Why Venezuela cannot be fixed

 I was planning this second post long ago, following my crude description of why Venezuela remains messed up in spite of all the regime propaganda. But on occasion procrastination pays and I can start with recent items telling us what type of wondercrap Venezuela is.

First the new economic zones (ZEE). This is the latest at attracting foreign investors offering them all sorts of fiscal favors, and other favors that better remain nameless for the time being, but surely one would be by exempting those investors with having to follow labor laws. The delirium goes as far as including in these zones the Tortuga Island that will be transformed in an international tourists pole with airport and all.  I happen to know La Tortuga. It is small, barren, waterless, no natural harbour worthy mentioning, etc, etc. Yes, it is beautifully wild with scuba diving offerings. But if you imagine Tortuga with ten resorts and golf courses, well, there go the corals. Nothing will remain, the island is too fragile for even a single resort. The idea behind that cockamamie plan is for laundering money away from scrutiny, creating at best a secluded retreat so that regime higher ups can go partying among themselves.

The other item was to give Iran gazillions acres of land so they can produce food to bring home. That the country side is devastated, that the Venezuelan agricultural worker has lost long ago its punch and skill, that we lack food enough that giving land to Iran, that is just crazy. Again, there is something else at play there. There is ALWAYS something else at play when chavismo announces big undoable plans. A secret base for Iran comes to mind.

And of course, we are now in November and no one is speaking about this anymore. 

From this items you get already the gist of this blog entry: there are no conditions in Venezuela today to discuss any rebuilding plan.  Assuming of course that within the regime here are people able to draw a realistic reconstruction plan. This is a short list of the main obstacles you will face to develop almost anything productive in Venezuela.

1. The general infrastructure is obsolete and in severe disrepair. Be it roads or electrical distribution, it does not work and the regime seems unable to fix it except in some points of utmost necessity for them, not for the populace. To build and run something is a major effort requiring that you bring in your own electricity generating system, for example.
2. The sanitary situation is simply nasty for foreigners. From run down and resource poor hospitals to the increasing scarcity of decent tap water, life is difficult. Very difficult.
3. The legal system is a joke. If you invest you never know when some government agency will knock at your door trying to see what they can extort from you. Or you can yourself get a single protector to whom you'll pay a regular stipend. The law is not your friend, it is your foe.
4. Which brings us to the security of the people working for you. As bad as ever. Your top management will need armored cars and perhaps even body guards.
5. So you say lets work with locals, they are used to it. What locals? 6 millions and counting have fled the country, including a cohort of skilled professionals.  You are going to have trouble hiring competent mid management.  As for lower ranks in your business hires, do not be too optimist. 20 years of chavismo have created a despondent worker, that thinks only about rights and that the bosses are tyrants. Then again enough are starving and desperate that you may manage to have them do all sorts of nasty jobs. Note: I am not saying that Venezuelan workers are bad, just saying that building a decent team is not going to be easy.
6. And of course considerations such as the environment, protection from messy neighbors and the like you can dream on.

I'll stop there, enough said for to make my point: Venezuela cannot be fixed as long as chavismo remains in office. There is no means, no skill, no will for that. The country is drifting from an improvisation to another with the sole objective to control population and allow the caste of "revolutionaries" to live the high life in Caracas since too many of them would be arrested were they to leave the country.  Oh yes, there are a thing or two you can do with that caste, a.k.a. boliburgueses, but you better be sure that you will have a very high return on your investment and no moral compass least you get taken for a ride and pockets emptied.

Venezuela se arreglo. Not.

 "Venezuela se arreglo", Venezuela is fixed up.

This is what the regime would like us to believe, but not they alone. There are also a few people that are tired to be opposition. There are also a few more in the US that are desperate to recover their lost funds. And some in the Biden administration that would love to have Venezuela supply what we do not want anymore from Russia.

Pipe dreams all.  Nothing will improve significantly as long as those in place remain at Miraflores palace. I am not going to repeat my tired tirade on what we have there are not politicians but a narco mafia set. With criminals there is no negotiation possible unless you show at the same time determination to exert force AND offer a safe haven to some of the gang if they surrender power.

So, why is there an erroneous perception that Venezuela is improving? 

