Emergency in Venezuela, but where is Chavez?

In El Nacional today Minister Jesse Chacon insures that the emergency state decree for the states of Falcon, Miranda, Aragua, Distrito Capital, Vargas, Yaracuy and Carabobo, will be signed today by President Hugo Chavez, during the ministers’ council meeting.

Chacon gave some numbers with respect to the number of families that have been affected. According to him, there are 995 affected families of which 115 had suffered damages and 57 are located in shelters. He insured that they have “total control of the emergency”.

Meanwhile, the MINCI site has no fresh news. They mentioned the same declarations given by minister Izarra yesterday night, the declarations of minister Chacon and the suspension of classes stated by education minister Isturiz.

El Universal reports that Vargas governor says that river El Cojo in Macuto overflowed. The minister of the environment, Jacqueline Faria underlines that there is not much drinking water for Vargas and that the rate is just 400 liters per second. It is still raining in Vargas and the colonial zone of Macuto is completely flooded.

So, I have been scanning official and private sites and have come up with declarations by several ministers: Izarra, Rangel, Isturiz, Chacon and Faria. But no word from the President!

The only time when a country really needs a caudillo is in times of crisis, and Chavez seems to fail miserably in those times. He is the leader and the strong man when it is time to insult his enemies or make sexist remarks about powerful women. He is not at all Television shy when he occupies the TV waves for 6 hours for Alo Presidente. So where is he now that the country really needs to know what is going on? I assume that he must be in Venezuela because Chacon said that he will be signing today the emergency decree. But even if he was not in Venezuela, I am sure that the President has the means to show the people of Venezuela that he is in charge, hasn’t he?

In 1999 in the aftermath of the Vargas tragedy, Chavez was not in charge, he was in La Orchila celebrating the victory of his Constitutional Referendum. Later, he failed to understand the magnitude of the disaster when he refused the coming aid from the United States. On the referendum day, instead of listening to the civil defense that had asked to stop the process, he called people to go to vote. He even used a famous Bolivar quote:

“Si la Naturaleza se opone, lucharemos contra ella, y haremos que nos obedezca”

“If Nature opposes us, we will fight against her and will make her obey”.

Maybe the Chavez ministers have learned the lesson and have hidden the president, just in case he now uses one of those quotes…

P.S1. Update from Miguel: it seems that the rain has lowered its intensity in particular in Caracas. It looks like the worse scenario is in Vargas, the rivers have overflowed and there is no way thru. Miguel's brother was able to get home but not his mom. They are scared and have no water or electricity.

PS2. From Unionradio (thanks for the pointer R). Minister Izarra asked the people vacationing in Vargas to be extremely careful (!!). Izarra (that at least is there informing people) said that this afternoon will take place the ministers' council (this afternoon!?!) to approve the financial resources. He asked the people living in Vargas to be patient and to wait for the Civil protection and the Armed Forces in case an evacuation scenario is necessary. My question is why wait? Is there anything different from 1999 when tens of thousands of people could have been saved if the goverment had evacuated them sooner? It is raining a lot like in 99, the mountain is still up there and it is still full of slums. Does the goverment has an evacuation contingency? Let us cross our fingers and hope they do.

Meanwhile, there are no news from Chavez, ...yet.

PS3. Check out the MINCI web page. They have changed the date on yesterday's news so that it looks that those are fresh news.

News item: State of Emergency in Venezuela due to Heavy Rains.

El Universal reports that because of the heavy rains the State of emergency may be declared in seven entities, one of them is Yaracuy, where Daniel lives. The vice president Jose Vicente Rangel also said that the rain is moving towards the east of the country, so that they are taken the necessary measures. In Vargas the government has already declared the state of emergency. Vcrisis is also reporting some details on the areas in Caracas that have been affected.

The Information Minister, Izarra, reported that there are 3 000 people affected and 3 death so far, but made sure that all the organizations of protection and security will be deployed.

To the delight of millions of children, the education Minister declared that classes have been suspended.

