menschen, die vielleicht einen Putsch oder noch weniger, eine offene Proteste, versuchen wollten. Chávez hatte die Offiziere jahrelang gesiebt. Zu viel verdienen die Militärs durch ihre Korruptionskanäle beim Import und bei den Kontrllen an Häfen, Grenzübergängen und - für die kleineren Soldaten - Landesstraßen. Zu viel verdienen manche, die mit Waffen zu tun haben. Venezuela ist das südamerikanische Land, das am meisten Waffen importiert, mehr als Brasilien, ein Land, das das Sechsfache des BIP Venezuelas hat.

Die drei Generäle sind:

• José Daniel Machillanda Díaz, geboren im Jahr 1966
• Oswaldo Hernández Sánchez, geboren im Jahr 1961
• Carlos Alberto Millán Yaguaracuto, geboren im Jahr 1961

Interessant finde ich, was ich über Millán Yaguaracuto hier lesen konnte: anscheinend war er in einem Prozess verwickelt war. Eine gute Reputation hatte er schon nicht. José Daniel Machillanda Díaz war seinerseits für die Einfuhr von Simulationssystemen für die Verteidigung bei der staatlichen Firma VEXIMCA zuständig. Ich frage mich, ob sie wirklich nicht einfach die typischen korrupten Offiziere sind, die zu problematisch geworden sind und nun, dass sie entsorgt werden müssen, am besten auch mit der Opposition in Verbindung gebracht werden.

Sie wurden im Jahr 2010 zu Generales de brigada gemacht und sie waren, meines Wissens, im Bundesstaat Aragua tätig. Ein General de brigada ist mehr oder weniger, was in Deutschland ein Brigadegeneral ist, auch wenn die Ränge nicht ganz dieselbe sind. Bis jetzt hatten sie keinen Zugang zu Anwälten. Sie befinden sich im DIM, División de Inteligencia Militar.

Es gab bis jetzt 36 Tote im Kontext der Proteste.

In der Zwischenzeit hat die ehemalige Chávez-Politikerin und jetzige Präsidentin des Verfassungsgerichts, Gladys María Gutiérrez Alvarado, erneut einen Bürgermeister der Opposition, Ceballos, wegen Insubordination zu 10 Monaten Haft verurteilt. Sie hatte schon den Bürgermeister von San Diego, Scarano, zu 10.5 Monaten Haft verurteilt.

Der jetzige Vorsitzende der Nationalversammlung und ehemaliger Putschist, Diosdado Cabello, erklärte, die Oppositionsabgeordenete María Corina Machado sei keine Abgeordnete mehr, denn sie hatte in einer Session der Organisation Amerikanischer Staaten eine Rede gehalten und zwar an der Stelle von einem Panama-Beamten. Die Regierung Panama hatte ihr diese Stelle für diese Zeit gegeben, da die Opposition Venezuelas sonst in solchen Veranstaltungen nicht sprechen durfte. Sie wird nun von der Regierung Maduros als Vaterlandverräterin angeklagt. Die Interpretation der Maduristas ist, dass sie als "Agentin eines anderen Landes agierte". Eine pensionierte Richterin des Bundesverfassungsgerichts, Cecilia Gómez, sagte, Cabello dürfte eigentlich kein Abgeordneter mehr sein, denn der Präsident Nicolas Maduro hatte ihn zu aktivem Hauptmann gemacht. Was Frau Gómez aber vergisst: Gesetze können in Venezuela aber nur die Oppositionellen brechen und das nach der Interpretation von Richterinnen, die Politikerinnen der regierenden Partei sind.

Blunter repression in Venezuela: mayor jailed

Enzo Scarano, mayor of San Diego and clearly the most popular politician in the very important Carabobo state, has been sent to jail for ten months and a half. The trial took eight hours and the evidence was based on accusations to him on a newspaper article. The Chavista regime had been trying to neutralise Scarano for years now. It was producing bogus accusations all the time (just one example). Now it accused him of not having taken away the barricades that students were putting up in the municipality where he has been mayor. Scarano had repeatedly said he could only take away the blockades when people were not opposing. By law the ones who had to come in case people were on the streets were the national police. 