The first impression comes from the country dollarized economy. This process is unfortunately on shaky grounds. First, the financial players remaining in Venezuela are in no position to secure a durable dollarization since there is no way to guarantee that $$ banknotes are legit, there are no coins, and too many transactions are opaque and mere money laundering. But the problem goes deeper: not only the regime has allowed dollarization without any agreement with the US, but the legal sort of framework upon which it is built can be pulled off easily, with the risk that all dollars in banking accounts could be blocked from one day to the next. In such a situation people are not going to invest long term. Period.

A second misleading perception is that Caracas, and a few rare spots outside of Caracas, have now bodegones, that is stores that import whatever they want with few if any custom taxes. Their preferred currency is of course the green back. Bodegones are just a gigantic laundering operation where illicit funds are used to buy cash stuff to resell in Venezuela creating thus a legal receipt. All this is made possible with the desperate situation of people that have some income or savings in dollars. In particular those who have relatives that fled the country and are now able to send a little bit of currency to their relatives left behind. Beyond the regime cynicism of washing its loot out of people it ruined, the casual observer will be mislead that shortages are over in Venezuela. They are over only for those who can dispose of at least 400 $ a month. And a rising amount at that.

A third misleading perception is that some services have improved and that restaurants in Eastern Caracas are full. The essential services, water, electricity, telephone, internet, garbage have not improved. But for those with dollars it is easier now to hire plumbers, electricians, private internet or even dig a well if they are on some sedimentary land with water under. As for the restaurants, keep in mind that international sanctions have induced a lot of those who became rich on looting the state to now be forced to stay in Venezuela. Of course, they are not going to suffer and will pay what it takes to enjoy their riches.

A fourth mirage is that suddenly we see positive GDP growth rates, relatively big even. But look, when you are in the gutter, managing to sit in that gutter looks good even if you are still soaked in garbage. As long as you do not have the strength to start climbing out, well, your head may be drying but you are still in the gutter. The Venezuelan economy is so downtrodden that to reach pre Chavez level will require many years of double digit growth rate.

I could go on but you get the picture. If you do not get it, in particular if you are a journo or a tankie visiting for a few days, I suggest you leave the comforts of Eastern Caracas and go spend a week end in a town less than 25,000 people and see the reality of Venezuelans descended to poverty level everywhere.

All that recovery is potemkinesque and too many people that should know better are falling for it, or are using it to get personal benefit. But recovery is NOT happening because the key element is missing: there is no significant production growth. Why not? Because nobody trusts the regime, a true scorpion on the back of the toad crossing the river: everybody knows that sooner or later the regime will strike back and like the scorpion it will sting the toad even if it means that killing the toad will drown the scorpion. Any legal tolerance can be easily reversed as there is no more institutions or justice left. 

So, who is going to invest in Venezuela? Nobody serious, not even in the oil industry since it is run down and it would take a few years until it can produce enough to replace some of the Russian deficit. People that "invest" in Venezuela are either those that gamble on short term high yield ventures, or those who need to bring their money back to Venezuela before some tribunal seizes it. But these last ones are not investing in productive ventures, not yet. They are much more into laundering facilities such as bodegones of building brand new office buildings that remain empty but that they resell among themselves to get clean billing. These people are not used to work hard the way a normal entrepreneur works so investing in manufacturing or agricultural objectives is not what they want.

It is thus crystal clear, I hope, that there is no real recovery in Venezuela. As long as production of real goods does not start, it will not happen.

Carvativir as the symbol of Covid Maduro's failure

It is now common knowledge that Venezuela's dealings with Covid19 have been a failure. The best that can be said is that the regime has bet secretly on herd immunity because, well, there is nothing else the regime can do.

And yet in the midst of this abject failure to preserve the health of Venezuelans, the regime manages to outdo itself in its abjectness. Now Maduro on TV has revealed himself a snake oil promoter. Rarely I have been as angry at the regime than after seeing the clip below.

Well, against his incapacity to deal with COVID and much less to vaccinate the country @NicolasMaduro has decided to sell snake oil. With "carvativir" he claims that 10 drops under your tongue every 4 hours will kill 100% of the coronavirus.
Let's delve: https://t.co/0CpLkxz0Eb pic.twitter.com/Rms6HYcN8v

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) January 25, 2021

What is behind all of that charade?

Misinformation galore wars: separating the wheat from the chaff

It has been raining political analysis, misplaced opinions, and whatnot, specially from the foreign press, leftists and what not who just learned how to place Venezuela on a map (if that much).