My family just called me from Venezuela. It seems that flights have been cancelled and that the thousands of people that were coming back from the Carnival vacation holiday have been asked to stay where they are.

The MINCI guys seem to have taken their role seriously and have kept people informed and made recommendations to the civil population.

Meanwhile, I have seen no news on Chavez. He has the bad habit of disappearing in times of crisis. When the 1999 Vargas tragedy took place, he disappeared for two days.

At that time, the government did not declare the state of emergency right away.This time is different: either they have learned their lesson, or it is just good luck that there is no election or Constitutional Referendum to win today.

PS. No news from Daniel but Miguel made the following report in his comment session:

I am OK, tried to make a post, maybe PC at home is off. Here is the post: The news in Caracas is being dominated by the heavy rains that have been falling in the last forty eight hours. In the last day Caracas registered 3.33 inches of rain, a historical record for the city for any twenty four hour period. Three people have died in Caracas, while thousands of vacationers that went to the beach near Caracas for the long Carnival weekend are stranded. There are a number of problems there. First, the highways were already in bad shape as they have never recovered from the tragedy in 2000 when mores than 40,000 people were estimated to have died when many days of rain made rocks and mud come down from the mountains and destroyed buildings and roads. This time, it is more flash flooding from heavy rains than the softening of the mountains near by, although one can not rule out a repeat if the rains continue. A second problem is the traffic from vacationers who did not realize what was happening. Some people (my brother) are trapped between two overflowed rivers. Others have been hours in traffic coming up from sea level to Caracas which is 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) above sea level. The highway is reportedly full of dirt, little rocks and mud which makes progress very slow. There are a few landslides along its length (about ten miles from the airport to Caracas) In Caracas, the Guaire river which cuts right through it lengthwise has overflowed in various parts. The subway system is not working and classes have been suspended for tomorrow. I am not in Caracas and had planned to return tomorrow but I guess I will have to wait and see, play it by ear. As I said my brother is trapped in the coastal region in his car with his family between two rivers and my mother and another sister are further beyond but they are in a high building just waiting it out.

Miguel Octavio • 2/8/05; 4:27:05 PM #

I am back, with a travelogue from a US trip

Well, I am sort of back.

The deficiencies of the Venezuelan structures were waiting for me, and arriving home on Saturday I had some problem with my communication system. This being the Carnaval holiday there is little I can do but to resort to cyber cafes to get on line. Hopefully Wednesday I will at least be able to use my work station until they fix my home problem.

However, for once I come back not as impressed by the US: there service keeps its steady decline. For example, it is becoming more and more difficult for a foreigner to travel inside the US, and I am not talking about the security check ups! Never was I asked as many questions in a nastier way at immigration!!! In spite of a passport loaded with in and outs of the USA for the last two decades! But I digress.

What I was alluding to is that the proliferation of cel phones has had the side effect to increase the number of public phones out of order, concurrent to a decrease of calling cards selling points. Arriving at a given airport if you must make a call you might have to cart your luggage from one floor to another in search of that calling card because the one you bought two days earlier is not recognized by the company holding the phones at your new destination. I probably shall have to rent a cel phone next time, even if expensive: the savings in anger management will justify it.

Another item becoming more difficult are taxis. They are prohibitively expensive for those coming from a country on the fast track to pauperization. I suppose that the folks from the regime who have no restriction to dollar access probably do not care, but for those of us who must travel at least three times a year for business and who count for that of a total of 4000 USD, airport taxis are a real problem. Now, some could retort that there are limousines and other type of semi collective transport. Well, when you carry a suitcase and a bag and a cabin luggage, public transportation is pretty much off limit. The shared taxis are a pain because they only will be going so far and you will still need to get a cab for your very final destination. And they wait for up to half an hour to try to get one or two more passengers. Not much time you might said but late on a winter evening after a long trip, well, these 30 extra minutes are a pain in the neck.

