Arte on Venezuela: how to fail

Arte is a German-French culture channel and it often produces very good programmes but the one I just watch about Venezuela is not one of them. It failed to answer the question it asked at the start: how could Venezuela come to this mess?

You can watch it in German here (at least until November 2018)

• 2:30 The population in Venezuela is indeed ethnically very mixed but the figures Arte got are the old and rather official figures that do not have anything to do with what our Venezuelan common sense and present day genetic studies have shown. Arte says our population is 50% "of mixed origin", 42% "of European origin", 3.5% of African and 2,5% "of native American origin". In reality people of purely European original might be less than 10% and probably more than 88% are mixed in the most incredible ways. A lot of Europeans or US Americans might think I am of "European stock". As I have always known and as the Genographic Project showed me, I am the typical European-native American-African Homo sapiens. My profile, which is close to the mean, is 67% European, 25% native American and 8% black African. This is a good start to view what genetics in the Caribbean is. Arte: instead of trying to explain our ethnic background or whatever you want to call it, you could have spent some time explaining how the left extreme sponsored by Cuba infiltratred military and got to military like Chavez or violent groups that promoted the clash of El Caracazo in 1998 or how the military managed to destroy the already weak division of powers or how elections were influced or simply violated (you probably did not hear about the Smartmatic scandal).
• At minute 3 Arte says the average Venezuelan has good education levels. That is bollocks, to say it mildly. If you want to read about education in Venezuela, you can check out my posts since 2007 and, in particular, my little project about the OECD PISA programme. I can put journalists in contact with people in Venezuela and abroad who dealt with this issue. Venezuelans had a lot of top professionals who fled in the last decades due to Chavismo but the median Venezuelan is not better educated than the average Colombian or Argentinian or Chilean or Uruguayan or Peruvian or...you get the point. Official literacy figures were already at about 93-95% in 1998, but in reality we had and have a huge problem with functional illiterate. The quality of education had been going down the drain since oil prices first collapsed back in the eighties things worsened even when Chavez got the longest, biggest oil boom in our history - and the petrodollars that go with that. UNESCO my foot. United Nations also praised Venezuela for its efforts in food production made up by the regime...shortly before people discovered malnutrition was worse than what we had in many many decades.
• At 4:20 Arte says oil exports make up 95% of our exports. That has been the figure mentioned since at least 2005. What Arte fails to say is that in the nineties, before the caudillo came to power, the figure was around 75%. What happened?
• At 4:40 Arte, like a lot of journalist sources that did not care to investigate, repeats the mantra that Chavez introduced the social contract of distributing oil wealth. Arte - and this is the very worst of the program - simply did not care to investigate what efforts previous governments did, already since the end of the Gomez dictatorship in 1937, particularly in the forties and then in the sixties, seventies, eighties...until world oil prices collapse. Arte did not mention free education and health care systems were introduced long before Chavez was born. It did not mention that sinking oil prices impacted those social programmes that enable all of Chavez's family, my family, the families of almost all Venezuelans to receive free education and health care - faulty but free nonetheless and better than during most of the Chavista regime. Arte claims Maduro is keeping up those policies of helping the poor. This is simply rubbish. Maduro prefers to pay back the huge debts incurrend by Chavez and himself instead of providing for basic medicine for children, for the elderly, for everyone. Virtually all Venezuelans could give you a lesson or two about that.
• At 5 Arte explains we have not built other production sectors apart from oil. It does not care to find out how we were earning the 25% of export during the low oil price time that enabled Chavez to become a candidate. Arte and those German and French journalists do not have a clue about how Venezuela had started to export more things related to aluminum, steel, even textiles etc but people did not want to wait for the fruits and a minority went to elect a populist, a bloody coupster who, they thought, would bring back the golden times when oil prices were high. Unfortunatelly, few books and Internet sources report what kind of things we were exporting back in 1998. Try to Google a bit "Rualca Venezuela". That kind of company was destroyed by Chavismo. There were a few like it.
• At 5:39 Arte talks about how we import food etc from different countries. We have done that indeed for many many decades but Arte does not care about the percentage of things we were importing before Chavismo came to power. Finding out about that requires some investigation, which Arte has no time to do.
• At 5:59 Arte shows a chart for oil price evolution for the last ten years. Here lies one of the biggest errors of Arte. It definitely is not able to put Chavismo in perspective. If Arte journalists were data scientists trying to help the world with their use of statistics, we would be doomed like now. In my blog you can find many charts about oil prices, GDP etc that take into account the evolution since before Chavismo came to power. There is no excuse for Arte to restrict its chart to the 2008-2018 period: you can in the same time give a bigger and much more clear picture. Oil prices now are still higher, much higher, inflation included, than what they were in the early days of Chavismo and much more than in the decade that preceded Chavismo. In the nineties we had hard times but people were not starving as they are now, we did not have the massive flood of emigration and even our murder rate was a third of what we have now. This is something Arte journalists do not mention. As people who do know about economics have written, Venezuela's economics was already a mess when oil prices were at its highest...only that Chavez sold Venezuela's future to the Chinese and Russians. 
• At 6:23 Arte finally mentions the magic word "corruption". Unfortunatelly, it does not show the incredible evolution corruption - an eternal problem in Venezuela - has had since Chavismo came to power. The government of Carlos Andres Perez fell for a fraction of a fraction of the money Chavismo stole in their first days. Chavismo has stolen more than what Mobutu stoled over a longer period of time in Congo.
• At 6:40 Arte rightly mentioned that we have not diversified our economy...but it does not know we were actually doing it before the coup monger was elected president in December of 1998.
• At 6:47 Arte says unemployment is at 25%. This figure is just pointless. Better say a university teacher could not earn enough to buy food with his salary, much less to buy shoes.
• Arte does not mention how the regime is printing money like absolute idiots
• At 8 the journalist explains Venezuela's population is divided between opposition and pro-government, something with an information value close to zero as you can say this of many many countries around the globe. In reality we have a middle group that is equally important and that group is made up of those who blaimed it on the opposition and the governemtn (whereas the opposition blames it on the others and the government and the government blames it on the opposition and the rest of the world that is not Putin and the Castro Regime and China and Iran).
• At the end Arte talks a bit about the massive emigration from Venezuela but as Venezuelan history for the Germans and the French started with Chavez, it fails to report that many millions of people immigrated to Venezuela in the decades prior to Chavismo. It does wonder why.

