Where is Maduro going to go?

First of all: we need to be cautious. Maduro is going to cling to power a little bit more. This is not 1989 Eastern Europe. Venezuela is not Czechoslovakia, Putin is not Gorbachev who cared about human rights and stuff but rather an ex KGB who feels humiliated by the West and China's GDP is more than 20 times what it was back then and it is a country looking for good colonies. There are lots of people around Maduro who are not only guilty of crimes against humanity but also a lot who are actually involved in drug trafficking and other stuff that might have repercussions even if the new government puts in place a very generous amnesty law. Big Chavistas know they might not have such a quiet life as their counterparts in Eastern Europe back in the nineties because they have made enemies everywhere.

Yanukovich lives close to Moscow but he speaks Russian better than Maduro, Cabello or Flores

Let's see Maduro's options very soon:

1) Staying in Venezuela as a normal citizen: this would mean he would need to have lots of security guards around him all the time and yet he won't be able  to move much: even if no one would touch him, he would be booed everywhere he went all the time, at the very least.

2) Going to Cuba: a lot of people take this as the more likely option but they forget Cuba's regime is largely counting on Venezuela's blood to survive. When Chavismo falls - and it will fall - Castristas will have other concerns. They definitely do not want Maduro there.

3) Going to Mexico: this might be an option if Maduro decides to go to some hacienda in some remote area of Mexico and the current president, lefty Obrador, gives him also protection round the clock.

4) Going to some country in Western Europe: this is possible but probably less so than option 3. First of all: Maduro and his people would not be able to keep up with their lifestyle without getting noticed and Venezuelan expats would make his life difficult: Cilia Flores would not be able to go shopping just lik that in the streets of Zurich or Paris. There are too many Venezuelans there and we live in the Age of the Mobile.

5) Going to Russia: this seems like an option as there are fewer Venezuelans there, Putin still has control of the country even if his popularity is going down. Still, I still cannot picture him spending his days in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, surrounded by mostly Russian speaking people. 

6) The same goes for Belarus but much more so than Russia.

We need to try to picture all this so that we can understand Maduro´s state of mind. Take into account that this is also in the minds of dozens and dozens of other Chavistas. 

I am currently not saying anything more. He has to go. Democracy must finally arrive to Venezuela as it arrived to the Czech Republic, to Estonia, to Eastern Germany. We need to show Maduro that if he tries to stay in Venezuela even though nobody wants him is going to be for him much worse than options 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 10000.

At this moment I think Maduro's best options are Mexico or Russia.

Children's foes

There is a new index about children's wellfare. Not surprisingly, Venezuela now offers children a worse standard of living than almost any other country in the Americas. Venezuelan children are now worse off than those in a lot of African countries.

That is very much unlike when I grew up in Venezuela's Caribbean.

This reports shows children are more likely to be murdered in Venezuela than in most American countries but for Honduras.

Venezuelan underaged girls are more likely to become pregnant than almost anywhere else, as I wrote already a couple of years ago.

Chavismo has to go away.

Cocaine and Chavismo, a Country in Decomposition

Everyone I know across Venezuela tells me the same: they are having a lot of trouble trying to make ends meet. Chicken? Onions? Beans? Meat? Flour? Hard to find and incredibly expensive for someone who earns in Venezuela's currency. We have heard for years now about the shortages in medicine supplies but now we have reached levels unheard of. We are entering hyper-inflation mode and the regime keeps talking about "economic war". Other bloggers have written a lot about this even if Chávez initiated the destruction of Venezuela's already weak economic structure, Maduro has accelerated the process. Maduro has allowed the shameless kleptocrats to prevail over all other interest groups of Chavismo. Desperation is increasing by the day. Still, most Venezuelans in Venezuela find it hard to understand things are going to get worse. When you suffer an inflation of over 150%, you haven't got much time to grasp it will keep increasing. You just try to survive yet another week.

