Dear President Obama
Dear Secretary Clinton
As a Venezuelan citizen I am allowing to write you this short memo before you set foot in Trinidad for the upcoming summit of the Americas. I am not trying to warn you of a trap or anything of the sort: I think that both of you are quite clear on what is going on in Venezuela. I just wish to express as an individual citizen, and a dear friend of the United States, that I would be tickled pink if you made sure you do not fall into the trap that Lula, the Castros and Chavez are trying to set up.
See, one of their aim in effecting a "rapprochement" between the US of A and Cuba is to make it a package deal of sorts which includes Chavez, these days in dire need of some form of international recognition and legitimacy. I think that the reasons of Lula are purely emotional, but the ones of the Castros and Chavez are downright cynical. As such it is very easy for you to avoid falling into the trap they are setting for you. Accept to discuss chosen Cuban issues but ignore Venezuela all the time, that is all that you need to do. Be careful, Chavez will probably try to hug you or at least to be next to you in some picture so he can use it in Venezuela to pretend all is fine, until again he insults you and the US whenever he feels a need for it.
Trust me on that one, the less you talk to Chavez the better you will control him in the end. Let him make the first concession if he wants to prove that he is serious, for example asking for a new U.S. ambassador. The other guys such as Lula and the Castros are only opportunist that use Chavez to make themselves look better than what they really are. Worry not, today you are in the driving seat with Chavez as long as oil does not go above 60 dollars. Time is on your side, soon Chavez will come hat in hand. You have so much more important work to do than to bother with our local comedy act.
With this I wish you the best possible stay in Trinidad.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
PS to regular readers of this column: this is an issue important enough to distract me briefly from the other writing tasks at hand. Besides this memo almost wrote by itself.
-The end-
Monday, April 13, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Venezuela News &Views, what for?
First I must issue a warning: the following posts can be seen as a self indulgent exercise. If you are interested in hard news and comment you might want to skip some of the next posts, if not all of them.
In the following posts I will try to assess what the situation in Venezuela is today and what are the consequences for me if I want to keep blogging. As I have written a couple of weeks ago, I need to do that review before I decide what to do with this blog. The question is not whether to stop writing; it is how to be purposeful with that writing. Tentatively these issues will be covered in the following posts (links added as posts are written):
And I will not cover current news as long as this series is not over, which might take maybe a couple of weeks.
-The end-
In the following posts I will try to assess what the situation in Venezuela is today and what are the consequences for me if I want to keep blogging. As I have written a couple of weeks ago, I need to do that review before I decide what to do with this blog. The question is not whether to stop writing; it is how to be purposeful with that writing. Tentatively these issues will be covered in the following posts (links added as posts are written):
- Is Venezuela a dictatorship?
- The consequences of the February 15 vote
- 6 years of blogging in perspective
- Where now?
And I will not cover current news as long as this series is not over, which might take maybe a couple of weeks.
-The end-
Is Venezuela a dictatorship?
To evaluate the wisdom to keep blogging after February 15 was to answer a simple question unambiguously: is Venezuela now a dictatorship? This examination is required because the Venezuelan situation has changed dramatically during the regional election campaign of fall 2008, reaching a nadir on February 15 2009 and moving into uncharted waters since then.
For me the answer is simple: Venezuela is indeed a dictatorship (see note at the end). The exact date can be left to the individual choice depending on the values this one espouses. However the mistake that many make, whether they do not support the fact that Venezuela is a dictatorship being irrelevant, is that they do not quite realize that we are in front of a very new type of dictatorship, one conditioned by the realities of an era of mass communication, an era which Venezuela had fully entered before Chavez became president. In fact, it is not a long stretch to consider that mass media, vulgarization of the news and sensationalism have played an essential role in allowing a monstrosity such as chavismo to metastasize the Venezuelan polity. For those who forget easily, this brave new world was brought to our attention when CNN waited on the shores of Somalia for the Marines to land. Politics have never been the same since.
My dates are simple: Venezuela slid into an authoritarian regime in February 2004 and became a dictatorship when RCTV was closed. The intentions of the autocrat to became a dictator had been set long ago when this one and his acolytes killed any vestigial independence of the judiciary system, a process started in 1999 and still quite not completed today although irreversible with the arrival of Luisa Estela Morales at the head of the High Court. However the very recent new change in the supervision of judges by folks stranger to the judicial world, that is, folks obeying to the executive branch, allow us to assume that in the next few months the process of creating a partial justice will be completed, thus removing any democratic pretense that some rather simple minded souls persist in attributing to Chavez’s movement.
The closing of RCTV in May 2007 was not the entry into dictatorship because a media was closed. No, not at all in spite of the glaring symbolism. The entry into a dictatorship was marked then when we saw that justice had ceased to exist in Venezuela as the rights of RCTV were obviated carelessly by the state. The entry into dictatorship was also marked by the symbol RCTV provided for the transition from a pseudo revolution that Chavez had tried to make us believe was taking place to into a de facto regime opposed by the thinking country. Like all failed revolutions, the Bolivarian one could only end in civil war or in dictatorship. As such it has chosen the second exit while the first one is far from ruled out. Closing RCTV Chavez indicated to us that his will was the master of the country and as such democracy was over.
What is confusing to many, including for my colleague Quico Toro who has written a particularly inane post on the topic, is that the dictatorship of Chavez still displays elements of democracy. There is no confusion to be had here: Chavez tolerates still some expressions of dissent, some civil liberties because simply he cannot afford to take them away, yet; or ever for that matter. We are in the XXI century and taking over all media is difficult. Internet cannot be controlled like it is in China or Cuba because it was free in Venezuela before Chavez came to power. To control it Chavez would need to close it and reopen it under his conditions, something more likely now that he controls the main Venezuelan ISP, CANTV.
