For reasons that will be elaborated in another post, I have been silent for two weeks. Not that it seems to have mattered much. I do not think Venezuela matters much anymore, there is protest fatigue just as there was protest fatigue after Ahmadinejad stole his reelection from Moussavi. The world tires fast, even though inside Venezuela protest and repression keep apace while in Iran they died eventually.
The fact of the matter is that I have nothing to add. What I wrote since last year is constantly proven right. Anything new is a mere rehash of a situation in full decomposition. The causes are the same, the outcome is to be feared. The only variables are those that affect the speed of the proceedings.
True, I could entertain the readers with deep analysis on why the car production in Venezuela is now near zero, on why inflation has forced the regime to double the circulation of the highest banknote (barely worth 2 USD today), on the latest presidential assassination attempt (and counting, as Tal Cual lists it as the 13th on Maduro alone), an attempt based on obviously forged E-mails that the attorney office takes seriously. Would those articles bring anything new?
All is the same.
On one side there is thug regime, whose factions are fighting between each other for the shrinking marks of power and the "
peau de chagrin" that the national income has become. As the crisis aggravate, as it is becoming more and more difficult for the mobsters at Miraflores to agree amongst themselves on any issue except survival, the repression can only become worse.
The latest show must be understood at the subliminal level, not at the ridiculous attempt to fabricate charges to jail a few more opposition politicians. That show was dedicated to the lumpenest of the chavista lumpen, those that cannot perceive any issue in their lives outside of serving the regime, those that can kill for that and thus need no rational reason to do so. They just need a reason and the regime obliged.
On the other side there is an opposition that still cannot make its mind up even though the mayoral election of San Cristobal and San Diego showed the way: stern protest until the regime knuckles down. The more repressive it gets, the more it loses support. Even chavistas in these cities for the first time crossed the line directly, without an "abstention" phase first.
Stern protest do not mean rioting aimlessly in safe areas. Stern protests mean making no concession on the regime, means stopping any negotiation farce until the regime proves its good will, means calling a spade a spade, and a dictatorship a dictatorship. Stern protests mean making the regime thoroughly responsible for the mess we are in, and ever expanding one.
After a month in Caracas I came back to San Felipe last Monday. I had to stop several times until I found a small bottled water. There are no munchies besides "Cocosette" or the chemical tasting "Samba". One place had also awful Nestle milk chocolate. Salty snacks limited to
tostones, when available. The last Burger King on the road closed.
Areperas were low on choices to fill up your
arepas. The only soda still abundant seemed to be Pepsi. Even though I dared travel on a Monday, the worse traffic day on roads, I encountered no significant problem. It has been years that I made Caracas San Felipe on a Monday in less than 6 hours. This time it took me 4.5 hours.
Can anyone think that anything I may add to this post will make it more enlightening?
La manera en que Giordani fue botado nos pone a pensar. Y pensándolo bien uno entiende que más allá de cualquier diferencia ideológica o de cualquier ilusión de cambio económico, lo que se esta gestando dentro del chavismo es "La Salida", pero de algunos de ellos, a disfrutar de lo que se han robado. Si algo ha sido confirmado estos días, aunque sea parcialmente, es lo que escribe Rafael Poleo desde hace ya bastante tiempo. Según Poleo un grupo dentro del chavismo ha decidido ir a la posición pragmática de negociar una salida. En este caso lo "pragmático" no significa un cambio de modelo, no significa mas democracia. No. Significa hacer los cambios necesarios para que los altos jerarcas puedan salir del poder de una manera "soft", y entregar el coroto a unos sucesores que cargarán con casi toda seguridad con las culpas. El cambio de Maduro de comunista barato a neo liberal de pacotilla solo puede explicarse con la decisión de Cuba de entregar Venezuela a intereses transnacionales a cambio de que él, y los Castro y unos cuantos más salgan ilesos, con una porción suficiente del botín acumulado para un retiro cómodo.