Please, Arte: oil prices are not a major reason for the whole mess. We did not have this mess during the period of low oil prices between 1988 and 1998. Even Nigeria or Iran do not have this crisis.

Arte: do your homework. Even left-oriented newspapers like The Guardian and a few French ones produce a much more critical analysis in less time/space than you do. Venezuela's history did not start in 2008 or 1998.

You failed to explain how Venezuela turned into an ugly dictatorship.

Priorities for Venezuela's socialist regime

The Venezuelan regime knows where its priorities are. That's why it is spending $480,000,000 in maintenance for its Russian war planes. It will also spend Bs 6,000,000,000 in goodies for the military caste. That is equivalent to $944,000,000 or $7,600,000, depending on what exchange rate you use (I know how mental the range is).

In my city a huge amount of public schools similar to where I was as a child do not have teachers and pupils are getting their time wasted. A teacher in Venezuela doesn't earn enough to buy food for a family, much less to rent a tiny flat in a poor neighbourhood.

If this is not criminal, I do not know what is.

Bear in mind the military caste is the key element in logistics for the upcoming elections.

No wonder the regime does not want independent international observers.

Weapons and underdevelopment in Chavista Venezuela (year 2015)

Maduro announced on Wednesday he would buy 12 more Sukhoi fighters from Russia. The Venezuelan military had recently lost two men in a crash that has not been properly investigated but that has been explained as a "fight against the paramilitary drug dealers from Colombia". Paramilitary is now Chavista code for right-winged, ergo close to the whole of Venezuela's opposition. Chávez had bought 24 Sukhoi 30 in 2006-2008 (here in Russian) and spent over 13 billion dollars in weapons until 2012. Purchases were reduced in the last couple of years but that was from an all-time record. In 2012 Venezuela was at position 13th worldwide and the first in Latin America as importer of conventional weapons (See SIPRI report for 2012). In 2013 there was a short stop, which was used by the Chavista propaganda to announce Venezuela had seen the sharpest decrease in military spending...the kind of pieces of pseudo-information useful idiots abroad hasten to publish. See here for their grasp on reality.

Intermezzo

A university professor in Venezuela doesn't earn enough to rent a small one-room flat in a working class area. That is why universities are going on strike now. If you try to calculate salaries based on one of the official currency rates, bear in mind almost no one can get dollars at that rate in Venezuela. If you want to understand what the Venezuelan exchange rates area mean, you can check out this article by Bloomberg, which is an outdated version of what is happening now: the black market dollar is currently at over 700 Bolívars.

Divertimento

Russian foreign minister Lavrov was set to visit Venezuela this Saturday on a stopover before going to New York. At the last minute, he decided to skip that stopover and go to New York directly. He met foreign minister Delsy Rodríguez (she is there basically because of her brother, current mayor of Caracas) and Nicolás Maduro and they discussed, among other things, "how to coordinate foreign policies" (in Russian here). They also signed a joke of an agreement whereby Venezuela avows not to use weapons in outer space. Considering Venezuela's technological development has been abysmal and it is much worse right now, considering that Venezuela is even failing to assemble cars, you have to be cynical to announce Venezuela is renouncing the use of weapons in outer  space.

Coda

Tomorrow Venezuela will receive 630000 barrels of Russian oil that it will process in Curacao. Oil swapping has always taken place but since Chavismo has let the national oil company PDVSA crumble down, the Venezuelan government has been forced to import more and more oil...something dramatic for a country that does nothing but export oil.

Volle Kanne mit der Gehirnwäsche in Venezuela

Hier übersetze ich für Sie ein Fragment eines Büchleins, das vor kurzem zusammen mit der von der Maduro-Regierung finanzierten Zeitung Correo del Orinoco erschienen ist. Es handelt sich um eine Biographie des Militärs, Putschisten, ehemaligen Präsidenten und Sarah-Wagenknecht-Helden Hugo Chávez Frías.

Am 5.3.2013 um 16:25 wurde diese Liebe verewigt und Hugo geht in das Vaterland derjenigen, die, wie er, die Menschheit lieben und für sie kämpfen.

Dort begegnet Hugo Maisanta¹, der zusammen an der Seite von Zamora² kämpft, dort sieht er Simón Bolívar selbst, der die Flagge von Miranda³ entgegennimmt; auf dieser Seite steht Aquiles Nazoa⁴ und Alí Primera⁵, die ein Lied improvisieren; dort sind der Che, Sucre⁶und Chávez' Freund, der blonde Acosta Carles⁷. Alle sind da!

Sie stehen Schlange, um den Neuen zu empfangen und sie begleiten ihn genau zu jenem Ort, wo er einst sagte, man sollte ihn dahin bringen, wenn er wieder geboren würde (sic)."

"Gott Vater, schicke mich zum selben unvergesslichen und mit Palmen gedeckten Häuslein, zum selben Ort mit dem Lehmboden, den Lehmwänden, dem Holzbett und der Stroh- und Moosmatratze , mit dem grossen Hof voll Obstbäumen. Und eine Großmutter und eine Mutter und ein Vater voll Liebe und Geschwister und ein Bauerndorf am Rande des Flusses". Hugo ist glücklich. Die Oma flüstert ihm ins Ohr Erzählungen und Erinnerungen. Es dämmert.