But Chavez would also need to take away all the satellite dishes that dot Venezuela, including many of the poorer areas who still vote for him. As such Chavez has had to limit himself to close down the most vocal media: RCTV first and Globovision probably before this year is through. They will remain on cable for a while but we can expect at some point that the cable TV laws will be changed, probably after Venezuela leaves international institutions such as the OAS or the ICC. Internet will be more difficult to control but filtering cyber cafes should not be too difficult and offering a cheap but limited access to Internet through CANTV could be a way to limit Internet access of real news to the population sector chavismo cares about the most.
Other civil liberties associated to democracy are advanced to prove that Venezuela is not a dictatorship, such as the freedom to travel. And yet there is already plenty of evidence that traveling is an increasingly difficult proposition for the average Venezuelan, from getting a passport to the access of international currency required for travel.
True, large scale political prosecution is not obvious and yet it exists, or have people forgotten about the Tascon List who has since 2004 created a set of second class citizens? Selective prosecution is now a routine occurrence, from the fired PDVSA employees which are persistently tracked down in any job they may hold, to the harassment of politicians elected to office in November 2008.
But more worrisome than any of that has been the creation of a series of governmental tools that can be used whenever the government will see it fit. Laws like LOCYMAT or some of those decrees in the latest enabling law of 2007-2008 are designed as punitive tools. There are laws that can be used when necessary to bankrupt any private business that incurs the displeasure of the regime, or simply the envy of anyone within the regime.
Thus even though on paper we can still hang out around at capitalists malls, travel to Aruba for the week end, buy Tal Cual, at least in main cities, and other such pleasures, the fact of life for those who live in Venezuela and are in disagreement with chavismo vision of the world is that our personal and private lives are increasingly affected by the state policies. And this, at any era, is a hallmark of dictatorship.
The concept of dictatorship has evolved through history. After all the word tyrannos was not necessarily a bad word in early Greece. I was reading “El Dictador” by Ramon Guillermo Aveledo over this Easter Holiday (1). He chose to resume the lives of some famous dictators as a way to illustrate what a dictatorship means, I suppose. The book is simple, memory refreshing, well written though not as deep as one would have wanted it to be. However as you read it you do see that the common thread of all of these dictators was an unquenchable thirst for power, a thirst which might not even had existed explicitly at the onset of the dictatorship. But all of them developed a clear sense of uniqueness, perverse if you like, through their tenure which led them to hold power until their death, in bed or in front an ad hoc executioner. Chavez of course has shown all the signs to try to join that group, all historical parallels taken into account (even though this is not directly addressed by the author).
Indeed as I have written before, the best example to illustrate the perplexing type of regime that Chavez has set in place so far might be France’s Napoleon the third, 1851-1870, and as such worth revisiting today. This period of French history still needs a more thorough evaluation as it is still too clouded by the criteria of the times. After all in 1851 “Republic” was a bad word and even alleged democracies like the US were far from perfect as the slave problem was unresolved and the native populations dealt with ruthlessly. When Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, elected in 1848 president of France, made a coup to ensure his reelection, nobody outside of France protested much. Many were in fact rather happy to see the second republic gone and knew that times had changed, that the new Napoleon the third was not going to be able to be the conquering hero his uncle had been (though it is not even certain he was his nephew).
For all practical purposes the Napoleon III regime, the second empire, was a dictatorship though many did not see it as such at the time. After all there were elections which by European standards were still better and more democratic than in the rest of Europe except for Britain (2) and a couple of minor exceptions: the republican party did manage to elect some representatives, and every six years it did manage to increase its representation in spite of all the electoral hurdles put up by the regime. Censorship existed, but then it existed elsewhere in Europe and Paris publications were certainly much freer than those of most European countries. Not only French people could travel, if they could afford it, but the “who’s who” of Europe traveled to Paris once Napoleon had shown he was there to stay and France economy grew significantly. In fact, in the French history manuals that I got at school, the “second empire” is depicted as a time of prosperity, growth and modernization, with the darker side of it much less stressed than what it might be in today’s books. True, there was no gulags (3), not even significant political exiles: the most famous one, Victor Hugo, was a self imposed exile while many of the Republicans were back in France trying to run for election, or discretely conspiring.
But it was a dictatorship alright. The first decade was repressive enough and only when prosperity was served to the populace did the regime opened up some. The regime was based on the division between an agrarian conservative France and an urban one where a restless proletariat was always a concern, and used as a scarecrow to keep the country side faithful to the regime. The will of the state was applied regardless of the will of the people, though that was standard practice in most of the world then. And yet, in situations such as the opening of the Paris Boulevards many communities were unnecessary abused in France, abused in ways that they had not been under the previous more democratic monarchy of Louis Philippe. The splendor of today’s Paris, largely inherited of Baron Haussman work, makes us forget today that these boulevards were drawn so as to allow for cavalry charges against the barricades that had been a regular occurrence since 1789 (and which will come up again notably in 1870 and 1968). In other words, crowded popular districts of downtown Paris were deliberately destroyed with their people moved to the periphery of the city to ensure more security for the government and the people who supported it (as well as the corruption that accompanied such public works). If you like Emile Zola I would suggest two of his novels to illustrate the politics and corruption of the times, La Conquête de Plassans and Son Excellence Eugene Rougon.
Chavez of course cannot even boast of the economic success of Napoleon III but his regime amusingly shares some of the characteristics of the Second Empire such as an existing but controlled opposition, without a real chance to ever access power (in a stunning political maneuver Napoleon III gained a political reprieve in 1869, neutralizing the Republican opposition, that would have allowed him to die peacefully in his palace a few years later if it had not been for the war on Prussia who saw the amazingly quick crumbling of his regime and the return of the republic in September 1870).
