Chavez continues his steady transformation into a outright dictator: now he is a puritan for prohibition!

Today we got back on the attack mode against Polar.  Of course, we would.  The take over of Agroisleña is now clearly a fiasco, the one of Exito is becoming one in spite of retaining some of the French management.  And amen on having now to import cement from Cuba...  So Chavez needs new things to plunder until there is nothing left working in Venezuela.

But if that attack was not a surprise, some of the choice words used by Chavez deserve a special mention.  In November he accused CEO of Polar to look at Venezuela as a brothel and selling beer straight from the truck at street corners.  I personally never saw a Polar truck doing such a thing though it certainly can be possible, the more so if the truck is one of the frequently stolen beer trucks in a country that has absolutely no personal safety left.  However, Polar is one of my clients, a minor one albeit, but I have dealt with them enough to know that they operate under very stringent internal control because they are always at a high risk of government intervention.  I doubt that it would be very easy for a Polar beer truck to sell on detail cases of beer at a street corner since there will be a certain difficulty in gathering the necessary sales receipts....

The people of course know that because they certainly would love to buy beer from the truck as we do for sodas for example.  So that attack did not go much further.  Today we get one better, Chavez accuse Polar or promoting alcoholism in Venezuela, and in a very nasty way.

"...desata la lujuria en el colectivo, la desvergüenza gracias a la Polar y a muchas otras marcas”.

vale la pena preguntar cuántos muertos en el país son responsabilidad de la empresa Polar, productora de cerveza, entre otras bebidas alcohólicas. La cerveza es veneno."

"... it provokes lust in the collective [?????], slutyness thanks to Polar and many other brands

it would be worth to ask how many people are killed in the country becasue of Polar, enterprise producing beer, among other alcoholic beverages. Beer is poison."

I am not going to dwell on the obvious sexual perturbation of Chavez who mentally is trying to find ways to rape Polar.  I will just limit myself to some simple facts in Venezuela.

Beer is the beverage of the poor, and they are lucky to have a great quality product favorably commented upon by most tourists visiting.  We do not get here the pissy beer of the US, nor the stronger stuff of Europe not suitable for our warm climates.  So yes, Polar produces the opium of the masses but at least it is not only a good damn opium, it is good enough that the competition has never been able to prosper, and it has kept us away of worse poison such as Russian bad vodka....

That competition, by the way, which is not mentioned by Chavez is Regional, in the hands of the infamous Cisneros group of Venevision who has sold his soul to the devil; and to Brahma of Brazil who has met only a limited success and who I was told was selling or sold.  These two allies of Chavez are selling a significant portion of the beer in Venezuela and I am sure that they also try to sell at street corners because contrary to Polar they can probably get away with it.

But let's go further: Polar produces its beer INSIDE Venezuela, using corn in large amount, creating jobs, plenty of jobs.  If it were for Polar, it would grow and produce 90% of its supplies INSIDE Venezuela whereas now through the catastrophic policies of the regime it needs to import even corn!  What is really driving alcoholism in Venezuela these days is the undeviating love for Scotch, and the more expensive the better.  Scotch has supplanted long ago Venezuelan rum as the drink of choice and as you well know it is not produced in Venezuela.  On the other hand, "the other" alcohol produced by Polar is a fascinating wine growing experiencing near Carora with some reasonable success.  But of course the barracks lout that Chavez is could not comprehend what an exploit and what an economic boon a wine producing region in Venezuela is.

Anyway, as it is always the case between Chavez and Polar it is a problem that comes because Polar is the mirror through which the failures of Chavez are cruelly and constantly reflected.  Polar proves that in Venezuela we can have a first world quality economic concern and thus by comparison it makes all government initiatives and nationalizations look increasingly like 4th world badly run native tribal affairs.

And of course, the very real alcoholism problem that we see in Venezuela has NEVER been properly addressed by Chavez or his regime who have promoted access to easy cash to the masses so that they can get drunk on week ends.  That is something that you will not find reported even in Venezuelan press too self censored on such stuff and even less on progressive pages about Venezuela that should know better.  Under Chavez alcoholism (and drug addiction while we are at it) have become scourges.  The Polar trucks do not need to stop at street corner to sell their stuff, the tiniest village today might have only one store and it sells beer. Deliveries are easy, for any brand of beer or booze.

Think about that for a second.