Fascism at work: Caracas Mayor in action

Miguel reported on the latest outburst of Juan Barreto, the Mayor "at large". Someone sent me the link of the video published in Noticiero Digital. If you can understand Spanish you can watch how Barreto verbally abused a journalist trying to ask him the tough questions that someone in his position should be able to reply. What did Barreto do? Disqualify the journalist. Just like so many chavista supporters do when they hit the comment section of this or other blogs written from an opposition point of view.

But if in a blog this might even be amusing, when it comes from the mayor of Caracas at large, the Mayor of ALL of Caracas, addressing a crisis situation (bridge down, people displaced, building invasions, etc...) who ends up with his court of hanger-on thugs insulting the journalists doing their work, well, you should worry. In this video, where Barreto had even the gall to offer journalism classes to the aggrieved journalist, you can see how fascism works in real life.

Incidentally, a gossip, that I cannot verify but I will work on it, reached me. When Barreto goes to teach, his bodyguards serve him with coffee and light up his cigarettes. I do not know if this is true or not, but after this video, why doubt it?

Barreto of course is our first nominee for Fascist of the Year 2006 by Venezuela News and Views. But I am afraid that the competition will be tough.

A crumbling country and Darth Chavez

Friday was a sweet day for the history lover that I am. At the same time horrified by what is going on, I could not help but enjoy the moment, all so predictable for anyone who knows history, and Venezuela.

la voix de son maître

On the political front we had the new National Assembly formally installed. There is no point discussing in depth who is going to preside it(1). Suffice to say that the new president, Nicolas Maduro was awarded the prize “fascist of the year” by Venezuela News and Views (2); the vice president is renown hypocrite Desiree Santos Amaral, journalist by trade who under the guise of “home and homely” journalist-deputy was one of the main architects of the “gag law” that would silence her more talented colleagues (3); the second vice-president will go to an old communist, Roberto Hernandez, who used to defend leftists in trouble, such as Teodoro Petkoff in his old days. Now he can sponsor new laws to silence Teodoro if he wishes to.

Embarrassing at it was to install an assembly that represent only 15% of Venezuela, Maduro was not afraid to dig further the hole of illegitimacy by claiming in his speech that if the assembly was not ‘pluri-political’ it was ‘pluri-social’, a lamest excuse for suppressing democracy, used under one guise or another to justify the domination by a group of people pretending to speak on the name of one social class. I suppose soon that we will be able to skip elections altogether as Chavez will be able to name a “democratic assembly” just by making sure that each trade is represented. It was called corporatism under fascism. Yet another example of chavismo drift to fascism (4).

All was in cadena, of course. But that was not all, to add further embarrassment to a rather pathetic moment Chavez was in attendance and gave a speech, probably even longer than the new Assembly president sycophantic speech. One must love the symbolism and appreciate the gall of Chavez: on a day where he had so much to do, when the country is crumbling all around, he had time to go to a function of a supposedly independent power to make an anti-everything speech and demonstrate that the National Assembly was indeed his, and his only. Don’t they use Public Relations people at Miraflores?

Indeed, the Chavez intervention Friday was one of his crassest in a long series of crass and cynical interventions since he has become president. And it followed quite a few setbacks highlighting the negative aspects of his regime. Let’s look at some of them.

A bridge too far

Wednesday the main bridge of the Caracas La Guaira highway finally expired. No point detailing the sad story so well told elsewhere. Let’s just underline that La Guaira carries 20% of the maritime traffic of Venezuela, and basically the most critical imports of the country (food and medicine for Caracas 6 million metro area). Let’s stress that Maiquetia airport manages about 80% of the international passengers load, and is the main national terminus. Let’s stress that Chavez will have been in office for 7 years in a few days, that he was elected to finally solve problems such as the fallen bridge, but that he preferred to run and waste money on political social programs designed mostly to maintain his incompetent clique in office. The collapsed bridge consequences, if not fixed in a very few weeks, are by themselves able to trigger at least a minor recession and add a few inflation points to the national index. Chavismo knew all of this of course, but refused to act until it was too late.