That didn't help. A newspaper article by a journalist accusing him of something was everything the regime needed now.

Scarano had announced he would go to the trial the day before. He went there with his lawyers and a bunch of supporters. Still, unlike in other countries, he was simply taken away directly, like a dangerous criminal. Before that the military had sent at least seven tankettes to surround the Supreme Court.

Scarano has been a great threat to Chavismo's autocratic ways because he was bound to be the next candidate for the position of governor in Carabobo. He got 75.24% of votes in his re-election bid in December 2013 and that in an area that is not upper class or upper-middle class like in Northern Valencia but rather lower-middle class with several slums included. He could organise as best as possible the young people who would prevent Chavista thugs and military from stealing elections in voting centres under their radar. How he could do that? By making sure witnesses would be circulating and transmitting all the information they had on a very orderly fashion. Now he will be in jail.

The Supreme Court has been a joke for years. The current president, Gladys María Gutiérrez Alvarado, was a very public Chavista politician for years, not just a sympathizer. She ran for governor under Chávez's flag...and Venezuelans are expected to consider her as the supreme arbiter of political matters now. The previous one, Luisa Estela Morales, declared to baffled journalists the division of powers "weakens the State"...apparently a lawyer who doesn't know the division of power is one of the key factors for democracy, something people already consider evident at the time of the French Revolution.

Will the World keep quiet about all this? What will Amnesty International say? And what will the very silent presidents of all the Latin American countries with a very nice trade surplus vis-a-vis Venezuela?

Caracas Chronicles reports about another mayor who went to jail and how the Minister of Interior, not the Ministry of Justice, was the one announcing that.

Update: San Diego Municipality will have new elections pretty soon. The regime has basically neutralised its main opponent in the key state of Carabobo. And yet: this doesn't mean it has neutralised the people of the Tacarigua region. We aren't going to take it.

A frequent Venezuelan visitor to Europe: doña Luisa

You can see Luisa Ortega Díaz, the General Attorney of Venezuela and fervent supporter of Maduro's regime, in the video below doing some shopping n Germany now. She is really a frequent visitor to Europe. Venezuelans living and working in Europe have been able to photograph her in different shops around the Old Continent.

I don't usually upload this kind of videos but the regime has been using private information from customs official to "shame" opposition politicians who have travelled abroad.

Mind: Venezuelans - at least those who are not revolutionary - only have access to a limited amount of dollars every year as there is a strict currency control.

Venezuelans in Europe tell the world: SOS

Venezuelans in Berlin on 15.3: For a better Venezuela

I have had little time in the last few days but I just wanted to write about this: Venezuelans everywhere organised this Saturday 15 remembrance meetings to mourn the people who have been killed during the protests against the corrupt and increasingly authoritarian government of Maduro.

There were remembrance meetings in the whole world, from Chile to Brussels to China. Here I just show pictures from two places: one in Norway and one in Germany.

Venezuelans in Stavanger, Western Norway: for a better Venezuela

Violence in Venezuela: a sense of perspective

Here I will focus on events in Valencia only, but a similar situation is present in most of Venezuela's main cities.

There is violence from both sides and violence should always be condemned. And yet it is also clear the current government of Venezuela uses the colectivos to terrorise neighbourhoods that show any opposition against the government. That is the main reason why it's not so easy to ask for concessions from both parties in just the same way. Many of those keeping up the blockades are afraid the heavily armed bikers will be able to get into their buildings and shoot indiscriminately at them if blockades are lifted. Venezuelans know the government is on the side of the bikers, Venezuelans have seen time after time how national cops vanish or do nothing when the paramilitary attack people who openly criticise the government.

Maduro said 13 March that the bikers or colectivos - paramilitary groups supporting the government - were defeating the "coup d'etat".

"Este golpe de Estado continuado que ya está derrotado, pero que sigue haciéndole daño al pueblo, ha permitido que los motorizados irrumpan como un actor para el bien de la Patria. Ahora ustedes son visibles, ya no serán más estigmatizados. Los motorizados actuarán haciendo la paz y en este momento están derrotando un golpe de Estado".