On Friday we read of a major detained at the Colombian-Venezuelan border trying to smuggle cocaine. He had about 503 kg of cocaine in his lorry. This is nothing new but this major, Juan José Sorja Ojeda, turns out to be a permanent assistant to Hugo Chávez's father. The Chávez Family treats Barinas, their home state, as their fiefdom and there they have their haciendas, a lot of relatives have high ranking state positions. This major was a sergeant with nurse training who suddenly became a major. That is quite a jump in the Venezuelan military system.

Here you can see a picture of him next to Walter Martínez, the "star of international news" at the national - Chavista - state channel Venezolana de Televisión.

@cocando aquí está su foto para q lo conozcan! pic.twitter.com/t5EKCXzMwL

— OpositorRdikl RAV (@OpositorRdikl) February 13, 2016

Juan José was very active on Facebook and he was a very vocal supporter of Chavismo. The fact that he was caught while trafficking cocaine doesn't say anything about independence of powers but everything about lack of coordination among the different groups in power now. It also might show at least some of the low-key soldiers controlling our roads do mean business and want to do the right thing. The minister of defence, Vladimir Padrino, rushed to explain the guy was "no real military". The reasoning? "A coward, someone lacking dignity, honour, someone scorning his arms, cannot be a military". OK...so I suppose most Chavista militaries, once discovered by others in some crime, stopped being military.

Venezuelans are getting more and more isolated and neighbours do not seem to care. If you speak Spanish, you can read Krauze's article about that in El País.

Mord in Altagracia und die Ethik venezolanischer Politik

Luis Manuel Díaz, ein lokaler Oppositionspolitiker, wurde am 25.11.2015 in der Kleinstadt Altagracia de Orituco, in den venezolanischen Ebenen, während einer politischen Rallye erschossen. Tintori, Frau des inhaftierten Oppositionspolitiker Leopoldo López, hatte kurz davor neben ihm geredet.

Nicolás Maduro sagte, dass der Mord womöglich eine Abrechnung zwischen Kriminellen war. Dasselbe sagte der "Bürgerbeauftragter der Nation", Tarek Saab, der ein bekannter PSUV-Politiker ist, der Gedichte über Chávez schon schrieb, als dieser noch lebte. Der Chavista Fernsehsender Telesur sagte, Luis Manuel Díaz war seit 2010 wegen Mordes untersucht und erklärte, womöglich hätte ein Gangster ihn aus Rache ermordet. Tatsächlich zeigt die Seite von Telesur sein Foto nachdem er festgenommen wurde. Bis jetzt habe ich im Netz nichts über diesen Mann (Jahrgang 1971) vor seinem Mord gefunden. Auch wenn Altagracia ein Kaff ist: das ist schon bemerkenswert. Eine Frage stellt sich aber auch: warum wurde er freigelassen? Was ist aus dieser  Untersuchung in den letzten 5 Jahren geschehen? 

Amnesty International und die Organisation Amerikanischer Staaten forderten die "Einsetzung unabhängiger Ermittlungsbehörden", um eine Untersuchung einzuleiten.

Die einzigen unabhängigen Organisationen in Venezuela sind die Moskitoschwärme.

Es ist schon mehrmals im Laufe dieser Wahlzeit zu Gewalt gekommen: die Oppositionspolitiker Richard Blanco und Miguel Pizarro sind von bewaffneten Gruppen angegriffen worden. Bis jetzt hat die Regierung nicht gesagt, dass diese lauter Abrechnungen wären.

Dying on Venezuela's roads

A few days back a relative of mine was murdered on the road. Some criminals threw stones to his car from a bridge. He crashed, they robbed the car. They were not found and it is highly unlikely they will be found. That bridge is well known for that kind of crimes. Many other times people die because they driving while drunk, because they drive too fast, because they do not know how to drive, because the cars are breaking apart, because the roads are full of holes.

In any case, Venezuela registered the second highest rate of traffic fatalities on Earth a few years back. What about now?

