Venezuela's laziest people or just populism at a different level?

Aristóbulo Istúriz, governor of the Northeastern state of Anzoátegui, declared today is a holiday because the regional basketball team won the national basketball championship. It doesn't matter Venezuela is getting into recession, the country is lagging behind most other South American countries in spite of its oil and people have to spend endless hours queuing up for food. Or perhaps it does matter and that's why he does it.

Istúriz is one of those "revolutionaries" who was actually integral part of the IV Republic: before he became Chavista, he was an active politician of Acción Democrática, social democrats, and then of Causa R, left-left, both now opposition parties.

Declaring a compulsory holiday for everyone not working in emergency services or the like is not new in Anzoátegui. Back in January 2011 the previous governor, Tareq Saab (of Syrian and pro-al-Assad family, as many Chavista apparatchiks), declared a holiday also for a basketball victory at the national championship. In  July 2011 Saab did the same for another victory. The governor also declared another holiday in June of the same year because the Spanish soccer team was playing a friendly match with the Venezuelan team.

The state is called after a military caudillo.  Saab also declared a holiday on General Anzoátegui's birthday. Of course, you should add all the national holidays Venezuelans have.

Our country can go to hell but we won't work

Why did the Venezuelan chicken cross the road?

Why did the Venezuelan chicken cross the road? 


Venezuelans running to be the first to queue up for chicken and flour

• "It didn't cross the road. The fascist opposition smuggled it across the road to Colombia because of the economic war" Minister of Trade Dante Rivas
• "It crossed the road so that Bolivians, Nicaraguans and Cubans can eat as well. They give us beans and doctors for it".  Just a Maduro apparatchik
• "Every Venezuelan chicken will provide for ten Cuban doctors in Venezuela's slums and if you don't believe it you are evil and you want little children and baby pandas to die" Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba
• "It didn't. There is no chicken in Venezuela" Canadian journalist
• "Because a big man with a moustache kept staring and calling it Hugo"
• Did it? Did it? I'll give you one tomato if you help me catch it" A Venezuelan with two tomatoes
• "To get in line for one package of maize flour" A reader

Do you have any other ideas?

Venezuela: no tin for coffins, no coffins for Venezuela's dead, more lies and repression for the living

Nice view until you start to fall

Maduro promised to eliminate extreme poverty for 2018. A few weeks earlier the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE) had published a report stating poverty had significantly increased in the last year but then one of Maduro's ministers said that was not true. That was the same minister who said the government didn't want to take people out of poverty for them then to become "squalid" (one of the words Chávez used to describe people who disliked his policies) and then said he had been quoted out of context. As the INE is fully dependent on the Executive and the Executive won't tolerate dissent, I am sure there will be more than reprimands. People are bound to get sacked for saying the truth or at least threatened with an immediate sack if they publish similar figures again.

All public organisations, including the Central Bank, talk about an economic war as reason for the complete economic decay and the shortage economy in Venezuela.

There is no tin production and hardly any dollars to import stuff, so even mortuaries are running out of coffins (which, I didn't know, usually contain tin).

The regime is going to investigate opposition leader María Corina Machado and others for "trying to assassinate Maduro". Since 1998 Chavismo has announced at least once every quarter a major assassination attempt. Since Chávez is "the Eternal Commandant" and Maduro is in power, the announcements have become more frequent.

The government wants to send all meaningful opposition leaders to jail or, preferably, to exile before the economy deteriorates further.

Meanwhile, South America's leaders are pretending they don't see anything. Almost all of their countries still have a trade surplus with Venezuela and the leaders of Brazil and Uruguay were tortured during dictatorships of the right...they apparently think human right abuses from regimes that wear the label "left" are better than others.

Ah, in Valencia, Venezuela's third largest city, there was a new march to protest the extreme pollution of the region's tap water. In the nineties bad sewage planning led to an increase in the Valencia Lake levels - levels that had been receding for centuries -. Chávez had the "great idea" to connect the water of the Valencia Lake with a water reservoir in Southwestern Valencia, the Pao-Cachinche reservoir. The problem is that the Valencia Lake waters are highly polluted, they are becoming more polluted by the day and the water treatment plant in Los Guayos that is supposed to deal with that is not enough and pigs could maintain it better than the current employees do.

If you open a tap in most of the Carabobo region and there is water, it will stink a lot and it will be either dark yellowish or extreme white, with chlorine levels that are not healthy at all.

Venezuela is falling apart.

Maduro, al-Assad und as-Sissi oder "ein Esel gefällt dem anderen"

Der venezolanische Machtshaber Nicolas Maduro hat nun al-Assad in Syrien und as-Sissi in Ägypten für ihre Wahlsiege gratuliert.

Dass Maduro den Massenmörder al-Assad gratulieren würde, war von jedem zu erwarten. Die al-Assad-Diktatur war mit der Chávez-Regierung seit je eng befreundet. Viele Venezolaner-Araber, deren Eltern oder Grosseltern aus dieser Region stammen sind zur Zeit Bonzen in der Maduro-Regierung. Dass Maduro sich aber auch mit Lob an den Militärcaudillo as-Sissi wenden würde, hat mich schon ein bisschen überrascht, denn vom Autoritarismus mal abgesehen hatten sie bis jetzt nicht viel zu tun gehabt. Vielleicht hat Maduro einfach gesehen, dass die US-Amerikaner sich von as-Sissi distanzieren wollen. Vielleicht sehnt sich Maduro für mehr Anerkennung und will an jede Tür klopfen.