My literal translation:

This permanent coup d'etat  has already been defeated but that is still hurting people, has allowed the bikers to become actors for the well-being of the fatherland. Now you are invincible, you won't be stigmatized any longer. The bikers will act bringing in peace and in this moment they are defeating a coup.

Nicolás Maduro talks all the time about the opposition as coupsters. The paradoxical thing is that his beloved "intellectual father", Chávez, and a third of his current ministers were military coupsters who raised against a democratic government (they did that in 1992 and used as excuse a very bloody event in 1989 that was to a large extent their own responsability, although they blaimed the president and a couple of other high ranking individuals alone).

One of those military, Francisco Ameliach, is now the governor of Carabobo. During the campaign for the local elections in 2013 Ameliach, like Maduro, repeatedly accused opposition candidates of being thieves. Ameliach said the opposition candidates would end up in jail. Here you can read and hear how that militar threatened the then candidate Cocchiola with jail for being a thief. Cocchiola was at that moment in the USA attending family matters and the national government was accusing him of running away from justice. Even Maduro said on national TV Cocchiola was going to jail. Cocchiola returned and was easily elected as mayor for Valencia. He has been one of the opposition politicians who have collaborated the most with the regime, but relations are anything but nice. He hasn't been to jail yet and I suppose this will just be used as a sort of Democles sword if Cocchiola becomes too critical of the national government.

This is the approximate voters' distribution for April 2013: blue for Capriles, red for Maduro. One dot= +- 1000 voters

On 13 February, one day after national protests started, a group of National Guards detained two young people from Valencia, burnt their car, hit them, tortured them. One of them was raped with a rifle. The National Attorney and other national officials have questioned the reports about the rape produced by known Venezuelan physicians.

According to Gabriela Ramírez, a state officer who is Defensora del Pueblo or National Ombudswoman for Human Rights, torture is only when the person inflicting pain is doing so to gain information from you (watch minute 3:00 to 3:11). Otherwise, it is just a disproportionate use of force. Before being the human rights ombudsperson, Ramírez was just known as an activist of Chavismo. It is really a shame that the United Nations has repeatedly recognised this woman as a kosher representative in spite of her having the most pro-government stance you can imagine. I wonder when Amnesty International is going to say something clear about this case.

Very early on 18 February several students went to protest in the very poor sector Tocuyito. They were shot at.

At 2 pm on the same day a mass of students went to march at the Avenida Cedeno, which is just 5 streets from Valencia's very small centre. They were on the Cedeno Avenue and wanted to go further South when the colectivos appeared from the West and started shooting at them. The government police disappeared from the place and allowed the colectivos to go on shooting. People ran for their lives. 

Ameliach had previously sent a tweet to the paramilitary stating "be prepared for the fulminating counter-attack, Diosdado [Cabello, another military coupster and current head of the National Assembly] will give the order".

Here you can see how students were marching from East to West before they were attacked.  Here a longer video.

This video (North-South take) shows some of the gangsters still shooting but  once they had dispersed most students.

About 10 students were wounded. The 23-year old Génesis Carmona was shot dead. She received a bullet on the back of her head.

Ameliach later deleted his tweet.

Maduro is so shameless that he explained the bullet came from the back as a proof Génesis was killed by her own people. This man is utterly despicable and he is supposed to be the president of the country.

On 22 in lower-middle class Naguanagua a guardia nacional shot Geraldine Moreno Orozco, a 23-year old woman, on the face. She died a day later. She was just watching a protest.

Clashes have repeatedly taken place in La Isabelica, which is a poor sector slightly to the Northeast of Valencia's city centre. There the paramilitary and the National Guard have shot and hit a lot of people. One of the best known cases was that of a woman who was repeatedly beaten with a helmet when she was lying on the street. The case is well-known because there are several videos and shots about the situation.