Der Text lässt auf eine Mischung von katholischem Katechismus, kubanischen Santería-Legenden, venezolanischem María-Lionza-Aberglaube und marxistischem Personenkult hindeuten, die unter Verwendung halluzinogener Pilzen entstanden ist.

Dies ist was die venezolanischen Kinder jetzt für ihr Erdöl bekommen, statt Bücher, mit denen sie über Mathe, Spanisch oder Biologie lesen können.

Ich werden in zukünftigen Posts mehr über die brutale Gehirnwäsche schreiben, die jetzt in unseren armen Schulen betrieben wird.

1 Maisanta war Chávez' Urgrossvater, ein Caudillo, Mörder, Großgrundbesitzer und Gegner vom Diktator Gómez. Er wurde von Chávez zum Revolutionär hochstilisiert.

2 Ezequiel Zamora (1817-1860) war auch ein anderer Großgrundbesitzer, der in einem der venezolanischen Bürgerkriege getötet wurde und von früheren Linken als Sozialist gegen die Großgrundbesitzer umdefiniert wurde.

3 Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) war ein Nationalheld, der auch die Flagge Venezuelas entworfen hat, von Bolívar im Jahr 1812 verraten wurde. Die meisten Venezolaner reden den Verrat Bolívars schön und sagen, es wäre ein Irrtum gewesen, dass Bolívar eigentlich Miranda für einen Verräter hielt und ihn deswegen an die Spanier übergab (!)

4 Aquiles Nazoa (1920-1976) war ein Volksdichter, nicht besonders sozialistisch aber populär, er wird aber (auch) von den Kommunisten sehr geliebt.

5 Alí Primera (1942-1985) war ein linksgerichteter Musiker, der immer wieder gegen das USA-Reich sang

6 Antonio José Sucre (1795-1830) war Militär der Unabhängigkeitskriege, Freund von Bolívar

7 Acosta 'der Blonde" Carles war ein Militär, der kurioserweise während des Caracazos gegen die Plünderer vorging und dabei von Linksextremisten getötet wurde...irgendwie mutiert er aber zu einem Linksrevoluzer

Siehe auf Englisch

País de disparos, país de ideas

Quien haya vivido un par de años en países muy disímiles sabe lo difícil que puede ser dar una buena descripción de la situación económica de uno de estos países a foráneos que tengan un marco de referencia muy diferente. Tratar de mapear ingresos y costes a una moneda determinada, sean dólares, euros o lo que sea, no es un buen procedimiento. En vez de eso, a menudo se usa alguna forma de expresar el poder adquisitivo o se habla de cuánto tiene que trabajar un empleado de una profesión X para conseguir una unidad del producto Y en uno y otro país. Aun así, al final siempre vamos a decir: es de cajón que en un país menos desarrollado haya un poder adquisitivo más bajo.

Independientemente de las diferencias entre un país desarrollado rico y otro pobre y en vías de desarrollo, este último debería darles al menos tanta o más importancia a aquellos aspectos del gasto nacional que le ayuden a avanzar. Eso debería ser evidente, ¿no? El gasto nacional muestra las prioridades de un país.

Fuente: Carlos Mata

Aquí les presento los salarios relativos de dos categorías de militares y de maestros en Venezuela y en Alemania. Aunque los rangos de militares y categorías de maestros difieren, los que presento aquí son más o menos comparables.

El salario  de un teniente en cada país es la referencia "100". Como pueden ver, el aumento de salario de teniente a capitán es mucho mayor en Venezuela que en Alemania: un capitán gana 52% más que un teniente.  Lo más importante, sin embargo, es ver la diferencia en poder adquisitivo entre cualquier militar venezolano y cualquier maestro de escuela. En Venezuela un teniente gana más que un maestro con más de una década de experiencia y estudios extras. En Alemania, es todo lo contrario. La situación se mostraría más dramática si hubiera incluído cargos con más experiencia. Los militares son claramente más importantes para el Estado venezolano que los maestros. Venezuela es un país donde los militares son y siempre han sido una casta militar...sobre todo aquellos que terminan la academia militar, no los pobres reclutas.

Comparación de salarios maestros-militares en Venezuela y Alemania. Referencia: 100=salario de teniente

En realidad los sueldos de los militares son adaptados al menos dos veces cada año para que se mantengan por encima de la inflación. Eso ha sido así por lo menos desde que el chavismo está en el poder. El sueldo de los maestros, por su lado, no había sido adaptado a la altísima tasa de inflación de Venezuela desde hacía años. Apenas en octubre del 2013 los maestros consiguieron firmar un nuevo contrato colectivo y los correspondientes aumentos de sueldo. Pueden tener la absoluta seguridad de que en 2015 y por un par de años más la diferencia entre el poder adquisitivo de un militar y de un maestro con una experiencia "comparable" van a hacerse mucho mayores. El gobierno se cerciora a cada rato de que los militares no sufran por la inflación, pero solo hace lo mismo con los maestros cuando ya no puede seguir postponiéndolo.

Si Ustedes no son venezolanos, tienen que tener en cuenta este detallito: en las elecciones en Venezuela, a diferencia de las elecciones en Alemania, los militares vigilan casi todos los aspectos de las votaciones, son los que realmente deciden cuándo cerrar o abrir los centros de votación, los que transportan los materiales de votación y los que están al lado de los directivos del Centro Nacional Electoral a la hora de anunciar los resultados.

País\Profesión	Teniente	Capitán	Maestro	Maestro IV
Venezuela (Bs)	6032	9155	4832	5385
Alemania €	2532	3344	3355	3921

Algunas fuentes:
Venezuela, Venezuela, Venezuela
Alemania, Alemania

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!