But by good fortune I had a very nice African America Lady to share the cab with. And since our ride took almost half an hour I did manage to describe to her the most unkind aggression of El Supremo to the new Secretary of State. Interestingly and to my very great satisfaction, both the passenger and the cab driver, also an Africa American, were both outraged, though both liberals and non Bush voters. I must say that this experience made me forget the lousy public phones and the exorbitant cab fares: it was all worth it to see that Chavez really hurt his cause with his racism, macho stance, not to mention reverse bigotry.

The work experience was also rewarding. All Latin business folks I met were consternated and almost willing to tap my shoulder in sympathy. Colombians were particularly nice though we played the "game" of welcoming each other as if we were hiding, least pro Chavez informers might report me from talking with the enemy. What was worrisome in that game was the easiness in which Colombians entered it, showing that they know what is really going on in Venezuela, and that they are sorry for us as they see us entering unnecessarily in the same violence spiral that they have endured for now 40 years themselves. At least the Brazilians this time were much more relaxed from the last two years, having accepted Lula reformism and starting investing again. Argentineans seemed also more upbeat but still few are traveling compared to previous years.

So now I am back and trying to think about ways I can keep all these foreign obligations with my partners, exhausted to have to explain once again that we are under a useless currency exchange control system, etc, etc... Not to mention having to fend off all the questions that come naturally to people who see land invasion and other forms of economic violence. Certainly, they might still be willing to do business in Venezuela with survivors like my business, but forget about asking them for joint investment schemes....

And I do not even want to think about what I will have to explain next year about the "creative" initiatives of El Supremo....

I suppose that instead of worrying about these things I should finish my holiday resting from the trip and preparing also myself to regain control over my blog, so nicely maintained by two great ghost writers. But that recovery will come late this week, courtesy of the own inefficiencies of our Venezuelan utilities, getting worse every year. Maybe it is the only form of globalization that Chavez allows? Lousy utility companies?

US News and World Report got the electoral fraud in Venezuela

Pressed for time, I will just post the recent article on Venezuela. I can only say that the detailed exploration of the electoral pseudo-verification that the Carter center made (to their everlasting shame it seems more and more). No matter what one might think of USNews and World, it shows that consciousness is rising fast in the US that Venezuela has indeed become a authoritarian regime (until stronger words are applied, any time soon is my guess).

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Editorial
By Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Cracking down on Caracas

While we have our eyes on the Middle East and the recent good news out of there, a danger to democracy is brewing right here in our backyard. Venezuela, long one of Latin America's strongest democracies, is now under siege by its president, Hugo Chavez. Thanks to an ill-judged intervention by former President Jimmy Carter, Chavez narrowly survived a recall election and has now accelerated his subversion of Venezuela's democracy by a scummy deal with Fidel Castro.

According to Miami's El Nuevo Herald, Chavez has granted Cuban judicial and security forces extensive police powers within Venezuela. Cubans are already running the intelligence services and indoctrinating and training the military. They will effectively bypass what is left of Venezuela's judicial system when they exercise new powers to investigate, seize, detain, and interrogate Venezuelans and Cubans living in Venezuela, with the right to extradite them to Cuba and try them there. This threatens the safety of some 30,000 Cubans in Venezuela.

All this is a culmination of Chavez's frontal attack on civil society, reducing state institutions to mere shadows with only ceremonial powers. Just for starters, Chavez has rewritten Venezuela's Constitution to enhance his powers, purged critics in the military, set up legislation to pack the Supreme Court, intimidated the media by threatening the expropriation of the licenses of private television stations that supported the opposition, and given succor to thousands of Castro's military and intelligence officers, along with many social and medical workers, while tens of thousands of young Venezuelans have been sent to Cuba for indoctrination.

Spots and pans. havez, in turn, provides Castro with 80,000 barrels a day of essential oil. Venezuela's rich flow of oil revenues has enabled Chavez to buy the support of sectors of Venezuelan society and assert himself as the leader of what he calls a "jihad" against American imperialism. Chavez's sense of moral justice is manifest in his alliance with the worst criminal organizations in Latin America, especially the narcoterrorists in Colombia. Just recently, he denounced Colombian authorities because they arrested a senior member of the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who had been given sanctuary in Venezuela.