Chavez will never be Castro (Venezuela is not an island). Chavez will never be Stalin or Mao (he does not have a powerful political machinery that was ready for him when he reached power). Chavez will never be Mussolini or Franco (he did not reach power through a civil war or as the political consequences of a foreign war). Chavez will never be Hitler (Venezuelans are not disciplined Germans). Chavez will never be Peron (he would never allow an Evita to take the spotlight). Chavez will be Chavez, taking a page or two of each of the above, and several from Castro’s book. Like all of them ideology was more an excuse to hold power than anything they truly believed in. Chavez knows very well the weaknesses of the Venezuelan people and he is skillful at using them, just as many of these dictators did at least in the early part of their career. It is still too early to say what the end product of his takeover will be though possible outcomes can already be conceived such as a mad war against Colombia or even worse, a civil war in Venezuela as money will not be enough to satisfy the appetites of all of the military personnel. But what we can say today is that the regime has already the following characteristics of a dictatorship:
- there will not be a pacific take over by the opposition even if by miracle this one did manage to win a general election
- a repressive system is in place, and if repression has been used still relatively sparsely the tendency is to increasing use of it, as the possibility of repression is already a terror instrument
- the state is increasingly interfering in the private life of the people, selecting who gets what and who is punished in an arbitrary way, linked to the loyalty to Chavez
- a necessary but not sufficient condition for your success is to show loyalty to the regime, any opposition to Chavez or his acolytes now signifies your downfall, starting as simply as a targeted tax audit of which supporters of the regime seem almost miraculously exempt.
- corruption is an institution of rule
- assault troops exit. If the more vocal ones such as Lina Ron and La Piedrita are limited in scope, the fact of the matter is that paramilitary groups are growing in the country, hidden within the “reserva” a militia of sorts, or even in the public administration as told us by the implausible payrolls found by Ledezma when he took office in Caracas last year. These groups are now formed and ready to operate when the time comes, if the army allows
- other accessories also exist. For example Chavez has tried to use mass movement the way Mussolini or Peron did, but with limited success as the paid for assistance is a witness. However he has skillfully used TV and radio to penetrate the Venezuelan home using the folksy habits of Venezuelans of the country side: the circle of visitors loosely organized around the guest of honor or the patriarch. When you watch Chavez on TV you almost can feel him in your living room even if he is insulting you, calling you a traitor, just as the local patriarch would publicly recriminate you for having stolen some maiden’s honor or betrayed your husband’s pride…..
In short, when defining dictatorship in regards to Venezuela keep in mind that our circumstances are very different than the ones of the other more "classical" dictator regimes. But the end result is unfortunately the same. The word applies. And as such one needs to admits the consequences of such conclusion as to what is possible to do next.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Note: it is fitting to write about such matters these days as we commemorate once again the April 11-12-13 events of 2002. I am in no mood to revisit these days, however it is important to note that since April 13 2002 Chavez has done much worse things than what Carmona was promising to do on April 12 2002. A dictateur, dictateur et demi
as we could paraphrase from a French saying meaning that to each creep there is a match that might be even worse.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
1) ISBN 978-980-6933-42-2, Editorial Libros Marcados, September 2008
librosmarcados3000@yahoo.com
2) One of the justification of Louis Napoleón coup was to reestablish universal manhood suffrage that the 1848 revolution had established and which was limited by the surprisingly strong conservative assembly that was elected out of it. Thus after 1851 elections might not have been free but France was the only country then to have universal manhood suffrage for its 21 old citizens. We could call that the “democracia participativa and protagonica” plank of the times.
3) “colonization” was the gulag of the day as political prisoners were sent to Algeria or New Caledonia. But most of these forced exiles happened under the second republic repressive measures against the Paris and main cities political proletariat. Thus if the second empire cannot be blamed for their creation it still was not keen on eliminating then and certainly not adverse at using them when convenient. Note, as the years went by many of those “exiled” were allowed to return to France.
-The end-
For me the answer is simple: Venezuela is indeed a dictatorship (see note at the end). The exact date can be left to the individual choice depending on the values this one espouses. However the mistake that many make, whether they do not support the fact that Venezuela is a dictatorship being irrelevant, is that they do not quite realize that we are in front of a very new type of dictatorship, one conditioned by the realities of an era of mass communication, an era which Venezuela had fully entered before Chavez became president. In fact, it is not a long stretch to consider that mass media, vulgarization of the news and sensationalism have played an essential role in allowing a monstrosity such as chavismo to metastasize the Venezuelan polity. For those who forget easily, this brave new world was brought to our attention when CNN waited on the shores of Somalia for the Marines to land. Politics have never been the same since.
My dates are simple: Venezuela slid into an authoritarian regime in February 2004 and became a dictatorship when RCTV was closed. The intentions of the autocrat to became a dictator had been set long ago when this one and his acolytes killed any vestigial independence of the judiciary system, a process started in 1999 and still quite not completed today although irreversible with the arrival of Luisa Estela Morales at the head of the High Court. However the very recent new change in the supervision of judges by folks stranger to the judicial world, that is, folks obeying to the executive branch, allow us to assume that in the next few months the process of creating a partial justice will be completed, thus removing any democratic pretense that some rather simple minded souls persist in attributing to Chavez’s movement.