Well, now the regime has simply decided not to provide the data. This year Venezuela is, together with Ukraine and South Sudan, one of the few countries that did not report how many people die on the road.

Now, if you go to the previous report of 2013, where Venezuela still appeared, you will see Venezuela's enforcement of seat belt was among the lowest reported: 2 out of 10 times. Also, 3/4 of all fatality types are classified as "other", as opposed to "pedestrians, drivers" or the like, a figure that is usually less than 15% for other countries. It seems as if Venezuelan authorities didn't have a clue about who died why. Venezuelans do not like rules, they do not calculate risks.

La Guerre au Vénézuéla aux temps du Chavismo

If you speak French, you should listen to this. If you don't but you know French speakers  who want to know about Venezuela, send them the link, please.

Thanks to Alexandra for tweeting that and to Julien, in the first place, for that excellent report.

Murder in Chavista Venezuela

Here you can see the murders reported in the Central Venezuelan state of Carabobo from January 2006 up to December 2014. The data comes from Notitarde. As this newspaper has just been sold out under governmental pressure, you can expect those numbers to drop or completely disappear. The Chavista government said it wanted an "impartial press".

The murder rate in Carabobo, like in all of Venezuela, rose dramatically from 1999 up to 2008. Since then numbers seem to have stabilize, although there is quite some discussion about what is really going on, as you can see here. I have discussed this issue with Dorothy Kronick in a couple of emails. My impression, based on projections from the Electoral Council data on voters is that if murder has reached its peak it is because of the demographic evolution: the amount of men in the most likely age range to be involved in murders also peaked about that time. Still, it might be too early to tell whether the murder epidemic has reached its maximum.

In any case, Venezuela now is just a shadow of what it was in 1998...and back then it was already in bad shape.

Time for a change?

Kampf der Hyänen: Venezuela im Oktober 2014

Robert Serra, ein 27-jähriger Abgeordneter der Regierungpartei in Venezuela, wurde zusammen mit einer seiner Assistentinnen ermordet. Die Maduro-Regierung erklärte prompt, "die Faschisten" - damit wird immer die Opposition gemeint - wären dafür verantwortlich. Serra war, wie viele hohen Bonzen, ein Santero. Die Santería ist ein Aberglaube, der aus Kuba stammt. Zwar gab es seit je andere Formen des Aberglaubens in Venezuela. Santería hat aber seit der Ankunft des Chavismus eine wichtige Rolle eingenommen.  Serra organisierte Santería-Riten in seinem Haus. Zwei seiner Mörder waren als Santeros angezogen. Serras Assistentin öffnete ihnen die Tür. Anscheinend kannte oder erwartete sie die Männer.

Am 7.10 ereignete sich ein Feuergefecht zwischen der venezolanischen Polizei und Colectivos, den Chavista-Paramilitärs, die der Regierung zufolge keine Paramilitärs sind. Fünf Mesnchen wurden dabei getötet. Die Regierung erklärte, die Getöteten seien keine Colectivos, sondern Kriminelle, denn Colectivos seien keine Kriminellen. Dabei war einer der Getöteten, José Odreman, ein Bekannter unter den Chavistas. Es wird schwer für die Regierung sein, sich von diesen Getöteten zu distanzieren. Odreman hatte sich selbst mal mit der Frau Maduros, mal mit Serra fotographieren lassen. Während der Schiesserei erklärte Odreman einigen Journalisten, einer seiner Kamaraden wäre von den Polizisten beim Schlaf ermordet und dass der Innenminister, Miguel Rodríguez Torres, verantwortlich sein würde, falls ihm, Odreman, etwas geschehen würde. Kurz darauf war er tot.

Fortsetzung...

Maduro says Serra was killed by Uribe (and the rest)

Maduro has, not surprisingly, declared PSUV deputy Serra was killed on the orders of Uribe and "those in Miami", by fascists (which is Chavismo talk for the opposition). He said a similar thing about the murder of notorious military Eliécer Otaiza, who was killed last April by...the usual criminals who roam Venezuela under the so-called revolution.

