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| Closed border, people in check. Why? |
I suppose some would make a case for April 2002 as "the grand moment". But it was not, a mere failed coup and a failed Restoration which yielded a shit faced Chavez that decided to surrender to the Castros in Cuba to get what he really wanted: life presidency. It worked, he died in office.
That first farcical but how damaging moment of April 2002 got a pricey oil enhanced stint which led to the 2007 referendum failure. For me it was the end, no revolution can survive when its idealistic and creative base deserts it, or rather turns against it as Venezuelan campus were never fervent Chavez supporters, even in his first couple of years.
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| Student and his bookcase? |
From 2007 on it was all predictable: the pseudo revolution morphed into an autocratic regime that added insult to injury by becoming a narco state and henceforth the most corrupt and violent country in the Americas. By far.
I thought that we had seen it all, that we had accepted the fact that under Maduro we entered the outright dictatorship phase of the regime. A cross between Peron, sans Evita, with the Burma never ending military thuggery. Heck, with Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado we are even getting a bi-cephalic version of Aung San Suu Kyi.
But no, we had to go into such infamy as creating a refugee crisis worse than the one in Europe right now, worse because even if much smaller it is absolutely unjustified, absolutely unnecessary, invented in full by dark conspiracies and likely drug war cartels fighting for turf control. These dark forces have had no qualm to use a state conflict to solve their own internal problems, harking back to imperial models of having the natives fight it ought for the honor of being directly under the toe of the colonial master. Chavismo there cannot even match the epic of Tlaxcala or the complexity of Plassey.
That is not all. There are no people drowning in the Mediterranean but poor Colombians wading in a shallow river with the lone bag they were allowed to carry. No real fences like in Hungary but a mere cattle guard here and there.
Even in infamy chavismo is so tacky, so venial, so corrupt that it cannot create a moment of epic or even true outrage. The word is taking its time in condemning the regime abuses on the Colombians it unjustly expels because they are mesmerized by the fact the regime is seriously wanting them to believe that these scared house wives wading dirty water are the cause of all of Venezuela trouble.
But one thing is not missing, fascism. In addition of all sort of promoted tweet support the regime has even produced Colombians supporting the abuse. A tropical Nazi paradise cannot be that far away.
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| Refugee camp and a meager army to push them away, not even allowing them to go the next bridge... |
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| Apartheid worse, R on houses that have been "revised" searched. Some have a D for scheduled demolition. |
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First video Maduro says horrors about Colombians and states that Colombians come to Venezuelan Bolivarian Paradise just like from Africa migrants go to Europe. Pathetic, the more so he is from Cucuta so we have there his subconscious betraying him in not wanting to be Colombian, like some kid in Austria, you know.
In this one the goebbelian frau Rodriguez says that all is an invention, that nothing is going on at the border, that the scenes are invented. Both videos promptly posted by the people of Maria Corina Machado apparently FROM international footage of news. Footage that is of course not shown on Venezuelan TV.
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Historical comment.
Do not think the American Revolution escapes that rule. If with the Election of Washington as it first president it could be considered a success it remained that it was not completed and had its last bloody pang in the Civil War, the only way it found to make the new institutions fully credible.
Just for fairness to all revolutions.
Ten years of French revolution, and then 16 years of Napoleon. Lenin in 1917 and then 72 years to Boris Yeltsin. Batista overthrown in 1959, and then 56 years of the Castros (and counting). Chavez in 1999, only 16 years ago. What are we complaining about?
DeleteLincoln
"Chavismo is now, like its founder, a corpse. We just need to find an undertaker."
ReplyDeleteMadurismo might be dead, somehow, after a couple more fraudulent elections, violently, around 2019. It still has 5 Million direct employee leeches plus surrounding vultures, thus 20% approval, even today.
Chavismo is far from dead. After the massive 1.5 Million Brain-Drain, the majority of incredibly ignorant, corrupt, uneducated, spoiled Venezuelans stil Love Chavez.
Over 60% still favor Chavismo and dislike the opposition. They still remember all the Freebies, and fake vivienda promises, fake jobs, multiple guisos everywhere during the last oil boom. Love Chavez and the stupid ideology, utterly Brain-Washed.
This massive Brain-Wash and Brain-Drain (none of us few educated professionals will retutn, none) as if on a giant Lavadora, leaves you with a pathetic, lamentable and still highly incendiary and polarized population.
Chavismo, by all accounts, is far from dead. And it will come back in full force to suffocate any MUDcrap government that follows the current Regime. Whatver that corrupt Chavista-Light Mudcrap will be, it will be in deep, deep shit, for a couple decades, having to deal with the enormous disaster at all all levels, all fabrics of a putrid society.
The pestilent Chavista corpse is far from incinerated, its putrid stench can be felt when talking to the ignorant and corrupt "pueblo" or "mud" everywhere. And that smell or the Cubazuelan disaster wont go away in many decades to come.
Sledge, yes and no.
ReplyDeleteThe gestalt of the new man created by chavismo is very much as you describe, but in essence not very different from the clientele hordes of adecopey before it.
The challenge for any new establishment will be to manage the incumbent rejection and resistance to change, to work, to produce, to be meritocratic, and show results that socialist and clientele societies are not the best choice.
If it manages to do both things well enough, it also need a strong communications drive to educate people of the new morals and values.
Not an easy task for sure and one that will take a couple of decades at least. before it can be stable.
LuisF
And so it all came up to that. A revolution that claimed to unite a whole continent for the liberation of all of its people against real or imaginary empires ends up in a whimper, ostracizing, jewing up a population that cannot be distinguished at all from the one across the border or from the one they have been living among since there is historical memory.
ReplyDeleteWhaat?
I make up words. I was waiting to see if someone would pick it up and scream. thanks. But the term applies, from expelled in the middle of the night with only what they can carry to have their homes marked, it is reminiscent of the 30ies.....
DeleteDaniel This is one of your best articles. The word "Jewing" is excellent imagery.
DeleteI make up words.
DeleteYou may believe that you are the first person to use "jew" as a verb, but you are not. There is also the term "to jew someone down," which means to drive a hard bargain. I believe the term is today somewhat archaic, as I have never heard it used directly. Three decades ago my New Englander sister heard someone use it in flyover country. I would suspect that Jesse Helms was familiar with the term, and used it on occasion. While I never heard my Southwestern grandmother use the term, I can certainly imagine her using it. Oh yes.
Your invention of "to jew" in the meaning of to scapegoat or persecute someone collided with an older use of "to jew someone down," meaning to drive a hard bargain. While your intended use was not anti-Semitic, it collided with an already established meaning- which was was decidedly anti-Semitic.
You were too clever by half.
Maria Gabriela Chavez, 35, the late president’s second-oldest daughter, holds assets in American and Andorran banks totaling almost $4.2billion, Diario las Americas reports.
ReplyDeleteJohn, dont believe everything you read
DeleteLets hope that at some point in the future it will be repatriated to its rightful owners.
ReplyDeleteI would remind Maduro:
ReplyDelete"El que le pega a su casa se arruina."
Unbelievable how he's doing this to his own countrymen!
RobertoN
I can't help but think the gunning down of criminals in broad daylight is also somehow part of this new stage of the revolution. Anyhow, picking on Colombians makes sense because a dictatorship needs an enemy and these poor Colombians are easy pickings. Just like Mexican immigrants in the United States being easy pickings for Trump. It's horrible, but we've seen this script before.
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to believe the role of Cuba in creating this crisis in order to stop the lost of its doctors through the border with Colombia?
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