Venezuela's post versus the rest of the World

Venezuela's postal service has always have issues but since May of this year Venezuelans simply cannot send post to most of the rest of the world. Perhaps letters may arrive in Cuba, but I am not even sure of that. The system is so bad that even state employees, always afraid of losing their jobs, were protesting some weeks earlier.

When I was a child in Venezuela I used to get lots of post from people from the Soviet Union to Canada. A normal letter from Valencia, Venezuela, to Beliko Turnavo in Bulgaria or to Brno in Moravia would take at most two weeks to arrive.

In the last few years friends of mine have sent letters from Venezuela to Western Europe that took from three to six and a half months to arrive. Those letters spend at most two or three days of that duration in Europe. The rest of the time except for the flight they are in Venezuela. At the end of the XVIII century Venezuelan letters to Prussia would take less time than that. Only during the British blockade against Spain did letters take the time they were taking until this year, as Alexander von Humboldt once reported (a letter he sent from an Indian village in remote Apure arrived six months later in Prussia because of the English battle ships). Now Venezuelans can only use rather costly private services...even though the state employees keep getting their salaries.

What's the matter? The system is highly ineffective. People are not motivated to work. Prices don't change according to inflation. But the reason for the total collapse now is that the government doesn't have dollars to pay for getting letters out of Venezuela. This is yet another proof the government simply hasn't got the money.

Venezuela's postal services have become highly ideological spots. If you go to one of the few postal offices in Venezuela you will be shocked to see the level of personality cult and propaganda for Chavismo there.

Look at the twitter account of Spain's postal services:

And look at the twitter account of Ecuador's postal service:

This is the one for Venezuela: full of pictures of a military coup monger:

Venezuelan authorities say the "temporal suspension of international post" is due to a high demand. This is, of course, ludicrous.

Venezuelans now cannot send letters through the "revolutionary post service" but they still can buy these stamps and take part in the craziest, sickest personality cult of the last decades: