Francisco Ameliach, current governor of Carabobo, visited yesterday together with the Defence Minister what is going to become "Chávez City", a new urbanisation in Southern Valencia. The regime has built less social houses than governments that rule while world oil prices were just a fraction of what they are now and yet the regime will announce otherwise now. Who is there to verify? And the personality cult goes on. Saddam had his "Saddam City" while he was alive. Chávez will have his now...at least for a couple of years.
Francisco Ameliach is a military and he was a coup monger in 1992, together with most of the rest in power now. And he is now stating accusations against Laurentzi Odriozola, the director of Notitarde, the last newspaper in the region that has kept a critical stance towards the regime. Notitarde is not a high quality newspaper but it does print what is happening in Carabobo. Ameliach is accusing the director of planning a murder...possibly of Nicolás Maduro.
Ameliach has a radio programme on Radio Nacional. When I was a child Radio Nacional was a state radio for classic or traditional music, for science and culture. Now it is a propaganda channel. Another military man, Diosdado Cabello, has his own TV channel on Venezolana de Televisión, where he shows illegally wire-tapped or fictional recordings of the opposition and accuses opposition politicians of anything without these to have a "derecho a réplica", a right that only pro-government people have. Ameliach was the one who call the colectivos, the pro-government paramilitary, to prepare themselves for the "fulminating counter-attack". Hours later these pro-regime guys killed a girl and wounded several others.
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| Another military oligarch |
The regime is acting more and more shameless because it knows the rest of South and Central America won't do anything but state "their hopes for reconciliation" and the like. Virtually all the countries that count have now a nice trade surplus with Venezuela and any even tiny expression of concern about human rights and democracy in Venezuela would lead to the Venezuelan regime cutting off relations with those countries or, at least, cancelling the massive imports of food from there. That happened already for a couple of years with Colombia and Peru and for a few months with Panama.
Besides, the heads of Brazil, Uruguay and Chile were tortured under right-winged dictatorships and they seem to think "left-winged" autocracies are fine...specially as long as the entrepreneurs of Brazil, Uruguay and Chile make a killing with exports to Venezuela. Argentina's Cristina Fernández was not tortured but she still has an ideological link and a financial debt with the Venezuelan regime.
Inflation and shortages continue in Venezuela but people are tired. Several of their opposition leaders are in jail.
A new international development seems to be playing for Venezuelans' boligarchs: the mess in Iraq is making oil prices rise again...not that they were low but they have remained at the $105 level for a couple of years.
I´m afraid what you see happening in Venezuela has happened in other nations, and the international reaction was similar: a little bit of talk, some hand wringing, and possibly a policy to provide political asylum and refugee visas. However, most of them are also quite willing to do business. This is why we see multinationals such as ChevronTexaco and Halliburton provide financing to keep Maduro afloat, and nobody says or writes anything about it.
ReplyDeleteI agree. It's disheartening and yet we have make such unethical behaviour become as clear as possible.
DeleteI am aware that at the end of the day countries such as Uruguay or Brazil will only start becoming more concern about human right abuses in Venezuela when the Venezuelan government runs out of money to pay for the milk, the chicken, the beans.