The closing of RCTV in May 2007 was not the entry into dictatorship because a media was closed. No, not at all in spite of the glaring symbolism. The entry into a dictatorship was marked then when we saw that justice had ceased to exist in Venezuela as the rights of RCTV were obviated carelessly by the state. The entry into dictatorship was also marked by the symbol RCTV provided for the transition from a pseudo revolution that Chavez had tried to make us believe was taking place to into a de facto regime opposed by the thinking country. Like all failed revolutions, the Bolivarian one could only end in civil war or in dictatorship. As such it has chosen the second exit while the first one is far from ruled out. Closing RCTV Chavez indicated to us that his will was the master of the country and as such democracy was over.
What is confusing to many, including for my colleague Quico Toro who has written a particularly inane post on the topic, is that the dictatorship of Chavez still displays elements of democracy. There is no confusion to be had here: Chavez tolerates still some expressions of dissent, some civil liberties because simply he cannot afford to take them away, yet; or ever for that matter. We are in the XXI century and taking over all media is difficult. Internet cannot be controlled like it is in China or Cuba because it was free in Venezuela before Chavez came to power. To control it Chavez would need to close it and reopen it under his conditions, something more likely now that he controls the main Venezuelan ISP, CANTV.
But Chavez would also need to take away all the satellite dishes that dot Venezuela, including many of the poorer areas who still vote for him. As such Chavez has had to limit himself to close down the most vocal media: RCTV first and Globovision probably before this year is through. They will remain on cable for a while but we can expect at some point that the cable TV laws will be changed, probably after Venezuela leaves international institutions such as the OAS or the ICC. Internet will be more difficult to control but filtering cyber cafes should not be too difficult and offering a cheap but limited access to Internet through CANTV could be a way to limit Internet access of real news to the population sector chavismo cares about the most.
Other civil liberties associated to democracy are advanced to prove that Venezuela is not a dictatorship, such as the freedom to travel. And yet there is already plenty of evidence that traveling is an increasingly difficult proposition for the average Venezuelan, from getting a passport to the access of international currency required for travel.
True, large scale political prosecution is not obvious and yet it exists, or have people forgotten about the Tascon List who has since 2004 created a set of second class citizens? Selective prosecution is now a routine occurrence, from the fired PDVSA employees which are persistently tracked down in any job they may hold, to the harassment of politicians elected to office in November 2008.
But more worrisome than any of that has been the creation of a series of governmental tools that can be used whenever the government will see it fit. Laws like LOCYMAT or some of those decrees in the latest enabling law of 2007-2008 are designed as punitive tools. There are laws that can be used when necessary to bankrupt any private business that incurs the displeasure of the regime, or simply the envy of anyone within the regime.
Thus even though on paper we can still hang out around at capitalists malls, travel to Aruba for the week end, buy Tal Cual, at least in main cities, and other such pleasures, the fact of life for those who live in Venezuela and are in disagreement with chavismo vision of the world is that our personal and private lives are increasingly affected by the state policies. And this, at any era, is a hallmark of dictatorship.
The concept of dictatorship has evolved through history. After all the word tyrannos was not necessarily a bad word in early Greece. I was reading “El Dictador” by Ramon Guillermo Aveledo over this Easter Holiday (1). He chose to resume the lives of some famous dictators as a way to illustrate what a dictatorship means, I suppose. The book is simple, memory refreshing, well written though not as deep as one would have wanted it to be. However as you read it you do see that the common thread of all of these dictators was an unquenchable thirst for power, a thirst which might not even had existed explicitly at the onset of the dictatorship. But all of them developed a clear sense of uniqueness, perverse if you like, through their tenure which led them to hold power until their death, in bed or in front an ad hoc executioner. Chavez of course has shown all the signs to try to join that group, all historical parallels taken into account (even though this is not directly addressed by the author).
Indeed as I have written before, the best example to illustrate the perplexing type of regime that Chavez has set in place so far might be France’s Napoleon the third, 1851-1870, and as such worth revisiting today. This period of French history still needs a more thorough evaluation as it is still too clouded by the criteria of the times. After all in 1851 “Republic” was a bad word and even alleged democracies like the US were far from perfect as the slave problem was unresolved and the native populations dealt with ruthlessly. When Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, elected in 1848 president of France, made a coup to ensure his reelection, nobody outside of France protested much. Many were in fact rather happy to see the second republic gone and knew that times had changed, that the new Napoleon the third was not going to be able to be the conquering hero his uncle had been (though it is not even certain he was his nephew).
For all practical purposes the Napoleon III regime, the second empire, was a dictatorship though many did not see it as such at the time. After all there were elections which by European standards were still better and more democratic than in the rest of Europe except for Britain (2) and a couple of minor exceptions: the republican party did manage to elect some representatives, and every six years it did manage to increase its representation in spite of all the electoral hurdles put up by the regime. Censorship existed, but then it existed elsewhere in Europe and Paris publications were certainly much freer than those of most European countries. Not only French people could travel, if they could afford it, but the “who’s who” of Europe traveled to Paris once Napoleon had shown he was there to stay and France economy grew significantly. In fact, in the French history manuals that I got at school, the “second empire” is depicted as a time of prosperity, growth and modernization, with the darker side of it much less stressed than what it might be in today’s books. True, there was no gulags (3), not even significant political exiles: the most famous one, Victor Hugo, was a self imposed exile while many of the Republicans were back in France trying to run for election, or discretely conspiring.
But it was a dictatorship alright. The first decade was repressive enough and only when prosperity was served to the populace did the regime opened up some. The regime was based on the division between an agrarian conservative France and an urban one where a restless proletariat was always a concern, and used as a scarecrow to keep the country side faithful to the regime. The will of the state was applied regardless of the will of the people, though that was standard practice in most of the world then. And yet, in situations such as the opening of the Paris Boulevards many communities were unnecessary abused in France, abused in ways that they had not been under the previous more democratic monarchy of Louis Philippe. The splendor of today’s Paris, largely inherited of Baron Haussman work, makes us forget today that these boulevards were drawn so as to allow for cavalry charges against the barricades that had been a regular occurrence since 1789 (and which will come up again notably in 1870 and 1968). In other words, crowded popular districts of downtown Paris were deliberately destroyed with their people moved to the periphery of the city to ensure more security for the government and the people who supported it (as well as the corruption that accompanied such public works). If you like Emile Zola I would suggest two of his novels to illustrate the politics and corruption of the times, La Conquête de Plassans and Son Excellence Eugene Rougon.