Venezolanische Bildungsministerin, Gehirnwäsche und Intoleranz

Ich muss sagen: die Leute an der Macht in Venezuela werden immer unverschämter. Maryann Hanson, die jetzige Bildungsministerin in Venezuela, erklärte neulich, die Regierung hätte die Lokalwahlen in den größten Ballungszentren verloren, weil die Leute dort am meisten "entfremdet sind".

"Wir können darüber nachdenken - sagte sie - "in den größten Städten leiden die Menschen unter Entfremdung, denn sie halten weniger Beziehungen zu den Mitmenschen, sie teilen weniger, sie sind weniger solidarisch, sie arbeiten weniger zusammen, sie sind sich der sozialen Pflichten weniger bewusst, weil sie vielleicht isolierter, ja einsam leben."

Im Januar will sie einen neuen Bildungsplan vorstellen. Das Programm stand nicht öffentlich zur Debatte. Es gab nur eine Reihe Workshops, von denen die wenigsten Menschen erfuhren. Die Ministerin wollte "Empfehlungen" der verschiedenen Akteuren per E-Mail zugeschickt bekommen. Debatte? Nein, danke.

Eine Idee dieses Planes kann man hier finden. Der Text ist schlechtes Spanisch schlechthin - und ein Beispiel unverschämter Gehirnwäsche.

Unter anderen liest man:

"[die Bildung] strukturiert sich, um die Bildung der Bürger und der Schüler mit sozialistischen Werten und Einstellung zu garantieren".

Venezuela ist eins der wenigen Länder Lateinamerikas, die noch nicht an der PISA-Studie teilnehmen. Stattdessen will man in der ganzen Welt Märchen über Errungenschaften erzählen, so wie Kuba das seit Jahrzehnten tut. Manche Apologeten sagen, auf Kuba hätten die Menschen jetzt zumindest eine gute Bildung. Hier kann man feststellen, wie der 20-jährige Kubaner Elian González bei praktisch jeder Zeile, die er schreibt, Sprachfehler produziert, die ein zehnjähriger Schüler anderswo nicht mehr machen sollte. Er ist aber ein richtiger Kriecher der Castros. Dahin will die venezolanische Regierung jetzt.

Ein Kind in Venezuela

Die Schule fängt später in Venezuela. Und schon wieder müssen Eltern viel Geld zur Verfügung stellen, um das Lehrmaterial für ihre Kinder zu kaufen. Für ein Kind in der Grundschule müssten Eltern etwa Bs. 4900 ausgeben. Das ist mehr als der Monatslohn vieler Menschen.

Eine sehr junge Straßenverkäuferin in Maracaibo

Venezolaner glauben, dass es ihr gutes Recht ist, ein Liter Benzin für weniger als ein Eurocent zu bekommen. Sie erwarten aber nicht viel vom Staat, wenn es um echte Bildung angeht. Irgendwie muss man zur Schule gehen, vielleicht zur Uni. Was das aber eigentlich bedeuten soll, ist den meisten nicht so klar. Was sie dafür nötig haben, umso weniger.

Die Venezolaner wissen nicht mal, dass in den kapitalistischen USA oder in Kanada die Kinder Bücher, Hefte, Bleistifte und ähnliches vom Staat bekommen. Von staatlichen Medien hören sie jetzt, wie schlimm die Armut in Europa ist in diesen Zeiten der Krise.

Ab und zu erhalten Kinder in einigen Musterschulen Venezuelas Lehrbücher von der Regierung. Darüber berichten die staatlichen Medien zur Genüge. In diesen Büchern können die jungen Venezolaner jetzt lesen, wie großartig der ewige Kommandant, Hugo Chávez Frías, war oder ist.

Wir sind im 14. Jahr einer sogenannten Revolution. Wie es früher war? Es kommt drauf an. Ihr könnt in meinem Post an die Wagenknecht über Analphabetismus lesen. Im Jahr 1960, im Jahr 1970 oder im Jahr 1980 war es im allgemeinen besser gestellt mit den Mitteln, die der Staat für die Bildung bereitstellte. Darum waren Chávez' Brüder - das wissen die wenigsten Eurosozialisten- an der Uni. Dann ging es bergab. Im Jahr 1998, als der Erdölpreis auf 12 Dollar pro Fass lag, war es schlimmer als im Jahr 2008. Jetzt aber, als ein Fass Öl über 100 Dollar kostet, scheinen wir weniger Geld zu haben für die Bildung. 

Wohin geht dann das Geld unserer Erdölexporte? Ein Teil geht zur Subvention vom Benzin. Viel Geld wird für die Beibehaltung einer äußerst überbewerteten Währung ausgegeben. So können die Reichen billige Dollars kaufen, um nach Europa oder in die USA zu reisen und so können Freunde der Regierung auch Kaffee aus Nikaragua oder Reis aus den USA importieren, um es für "sozialistische Preise" in Venezuela zu verkaufen und den inneren Kapitalismus zu "bekämpfen". Die staatliche Erdölgesellschaft zahlt doppelt zu viel an gewisse Firmen. Wozu das gut ist, weiß ich nicht. Schließlich sind wir die besten Kunden Lateinamerikas für die russische Rüstungsindustrie. Da dieses Geld vor allem aus FONDEN kommt, aus dem Fond für "nachhaltige Entwicklung", steht es nicht im normalen Haushalt. Und so können die Apologeten des Chavismus sagen, dass Venezuela ein Beispiel für die Welt ist.

The State of Education in a Stateless Nation

My mother was a school teacher. My aunts as well. I attended a public school in a poor area of my region, paid by the State. I got free lunch, like all the other kids. That was 3 decades ago. Teachers didn't have much of a salary, but they could live from it. They could even raise a family. 