Let's see.

Serra was a Santero, like many Venezuelans since Cuba is calling the shots in Venezuela. There are supposed to be two broad types of Santeros: those practicing the "white" and the "black" sort and the first ones are supposed to be practicing white magic and the others the bad one. In reality, it's the same rubbish and they all have mafioso structures. To be a 'godfather' means a lot of wealth for them.

Serra arrived to his house on Wednesday and told his bodyguards to leave because he was going to prepare some dinner (?) with his group. His assistant opened the door for 6 six people, two of them dressed as Santeros. The visitors attacked the assistant and Serra using knives. The criminals then found the six cameras Serra kept in place, took them so as to prevent leavin any sign of their action and fled. Obviously, the guys knew the place well and their victims knew them as well.

Maduro has previously said Uribe wanted to kill him and that the opposition had bought several planes now stationed in Colombia and ready to invade Venezuela.

If you made any kind of concrete accusation against Maduro the way he does against the opposition, a judiciary process would be started against you right away, just like the military honcho Cabello has done against the newspaper Tal Cual and a journalist working there for something they wrote against him. Cabello, by the way, has already accused the opposition of being responsible for the death of Serra and he even hinted someone from Voluntad Popular might be behind that.

Food for thought about crime

The results of this Swedish study are not surprising to me. A lot of social workers won't like those results. A lot of conservatives will see their believes confirmed.

I think one needs to further analyse the initial correlations that came out of this research. In any case, it is worth keeping an open mind. 

I wouldn't be surprised if a similar study would bring similar results for Venezuela, in spite of Venezuela having such a different environment as Sweden. The crucial thing would be: what can we do about it?

Venezuela und Benzin, Benzin, Benzin, Benzin + Tafelberge

Dieser Dokumentarfilm der ARD muss man sehen. Vor allem ab Minute 5, wo es um den Benzinschmuggel geht.

Nur erklärt er Journalist die Sache nicht so ganz richtig:

"Jeder hat sein Teil davon eingesteckt, von denen ganz unten bis zu denen ganz oben": 

Nur diejenigen, die in diesem Verbrechen beteiligt sind - einschl. der Schweizer da-, gewinnen was davon. Das Geld, das die Regierung für das stark subventionierte Benzin ausgibt, ist Geld, das die sie für die heruntergekommenen Krankenhäuser und Schulen nicht ausgeben kann. Ein Lehrer in Venezuela verdient wesentlich weniger als ein Militär, der ohnehin vom Schmuggel profitiert. Ein Lehrer kann mit seinem Lohn nicht mal eine Einzimmerwohnung mieten.

Man weiss, warum Maduro am Ende den Benzinpreis nicht erhöhen wollte: die Militärs würden weniger kassieren.

"El Honor es su divisa" ist das Motto der Nationalgarde. Es müsste "Schmuggeln ist ihre Divise" heissen

GDP per capita for Chile, Colombia and Venezuela

Venezuela's GDP is bound to drop significantly between this year and 2015. The data you see here speaks for itself. Of course, Chavismo will say Venezuela has now the best GINI coefficient in the Milky Way. That doesn't seem to compute very well with the fact Venezuela has the highest murder rate in South America and crime is provoked, to a big extent, by inequality.


Source: IMF

Tod in Caracas und Erdölgeschäfte

Der venezolanischen Zeitung Notitarde zufolge war Cristophorus Wilhelm Klieuters, der Deutsche, der in Caracas kurz nach seiner Ankunft letzte Woche ermordet wurde, ein häufiger Besucher Venezuelas. Er war ein Geschäftsmann und hatte vor, mit mehreren Bonzen der staatlichen Erdölgesellschaft PDVSA zu sprechen. Klieuters hatte eine Firma, die mit Bohrinseln zu tun hatte, wie die Bild-Zeitung berichtet.