Chavez of course cannot even boast of the economic success of Napoleon III but his regime amusingly shares some of the characteristics of the Second Empire such as an existing but controlled opposition, without a real chance to ever access power (in a stunning political maneuver Napoleon III gained a political reprieve in 1869, neutralizing the Republican opposition, that would have allowed him to die peacefully in his palace a few years later if it had not been for the war on Prussia who saw the amazingly quick crumbling of his regime and the return of the republic in September 1870).
Chavez will never be Castro (Venezuela is not an island). Chavez will never be Stalin or Mao (he does not have a powerful political machinery that was ready for him when he reached power). Chavez will never be Mussolini or Franco (he did not reach power through a civil war or as the political consequences of a foreign war). Chavez will never be Hitler (Venezuelans are not disciplined Germans). Chavez will never be Peron (he would never allow an Evita to take the spotlight). Chavez will be Chavez, taking a page or two of each of the above, and several from Castro’s book. Like all of them ideology was more an excuse to hold power than anything they truly believed in. Chavez knows very well the weaknesses of the Venezuelan people and he is skillful at using them, just as many of these dictators did at least in the early part of their career. It is still too early to say what the end product of his takeover will be though possible outcomes can already be conceived such as a mad war against Colombia or even worse, a civil war in Venezuela as money will not be enough to satisfy the appetites of all of the military personnel. But what we can say today is that the regime has already the following characteristics of a dictatorship:
- there will not be a pacific take over by the opposition even if by miracle this one did manage to win a general election
- a repressive system is in place, and if repression has been used still relatively sparsely the tendency is to increasing use of it, as the possibility of repression is already a terror instrument
- the state is increasingly interfering in the private life of the people, selecting who gets what and who is punished in an arbitrary way, linked to the loyalty to Chavez
- a necessary but not sufficient condition for your success is to show loyalty to the regime, any opposition to Chavez or his acolytes now signifies your downfall, starting as simply as a targeted tax audit of which supporters of the regime seem almost miraculously exempt.
- corruption is an institution of rule
- assault troops exit. If the more vocal ones such as Lina Ron and La Piedrita are limited in scope, the fact of the matter is that paramilitary groups are growing in the country, hidden within the “reserva” a militia of sorts, or even in the public administration as told us by the implausible payrolls found by Ledezma when he took office in Caracas last year. These groups are now formed and ready to operate when the time comes, if the army allows
- other accessories also exist. For example Chavez has tried to use mass movement the way Mussolini or Peron did, but with limited success as the paid for assistance is a witness. However he has skillfully used TV and radio to penetrate the Venezuelan home using the folksy habits of Venezuelans of the country side: the circle of visitors loosely organized around the guest of honor or the patriarch. When you watch Chavez on TV you almost can feel him in your living room even if he is insulting you, calling you a traitor, just as the local patriarch would publicly recriminate you for having stolen some maiden’s honor or betrayed your husband’s pride…..
In short, when defining dictatorship in regards to Venezuela keep in mind that our circumstances are very different than the ones of the other more "classical" dictator regimes. But the end result is unfortunately the same. The word applies. And as such one needs to admits the consequences of such conclusion as to what is possible to do next.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Note: it is fitting to write about such matters these days as we commemorate once again the April 11-12-13 events of 2002. I am in no mood to revisit these days, however it is important to note that since April 13 2002 Chavez has done much worse things than what Carmona was promising to do on April 12 2002. A dictateur, dictateur et demi
as we could paraphrase from a French saying meaning that to each creep there is a match that might be even worse.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
1) ISBN 978-980-6933-42-2, Editorial Libros Marcados, September 2008
librosmarcados3000@yahoo.com
2) One of the justification of Louis Napoleón coup was to reestablish universal manhood suffrage that the 1848 revolution had established and which was limited by the surprisingly strong conservative assembly that was elected out of it. Thus after 1851 elections might not have been free but France was the only country then to have universal manhood suffrage for its 21 old citizens. We could call that the “democracia participativa and protagonica” plank of the times.
3) “colonization” was the gulag of the day as political prisoners were sent to Algeria or New Caledonia. But most of these forced exiles happened under the second republic repressive measures against the Paris and main cities political proletariat. Thus if the second empire cannot be blamed for their creation it still was not keen on eliminating then and certainly not adverse at using them when convenient. Note, as the years went by many of those “exiled” were allowed to return to France.
-The end-
Friday, April 03, 2009
Cuba's style justice in Venezuela
I have said that I would take a break for a week or two unless some really big news came along. The condemnation of Forero, Simonovis and Vivas would not have been enough for me to post. Their sentence to 30 years is more than enough.
In any civilized country application of the maximum sentence allowed is always a delicate matter. Usually it requires several of the following:
-the weapon murder
-a direct link with the victim
-premeditation
-an unusually cruel way to kill
-be caught in the act
-and other such reasons of equal weight
In Venezuela which abolished early death penalty the maximum sentence was 30 years, and it was applied as sparingly as the death penalty was applied elsewhere, at least during the democratic period of Venezuela which ended in February 2004. This sentence today is thus not the sentence of a democracy, it is a political sentence, just as those that are applied in Cuba to any dissident of the regime when this one needs to silence someone or needs to scare a few other folks.