When Chávez came to power, his propaganda machine started to tell the world the "revolution" had made real free education possible. Sometimes they owned up public education existed before "but only on paper, there were many people who couldn't go because they didn't have scholarship". In reality, the situation has only deteriorated. Useful idiots supporting Chavismo abroad didn't think for a moment how come Chávez's parents were school teachers and his brothers went to university - for free. The only thing that happened in this Chavismo time is that the government, with over 8 times more petrodollars flowing in, started to give again more scholarships than what previous governments could give when they had the low oil price period of the nineties. Most of these "scholarships", though, are nothing but some money for people who couldn't find a job in an economy completely dependent on state-sponsored imports.

Notitarde describes a little bit the situation of teachers now. The article refers to my region, but it is the same everywhere else in Venezuela. The state of Miranda, managed at some limited levels by the opposition, is at a somewhat  better position, but that is about it.

70% of teachers at public schools now do not earn the minimum salary. That means they earn less than 2,702 Bolívares, or 302 euros a month at the official rate, less than 150 euros at the real rate. 

I went to a school like this....but teachers could raise a family with their salaries back then

Now think about this: Venezuela was in 2012  the main importer of weapons in the Americas. It imported more weapons than huge Brazil. Most of the money for those weapons came from FONDEN, the Fund for "Sustainable Development". The National Assembly does not have control over that money, it is the government's private fund, to use as the president sees fit. Most of the money went to Russia and some to China, but also some to Spain and other Western countries.

A lot of the teachers are not even permanent employees but live from one temporary contract to the next one, for years, which is against the law...but then the law is only for the "evil, capitalist private sector". The percentage of pupils in public schools has not increased since Chavismo came to power 14 years ago. This is what we have after the longest oil boom in our history.

If this is not perverse, I do not know what it is. Chavismo cannot even deliver what socialists or half-socialists or "socialists-in-the-making" provided in Cuba, in Vietnam, in the former Soviet Union. Extreme leftists always say when their favourite systems fail that these system were not the real thing. Even those systems that were not "the real thing", according to them, are miles apart from the mess Venezuela is in. Only the high oil prices keep Venezuela running.

Ps. Notitarde and El Carabobeño are some of the few remaining media outlets that can be critical of the regime. As Caracas Chronicles mentions here, they are under threat now.

Wasted time

Venezuelan children will lose still more days because of banana republic politics: the military, who are the ones doing the logistics in Venezuela's elections, will take over the schools late 9 April "to prepare everything for the vote". Children will stay at  home on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday. The election day will be on Sunday and the military caste will also need the day after to put things back "as they were". This is in what Jimmy Carter considers "the best voting system on Earth".

Pupils will have lost over 30 days of classes because of elections in October, December and April and last but not least, because of the death of caudillo Hugo Chávez.

Germany it isn't. In fact: Costa Rica, Chile, Brazil, it isn't. It's Congo (Zaire, not the other one).

Schokolade statt Kapitalismus? Brief an Frau Wagenknecht über Venezuela

(Kopie an deutsche Medien)

Sehr geehrte Frau Wagenknecht,

Ich bin ein Venezolaner und ich habe mit Interesse – eigentlich mit Staunen - Ihre Position zur politischen Lage in meinem Land verfolgt. Sie haben Ihren politischen Gegnern gesagt, dass sie sich in die Angelegenheiten meines Landes nicht einmischen sollten, zumindest nicht wie Sie, denn Sie hätten Venezuela selbst besucht und würden es gut kennen. Sie selbst haben ein Buch über mein Land geschrieben.

Sie behaupteten 2009, die Analphabetenrate in meinem Land sei von über 11% auf nahezu null reduziert worden. Das würde beinahe einem Niveau wie in Norwegen oder Island entsprechen. Haben Sie das wirklich geglaubt? Oder müssen wir einfach schweigen und das als “so eine politische Aussage” interpretieren?  Könnten Sie jetzt öffentlich zugeben, dass Sie sich gründlich geirrt haben?

Die Chávez-Regierung hat vor einigen Jahren behauptet, UNESCO selbst habe bestätigt, dass es in Venezuela praktisch keine Analphabeten mehr gäbe. Das wurde in manchen ausländischen Medien wiederholt, ohne dass es nach geprüft wurde. Auch Sie haben das wiederholt. In Wirklichkeit gab es überhaupt keine unabhängige Überprüfung dieser Daten. Die Chávez-Regierung hat lediglich ihre eigene Studie auf ihre Seite von UNESCO hoch geladen. Nur etwas später kamen andere dazu und erklärten, wie es wirklich war. Etwas dazu können Sie bei The Economist lesen. Ich hoffe, Sie verwerfen nicht alles, was in The Economist erscheint als 'vom kapitalistischen Teufel kommend'.

Vor kurzem wurden die Ergebnisse der letzten Volkszählung 2011 veröffentlicht. Die Daten zeigen, dass jetzt immer noch 5% meiner Landsleute Analphabeten sind. Schrieben Sie nicht “fast null”, besser als in Deutschland? Ende der Neunziger Jahre, als der ehemalige Putschist Chávez demokratisch gewählt wurde – anscheinend gab es auch damals Demokratie - gab es eine Analphabetenrate von 7%. Die Hälfte der Analphabeten waren damals über 60 Jahre alt.

 Quellen: 
1, INE 
2 Unesco, 
3 Eurosur

Mein Opa und meine Oma waren Analphabeten und im Gegensatz zu Chávez’ Großeltern Bauern ohne Land. In den Vierzigern des 20. Jahrhunderts kam nach der Diktatur eine Zivilregierung an die Macht* und es kam zu massiven Investitionen in die Entwicklung des Landes.