It would be easy to focus and advantageously criticize Chavez from this incident, but unfortunately there are so many other on crumbling infrastructure in Venezuela that one is hard pressed to decide where to start. For example in my very own Yaracuy El Nacional reports that a key bridge to the Yumare area was whacked again. It was a provisional bridge while the 50 year old bridge was replaced. A 50 year old bridge that should have been replaced long ago, but well, you know, chavismo did not like the old Yaracuy governor. And so one could list all sort of roads, bridges, hospitals collapsing while we do not even have the pleasure to see new, supposedly vote getting, structures inaugurated. We have been waiting for 7 years for the second Orinoco bridge, the new Caracas subway line, the Maracaibo and Valencia subway, the railroad to Valencia and what more! All planned under previous administrations. But of course suddenly many of these are scheduled to be inaugurated during the 2006 reelection campaign. Imagine that! They might even hope that the stupidity of many chavista supporters will help chavismo pretend that they were the ones planning all of these major projects.

Somebody should tell them that a new subway line in Caracas will be rather useless if the La Guaira bridge and the Cabrera bridge in the Valencia direction are collapsed and no one can reach Caracas…

An intellectual insult too far

But while the country collapses, while we still hear excuses such as a changed climate or a 48 hours coup d’etat to justify the sheer incompetence of the regime, this does not stop Chavez to give money away. Here, some recent “gifts”. 300 millions for a road to Jamaica. 30 millions to Evo Morales a couple of days ago for no real reason. A new refinery for Brazil when we could refine all that oil here and ship finished products that Brazilians would buy anyway. Subsidized heating oil to Boston while the Anauco stream in Caracas claims again a few lives two nights ago. Etc, etc… (Read the fabulous memo of Gustavo Coronel to Mari Pili Hernandez, the light weight chavista apologist already duly exposed in this blog, here and here)

Imagine for a second if all that money was actually spent in Venezuela. Less unemployment, more functional roads. Better production and commerce. More prosperity for all of us. And more money for all Venezuelan citizens to import more goods manufactured by all the people who we supposedly help with money grants.

And some people wonder how come only 15% of the Venezuelan people went to vote last month in spite of all the pleas of chavismo, and coercion too.

The truth is that Chavez credit in Venezuela is finally ebbing some. People are starting to get bothered by so much incompetence, by Chavez considering our country as his own personal possession. More and more people are starting to feel intellectually insulted by so much official bullshit.

I wonder if Harry Belafonte and his suite visiting today Venezuela, and scandalously getting cheap oil for Maine natives (or was that Chicago public transport?), are aware that they might have some problem to get back to their airplane for their return flight. And while we are at it, what did they bring to the Venezuelan real poor, the natives that are begging in Caracas street corners and that I am quite sure mi radio colleague Bernardo Alvarez made sure they would not drive in front of? I should make a mental note of this if we cross pass on the radio again. The hypocrisy of Belafonte and Dolores Huerta should not go unchallenged, no matter how their anti Bush ideas might be justified. Shame on you Harry! Not to mention that you might be interested by the Simon Wiesenthal Center asking Chavez to apologize for anti semitic remarks. Shame, shame on you Harry!

No coffee, nor sugar, nor dry milk

Meanwhile, true to his controlling proto totalitarian instincts, Chavez has decided to block the price of coffee. That is, he decides how much a cup of coffee in Venezuela should cost. And if coffee producers do not like it, well, he will just nationalize coffee grills and toasting facilities. Meanwhile he seizes the stocks, pretending that there was hoarding (5). Hoarding or not, soon Venezuela, a major producing coffee country, one of the best coffee in the world, will start chronically lacking coffee. Who will invest in coffee if fair price and property rights are so easily mocked? I went grocery shopping Friday morning and the shelves were empty of coffee, not even the unregulated instant coffee that people probably snatched out knowing full well where all of this is leading us. While I was doing some errands this morning I noticed one of those “selling” points set up by Mercal to sell the impounded coffee. Apparently people are forced to buy other items from Mercal if they want to be allowed to get a single pack of coffee. Talk about freedom of choice! And there is also problems with sugar and dry milk. No more café au lait.

In Globovision

There is always a sure gauge to measure the nervousness of the chavista administration: its reaction to Globovision. Friday at Alo Ciudadano we saw Caracas Mayor Bernal and Vargas Governor Rodriguez San Juan visit the plateau. They even braved the callers as Globovision, unlike Alo Presidente, does not filter who calls. They were ill at ease and their usually pre-written speech from which chavistas officials never sway on the rare occasions they show up on Globovision did not work quite well. To see 2, TWO, chavista officials compelled to hit Globovision stage on the same evening is a sure sign that Globovision is the news channel that the people watch. Popular sectors, it seems, are not watching VTV when they want real news and “elected” officials know where they must go to talk to their stray sheep.