Kurioserweise heuerte er die Dienste einer privaten Sicherheitsfirma an, die einem aktiven General der berüchtigten venezolanischen Nationalgarde -Guardia Nacional- gehört. Wie kann um Gottes willen ein aktiver General so eine Firma treiben und das in einer sogenannten Revolution?

Hier könnt Ihr Dieterich auf Spanisch hören. Der Kerl, der sich als Ökonom bezeichnet, hat nichts verstanden. Er beschuldigt Maduro vieler Fehler, als ob Chávez damit nicht angefangen hätte. Er sagt, Maduro hätte nun inkompetente Minister, als ob die Minister des Caudillos Chávez andere Menschen gewesen wären.

Murder in the Land of the Pseudo-Revolution: United Nations' Report

 Here you have the latest UNODC report on crime in the whole world. The key part on page 35:

"South America now has the same homicide rate as in 1995, which is the result of very different trends at the country level. For example, Colombia’s homicide rate has been decreasing since 1996 but remains at a very high level, while the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the only country in South America that has had a consistently increasing homicide rate since 1995. Other countries in the region have quite stable homicide rates, but at different levels: Brazil’s homicide rate is quite stable and high, while hom- icide rates in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are stable and lower, which gives them homicide pro- files closer to those of European countries. " 

Also take a look at this here (from page 38 of the same report):

Perdidos en la Inseguridad

El gobierno madurista se ve obligado, una vez más, a entregarse al ritual público de preparar un nuevo plan de seguridad. Esta vez  el proceso se reinicia por el revuelo generado ante el asesinato de una famosa ex-reina de belleza y de su esposo. La noticia se ha regado por el mundo entero y Maduro nuevamente tiene que pretender hacer algo, que refuerza y repotencia el sistema de seguridad. Miguel Rodríguez Torres,  duodécimo ministro de lo que ahora se llama "Ministerio del Poder Popular de Interiores, Justicia y Paz y decimotercio cambio ministerial en catorce años, ha anunciado que se reunirá con todo el mundo - hasta con los líderes opositores. Este ministro no es un especialista en derecho, en logística o en sociología. Es un militar más de los que lideraron las sangrientas intentonas de golpe de Estado de 1992 y que dominan la política de Venezuela desde el 99. 

Entre otras cosas, Rodríguez anuncia nuevos controles en la carretera que une Puerto Cabello con Valencia, donde la pareja famosa fue asesinada el 6 de enero. 

Ante esto uno tiene que preguntarse hasta qué punto el gobierno nacional e incluso nuestros líderes opositores tienen una visión y un deseo de analizar las cosas de manera racional.

El mapa que ven aquí es de Estado Carabobo, donde ocurrió el asesinato que volvió a generar protestas extras contra la inseguridad. He usado las estadísticas publicadas en periódicos regionales y los datos del último censo de Venezuela para calcular la tasa de asesinatos de cada municipio (X homicidios por 100 mil habitantes).

Así, el Municipio Puerto Cabello, que es ahora el centro de interés de los medios de comunicación y del gobierno, registró una tasa de 49 asesinatos por 100 mil personas el año pasado. Esto es muchísimo. Es más del doble de la tasa de asesinatos a nivel nacional de 1998, el año antes de que el chavismo llegara al poder. Ahora bien: si vemos alrededor, nos damos cuenta que hay muchas otras regiones en el estado que tienen una tasa mucho mayor. El infierno de Carabobo es el Municipio Libertador - Venezuela tiene un montón de topónimos repetidos debido al culto a la personalidad de militares-. Ese municipio, donde se halla la cárcel de Tocuyito, tiene una tasa de asesinatos de 100 muertos por 100 mil habitantes. Le sigue el municipio Diego Ibarra, que se halla cerca de la ciudad de Maracay. Valencia sigue algo después. La tasa de asesinatos de este municipio es algo que merece un mejor análisis: más de la mitad de la población de dicho municipio vive en la mega-parroquia Miguel Peña y es allí donde probablemente se produzcan más de 3/4 de todos los asesinatos del municipio.