Kostenlose Bildung gehörte dazu. So konnten auch meine Eltern wie jeder andere kostenlos zur Schule gehen. Die Eltern des Caudillos Chávez waren Dozenten in einer öffentlichen Schule und der älteste seiner Brüder ging zur Uni, kostenlos.

Das kostenlose Bildungssystem wurde also nicht erst vom Militärputschist Chávez eingeführt. Die Korruption war leider groß und die Regierungen ließen zu wünschen übrig, erst mit dem Verfall der Erdölpreise weltweit kam es zu einem drastischen Rückgang der sozialen Programme in Venezuela und damit zu Unruhen und der Aufstieg der Militärs - ”Linksnationalisten, Linkssozialisten” werden sie manchmal von Vertretern der Linken genannt.

Ich spreche Ihre Sprache. Mehrere meiner besten Freunde sind Deutsche aus verschiedenen Sozialschichten und mit unterschiedlichen politischen Meinungen. Ich versuche seit Jahren alles Mögliche über die politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Entwicklung Ihres Landes zu lesen. Dennoch würde ich mich nicht als Deutschlandsspezialist bezeichnen. Ich stelle mir vor, ich müsste als Abgeordneter meines Landes einen Bericht über ein fremdes Land verfassen, um die Politik meines Landes und meiner Region diesem Land gegenüber zu beeinflüssen.  Das wäre eine große Verantwortung.  So etwas kann und darf man nicht leichtfertig tun. Wie konnten Sie sagen, dass Sie wirklich glauben, Venezuela hätte eine niedrigere Analphabetenrate als Deutschland?

Wieso ist Chávez so populär geworden? Sie müssten ein bisschen über die Geschichte Ihres eigenen Landes nachdenken und überlegen, wie Populisten demokratisch an die Macht kommen können. In den 10 Jahren, bevor Chávez an  die Macht kam, lag der durchschnittliche Erdölpreis – weltweit - im Keller. Im Jahr 1998 betrug er nur $12 pro Faß. Der Erdölpreis ist seit Jahrzehnten das Alpha und Omega der Popularität jedes venezolanischen Präsidenten. Es war viel schwieriger, die staatlichen Ausgaben zu erfüllen als es das heute mit einem hohen Ölpreis ist.

Im Jahr 2012 lag der durschnittliche Erdölpreis selbst ein bisschen höher

Die Regierung des Militärs und Putschisten Chávez hat vom längsten Erdölboom profitieren können. Dennoch ist die Analphabetenrate nicht schneller gesunken als es im Trend war.

Die Chávez-Regierung hasst jegliche Transparenz. Sie hasst sie genau so, wie die SED das damals in der DDR tat. Deswegen ist Venezuela eines der wenigen Länder Lateinamerikas, das an der PISA-Studie nicht teilnimmt.  Nur die Regierung des Bundesstaates Miranda - von der Opposition regiert - engagiert sich in diesem Programm. Hier können Sie etwas darüber lesen. Die Ergebnisse für Miranda sind leider nicht vollständig, da die Nationalregierung sich vehement geweigert hat, Daten zum Stand der Schulen preiszugeben, die sie direkt verwaltet.

Ein anderes Mal schreibe ich Ihnen etwas über den Fonds für nachhaltige Entwicklung Venezuelas (FONDEN), russische Waffen, über Armutsanteile, kostenlose Gesundheit, über Chávez und Hass gegen Andersdenkende.

Chávez-Anhänger, von einem PSUV-Bürgermeister, Alirio Cedeño, geleitet, griffen das Haus des Gouverneurs von Miranda, Capriles, an. Capriles Großeltern sind in einem KZ in Polen umgebracht worden.

Chávez selbst hat damals keine Stellung genommen. Er machte sich aber später über Capriles, den “escuálido” (Den Ausgemergelten) und “majunche” (Unterlegener) lustig, der “die Ohren, die Nase eines Schweines hat'”. 

* Die erste zivile Regierung wurde im Jahr 1948 von den Militärs gestürzt. Diktator Pérez Jiménez regierte bis 1958. Chávez hat ihn oft gelobt. Viele Menschen, darunter Kommunisten und Sozialdemokraten, wurden während der Pérez-Jiménez-Diktatur gefoltert und umgebracht. Aber ideologische Kohärenz ist nicht so eine Sache beim Chavismus...siehe Róger Cordero und Rodríguez Chacín.

Some naked numbers on education in Venezuela

El Universal finally published some results on the PISA programme in Miranda. That Northern-Central state of Miranda is the only region in Venezuela that is taking part in a scheme for open evaluation of quality in education. The central government, led by the military Chávez and his Boligarcs, is opposed to such programme because they argue "Cubans are our counsellors", so that's enough. Never mind that Cuba's often praised educational system has long stopped being compared to others. 


Kudos to Miranda, specially to Juan Maragall and Henrique Capriles. They decided to introduce some transparency to their administration and see how pupils in their region really compare to the rest of the world. That is something Chavismo would not dare to do. Results in Miranda showed how bad pupils score compared to others. Even though the ones tested in Miranda did better than Brazilian or Argentinian pupils as a whole, they did worse than Chileans or Costa Ricans, not to mentioned those of OECD countries. And mind: those pupils are not completely representative of Venezuela as private schools were over-represented in the sample. Last but not least, and this is something the article doesn't say,  academic levels in places such as the Llanos in Central Venezuela tend to be way lower than what we see in Miranda. That has been the case since time immemorial. That's how most military now in power have a strong Llanos background.