Let's take it in an occamish manner and answer a few questions (keeping in mind idiocies spewed from the left, the leftist press as the worst offender to one's intelligence!)).

Who is Juan Guaido?

May betrayals

This week there are only two news worthy commenting on Venezuela. The campaign itself is not worth a comment, though the first bit is more than campaign related.

Don't be fooled: Henri Falcon is the No. 1 traitor to the cause of democracy in Venezuela. See this: https://t.co/j7PdJ063ij @miamiherald pic.twitter.com/vkoo6YbzNQ

— Andres Oppenheimer (@oppenheimera) May 4, 2018

Andres Oppenheimer is a long established and respect journalist/Op-Ed writer at the Miami Herald. When he speaks about Latin America his batting average is, well, let's say 90%.  I am not measuring details here, but the general flow of politics in Latin America. One of his rare misses is chavismo in its earlier days. He was not fooled but he was among those who expected that the usages of power and administration would tame Chavez enough to avoid an utter mess and eventually have him leave power by reasonable means. He has made more than amends since that, become one of the first true coherent critics of Chavez. But today, at least on Venezuela, he hit a home run. Do read that piece which is going to explain better what is going in Venezuela right now than, well, at least 90% of the other ones you may come across. 

Open letter to Marco Rubio

Dear Senator Rubio

I was directed to a string of tweets you posted earlier on today. They are below next.

Those little genocidal moments

About every 6 weeks or so I need to take the S.O. to pick up his treatments at the IVSS high cost medicine.  By law in Venezuela a whole series of medications, usually expensive, cannot be sold and must be administered by the state (from rulings BEFORE the Chavez era, mind you, least you'd think that Chavez invented each and every social programs; 1).

This notable initiative has, of course, turned into a bureaucratic nightmare which with the current crisis has tuned out to become a nightmare of genocidal proportions. Today's story.

Valencia

Lots of things going on. One, a couple of weeks ago was a trip to Valencia.

Negotiation, not dialogue (or negation)

This past week has been eventful. It started with a new attempt at dialogue that nobody but the regime wants, to the strong words against Venezuela dictatorship from Trump, Macron, Santos, Michetti, and more, taking place at the UN general assembly.

That diner table was certainly better supplied than those of Caracas.

Arming the unarmed, and unarmable

This weekend the dictatorship decided to perform "military exercises" to scare the US away from an intervention.  Not that it matters since the US will not waste a drop of Marine blood on a Venezuelan beach, but let's not go there now. The point here is that if Marines do not kill folks while landing at Patanemo, ridicule may finally be able to kill people.....

Certainly these week end activities are a circus show, this one segment even includes a midget at the end of the video.  Why, oh, why?

Luisa Ortega lavish life style

One dichotomy when you analyze the current regime of Venezuela is to decide if it is communist or fascist. In the grand scheme of things it does not matter much since they are both totalitarian in nature and end point. But the road chosen does have different collateral damage. I, for one, think that its narco-criminal nature makes it more of a fascist system that uses a populist/commie rhetoric to justify its means. But in the end, it is a smallish group of fascists strictly holding to their privileges.

Today we are going to comment the search at Luisa Ortega home. Please, let us know whether the lynching method is fascist, or communist.

Régimen hace un esfuerzo frenético x desacreditar a Luisa Ortega, ahora mostrando sus lujos, Y si visitamos a Diosdado o a Pedro Carreño? pic.twitter.com/3Nl2Om7Fje

— Johnattan Bilancieri (@Bilancieri) August 23, 2017

El Senador Marco Rubio le lee la cartilla a Maduro

Hace tiempo que no escribo en cristiano pero la declaración del Senador de Florida, Marco Rubio, merece toda la difusión que sea posible.



Veamos lo que dice Rubio, desmontando todos los mitos del chavismo. El chavismo tiene que empezar a entender que lo que dice Rubio NO ES un antojo, es el reflejo de una política, cada dia mas mundial, para cercenar la existencia de un estado forajido, un narco estado que envenenará a todo si se le deja hacer.

On to week 2 of dictatorship: getting rid of nuisances

Today was calm compared to yesterday but equally important.

The news of course is the annulation of political rights for Capriles. When his term as governor of Miranda ends, then for 15 years he will not be able to run for any office, not even for dog catcher. Inasmuch as this is the flashy headline, that Capriles is barred from future office is not quite the main news of the day: this one we will have to piece it together.