Star Wars as a metaphor

And how best to conclude that talking about an activity during my vacation? I was to watch with a house guest the 6 DVD of the Star Wars saga. Instead of comparing the hairdos of Padme and Leia, we were making comments as to some of the uncanny reminders to the Venezuelan situation that the political plot of Star Wars carries! In particular when Anakyn Skywalker was explaining to Padme that he wanted a stronger executive to solve the separatist problems in the galaxy as he was about to leave to massacre them, ex associates of Palpavez incidentally.

Well, this afternoon as I read El Universal I was struck by the words of Chavez himself yesterday:

¡Tenemos que dejar de ser la democracia boba, bobalicona y débil!
We must stop from being a silly, pusillanimous and week democracy.

Darth Vader could not have said it better. Except that his Republic/Empire did not have collapsing bridges it seems…


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1) details here in English.

2) Maduro during his speech alluded to some in the media accusing him of being a fascist. IT is amazing that a president of a legislative body would even address such an issue. That he did so is a testimony of his mediocrity, and that it hurt when he heard it (or read it in this blog? :) )

3) Santos Amaral reelection was rather contested, even in the frame of running without opposition. She almost got a real opposition from within chavismo when her constituents protested that she had not been seen in 4 years, reappearing only because Chavez decided that she should run again. The Tupamaros who had a perfectly good candidate to represent the popular 23 de Enero district protested loudly and she had to be escorted for her inauspicious campaign start. Eventually the Tupamaros relented, but the episode was quite telling of what Santos Amaral had been up to in her first tenure: apparatchik work undignified for an ex social journalist. She ahs been rewarded for her consistent boot licking.

4) RNV had a tad of pudor left when it only spoke of an "absolute majority" rather than use the term "we got ALL of them". A sure sign that the monochramatic chamber is already becoming a rather embarrassing proposition. I wonder what sense will have the "foro social mundial", the all expense Chavez paid meeting of diverse lefties hangeron to be held in a few weeks, without airport, without chavismo managing to put a single opposition seat, and only 15% of folks voting for the ticket. Perhaps that "foro" is called as Chavez now thinks more highly of foreign folks than Venezuelans who seem more and more reluctant to love him unconditionally.

5) Coffee is considered an "indispensable food item" and thus subjected to state control. See Miguel for more details on the coffee wars story.

Chavez and the “aquí_no_ha_pasado_nada” sindrome.

By the time you read this lines you all probably know that the Caracas-La Guaira Viaduct has been closed more than 24 hours, that there is the danger that is closed forever, and that rains seem to be a real menace for the alternative old route. So much so that traffic had to be stopped for three hours today because of the danger of slides.

We are talking, of course, of the most vital, most important traffic span in Venezuela: the one linking Caracas with its airport, port and major touristic attractions.

As Christmas travelers come back home, the situation is getting worse and worse. In the short term there is the question of how to move all that people back home safely. Should airplanes and ships be re-routed to other airports and ports? Do they have the required capabilities to sustain the level of reroute traffic? How about the people that live in La Guaira and have to commute to Caracas? How are they going to go to work? Is the old route really viable, despite the danger of mudslides, the lack of public lighting and the stiff curves? And, if the engineers decide that there is no way to fix the viaduct or build another one in the short term, what is the best strategy to be able to minimize the human discomfort and economic impact of the long transient situation?

These are just some of the questions that I have been asking myself since yesterday. There are no easy answers because we are facing a major emergency situation. An emergency that was announced and could have been prevented, but an emergency after all..

So, while scanning the official news I was appaled at what I read, or rather at what I did not read. Just in case the Minci guys change their page, I have taken a snapshot here.

If you have a look at it, you would thought that there is nothing going on in Venezuela except that there is a new directive in the National Assembly and that Harry Belafonte is visiting an endogenous center to report back in the US how things work in Venezuela!

Here are the pictures (in parenthesis) and the titles, given in order:

1.- (Chavez with Maduro and the TSJ president, that BTW are not cited in the article) “each obstacle that prevents the advances of the Revolution must be demolished by a law”

2.- (Chavez alone) “the producers of corn, coffee and sugar must respect the law”

3.- (Harry Belafonte with welcoming Chavista in red T shirt): “We came to visit to know the reality of the country”

4.- (far away small PDVSA gas station): “Food and fuel are guaranteed in Vargas”

5.- (Big handsome Chavez face): “president Chavez proposes to celebrate Miranda’s 200 year swearing anniversary.”