Los municipios menos peligrosos son el municipio básicamente urbano de San Diego, manejado por el opositor Scarano, y los municipios rurales de Miranda, Montalbán y ante todo Bejuma.

El gobierno habla ahora de "planes inteligentes". Sería interesante que algún vocero explicase porqué estos planes son tan inteligentes. Se basan, ante todo, en restringir los horarios de los motociclistas - en base a que los asesinos suelen ser personas que se mueven en motos.

Una de las primeras cosas que hizo el caudillo Chávez al llegar al poder fue sacar de las cárceles a miles de presos. En teoría se trataba de darle libertad a aquellos que habían quedado enredados en un sistema judicial que no procesaba, que no investigaba, que no resolvía nada. Aun así, tampoco se sabe qué procedimientos y que seguimiento se hizo de estos liberados. Solo se sabe que la tasa de asesinatos pasó de 19 asesinatos en el 98 a 34 en 2002.

En 2012 y 2013 se produce una nueva ola de liberaciones por los mismos motivos. La ministra "del Poder Popular de los Servicios Penitenciarios dice que está acertando un certero golpe al retraso procesal...que según ella se originó en la Cuarta República. Quizás debería hablar de golpes certeros, en plural, porque desde 1999 se la pasan en eso.

Definitivamente, los que mandan o quieren mandar parecen no tener ni idea de qué hacer con la situación, salvo pretender que están haciendo algo.

Municipio	Tasa de homicidios (2013)	Población*  (apr. censo 2011)
Valencia	68.69	829856
Libertador	100.5	166166
Los Guayos	56.15	149606
Guacara	58.45	176218
Carlos Arvelo	61.22	150277
Naguanagua	48.27	157437
Diego Ibarra	86.09	104536
Puerto Cabello	49.86	182493
Miranda	30.94	29092
San Joaquín	43.67	64124
San Diego	36.46	93257
Juan José Mora	62.11	69236
Bejuma	20.6	48538
Montalbán	24.09	24908

* La población en 2013 seguramente ha crecido, así que la tasa debería ser un 2% menor al total mostrado aquí. Lo que hice fue redondear hacia abajo. Quizás pude haber redondeado un poco más, pero eso no modifica las tasas mucho.

Ps. Aquí pueden ver un informe del Banco Central de Colombia sobre cómo ha variado la tasa de homicidio en Colombia en la última década. Observen en especial los datos en la página 26. Observen también cómo el informe explica previamente toda la metodología usada. Ojalá en Venezuela se llegue un día a producir estudios tan profesionales. Lamentablemente, hoy en día el Banco Central de Venezuela es una sombra de lo que antes era: manejado por personas que ni siquiera pueden hablar o sacar cuentas y que escriben informes sobre "guerra económica" y lo que ha hecho o no el supuesto "comandante eterno".

Justice ministers in Venezuela and elsewhere: what are they made of?

In the tables below you can see the list of ministers for Interior and Justice of Brazil, Chile and Venezuela since late 1998, with their professions. For Venezuela I added a star sign next to the name of those who very openly fell out of love with Chavismo - i.e. had a very public quarrel with Chávez. Brazil has serious problems with violent crime but the situation is better than it was in the nineties. Chile has violent crime levels that are so low as to be the envy of all of Latin America. Venezuela, on the other hand, is one of the most dangerous countries on Earth now. The murder rate of Brazil is about a third that of Venezuela. Just in case: I am not making big judgements on the value of a university degree for becoming a "Minister of Justice". I have heard quite some rumours about Venezuelan El Aissami and what he did when he was studying. He was the only one who studied law among Chávez's ministers in this field. But those are rumours. I hardly know anything about the different ministers in those other countries. Still, I think there is a pattern here. We need to remember this now, when in Venezuela Maduro is again talking about a stronger "civic-military" union.

