Update:
A couple of reactions to Maduro’s “I-am-so-misunderstood” op-ed in the New York Times — in Times’ Letters to the Editor by some influential readers.
Some excerpts:
… Venezuela is plagued by one of the world’s highest murder rates, rampant corruption related to state assets, a 57 percent inflation rate, a junk rating on the global bond markets and unprecedented scarcity of goods as basic as toilet paper. Venezuela’s government long ago ceased to be a democracy, by failing to live up to its responsibilities under the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
[..]
Mr. Maduro has hailed his efforts at “building a new national police force, strengthening community-police cooperation and revamping our prison system.” He did not disclose that this police force has been unleashed on innocent demonstrators, this “community-police cooperation” manifests itself through groups of armed thugs that routinely roam the streets on motorcycles looking for government opponents to beat and kill, and this prison system now houses several political prisoners, including Leopoldo López.
Congress should resist Mr. Maduro’s charm offensive, expose his regime’s brutal nature and adopt the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, which authorizes sanctions on people involved in serious human rights violations against peaceful demonstrators in Venezuela.
President Nicolás Maduro calls for peace in Venezuela. As chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I want nothing more.
Ironically, it is Mr. Maduro himself who is systematically violating human rights, forestalling peace. Following the populist playbook he inherited from his mentor, Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro writes that “antigovernment protests are being carried out by people in the wealthier segments of society.”
Shameless class-warfare rhetoric cannot change facts: The president has been violently crushing democratic protests, using disproportionate force, taking at least 39 lives. He intimidates democratic participation, labels opposition “Nazis” and “terrorists,” shuts down independent television networks, and arrests opposition leaders to silence discourse.
The American people are committed to supporting democratic values and human rights wherever threatened, whether through targeted sanctions or support for organizations that strengthen democracy.
Unlike the Organization of American States, Congress will not ignore Venezuela’s cries for freedom. If President Maduro is honest about peace, he must end his authoritarian stranglehold on the Venezuelan people, who are dying in pursuit of democracy, prosperity and freedom of expression.
By Edward R. Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In the meantime, Maduro’s government, a government boasting of having “ensured that both power and resources are equitably distributed among [its] people,”has “Venezuelans queued up to register for an electronic card system designed to end food shortages that have plagued the country – but which some fear may be the thin end of the rationing wedge,” according to the Guardian.
The ID card, introduced this week, will limit Venezuelans to once-a-week shopping and will set off an alarm to halt any transaction if a purchaser breaks the rules. The government wants to prevent individual shoppers from “over-buying” in a country hit by acute shortages of basic items including milk, sugar and toilet paper. Critics say it is an admission of failure of economic policy in one of the world’s big oil-producing nations.
Some critics say that “the card is the most blatant sign that Venezuela’s economy has spiraled out of control. For some, the recent move is nothing short of a Cuban-style rationing card that will sooner or later hamper citizens’ economic freedoms.”
Read more here.
Original Post:
An op-ed at the New York Times Wednesday by Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro is reminiscent of Putin’s attempt in the same newspaper last September to “speak directly to the American people,” that time on the issue of Syria.
Even the titles are similarly placid and innocuous. Maduro’s “Venezuela: A Call for Peace” and Putin’s “A Plea for Caution From Russia.”
It is a clever ploy, but just like Putin’s piece, Maduro’s op-ed is full of hypocrisy, half-truths and outright balderdash.
In his piece, Maduro laments how misunderstood he and his policies are: “Much of the foreign media coverage has distorted the reality of my country and the facts surrounding the events.”
He also, recycles his accusation that “the American government supported the 2002 coup and recognized the coup government despite its anti-democratic behavior” and Maduro airs a new grievance, that “today, the Obama administration spends at least $5 million annually to support opposition movements in Venezuela” and that legislation “calling for an additional $15 million for these anti-government organizations is now in Congress.”
He calls on the American people to tell their representatives not to enact sanctions on Venezuela.
Maduro is proud of the Venezuelan “participatory democracy,” built up “from the grass roots.”
He boasts about Venezuela’s standard of living and how his social policies have “improved citizens’ lives over all,” except, of course for that pesky, rampant inflation, the severe shortages of basic goods resulting in the gouging of customers, hoarding of products, a thriving black market and an alarmingly high crime rate.
Other than that, all is well in Venezuela, Maduro, claims.