Note that the only news that is somehow related to the viaduct situation is the fourth one, that refers to the logistics of food and oil distribution, and Chavez did not even mentioned it.

So, the official response to this major crisis seems to be the “aquí no ha pasado nada” (nothing has happened here), after the initial attempt by Vicepresident Rangel to deny that the government had any knowledge of the seriousness of the situation, despite the fact that the deterioration of the viaduct had been well known for years, and even denounced by the College of Engineers of Venezuela.

Why is Chavez having that attitude? My guess is that, as usual, he wants to detach himself from the incompetence of his government, as if they were two different entities. I bet that in the next Alo Presidente he will talk about the catastrophe nd blame his ministers while asking them to put more effort into this task.

Amazingly, such an irresponsible behavior can be seen as an improvement! Last year during the second Vargas crisis, reported by yours truly, Chavez was actually in hiding for a few days. And on 1999 he even used the crisis to take over illegally the Supreme Court , while nobody was paying attention.

At least now he shows his face to talk about the preparation of Miranda’s swearing anniversary on March 24.

Quite a leader.

Jorge Arena

Favorite ghost blogger

http://arenaspace.blogspot.com/

A picture is worth a thousand words

I am still in semi vacation and have had not much time to post on the La Guaira bridge disaster. But there is always a mail box where things arrive. Just like for Quico, not to be missed picture. I am sure FedEx and DHL will appreciate the plug.

"Carting goods from La Guaira to Caracas.
New road Caracas La Guaira. (with donkey sign)
Venezuela, FORWARD!
Going towards socialism (MINFRA is the ministry in charge)
(With monkey business adequately placed)"

And for a complete story with relevant pictures, you can read Miguel's post.

We are back one century in time, without even the Guzman Blanco railroad to help us or Perez Jimenez cable car across the Avila.

Milestones

Today news: a death and a telling visit.

The director of El Impulso dies on a Yaracuy highway

Juan Manuel Carmona, 74, was the owner editor of respected Barquisimeto El Impulso, a venerable centennial newspaper. He died in a freak car accident that killed him and his driver when the axis of a truck they were passing broke and the lose wheel it them directly. He will be remembered for his stern opposition to Chavez and to the useless governor he imposed on Lara State. Certainly a few chavistas will be delighted tonight as Carmona was an unbending and relentless denouncer of chavismo abuses. He certainly had no illusions about the nature of the regime who dared to have El Impulso has the first newspaper closed for "fiscal reasons", the SENIAT being now the official warning agency.

The axis of evil keeps consolidating

My very guarded optimism on Evo Morales seems to have been rebutted faster than I could have expected. He started by visiting Castro first, Chavez after before heading off to Spain. On the way he collected his first official fat check from Chavez, insulted Bush dutifully and pronounced all sorts of things he could have waited a little bit before burping.

Interestingly the visit of Morales coincided with a visit by nationalist "leader" Ollanta Humala from Peru who was probably cashing a not so official check for his campaign in Peru. The very intemperate declarations of Chavez, seeing himself now as the future president of the United States of South America created, were enough to cause Lima to recall its ambassador from Caracas.

Now what is it with all those VERY failed putsch makers that allow them to reach high office in their country. Napoleon the III, Hitler, Castro, Chavez, among others, failed miserably when they tried to seize power only to be elected (or carried in triumph in the case of Castro) to ensure the misery of their citizens by their blind lust for power. Are we really that stupid to elect such jerks?

Amusingly Fausta publishes a little photo montage on Chavez and his unsavory pals that I urge readers to visit. She is smart enough to include Chirac who supposedly from the right is an "aventurier" nevertheless just as Chavez is, and forgives him anything as long as he buys stuff and pretends to free Ingrid from the FARC. Sucker!