To get a sense of the degree to which Chavez is intimidating his opponents and harassing dissidents, just read the language of a new criminal law that he pushed through the legislature: "Any individual who creates panic in the community or makes it restless by disseminating false information via print media, radio, TV, phone, electronic mail, or pamphlets will be punished with two to five years in prison." Even the most popular form of political protest, banging pots and pans, done in the presence of members of his government, now carries with it up to a three-month jail sentence.

A distinguished international coalition, including former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Sen. John McCain, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, wrote to Chavez expressing concern that his actions are "a grave threat to democracy."

Alas, our own President Carter compromised the hopes of Venezuelans in the recall election by prematurely endorsing the vote that Chavez did not earn or deserve. Carter's people counted fewer than 1 percent of the polling stations, which, instead of being selected at random, as originally anticipated, were selected by Venezuelan officials. Even then, only 76 of the previously agreed 192 ballot boxes were counted, with either opposition witnesses or international observers present at only 26 out of the 76 boxes reviewed. The Chavez-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) forbade access to the tallying centers, not only to Carter's people but to the representatives of the opposition, and even to the two members of the CNE who opposed Chavez. Two professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that there was at least a 99 percent chance the election was a fraud. The audited sample (Carter's) was simply not a random sample, the professors concluded. Various independent exit polls showed that Chavez had lost the vote by 59 percent to 41 percent, instead of Chavez's contention that he had won by that margin.

Jimmy Carter, in effect, provided a seal of approval for a left-wing demagogue intent on destroying democracy in Venezuela even as he seeks to extend his ideology to other parts of Latin America. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was correct when she pointed out that Chavez is a danger not just to Venezuela but to much of Latin America. Very soon, we must translate those wise words into an effective policy.

Former president Carlos Andres Perez answers to Chavez

In response to the infamous official celebrations for the failed Coup Attempt of February 4, 1992, former president Carlos Andres Perez wrote yesterday the following letter.

Carlos Andres Perez answers to Hugo Chavez

Chavez should be ashamed of using the Military Museum of La Planicie where he cowardly hid on February 4, 1992. From there, the only thing he did was to give instructions to assassinate my family that was at the time in the Presidential residence, La Casona, of which he almost succeeded.

To celebrate as a day of joy and dignity the murder of Venezuelans by other Venezuelans provides the exact measure of the respect that the Chavista regime has for Venezuelan lives.

That Chavez and his comrades declare that “the blood spilled on February 4, 1992 was worth it” was a vile declaration. The spilled blood was Venezuelan blood of men that were serving in our Armed Forces. Chavez was the big responsible of the blood criminally spilled, precisely by his armed companions. To the family of the victims I reiterate my deepest condolences.

The propaganda and the erosion will never hide the misery and profound inequality in which Venezuela is currently sunk.

Miami, February 4, 2005.

Minister Izarra writes to CNN

Scanning the official sites, I came up with this interesting news that refer to a letter that Minister Andres Izarra addressed to CNN.

Minister Andres Izarra asks CNN not to disappoint his ethic contract with the audience.

Andres Izarra, minister of information of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in a letter addressed to Chris Commett, news director of the Chain of News for CNN en Español, underlines the clear disequilibrium in the coverage of Venezuelan news. He makes specifically reference to the case of Rodrigo Granda and other themes such as the Latin America integration or the expropriation of VENEPAL. He then points out that: “that bias is applicable to other Venezuelan themes, precisely those in which the audience needs objective criteria such as those in which the law defends children television rights or that of the land normalization.”

I was first wondering about the type of report Izarra would like to be portrayed in CNN…”the defense of children TV rights”? When we were kids, we thought that we had the right to watch TV whenever we liked it, no matter what my parents said. Is that what he is talking about? That Venezuelan kids should be able to watch TV whenever they want? If so, this is definitely the government for kids, first they change the way to calculate the mean so that everybody is above the mean (see Chavez’s Mathematics) and next they take the time to write to CNN in defense of the right of the kids to watch TV as they wish.. Hmm, I guess Izarra must not be referring to that, but rather to the “Muzzle Law”, don’t you think? So perfect! I more than agree with Minister Izarra, let us all ask CNN to do a thorough piece on the Muzzle Law so that the entire world can know about it.