Here you see a chart I produced some months ago based on a German book from 1920 by a certain Otto Bürger. That book is a magnificent snapshot of Venezuela during Gómez's time. I decided to show how many inhabitants each state had per pupil. Barinas (West in red) had one pupil for every 105 inhabitants. Delta Amacuro had 113. Amazonas, in the very South, didn't even make it for the statistics back then (it was not a state and its population was very small - mostly native Americans in the jungle back then- but still they could have mentioned it). Miranda had 48 inhabitants for each pupil you would find. I am absolutely sure relative differences still persist. That's part of Venezuela's reality and that is why we can't still talk about a Venezuela but about several Venezuelan regions.

A large part of schools in Miranda are actually controlled by the central government, so the regional government of Miranda could not include them for this test: the national government would never accept that. Instead, it took some public schools it does control and a lot of private schools that could join in willingly. And of course: there is a huge difference between public and private schools in Venezuela.

I went to public schools for most of the time and only took two years of private schooling at the end. I could see quite some difference. My brothers and sisters went all the way through public -free- schools but they are older. My parents went to public - free - schools. Since the seventies standards kept going down the drain and most people who could afford it started to send their children to private schools. The tendency has worsened...which is quite telling about what a farce this so-called "socialist" revolution has become. Of course, Boligarcs will only say that now, under "Bolivarian socialism", more people can afford private schools. My foot.

Public school standards have kept going down the drain for decades, but more so since Chávez came to power. Private institutions are not very good either and their standards also kept going down but not as dramatically.

And that is one of the reasons why the Chávez government does not want to let Venezuela take part in the PISA programme.

I hope Miranda can include more public schools in the next PISA round. Actually, I really hope Capriles wins the elections and can thus let the whole of Venezuela take part in the PISA programme.

This is cool: discovering where we are, discovering Venezuela and PISA

If you speak Spanish, read this.

Basically, tomorrow the government of Venezuela's central state of Miranda will present to the general public the results of the OECD tests carried out in that state. Some general data has been available here since last December. Results are only about schools under Miranda administration and private schools, as the Chávez government did not want to cooperate at all.

It has been thanks to Henrique Capriles and Juan Maragall and their team that  we had the first open test of pupils' competences in Venezuela in the last 14 years. Actually, this time it is really open as the Unesco studies carried out before were seen by education specialists only. Results came out at the end of last year, after some delay due to sabotage by the Chávez government.

The current national government - the military and Boligarchs - hates this kind of project like hell because such a project demands transparency. The Chávez government prefers to tell tales about "Unesco-certifications" and zero illiteracy that useful idiots abroad can repeat. Several people, including this blogger, actually asked in open letters for the Venezuelan government to take part in this project, a project where most of Latin America is already in. They ignored it.

I hope a lot of people start discussing in Venezuela what it really means to have first class basic and secondary education for everyone. I hope people really start thinking about what we need to get there.

Venezuela: sinking in ignorance

Another report about the state of things in Venezuela: we keep sinking when it comes to international standards. The Global Competitiveness Index came out and it shows how Venezuela is now at position 124. Last year it was at position 122. There are 18 countries worse off than us, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa plus a few others like Yemen and Haiti. When it comes to education in general Venezuela doesn't seem to do it so badly, "only" position 84 or so...but then that position is based on data coming from the national government, without independent verification. Do you know why the Chávez regime refuses to take part in the PISA programme of the OECD? (as opposed to the government of the opposition in Miranda, until now led by Henrique Capriles)

Free Bolivarian Fall

Because it prefers to lie.

Let's go back to the report: "Venezuela (124th) continues to fall in the rankings, despite a slight improvement in its overall score". I am sure the Chávez government and its foreign sycophants will really try to see the positive: some score went up. They won't tell you the truth: Venezuela is being left behind.

We read that the tertiary enrolment rate is very high (8th) - something that does not surprise me at all, but it is because I have always known how much of a farce a lot of university faculties have become. Students at Venezuelan universities often do not have the level of a 12-year old pupil in a developed country. The Chávez government, instead of working on improving primary and secondary education firstly, forces universities to accept everyone, even if they are functional illiterate.

On page 366 you can see how Venezuela's GDP evolved since the early eighties until now compared to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. In spite of the fact Venezuela's profited from the longest oil boom in history - thanks, China -, the rest of Latin America as a whole just caught up...and that is putting everyone else together - Haiti and El Salvador with Chile and Brazil. In reality lot of countries have overtaken Venezuela. But remember: Venezuela is the Latin American nation that spent the largest amount of money in importing weapons in 2010 according to Russian sources!

Hat off to reader Guido

Chávez buys more Russian tanks but Venezuela has too few schools

Russian newspaper Kommersant (via Lenta) tells us Chávez wants to get another set of 100 T-72B1V tanks. The T-72 is a slightly improved version of this thing:

I reckon they are still for the "asymmetric war" the caudillo so often talks about. Or are they not? In any case, they will be paid with part of the $4 billion credit the Chávez regime got from the Russians last October just to buy weapons made in Russia. 

According to Kommersant, Venezuela's debt for the Russian arms deals amounts to some 7.2 billion dollars (2.2 billion from a credit in 2009, 4 billion from that credit of 2011 and a little more from some other times). Most of the Venezuela money for buying this stuff does not come from the defence budget but from FONDEN, the Fondo Para Desarrollo Endógeno, which is supposed to be money for sustainable development. European sycophants of Chávez still say Venezuela's defence expenditure is peanuts based on the defence budget and comparisons to - oh, what else? - the USA.

The loans are linked to Venezuela giving Russian companies preferential access to oil fields such as Carabobo 2. Rosneft' is the main beneficiary but Garprom Neft', Lukoil, Surgutneftegas and TNK-VR are also involved in Junin 6 thanks to the military caste of my country committed national resources for the Russian weapons industry. Igor' Sechin, one of Putin's closest pals and like Putin a KGB man, was the guy doing the final killing.

Meanwhile, the children attending the Francisco de Miranda school, very close to where I grew up, have classes under the skies...the school is just too small, there are three classrooms for 250 pupils.