National guard Ramsor Ernesto Bracho Bravo was shot dead at a clash in Northern Valencia. Seven students were also wounded. I ignore how he was killed but the national head of the National Guard came to Valencia to see to it that his body is transported as that of a heroe.  And here I read that the same Ramsor Bracho Bravo was involved in the murder of a 50-year-old lady ten years ago. That lady was an activist of the Acción Democrática party and she was shot dead by the Guardia Nacional in the Western state of Zulia. Was that a coincidence?

On the same day a student in La Isabelica was killed by a shot in the chest. The shot came from the colectivos. A middle-age man and a six-year old girl who were just in the area were also killed.

Most of Valencia is now clearly pro-opposition, even rather poor areas. Only the poorest areas have still a majority that supports the government, although that majority is dwindling. But it takes a lot of guts to go to the streets and say you want this government to go if less than 70% of the population is not with you. That is how it goes in Venezuela right now.

Le Vénézuéla au Québec

Même au Canada on parle de plus en plus de nôtre pays. Voici une vidéo avec le professeur Claude Morin, plutôt sympathisant avec le régime, et le professeur Georges Bastin, qui est critique. Le professeur Bastin est d'origine belge mais il a vécu et travaillé longtemps au Vénézuéla. Il connais le pays comme sa poche.

En plus, un article du Devoir (aussi du Québec).

The Twitter political circus in Venezuela: an update

Maduro complained a couple of times Twitter is against him. He even denounced there was an obscure campaign against him and that's how he lost 6000 followers on that US social network. 

His predecessor, Chávez, had elevated Twitter to one of his contacts with the people. He had a team working to follow up the countless tweets asking for help of any kind - food, medicine, whatever the State couldn't provide but he, the Presidente, could, if they were lucky.

Chávez is now dead and even though Maduro has a vice-minister in charge of "social media", he is badly lagging behind the opposition.

Gone are the days when Maduro would announce he had reached so and so many followers.

Right now Capriles has more Twitter followers than the Comandante Eterno and many more than Maduro. Leopoldo López also beats Maduro very clearly.

Of course, you don't get power with Twitter and Chavistas are - perhaps slightly - less likely to tweet. Still, as we could see from how a serious Russian pollster analysed the data, Twitter does tell us something in Venezuela.

Spiegel, Dieterich und die Venezolaner: was ist denn los?

Schon wieder kommt der frühere Chávez-Berater Dieterich zu Wort, um im Spiegel Venezuela zu erklären. Wer interviewt ihn? Schon wieder Klaus Ehringfeld. Der liebe Ehringfeld schreibt für jede Menge deutsche Zeitungen und Zeitschriften. Er ist fast "der Deutsche, der aus Lateinamerika Lateinamerika für die Deutschen interpretiert". ARD und ZDF haben auch ihre Journalisten da,  die machen aber normalerweise lauter Dokumentarfilme.

Natürlich kann der alte Sozialist/Kommunist (auf jeden Fall keinen Sozialdemokrat) nichts gutes über die Opposition sagen. Sie können ihn hier - wenn Sie viel aber auch viel Geduld haben - bei einem früheren Interview von einem Kommunisten hören. Die beiden klingen fast so, als wären sie Zeugen Jehovas.

Wieso werden Venezolaner nie vom Spiegel interviewt? Venezolaner der Opposition? Im Spiegel sprechen Iraner, Russen, Chinesen und Chilenen der Regierung und der Opposition über ihre Ideen. Anscheinend finden die Redakteure der deutschen Zeitschrift, dass die Venezolaner über Venezuela nichts zu berichten haben.

Wir erklären Euch Venezuela

La BBC y sus errores

Nota 1: Lo siguiente se refiere a la BBC en inglés - no al servicio en español.
Nota 2: corrigieron los textos, aunque no dijeron que lo habían corregido. Aquí se ven los originales:

Versión original

Mons, Flanders: Es Mons, Valonia (o Bélgica, como pusieron ahora)

BBC sigue empeorando. Leo dos artículos, sólo dos - en realidad uno y medio-, y ya no puedo seguir.