The Venezuelan mirage (part 2)

Less than meets the eye

More than ever Venezuela appears as a land of contradictions. If indeed there is a significant economical increase, the casual traveler to Venezuela will observe more indigence than ever, more street kids than can be counted, more destroyed highways, more garbage and dirt than s/he would recall from a previous trip. How come? If the clear suspect is the highly inefficient and probably equally corrupt public administration, there is also a lack of direction for economic and social policies whose sole aim is to re-elect in vita aeternam the beloved leader of the revolution. If that strategy seems to have lower yields than before as people are shying away in droves from the ballot boxes, the pernicious effect on the economy of a rudderless ship can already be detected. Let´s see how a multitude of social programs with little or no follow up are able to create the impression of prosperity without solving any problem and even less offering peace of mind for a solid future.

Hidden numbers

Denying that things are moving in Venezuela would be foolish. No matter how much corruption might distract huge sums of dollars, no matter how many “gifts” the new Red Santa Chavez has been giving around in 2005, 3 years of high oil prices are having an effect.

The first question is: can we measure that effect? The answer? Not accurately. Since 2003, when finally Chavez acquired full control of all institutions and could place all the sycophants he needed to “improve” things, Venezuela has become a country that cannot be audited. Numbers and statistics are routinely emitted, be it from PDVSA or from any within the executive branch; but cross questioning by journalists or experts is carefully avoided, and forget about a non partisan commission to check out on some of those numbers. Obviously any government in the world would love to “arrange” numbers, and they do it whenever possible, the closer to an election the better. But the levels reached in Venezuela are simply scandalous, when not downright ridiculous. Let’s look as an example at the official INE or the SISOV, the two state organizations in charge of providing official numbers. As such, and as reported in this blog before, the authorities in charge there have for mission to publish “the truth” on Venezuela. But even the quality of manipulation is not good, allowing the critical mind to doubt fast.

The diagram on the right side comes from the SISOV. In it we can see the “occupational rate” and the “jobless rate”. No definition given. Any innocent soul would think that, woah!, 86% of the Venezuelan population has a real job (1). This is far from the truth: real jobs are a privilege in Venezuela, if you define real jobs as a 9 to 5, 5/7, 11/12, tax paying position. Too many “jobs” in Venezuela these days are in the “informal” sector, that is, street peddlers, house-call artisans, low wage services, etc… none of them paying taxes, none of them covered by social security, none of them with any health plan (unless downtrodden hospitals and Barrio Adentro limited primary care can pass as a comprehensive health service)

If we go to the more complete page of the National Institute of Statistics, INE, we do see the contradictions appear. First, there is a wide variety of definitions that confuse more than clarify things. The impression that one gets is that you are either “busy” (ocupado) or “not busy” (inactivo). Ocupado means that either you have a real job or go out in the streets for at least 15 hours of “activity”. This allows including any street peddler or any participant in one of the numerous “educational” misiones to be excluded from the jobless rate, and thus improve the numbers magnificently.

But even with such manipulations the government cannot hide quite well the basic job market problems of Venezuela. For example the ballyhooed decrease by 2% of unemployment from November to December 2005 is a mirage. It is simply due to the fact that street peddlers multiply at this time of the year and that on January 2, well, they will not even be able to have their 15 hours a week of activity. The picture on the left is the chart of the jobless rate obtained from the INE for 2004 and 2005, after two years of heavy lobbying to prove the “Venezuelan miracle”. In fact last year's decrease in November-December was 1.9% compared to the 2% of this year. But the increase in January added 4.6% to those that could not be “active” even 15 hours a week. Let’s see the variation in January 2006. Meanwhile, as promised, Chavez has “delivered” with a jobless rate below 10% for 2005.

Nowhere on the INE page I could find the same statistics for those who hold REAL jobs, that is those who are subjected to all the normal labor laws if Venezuela. You could naively go to the page of the Venezuelan Social Security system and check out how many people are making payments; but look as you may, you will not find that statistic (though many cases of a handful of retirees “finally” receiving their pension). Private reports on such numbers certainly do not paint the rosy picture of the INE. Estimates for the “informal” sector are anywhere between 30 to 50% of the working age population.

And all is like that, be it PDVSA claimed 3.3 million barrels a day and the assumed 2.8 by more serious and questioning observers. There is just no way to know for sure what is going on in Venezuela, and certainly few of the numbers that would not make the government look good.

The economical mirage

Yet, we do see activity.

Traffic is at an all time high on roads, and car and truck sales have doubled or more. But one could quickly point out that the apparent traffic increase is also due larger and larger numbers of jalopies breaking down on the highways and slowing down everything, not to mention collapsing roads. We are not taking here or maintenance repair, we are discussing roads falling apart.