Day 5 of dictatorship: the regime says we are a democracy again. We are laughing.

So what has happened after the high court flip-flop of the wee hours of last Friday?

In praise of the two MUD solution: 2- Solutions? Really?

Let's see.

What a difference a "revolution"
makes! Maikel from truant to boss.

The president of Venezuela, his excellency Nicolas Maduro Moros, has two of his nephews in jail in the US of A because they were found guilty of drug trafficking. This after a trial where the defense lawyers used were the best money can buy.

The vice president of Venezuela, albeit a by-appointment office but second in charge nevertheless, his worthiness Tareck El Aissami, was put a few weeks ago on the OFAC list by the Treasury Department of the US of A for drug trafficking, capital laundering, terrorism abetting through fake passports or what not. I cannot keep up.

The newly sworn head of the TSJ, the high cum supreme court of Venezuela, Maikel Moreno has a police mug shot from previous criminal offenses for which he was declared guilty. I mean, one may believe in second chances but there are limits.

So, what can a democratic opposition do when it has in front of it a publicly recognized criminal state? A state that has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing the faintest parcel of the power it accumulated? A state that does not blanch at the sight of the extensive misery it has created? A state which now wallows in gratuitous cruelty, by the way.

Tarecking CNN

This week has been a spinning nausea and we are only Wednesday evening. As of today we have a vice president accused of drug trafficking and fake passport emission, resulting not in an investigation but in closing CNN Spanish version.

Let me start with the obvious: when the Department of the Treasury of the United States indicates that your vice president is under investigation for MANY acts of drug trafficking there are only two options left for the president (of Venezuela or any other country). For Option one you fire, or at the very least suspend, your vice-president/prime-minister while investigations are undertaken. In Option two you break relations with the US, close the embassy of the US, call back all your staff in the US because obviously the US are liars and you cannot tolerate such a slandering of your principal politician.

Neither one took place. Instead the messenger was shot and the Spanish version of CNN was forced out of its cable broadcasts in Venezuela.

Becoming a failed state (2): the people

Excruciating cattle line for a white plastic rectangle

Last week end the regime was organization a census of sorts for people to sign up for “carnet de la patria”. The operation was on many Bolivar Squares of cities and villages, which are 90% of the time in areas of lower income status. That is, on Eastern Caracas, to give you an example, one would not see those lines. The objective is to codify under a single object all the now defunct social Misiones of Chavez. Defunct because there is no money and/or, they failed. But did the people signing up for the latest avatar knew what they were signing up for?


I was listening to an interview made to several people in the lines. One thought that it was some kind of census and people were required to sign up regardless. Another one did not know either but had heard that it would bring some material advantages “beneficios” so he had to sign up just in case. There was the one that wondered whether it was a new social program. Not forgetting the naïve one stating that the new card would stop abuse and corruption. Etc… Nobody knew exactly what the thing was about. All had an interpretation according to their need or wishes. And there had to be of course the chavista to the bone that said that this was the very last line that el pueblo had to stand in for, that thanks to the revolution and Maduro this was the final solution to all our woes. Or something of the kind, I am trying very hard to forget that after 17 there are still people like that.

Deliberate chaos: the first post modern cashless society. Not!

There are so many things that need to be discussed but my lifestyle, so to speak, forbids me to find the time for the blog. Yet tonight I must write to describe what is probably the most unjust, craziest, measure the regime has taken to date. And they did take a lot of those in the past.  But this one will hurt so many poor people that the mind reels at the idea on how a regime intentionally for the people has become now a regime against the people.

Today's bomb shell is the demonetization of the 100 tender in Venezuela.  Why, oh why?

The splendors of well aged chavismo

Thus we are in the middle of a social, economic and, thus, political crisis of major proportions. The regime assuredly thinks about what to do to counter an opposition that has been setting up the agenda for quite a while now. After a massive brain storm they come up with a minimum wage increase of 40% . I think, I cannot even be bothered to check whether it is 40 or X: it makes no difference.

Thy electoral CNE shoe droppeth

There will be a lot of brouhaha in the next days about the ignominious decision of the CNE to do its utmost to violate the constitution in order to block the Recall Election against Maduro. Let me try to make it clear for readers still hanging around here.

1) The motivation in any case is to annul the Recall Election, or in the very worst case push it to 2017 which means that the regime remains in office until January 2019 at the very least.