Venezuelans in Europe tell the world: SOS

Venezuelans in Berlin on 15.3: For a better Venezuela

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

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

Venezuelans in Stavanger, Western Norway: for a better Venezuela

Violence in Venezuela: a sense of perspective

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

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

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

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

My literal translation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ameliach later deleted his tweet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Le Vénézuéla au Québec

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

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

The Twitter political circus in Venezuela: an update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wir erklären Euch Venezuela

La BBC y sus errores

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

Versión original

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Housing in Venezuela and the current crisis

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

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

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

Too few, too slow, too badly

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

Cops earn less. Most people earn less.

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

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

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

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