BRAZIL
Renan Calheiros	“Politician”	1998
José Carlos Dias	Lawyer	1999
José Gregori	Lawyer	2000
Aloysio Nunes Ferreira Filho	Lawyer	2001
Miguel Reale Júnior	Lawyer	2002
Paulo de Tarso Ramos Ribeiro	Lawyer	2002
Márcio Thomaz Bastos	Lawyer	2003
Tarso Genro	Lawyer	2007
Luiz Paulo Barreto	Economist	2010
José Eduardo Cardozo	Lawyer	2011
CHILE
Raúl Troncoso Castillo	Lawyer	1998
José Miguel Insulza Salinas	Lawyer	2000
Francisco Vidal Salinas	History	2005
Andrés Zaldívar Larraín	Lawyer	2006
Belisario Velasco Baraona	None	2006
Edmundo Pérez Yoma	Arts,Entrepreneur	2008
Rodrigo Hinzpeter Kirberg	Lawyer	2010
Andrés Pío Bernardino Chadwick Piñera	Lawyer	2012
VENEZUELA
Luis Miquilena*	"Politician", union leader	1999
Ignacio Araya*	International Relations	2000
Luis Alfonso Dávila*	Military	2000
Luis Miquilena*	"Politician", union leader	2001
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín	Military	2002
Diosdado Cabello	Military	2002
Lucas Rincón Romero	Military	2003
Jesse Chacón Escamillo	Military	2004
Pedro Carreño	Military	2006
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín	Military	2007
Tarek El Aissami	Lawyer	2008
Néstor Reverol	Military	2012
Miguel Rodríguez Torres	Military	2013

A bloody coup monger as minister of Interior, Justice and Peace...and other things from the Venezuelan fraud

I just write this to remind foreigners about who the people in power in Venezuela are.

Miguel Eduardo Rodríguez Torres, the current minister of "the Popular Power of Interior, Justice and Peace", was one of the coup mongers who attacked the Presidential House in February 1992. He lead a group of military who killed quite a lot of innocent people there.

He has been involved in the training of the paramilitary Bolivarian circles.

He has been in charge of the security services SEBIN.

And he is one of the many pseudo-revolutionaries who want to minimize the crime situation in Venezuela.

As Rocío San Miguel explains, this guy has now managed to increase his power. He can be considered as influential among the military strongmen as that other coup monger, Diosdado Cabello.

Yesterday Maduro ratified Rodríguez in his position and proceeded to change some ministers, as Chavismo so often does. Below you can see a chart of the new changes.

There is a bad singer who got the ministry of Sports as he was not elected as mayor last December. He replaced a woman who was at that position for just a few months. There is another former coup monger, Wilmer Barrietos, who now became head of the "Despacho para la Presidencia", a sort of Presidential Office - don't mix up with the Presidential Secretary.

Venezuela's wonderful tourism in the times of the civic-military "revolution"

This chart shows the evolution across time of the amount of foreign tourists to American countries outside North America and huge Argentina and Brazil. Apart from a group of hardly known islands, you have them all: from Aruba, Colombia and Peru to Venezuela. I got the data from the World Bank.

The red dotted line at the bottom represents Venezuela. 

Some things you can spot right away:

1. Venezuela receives less foreign tourists now than in 1997, but has basically got the same amount of tourists
2. Cuba had as many foreign visitors as Venezuela in 1998 whereas now it has more than 5 times the tourists Venezuela gets. A similar case goes for Guatemala, Costa Rican, Ecuador and other countries.
3. Even El Salvador, formerly described by someone I knew as Central America's Armpit - surpassed Venezuela
4. The same goes for Honduras, in spite of its also horrible murder rates
5. Aruba, a tiny tiny little island off the coast of Venezuela with fewer beaches than those we have in just a fraction of the Paraguana region, has almost twice as many tourists as Venezuela from Guajira up to Guyana.
6. Few countries get less visitors than Venezuela: a few tiny islands that can hardly receive more tourists, natural-disaster-ravaged, extremely poor Haiti and the tiny group of Guyana and Suriname.