His second comment refers to the land “normalization”. What exactly is “land normalization”? I was quite puzzled with the meaning of the term “normalization”, but then Chavistas always invent a new terminology and, by the way, they are actually quite good at that, so this must be one of those times. First I thought that Minister Izarra could be referring to the process of finding out the mean of a normal distribution. I know that they are quite good in finding a mean that is always lower than any of the sample values, but I truly cannot understand how they can make that fit a normal distribution. So I guess that he must be referring to something else, like the act of seizing the lands regardless of the law that they themselves passed. Once again, I could not agree more with Minister Izarra. It would be great if CNN could do a piece on the application of the land law, on the Mathematics behind it and also on the seizure of Hato El Piñero.

At the end of the letter, Minister Izarra writes:

It is easy to understand that CNN favors the interests of the American Government but not to the point to disappoint his ethic contract with its principal client, its audience. We ask again that CNN balances more its Venezuela coverage; we ask that they revise the ethical and political positions of its contractors in this country and the quality of the work that is carried out by its writing heads.

I have mixed feelings about this last paragraph. First I think that Izarra is right again. CNN should definitely listen to its audience. Unfortunately, the last sentence is written in such a cryptic way that it was difficult for me to seize its meaning. It may be just because of the convoluted Chavista writing style or else, because it contains a subtle veil of warning for CNN.

In any case, I do agree that CNN should pay attention to its audience. So let us all write to Chris Commett and tell him that we do indeed support the idea that CNN does a piece on the Muzzle law and another one on the land seizures.

After all, we are the audience, aren’t we?

News Item: Venezuelan engineer heads major NASA laboratory

Miami, Feb 4 (EFE).- Carlos Tomas Mata is a Venezuelan engineer who came to Florida 10 years ago to study English and is now a NASA lab chief and contemplating another step toward realizing a dream he has had since childhood: becoming an astronaut.

Now chief of the Advanced Data Acquisition System at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Mata did not realize the importance of the job he was doing until two months into working at the center.

"I graduated on a Saturday and took a plane on Sunday to start work on Monday. It was only later that I realized that I was part of no less that the U.S. space program," Mata said in an interview with EFE.

The year was 2000, and Mata was finishing up his Ph.D. on potentials, electromagnetics and atmospheric scales at the University of Florida when he got a call from the Kennedy Space Center to apply for a job a the laboratory he now heads."

A few months earlier, I had visited the center and took the opportunity to ask about working there and dropped off my papers. To my surprise, a few weeks later they called me for an interview," he said."

Afterward, they asked me when I would be available to start.

They needed me in December, and it was precisely in December that I would be graduating. So I packed my bags still wracked by a headache from the graduation party," he added.

A 1993 graduate of Simon Bolivar University, the most prestigious of Venezuela's public scientific universities, with a degree in electrical engineering, Mata went to western Florida in 1995 to study English, not as an immigrant, because his professional situation in Caracas was stable. "I was doing well. I couldn't complain," he said.

But during his stay, Venezuela changed governments, and early in President Rafael Caldera's term, a banking crisis, the worst in Venezuelan history, made him decide to go for a master's degree and then a doctorate.

It wasn't easy. But Mata succeeded in getting admitted, with some financial aid, to the University of Florida, from where he moved directly into the space program.Four years later, at the age of 35, he heads the laboratory where he got started.

There's where the sensors and other instruments the spaceships need at the launching pad are designed. But, even though he has achieved a position that would be envied by any scientist, Mata has gone back to a childhood dream.

"I dreamed of being an astronaut, but it was a dream I abandoned as I grew up, because I understood that, living in Venezuela, it would only lead to frustration," he said.

Nevertheless, given the turns his life has taken, for a few months he has been thinking of applying to an astronaut training program to which he has a good chance of being admitted.

(Continued in this link here.)