Trucks carrying goods are running in large numbers. Commerce is going well, malls are reporting increased sales, the SENIAT gloats not only of increased tax revenues, but even of going past their collection goals.

Are these signs of real economic growth? Not necessarily.

The complaint of Giordani a few days ago (see part 1) that private investment had to show up is an admission that only the state is investing in Venezuela. The only sectors where private investment is significant, and by foreign companies , is oil and telecommunications (though one would like to know where the money from the sale of Telcel went, it does not seem to have stayed in new Venezuelan investment). Venezuelan private investors are not doing their job. (2)

Yes, there is some investing by the private sector. After all business needs to invest some just to maintain production. Also, an undeniable increase in state spending does open some opportunities, in particular if you can make deals with chavista folks at Mercal. But make the rounds of Venezuelan industrial parks and you will see scores of business still closed (and the target of “popular” takeovers to make them “productive” again, 3). It seems that in fact the economic increase is made on recovery of unused potential rather than creation of new industries. Companies are re-hiring, not creating new jobs. The decrease from 2003 was severe enough that this “recovery” looks spectacular. But we will wait for December 2006 to see if new growth, real growth, is happening.

All in all what we are seeing is a redistribution of money. Not much more. Social programs create large expenditures, generate significant amount of new, but provisional, jobs that compensate up to a point the jobs not created in industry. Chavista social programs are mostly band aids, sustained as long as they bring votes and oil money remains high. There is no long term support planning of the social programs currently in place. In fact new misiones are announced, new help for foreign country offered. And no cost benefit evaluation of these programs.

With so much oil money coming in, imports have been rising briskly (not to mention the political imports to fill up Mercal shelves). Thus the reason why commerce and taxes have increased so much in 2005, while the business still open did get a chance to regain some of their old production numbers. Even the numbers of the Venezuelan Central Bank point this way when they recognize that the per capita income of 2005 is comparable to the one of 1998 (4). Seven years wasted (5).

Conclusion?

Long term prospects are not good. With an increasing central planning system and judicial limbo it is not likely private investors will look much into Venezuela except for a few exceptions already named. Certainly no big private investment outside of oil (and even in oil considering the latest changes in rules at PDVSA and associates) will happen until the 2006 election is out of the way. Prosperity next year will be strictly based on how high oil prices remain and how PDVSA manages to maintain the numbers it has this year. A redistributive scheme will remain, while larger amounts are lost to corruption now that there is absolutely no control system left. With little investment in PDVSA as Chavez needs that money to win the election, we could even see a drop in oil income in 2007 and a recession. But by 2007 the regime thinks that it will be safe, out of reach from any challenge and tough decisions can wait. This disregard for sound planning will have a steep cost. We’ll see.

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1) As a bonus we can also see that the first semester of 2003 (that nasty lock out conspiracy!) bump in unemployment has been compensated, thanks, of course, to the brilliant governmental policies.

2) There is also a big boom, allegedly, on state sponsored cooperatives. Since statistics are even less auditable I prefer not to discuss them. However I would like to point out that many of those cooperatives do not follow the work regulations that are mandatory in state and private companies. That is, investment, benefits, wages, etc… are very variable. It is simply too early to asses the economic impact of such “desarollos endogenos”.

3) Many closed business are targets to reckless “nationalizations” without any regard as to why such business went bankrupt in the first place. So far, they have been plainly confiscated and the owners not even compensated for the land they lost.

4) The Central Bank gives for the January-September period a GDP of 31.476.391 million VBE. At constant VBE value the GDP for the same 2005 period is 33.600.784. Factor in the population growth and the difference in oil prices and you will be able to realize that genuine production wise we are barely into the 1998 per capita perspective. In fact, even with the huge oil price increase we observe that for the same period the oil sector has a yield of 5.859.890 in 1998 and 5.493.383 this year! Which makes you wonder about the real production numbers of PDVSA…

5) Chavez has been ruling for 7 years now. If political trouble was big in 2002 and 2003, it remains that the first economic downfall was the devaluation of February 2002, the blame going directly to Chavez and Giordani’s policies. Even 2004 cannot be counted as a political crisis year as the recovery from 2003 was amply promoted by Chavez during the referendum campaign. In short, out of 7 years there were only two years of crisis, which were recovered in 2004 and 2005. The slow down of 1999, 2000 and 2001 remains to be explained.

Happy New Year!