I wonder what new wonders Chávez's sycophants abroad will write about at this stage. Will they still say that there is less illiteracy in Venezuela than in Germany as communist-turned-social-market-expert Sahra Wagenknecht says, "according to UNESCO"*? Yeah, she knows because she has been to Venezuela. And I am an expert on Swahili.


Hallo, Sahra...was sagst Du jetzt? Es ist "entweder Chávez oder Bush"? Entweder Chávez oder die Vaterlandsverräter, die Un-Venezolaner? 


*Please, check out what scholar Francisco Rodríguez said about the education scam in my country.

We don't have the devices for treating cancer patients in Valencia but we got this

The Russian media reports what I seldom read in Venezuelan sources about Russian-Venezuelan relationships and definitely not in the state media. Take this piece of news:

A couple of days ago four Russian ships arrived to Puerto Cabello bringing ninety-two T-72B1 tanks like the one you see here:

They also brought BMP amphibious vehicles like these:

There were also other generals' toys like these, ammunition galore and a couple of other purchases to keep the military caste happy.

That was part of the deal for a 2009 credit the Venezuelan government got for over 2.2 billion dollars using mostly FONDEN money - the Fund for National Development, for which there is no real congressional control. Chávez also bought some Smetch anti-aircraft systems.

The generals still have to receive the weapons they decided to buy with a 4.4 billion dollar credit signed last year. They had spent several billions more in the years before that. Venezuela, according to Russian media, is the 10th largest importer of weapons on Earth...not bad for an underdeveloped nation of 29 million people.

So far Venezuela has got Sukhois 30MK2V, war helicopters of different types, Smetch anti-aircraft stuff, S-300 missiles and a huge amount of Kalashnikovs  Yeah...and foreign apologists keep telling us that the budget for defence is lower than in other countries -never mind that is no longer the case and most of the money comes from Fonden and other parts of the budget-.

But my city, with over 1.2 million people, still has one single general public hospital, built over 45 years ago. The equipments for cancer treatment there are conked out  most of the time. The paediatric wards there are collapsing and there have been many premature deaths lately because of serious infection problems. Poor patients have to buy medicine and other stuff from street vendors who usually get the equipment stolen from hospitals.

No wonder Chávez goes for cancer treatment in Cuba.

In Venezuela he just has the weapons to keep his generals happy. Syria's government is by far not as good a client for Russia's weapons barons as Venezuela's. Venezuela's military strongman pays Russians with the money from the Fondo de Desarrollo Nacional. No wonder Russia fully supports Chávez's permanence in power, no matter what.

PS
Some sources - in Spanish - about the REAL health system in my region (not that it is worse than elsewhere, I just know every corner of it):
here
here
and
here

There is much more. You can always read the other version at the VTV state site. These links are what I got from 30 seconds of Google search with key words that came from the top of my head, but I could tell you a lot of personal stories about these problems as well.

The opposition? It prefers to use the very little money it gets in stuff like the PISA programme for education assessment. Miranda, where opposition candidate Henrique Capriles is governor, is the only region in Venezuela taking part in that PISA program. The Chávez regime prefers to say it gets assessments from Cuba...a country that claims to have excellent education levels even if it had them before the Revolution and even though it stopped taking part in open evaluation programmes a long time ago.

Education and weapons in Venezuela: a matter of priorities

Herr Nagel hits the nail on the head again: he describes what is really happening with education in Venezuela and what the regime's priorities are. Read his article here.

More education for Venezuela

Here you can see the mean results for performance in reading according to the PISA test. Even it is well under the OECD average, the state of Miranda shows a better performace than Colombia and Brazil and Argentina, countries that have been taking part in this programme for some time. 

I am sure Miranda has one of the highest levels within Venezuela. Kudos to the education team of the Miranda government. It could probably do better if the Chávez government were not sabotaging as it does.

The truth about education in Venezuela (updated 2)

The results of the famous OECD PISA test on scholastic performance have just been published for pupils of Miranda, Venezuela (more here). For the last couple of years I have been trying, together with other Venezuelans, to promote the implementation of the PISA programme for our country. We asked the national government on several occassions to let Venezuela take part. It refused. It ignored us. It prefers to declare to the world that UNESCO certified Venezuela as free of illiteracy, even if such a statement is based on a self-assessment study conducted by the Chávez government and provided to UNESCO without independent control.  The current government hates transparency and open, real debate (it prefers parallel monologues).

Venezuelan pupils finally took the same tests that German ones take

The government of Miranda, led by opposition politician Henrique Capriles, accepted the challenge and got the pupils from Miranda-controlled schools tested by the OECD. The Chávez government tried to sabotage this by blocking the financing  (Miranda needed to pay for some fees in dollars and the central government controls the use of foreign money like in old Soviet times, unless it's money for tourism or the like).

What are the results? They are very much in line with what I expected. Perhaps they are a little bit better than my expectations, actually. Miranda pupils score well below the OECD average, but rather close to pupils of other Latin American nations like Colombia or Mexico. Venezuelan pupils do worse in maths than other Latin American pupils, which is something I very much expected, as I have written earlier. With these results you can understand to some extent what kind of problems we are facing...and start thinking about specific solutions. 

Still:  Miranda is not Venezuela. Although Miranda is a very varied region, with highly skilled people next to people with little formal education, rich and poor to very poor neighbourhoods, it is still close to the capital and thus closer to a strong flow of ideas. Miranda is also governed by civilians from the opposition and not by a military government.

This is a good start in order to bring about transparency to education in Venezuela. I will be posting a lot about this in the next weeks.

PS. I NOW got some more feedback about the problem with the standards: apparently the Chavez government did not suply the required information that PISA also needed to make a better comparison. Shame on Chavismo.