Let me remind folks reading so far that I do not need to go to any long analysis to make my point: the trial that finished today has been perhaps the longest one in our history. It has been a trial repeatedly denounced for extraordinary vices of form. That is: there was no smoking gun to condemn these people to the maximum sentence because if there was such a smoking gun the trial would have been considerably shorter. It is that simple.
From the day these arrest were made the power of the state was simply looking for a convenient political moment to make an example of these people. As yet another anniversary of April 11-13 2002 is coming up and as the despicable campaign launched after February 15 to annul the opposition has been launched, Chavez with these verdicts and actions makes three points:
- he is rewriting history to make sure that ALL guilt of these days reside exclusively with those who oppose him. We must understand the arrest of Baduel yesterday in this context since it is through his actions that Chavez was rescued from a certain political exile. Chavez cannot appear anymore to have been saved by anyone but "el pueblo" who we are told he is the incarnation. The only problem left for him to solve is to erase from the record that he asked for the "plan avila" to be applied which implied terrorist violence led to the events of April 11. That will be achieved when the media is duly censored and unable to remind folks of that original sin of Chavez.
- he sends a clear message to all of his political opponents that he controls the judicial system and that from now on they must desist or face the consequences. No fair trial will be offered them and any small fault will be magnified enough to apply a disproportionate sentence, maybe not 30 years but enough to get you out of the way, or at the very least ban from politics courtesy of comptroller Russian.
- he sends an even clearer message to his supporters. Not only they are told what can happen to them if they stray (Baduel is the poster case), but they are also told that they must support any decision and make any justification for it, as implausible as that justification might be. His supporters must now be active in denouncing and condemning any opposition so that Chavez cannot be blamed. It must look as if it were a consensus. This is understood by us because these violations of Human Rights happen while Chavez is on a foreign trip.
PS: since I truly think nothing worse than that atrocious verdict of today is going to happen until after Easter, it will take at least an earthquake or a military coup to make post again while I sort out my blogging life. Anything else simply will pale in comparison to the crime committed today against the Venezuelan people.
-The end-
In any civilized country application of the maximum sentence allowed is always a delicate matter. Usually it requires several of the following:
-the weapon murder
-a direct link with the victim
-premeditation
-an unusually cruel way to kill
-be caught in the act
-and other such reasons of equal weight
In Venezuela which abolished early death penalty the maximum sentence was 30 years, and it was applied as sparingly as the death penalty was applied elsewhere, at least during the democratic period of Venezuela which ended in February 2004. This sentence today is thus not the sentence of a democracy, it is a political sentence, just as those that are applied in Cuba to any dissident of the regime when this one needs to silence someone or needs to scare a few other folks.
Let me remind folks reading so far that I do not need to go to any long analysis to make my point: the trial that finished today has been perhaps the longest one in our history. It has been a trial repeatedly denounced for extraordinary vices of form. That is: there was no smoking gun to condemn these people to the maximum sentence because if there was such a smoking gun the trial would have been considerably shorter. It is that simple.
From the day these arrest were made the power of the state was simply looking for a convenient political moment to make an example of these people. As yet another anniversary of April 11-13 2002 is coming up and as the despicable campaign launched after February 15 to annul the opposition has been launched, Chavez with these verdicts and actions makes three points:
- he is rewriting history to make sure that ALL guilt of these days reside exclusively with those who oppose him. We must understand the arrest of Baduel yesterday in this context since it is through his actions that Chavez was rescued from a certain political exile. Chavez cannot appear anymore to have been saved by anyone but "el pueblo" who we are told he is the incarnation. The only problem left for him to solve is to erase from the record that he asked for the "plan avila" to be applied which implied terrorist violence led to the events of April 11. That will be achieved when the media is duly censored and unable to remind folks of that original sin of Chavez.
- he sends a clear message to all of his political opponents that he controls the judicial system and that from now on they must desist or face the consequences. No fair trial will be offered them and any small fault will be magnified enough to apply a disproportionate sentence, maybe not 30 years but enough to get you out of the way, or at the very least ban from politics courtesy of comptroller Russian.
- he sends an even clearer message to his supporters. Not only they are told what can happen to them if they stray (Baduel is the poster case), but they are also told that they must support any decision and make any justification for it, as implausible as that justification might be. His supporters must now be active in denouncing and condemning any opposition so that Chavez cannot be blamed. It must look as if it were a consensus. This is understood by us because these violations of Human Rights happen while Chavez is on a foreign trip.
PS: since I truly think nothing worse than that atrocious verdict of today is going to happen until after Easter, it will take at least an earthquake or a military coup to make post again while I sort out my blogging life. Anything else simply will pale in comparison to the crime committed today against the Venezuelan people.
-The end-
A guide for following events during the blog break
OK, so it is a little bit rough for me to take a break with so many things going on (Rosales, Baduel, Vivas, Simonovis, Perez Vivas, Ledezma, etc, etc...). But you can handle it very well on your own as everything can be made clear if you understand what is written below.
Chavez is creating a system where no opposition can ever win an election. As such, one tenet is that any personality that could gain enough notoriety to present a challenge, even at local level, must be thoroughly dealt with. Any trial under any pretense is always a good starting point. That can be supplemented with threats and/or a well organized slander campaign. This strategy is completed by making sure that any politician that manages anyway to break through by winning some elected office, is dispossessed of any means he or she could have to make an impact through their job performance.
Why must Chavez and its acolytes do something as patently fascist? Because they all depend on Chavez, they are mediocrities that amounted to nothing until Chavez lifted the rock under which they crawled, and becasue most of them know that whenever and independent judicial comes back to Venezuela they will end up in jail.