Tarek El-Aissami, einer der syrisch-venezolanischen Bonzen

How many barrels has the Venezuelan regime pawned?

In the last few years the Chavista regime increasingly borrowed money by promising to deliver oil in the future. The government has been doing that in spite of the fact oil prices have remained at very high levels. 

I want to ask my readers to send me information about all the different agreements of "money now for oil in the future". There is only so much oil Venezuela can produce and, given the corruption and complete incompetence of Venezuela's government and of the current state oil company PDVSA, things will have a limit. That limit will to a big extent decide how many days the regime has.

Thanks for your help.

Chinese loans (past):
?? 20 billions pending for ??? oil

Chinese loans (past), refers to the same stuff:
More details on the "rounds"

Chinese loan (latest): 05.2014
Got: $5 billion

Russian loan: 24.05.2014
1.6 million tonnes of oil
7.5 million tonnes of oil products within 5 years
Got: $2 billions

From Russia without love

Venezuela is one of Russia's most important clients for its weapons export. The South American country has spent over 9 billion dollars in Russian arms since 2006. Venezuela's government has even used a lot of money from the FONDEN, the "Fund for Endogenous Development", in order to pay for those arms. Chávez saw to it that the National Parliament cannot do anything to control the use of that money.

Some might think lots of Russians feel like buddies with Venezuelans. That is not the case. If you read the recent polls published by the Levada Centre, you will see Venezuela is far away in most Russian minds. When asked what countries they could name as close friends of Russia, people named Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Armenia, India, Cuba (yes, still Cuba), Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Moldavia, Uzbekistan, Kirghistan, Serbia and only then Venezuela. Venezuela is now just slightly "closer" to Russia than Germany and Turkey. The best popularity Venezuela got was in 2009 and it has been dropping off the radar for Russia since then. It only surpassed Germany this year because of the Ukraine crisis. Let's be honest: Venezuela is indeed very far away from Russia and other than oil and arms dealers a a bunch of Latin American fans with lots of adventure will, few Russians have anything to do with Venezuela and most Venezuelans who ever had anything to do with Russia were communists, a tiny group of Russian expats - but then Venezuela had expats from all over the world - and a couple of others with exotic or weird cultural interests like me.

Venezuela is one of the few countries that has followed Putin's will to recognise Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia as independent nations. The ambassador of Venezuela to Russia also deals with the non-existent relations to Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia.

Two weeks earlier several Venezuelan honchos went to Russia to ask for more money and cooperation. Here you can read about how mogul Rafael Ramírez signed on 24 May 2014 a deal with ex-KGB man Igor Sechin to get 2 billion dollars in advance in return for over 1.6 million tonnes of oil and 7.5 million tonnes of oil products within five years. Venezuela's government was one of the few governments that supported at United Nations Russia's move on Ukraine on 27 May 2014. The other only countries were North Korea, Belarus, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Syria, Bolivia, Sudan, Nicaragua and Armenia.

Venezuela is having to pay dearly for Russia's loans and weapons - as well as some SIGINT-. It's not precisely love or will for honest cooperation that binds both countries together.

Venezuela's rulers are doing this even if oil prices are still at a record high. For those of you who do not follow the development of oil prices, here a perspective:

La Vida en Venezuela

Kilos de pollo, tomate y cebolla que se podían comprar con un sueldo mínimo

En el gráfico pueden ver cuánto podía comprar un venezolano de tres productos con el salario mínimo en 1998 y en 2014.

El gráfico indica cuántos kilos de pollo, de tomate y de cebolla se podían comprar en 1998 y ahora con el salario mínimo. En 1998 se podían comprar 250 kilos con el salario mínimo de aquel entonces. Ahora solo se pueden comprar poco más de 42 kilos.

Hubiese podido haber elegido un sinnúmero de otros productos o servicios y la relación habría sido parecida. Solo hay algo que se ha vuelto mucho mucho más barato: la gasolina, que es prácticamente gratis. La electricidad también se ha venido haciendo cada vez más barata. El gobierno prefiere financiar la gasolina a gastar en buenos hospitales o en seguridad para la población.

Venezuela padece uno de los mayores niveles de obesidad del continente americano. Para la gran mayoría es un lujo comer vegetales. Un tomate o una cebolla son ahora mucho más caros en Venezuela subtropical  con sus 916000 km2 que en Bélgica o Alemania en invierno. Un kilo de filet de pollo cuesta en Venezuela el equivalente a unos 14,36 euros, un kilo de tomate 5,83 y uno de cebolla 11,67. Eso es a cambio oficial. Por supuesto, que sería mejor ver cuántos kilos de tomate, de cebolla o de pollo puede comprar un europeo con el salario mínimo de su país o algo equivalente.

Por supuesto que para muchos venezolanos, no es tan fácil acordarse de cuánto era su poder adquisitivo hace 15 años...las dádivas del boom petrolero ante todo a partir de 2002 y hasta, aproximadamente, el 2010, hicieron relativizar mucho del pasado. Pero ahora, aunque los precios del petróleo siguen muy altos, el nivel de vida del venezolano es hoy en día peor que en 1998.

Algunas referencias:

1998
1998
Aporrea
2014
2014 "Precios justos"