En el primero, ahora corregido, sobre Venezuela, dicen que hubo "más de mil manifestantes" en zonas de Caracas como Callao y Altamira.  El Callao más cercano a Altamira se encuentra a más de 840 kilómetros de esta, en la Guayana venezolana.  El segundo, que yo sepa, se encuentra en el Perú. Quisieron decir, supongo, "Chacao". Es muy probable que el periodista viva cerca de Chacao porque de allí no salen los periodistas anglófonos, al lado está el British Council y no muy lejos la embajada británica y el biotopo normal de esos periodistas extranjeros. 

Los más de mil manifestantes se puede ver, en parte, en esta foto.

Por supuesto que siguen con el temita de "left-leaning" versus "right-leaning", cosa que es bastante simplista cuando consideramos que todos los socialdemócratas, el Partido Radical (sindicalista obrero, muy de izquierdas) y hasta Bandera Roja son de oposición. Menos mal que no hablaron mucho del contexto en que se da la escasez, la inflación y cosas así, porque ya hemos visto cómo estos periodistas no tienen ni idea de los conceptos más elementales de economía: si un vocero del gobierno dice que todo es por "la guerra económica", pues ponen "because of the economic war", que eso de usar la corteza prefontal para algo más la selección del café es para ellos un tabú.

En el segundo artículo, sobre porqué los alemanes "no quieren hablar de la Primera Guerra", dicen que va a haber un evento de conmemoración en Mons, Flandes. Hombre: sé que Mons no es París, mucho menos Valencia de Venezuela. De hecho: ni siquiera en Mons se acuerdan mucho de Mons. Pero aun así: si uno no está 100% seguro de que una localidad queda en una región dada, bien puede usar una enciclopedia o, en estos días, escribir "where is Mons?" en Google y pinchar el botón "Enter". Mons no se halla en Flandes, sino en Valonia. 

Las pocas veces que he escuchado a los periodistas angloparlantes de la BBC en Venezuela tratando de hablar con el pueblo, me he dado cuenta de que tienen un dominio muy limitado de nuestro idioma. Uno habría pensado que en estos días, con la de periodistas desempleados que hay, los de la BBC podrían darse el lujo de seleccionar corresponsales, incluso periodistas independientes, que tengan un dominio mínimo del idioma hablado en el país que investigarán, sobre todo si se trata de uno de los idiomas más hablados en el planeta.

Creo que tengo suficiente BBC por bastante tiempo. Si no fuera por David Attenborough y gente así...

Housing in Venezuela and the current crisis

Most people outside Venezuela don't really know how badly the housing situation in Venezuela is. In Venezuela, on the other hand, everybody knows the situation is very bad but most don't even imagine how poorly Venezuela compares to most of the American continent. If they knew, they would be much angrier.

An average school teacher in Venezuela of today earns around 5,556 Bolivares.  The government always  tries to use the most favourable official exchange rate it has to express that in its propaganda. If we were use that rate, that teacher would earn around 655 euros a month. In reality, most things cannot be calculated using that rate. We could try to see how to use other rates, but that is a gruesome and unreliable exercise. 

Instead, we should better consider the purchasing power as how much of your salary is needed to get some basic things, like housing. 

Too few, too slow, too badly

If you wanted to have a flat of 49 m2 - not precisely your favourite penthouse - in Valencia, the third largest city of Venezuela, you would have to pay about 16,000 Bolívares. That is: the whole salary of a normal school teacher is just a third of what needs just to live in a small flat in Venezuela.

Cops earn less. Most people earn less.

In spite of all the talking Chavismo has built less social houses than the previous governments, which had less petrodollars for that. A

According to the promises Chávez made in 2011, the State and the private sector would build in 2013 380,000 housing units. Instead, it managed to build 164300. That's a way below expectation. And now the government is really running out of  money.

Most of the housing units built now have been constructed without any proper permit and without any provision about new schools, hospitals, green areas around.

And this is one of the many reasons why people are going to the streets now. This is a huge huge time bomb, even if most Venezuelans don't know a teacher in maligned Spain or the US or even Chile can actually afford to rent a flat and even buy food with his salary!