Venezuela has never received many tourists because 1) the country has been very dependent on oil, 2) it has been rather expensive and 3) the authorities have never ever developed infrastructure. 

I remember having visited the ministry of tourism in the early nineties to find out what the hell they were doing. Apparently, their main concern was to publish posters of how beautiful Venezuela was and producing some examinations for tourist guides. 

Now, in the year 2014, we haven't got proper tourist offices or the like just yet. We get posters of the "Comandante Eterno" saluting foreign tourists when they arrive. Things have got grimmer and grimmer. Other bloggers have written about the case of former Miss Venezuela, Miss Spears, who was recently murdered, together with her husband and in front of their little child, while on a tourist visit to her home country. She died in similarly horrible circumstances as many others that same day. The difference was that she was a well-known figure who was currently living abroad and came to Venezuela to promote its tourism. 

This doesn't count if you don't have the people to take care of tourists or to protect the environment

Venezuela's murder rate went from 19 murders per 100 000 inhabitants in 1999, when Chávez started to rule, to 34 in 2002 to 45+ to 70 now, depending on what statistics you want to believe (the government stopped sending murder numbers to United Nations in 2002).

Nope, this doesn't count if you don't have the people to take care of tourists or to protect the environment

There are simply more tourists everywhere in the year 2014 than 15 years ago. Not only are there more people but the middle class has grown almost everywhere in emerging markets and there are more flights. In spite of that, Venezuela's at the bottom and still the "minister of the Popular Power for Tourism" - a relative of yet another left-winged military man- has the chutzpah to brag about how he is promoting tourism.

This doesn't count either while we are polluting it as few do it in the Caribbean and you can get robbed more often while enjoying it because our government is simply incompetent (and now I will be accuse by the government of being the cause of so few tourists: a traitor of the Vaterland for writing this)

Nothing new in the Southern front

Here you can see the distribution of murders in August 2013 in Carabobo State. You can see the Valencia (in yellow) registered the highest amount of murders. That doesn't mean that's the municipality with the highest murder rate. Tocuyito (blueish to the West of Valencia) and Los Guayos (pink to the East) have a higher murder rate.

On the chart above you can see the total amount of murders per municipality since 2006. It seems the amount of murders has stabilized...but it has stabilized at a very high level. 

For comparison: last year the Comunidad Autónoma Valenciana in Spain registered 50 murders for its 5 million inhabitants. Carabobo, where Venezuelan Valencia is located, registered over 1500 murders for its 2.3 million citizens just from January to October of last year.

The murder rate has more than tripled since 1999.

On another topic: the government announced the Vergatario, Chávez's idea of a mobile, is going to be sold now for the equivalent of 389 dollars. The government will say that's a socialist price. As dollars are tightly controlled by the government, other mobiles will be even more expensive. A "socialist mobile" in Venezuela is much more expensive than a good mobile in the USA or Britain...and Venezuelans earn a fraction of what US Americans or Western Europeans earn.

The economy is absolutely running amok in Venezuela.

Venezuela is really sick: deaths on the road

It is simply amazing how Venezuelans as a whole and the government in particular manage to get so many things wrong. 

In the chart above you can see the chart of deaths on the road per 100,000 inhabitants for South American countries according to the latest WHO report. You won't see this kind of chart in Venezuelan newspapers because somehow journalists in my country think Venezuelans are idiots and can't read such a simple chart.

Now some useful idiots abroad will say: "the high death rate is because Venezuela is becoming so prosperous" or, alternatively, "it's because Venezuela hasn't arrived to the socialist stage just yet".

As an extra reference, here the rates for other countries outside South America:


Germany 4.7
Spain 5.4
Italy 7.2
USA 11.4
Portugal 11.8
Mexico 14.7
and at the very top, along Venezuela:


Nigeria 33.7
Iran 34.1
Thailand 38.1
Dominican Republic 41.7

Only Thailand and the much smaller Dominican Republic have worse rates (and Niue, but that is statistically meaningless)