See, it is very simple and it can explain even the closing of media, the new intervention of the judicial system, nationalizations, ridiculous invasions such as the Chacao old market or in short any successful venture in Venezuela that can prove that there is life without Chavez.
You may print this and use it as needed. It might still not work for the sports pages though it is already working for the entertainment pages as one of these crawling creeps suggested that Hollywood films should be banned form Venezuela.
PS: and with this post I am starting my new tag/label, "neo-totalitarianism". I predict a frequent usage of this tag when I get back in regular blogging.
-The end-
Chavez is creating a system where no opposition can ever win an election. As such, one tenet is that any personality that could gain enough notoriety to present a challenge, even at local level, must be thoroughly dealt with. Any trial under any pretense is always a good starting point. That can be supplemented with threats and/or a well organized slander campaign. This strategy is completed by making sure that any politician that manages anyway to break through by winning some elected office, is dispossessed of any means he or she could have to make an impact through their job performance.
Why must Chavez and its acolytes do something as patently fascist? Because they all depend on Chavez, they are mediocrities that amounted to nothing until Chavez lifted the rock under which they crawled, and becasue most of them know that whenever and independent judicial comes back to Venezuela they will end up in jail.
See, it is very simple and it can explain even the closing of media, the new intervention of the judicial system, nationalizations, ridiculous invasions such as the Chacao old market or in short any successful venture in Venezuela that can prove that there is life without Chavez.
You may print this and use it as needed. It might still not work for the sports pages though it is already working for the entertainment pages as one of these crawling creeps suggested that Hollywood films should be banned form Venezuela.
PS: and with this post I am starting my new tag/label, "neo-totalitarianism". I predict a frequent usage of this tag when I get back in regular blogging.
-The end-
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
I need a break
Since February 15 I have been writing a post, and rewriting it. And today I realize that I really need to finish this post, to take the time away from my blog to sort out these thoughts about what to with this blog.
The thing that made me realize the urgency is the latest post of Quico. For all my significant differences with him I can see when he gets something right and he did get something right in comparing Bush and al-Bashir. And some very undeserved flack for it. Some people might not like it but al-Bashir is a genocide and Bush is not.
The thing here is that I should have included something to that effect in my post about Chavez inviting al-Bashir. You only need to type in the word "genocide" in the top blog search feature and you will see almost two dozen entries with things such as:
May 15 2006
Of course, the reason for Chavez to qualify George Bush, the current US president, to be a genocidal president is due to the continued bombings of Iraq. This is certainly not the place to discuss the Iraq war. Instead I will discuss what genocide means and how that word has been abused, deliberately, by the chavista crowds.
But first a definition:
July 28 2006
I have underlined or circled the different allusions or direct attacks that abound in this tract. It sickens me to translate it but if anyone sees a purpose in the translation I will do it. Observe how the words holocaust and genocide are carelessly used, voided of any organic comment. Unforgivable!
August 10 2006
I will pass on discussing what is going on between Israel and its neighbors and focus on the fact that Chavez is consistently using words such as Holocaust, Fascism, Genocide, in conjunction to whatever his enemies do (in the case of Israel, which is not an enemy of Chavez the reason is to hit the main ally of Israel, the US, the perceived real enemy of Chavez).
Since Chavez is an ignorant of the real meaning of historical events one can conceive that the first 2-3 events where he used such words so lightly were a mere moment of irrationality and ignorance due to the length of his fiery speeches. But we cannot afford to entertain this benevolent hypothesis anymore: there is now a pattern. We are not even allowed to hope that his entourage is so scared of Chavez that they have not dared tell him that certain words are not to be played with. The vice president Jose Vicente Rangel knows better and he has had plenty of time to explain the subtleties to his boss. The trivialization of words such as Holocaust is a deliberate ploy. Soon we might even hear “Israel is holocausting Southern Lebanon”, becoming a verb as the ultimate descent into banality.
March 4, 2009
One little question: will Chavez defend, invite, praise Omar?
Not to mention that already in September 17, 2006 I was writing as a title: Does Chavez care about Darfur?
So why did I not remember all of that material? Note: before anyone thinks that I am trying to take credit away from Quico, I am not. If I cannot even remember myself what I wrote in so many occasions, how could I accuse anyone from the remotest plagiarism? Great minds think alike, as who knows who said in whatever sitcom, and any thinking person should reach te conclusion of what Quico wrote, although not necessarily as fast or as well written.
I definitely have a problem and I am losing any effectiveness that I might have had as a blogger. For example, why did I not see how big that issue was and focused rather on Chavez insulting Bachelet when it should have been the other way around? Is it because I have already said things so often that I am assuming that all should know? Am I despising Chavez so much that it has become easier to dismiss him, or to focus on the ridicule? How tired I am of this business?
Rafale Poleo titles his articles with a quote of Gide: Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer. (Everything has already been said; but since no one pays attention we must always start again.) I have been thinking a lot about that quote lately, not only because 6 years of blogging made me repeat too many things, but because all of that repeating is getting to me. And yet necessary it seems.
So, I will not post anything anymore for a few days, until I finish up that text I am working on. I need the time to think about what is it that I am doing here, now, in a post-February 15 apocalyptic scenario. Unless Rosales is arrested or some real major event, you will have to go elsewhere for the news and interpretations as I pledge no to post anything until I put some order in my thoughts. With Easter week coming it might take a while, and be a blessing.
PS: Comments will be monitored, just in case someone wants to write on this or other matters, I am not entering a monastery, I just need to finish something already in progress.
-The end-
The thing that made me realize the urgency is the latest post of Quico. For all my significant differences with him I can see when he gets something right and he did get something right in comparing Bush and al-Bashir. And some very undeserved flack for it. Some people might not like it but al-Bashir is a genocide and Bush is not.