Just look, Maduro says, at how the movement founded by Hugo Chávez has won fair and square “more than a dozen presidential, parliamentary and local elections through an electoral process that former American President Jimmy Carter has called ‘the best in the world.’”
Just look, he crows, at how “popular participation in politics in Venezuela has increased dramatically over the past decade.”
As to the current demonstrations, which in the United States have been described “as peaceful” and where folks have accused the Venezuelan government of “violently repressing them, Maduro says poppycock and attributes the chaos in the streets, the violence, destruction of property and “about half of the fatalities” suffered in the last two months directly to the protesters, that is “people in the wealthier segments of society who seek to reverse the gains of the democratic process that have benefited the vast majority of the people.” Protests that allegedly “have received no support in poor and working-class neighborhoods.”
Maduro concludes by calling for “dialogue and diplomacy,” saying that he has “extended a hand to the opposition” and has reached out to President Obama, hoping that Obama’s administration will “respond in kind.”
But what do others, much more familiar with Venezuelan politics, say?
While there are many blogs in and outside Venezuela that have been doing a good job of piercing through the fog of Maduro’s propaganda, there is perhaps none better than “Caracas Chronicles” (CaracasChronicles.com), a blog that has been “the place for opposition-leaning-but-not-insane analysis of the Venezuelan political scene since 2002.”
The blog’s founder, Francisco Toro, a Venezuelan journalist and co-author of Blogging the Revolution: Caracas Chronicles and the Hugo Chávez Era, contributes occasionally.
In a New Republic piece, the gist of it given away by its title, “The Most Outrageous Lie in Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s New York Times Op-Ed,” Toro “fact-checks” Maduro’s op-ed. Saying “Fact-checking the entire piece would be enough to cause an aneurysm,” Toro focuses on Maduro’s claim that the Bolivarian revolution “created flagship universal health care and education programs, free to our citizens nationwide.”
He does a fair job of debunking those notions by going back to 1961, 1938 and as far back as 1870, citing the “long, rich history of health and education reforms that in 1999 bequeathed Chávez the large and ambitious, albeit flawed, health and education systems that Maduro oversees today.”
Toro is concerned that while “Venezuelans have grown used to the tsunami of spin, obfuscation, half-truths, and outright lies that dominate our large and growing state propaganda system, the Times’ readers are likely less prepared for it.”
A couple of Americans, who have been on the ground in Venezuela for several years, are certainly prepared for seeing through that tsunami.
Diane and Shayne, daughter and son-in-law, respectively, of a good friend have been covering Venezuelan politics, culture and society in their wonderful blog cokerdemdepriest. They covered in real time the reactions to Hugo Chavez’ death and described the days and weeks leading up to it.
More recently they have been covering the unrest and violence in Venezuela including the day that Venezuela really started “unraveling.”
After a month of violent protests, on March 7, Shayne asks,”What Now?” and provides an insightful assessment of the situation:
Without support of the poor, it is almost certain there will be no lasting substantial change in Venezuelan politics. If the barrio Chavistas were to start locking arms with the opposition, it would be a game changer. Doing so would mean the poor trusting the opposition to be a positive force, despite government claims to the contrary. Barrio residents would also have to rise up and challenge the armed bandits (colectivos) who control their barrios and currently prevent them from expressing any opposition support.
In that post, as the world’s attention was riveted on Ukraine and the disappearance of Flight MH370, Shayne highlights Venezuela’s dire economic and security situation with the example of Air Canada suspending flights to Venezuela citing “the dangers caused by protests and on-going instability.” By the way, “the Venezuelan government owes foreign airlines approximately $3.7 billion dollars for the past year of operations,” Shayne says.
Also mentioned, the shortages of consumer goods, ration cards, hoarding and, of course, the continuing protests and arrests — including the arrests of two mayors associated with the opposition.
Finally, in his most recent post, “Altamira to Zumba: The On-Going Paradoxes of Caracas,” Shayne comments on the paradox of a country that brings in $90 billion in oil revenues each year having to ration milk, sugar, chicken, toilet paper, etc.
He tells us of the tragedy of a physical therapist who five years ago had saved a nice nest egg of about 50,000 Bolivars, or around $25,000 at those days’ exchange rate. Today, because of inflation, at the present exchange rate, his “nest egg” is worth $833.33. “No typo,” Shayne says, “and it gets more bizarre.”
Read more about the strange paradox that is Venezuela today here.
Lead image of Nicolás Maduro courtesy dolartoday.com.