The thing here is that I should have included something to that effect in my post about Chavez inviting al-Bashir. You only need to type in the word "genocide" in the top blog search feature and you will see almost two dozen entries with things such as:
May 15 2006
Of course, the reason for Chavez to qualify George Bush, the current US president, to be a genocidal president is due to the continued bombings of Iraq. This is certainly not the place to discuss the Iraq war. Instead I will discuss what genocide means and how that word has been abused, deliberately, by the chavista crowds.
But first a definition:
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.The link gives only one meaning. No ambiguity.
July 28 2006
I have underlined or circled the different allusions or direct attacks that abound in this tract. It sickens me to translate it but if anyone sees a purpose in the translation I will do it. Observe how the words holocaust and genocide are carelessly used, voided of any organic comment. Unforgivable!
August 10 2006
I will pass on discussing what is going on between Israel and its neighbors and focus on the fact that Chavez is consistently using words such as Holocaust, Fascism, Genocide, in conjunction to whatever his enemies do (in the case of Israel, which is not an enemy of Chavez the reason is to hit the main ally of Israel, the US, the perceived real enemy of Chavez).
Since Chavez is an ignorant of the real meaning of historical events one can conceive that the first 2-3 events where he used such words so lightly were a mere moment of irrationality and ignorance due to the length of his fiery speeches. But we cannot afford to entertain this benevolent hypothesis anymore: there is now a pattern. We are not even allowed to hope that his entourage is so scared of Chavez that they have not dared tell him that certain words are not to be played with. The vice president Jose Vicente Rangel knows better and he has had plenty of time to explain the subtleties to his boss. The trivialization of words such as Holocaust is a deliberate ploy. Soon we might even hear “Israel is holocausting Southern Lebanon”, becoming a verb as the ultimate descent into banality.
March 4, 2009
One little question: will Chavez defend, invite, praise Omar?
Not to mention that already in September 17, 2006 I was writing as a title: Does Chavez care about Darfur?
So why did I not remember all of that material? Note: before anyone thinks that I am trying to take credit away from Quico, I am not. If I cannot even remember myself what I wrote in so many occasions, how could I accuse anyone from the remotest plagiarism? Great minds think alike, as who knows who said in whatever sitcom, and any thinking person should reach te conclusion of what Quico wrote, although not necessarily as fast or as well written.
I definitely have a problem and I am losing any effectiveness that I might have had as a blogger. For example, why did I not see how big that issue was and focused rather on Chavez insulting Bachelet when it should have been the other way around? Is it because I have already said things so often that I am assuming that all should know? Am I despising Chavez so much that it has become easier to dismiss him, or to focus on the ridicule? How tired I am of this business?
Rafale Poleo titles his articles with a quote of Gide: Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer. (Everything has already been said; but since no one pays attention we must always start again.) I have been thinking a lot about that quote lately, not only because 6 years of blogging made me repeat too many things, but because all of that repeating is getting to me. And yet necessary it seems.
So, I will not post anything anymore for a few days, until I finish up that text I am working on. I need the time to think about what is it that I am doing here, now, in a post-February 15 apocalyptic scenario. Unless Rosales is arrested or some real major event, you will have to go elsewhere for the news and interpretations as I pledge no to post anything until I put some order in my thoughts. With Easter week coming it might take a while, and be a blessing.
PS: Comments will be monitored, just in case someone wants to write on this or other matters, I am not entering a monastery, I just need to finish something already in progress.
-The end-
Communists are not what they used to be
The other day a Globovision journalist obtained the pay check of a communist representative to the Venezuelan National Assembly. Apparently the guy did not know how much he was making and looked quite confused when Beatriz Adrian showed him his receipt (in general Communist Party elected officials turn over their pay check to the party who in exchange give them a salary according to their proletarian status; well, at least that is the theory).
This happened a couple of days after Chavez announced his alleged austerity plan, where the N.A. president Cilia Flores pretended that representatives really did make that much money when Chavez asked for pay check reduction. The publication of a rather substantial income far from the asseveration of Cilia gave us her very irate reaction. She actually threatened the Globovison journalist when in a real democracy the pay check of public officials is usually public knowledge.
Well, today we can read that the Communist Party Member whose paycheck was revealed, Oscar Figueras, is defending the secrecy of income because, well, you know, criminals get this information and they try to hold you for ransom. Unbelievable! What next? The communist party defending bonus to failed business managers at tax payer expense? Oh, wait! in bolivarian Venezuela that is an everyday occurrence for the managers of failed state enterprises!!!!
Meanwhile they have tracked down who gave the paycheck of Figueras and they are goign to punish him. The glorious bolivarian farce does not tolerate whistle blowers.
-The end-
This happened a couple of days after Chavez announced his alleged austerity plan, where the N.A. president Cilia Flores pretended that representatives really did make that much money when Chavez asked for pay check reduction. The publication of a rather substantial income far from the asseveration of Cilia gave us her very irate reaction. She actually threatened the Globovison journalist when in a real democracy the pay check of public officials is usually public knowledge.
Well, today we can read that the Communist Party Member whose paycheck was revealed, Oscar Figueras, is defending the secrecy of income because, well, you know, criminals get this information and they try to hold you for ransom. Unbelievable! What next? The communist party defending bonus to failed business managers at tax payer expense? Oh, wait! in bolivarian Venezuela that is an everyday occurrence for the managers of failed state enterprises!!!!
Meanwhile they have tracked down who gave the paycheck of Figueras and they are goign to punish him. The glorious bolivarian farce does not tolerate whistle blowers.
-The end-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)