Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID

Business Insider  Nov. 18, 2018

• Venezuela is rolling out a new, smart-card ID known as the "carnet de la patria," or "fatherland card," manufactured by Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corp.
• The ID transmits data about cardholders to government computer servers, and is increasingly linked to subsidized food, health, and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.
• The fatherland card, critics argue, illustrates how China, through state-linked companies like ZTE, exports technological know-how that can help like-minded governments track, reward, and punish citizens.

Venezuela’s neighbours are tightening their borders as crisis spurs exodus

The Guardian  9 Feb 2018

Venezuela’s neighbours are tightening their borders, alarmed by the exodus of hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing hunger, hyperinflation and a spiralling political crisis.

Brazil and Colombia are sending extra troops to patrol frontier regions where Venezuelans have arrived in record numbers over recent months.

Colombia, which officially took in more than half a million Venezuelans over the last six months of 2017, also plans to make it harder to cross the frontier or stay illegally in Colombia. Brazil said it will shift refugees from regions near the border where social services are badly strained.

The economic crisis and food shortages which have driven so many from their homes show no signs of easing.

The International Monetary Fund forecasts hyperinflation in Venezuela will hit 13,000% this year, so most salaries are now worth the equivalent of just a few British pounds a month.

Thousands of Venezuelans are searching for a new life in Colombia as crisis deepens

By Katy Watson  28 September 2017

Many have queued overnight, waiting patiently for the Simón Bolívar International bridge to open. Some 25,000 people cross the bridge into Colombia every day.

It is a short walk between the two countries but with the political and economic crisis in Venezuela deepening, the two neighbours now seem worlds apart.

Venezuela is suffering from acute shortages of medicines, hospitals struggle to treat patients and staple goods have become scarce and unaffordable to many.

Mothers cradle their babies, bringing them to the hospital in the town of Cúcuta, on the Colombian side of the border, to get them vaccinated.

Families push poorly relatives in wheelchairs. Others cross into Colombia with empty suitcases, filling them up with food and supplies they cannot get in Venezuela.

Two women with a baby in a pushchair walk past the border guard, muttering: "What a humiliation." They are clearly embarrassed they have to do this.

Crossing the border for food

The local church in Cúcuta is feeding between 600 and 2,000 people a day in an open-air courtyard filled with plastic tables and chairs.

Verónica Mendoza, 24, is five months pregnant. She is tucking in to a meal of rice, beans, potatoes and mince with her mother, Mariluz.

The two women travel two hours every day from Venezuela to sell fruit at a market in Colombia.

They cannot find work back home. They come here for their only proper meal of the day.

"Look at the weight I've lost," says Mariluz, grabbing her once fleshy arms and showing the loose skin. "I used to be healthy and strong. But we have to walk such a long way and work so hard."

Mariluz's case is not rare. Recent research [in Spanish] suggests that three-quarters of Venezuelans lost weight in the past year, an average of 9kg (20lb).

Living on the streets

The Colombian government recently introduced "border mobility cards" to allow Venezuelans to go back and forth across the border without the need for a passport.

More than 700,000 people have applied for the scheme so far.

But some like Carlos Alberto Ledesma, a professional jazz musician from Caracas, want to stay in Colombia for good.

Mr Ledesma arrived in Cúcuta eight days ago. "I spent a year living on the streets," he says.

"I stopped working in Venezuela because the bars aren't open, half of the musicians have gone."

Official figures put the number of Venezuelans who have left their homeland for Colombia because of the crisis at 300,000. But the actual number is thought to be much higher.

The influx is putting strain on communities in Colombia, which have lived through more than five decades of armed conflict between left-wing guerrilla groups, the armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries.

Luis Fernando Niño López is the secretary for victims, peace and post-conflict for the province of Norte de Santander, where Cúcuta is located.

"At the moment, there's a pretty big flow but not everybody stays," he says of the Venezuelans arriving in the region.

"But what's going to happen when they can't go back because [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro closes the border or because armed groups that control the border won't let people go back?"

Sheltering Venezuelans

At a shelter run by the Scalabrini International Migration Network in the centre of Cúcuta, the growing scale of the problem is evident.

Between January and June, 650 people came through its doors. In August alone, there were 850 people.

Mr Franklin Díaz, who runs the shelter, says those who come to the shelter are in urgent need of attention and more should be done to help them.

"The action of the authorities is fundamental, they are the ones who manage the resources."

Many of those crossing into Colombia from Venezuela originally fled the armed conflict in Colombia.

Nereidis Ascanio is one of them. Her father was killed by paramilitaries so her family left for Venezuela when she was a child.

A single mother, her two little boys have Venezuelan nationality.

She recently returned to Colombia and now lives in a little shack made out of wooden beams and a corrugated iron roof on the outskirts of Cúcuta. The tarpaulin walls do not even cover the entire shack. 

Ms Ascanio is desperate. "I need to find food for my kids," she says while she wipes away tears.

"And I need to find a job that will allow me to look after my boys."

Getting stuck in Cúcuta

Other Colombians left for Venezuela when the oil industry started booming there in the 1980s.

With oil prices now low and the economic crisis in Venezuela worsening, they too are returning in large numbers.

Many arrive in Colombia with great expectations of a new life.

But Venezuela's triple-digit inflation means their savings in Venezuelan bolivares are worthless once converted into Colombian pesos, so many get stuck.

In the middle of the town is a roundabout with a large sculpture which reads "I love Cúcuta". Some people are curled up sleeping in the letters "c".

Jeferson José Gutierres is one of those sleeping rough along with his wife and their three children. 

He came here a month ago and cannot find work.

But he says life in Cúcuta is still better than in Venezuela and he is not planning on going back while President Maduro is in power.

"I'll return when Maduro goes," he says.

"He's a president who spends money while his people die of hunger."         BBC

United Airlines will end its daily flight service to Venezuela in July, further isolating the crisis-hit South American country

By Girish Gupta | WASHINGTON

United Airlines will end its daily flight service to Venezuela in July, further isolating the crisis-hit South American country from international travel after the exit of many major airlines in recent years.

Many airlines have left after a protracted dispute over billions of dollars they say the government owes them. They say President Nicolas Maduro's administration has failed to reimburse companies in hard currency for ticket sales in local currency, as per strict currency controls in the socialist nation.

United, which flies daily between Caracas and Houston'sGeorge Bush Intercontinental Airport, confirmed to Reuters that it was halting that route, though said it was not because of any payment dispute.

While the flight is popular with Texas-based oil executives and Venezuelans living in the United States, few tourists travel to the crisis-stricken country and flights often have low occupancy.

"In every market we serve, we continually review demand for service and because our Houston-Caracas service is not meeting our financial expectations we have decided to suspend it, effective July 1," United spokesman Charles Hobart said in an email to Reuters.

In addition to currency disputes and low occupancy on flights to Venezuela, airlines also fret about security for their crews on the ground.

Unrest prompted by food shortages has resulted in the deaths of at least 64 people since April. On Saturday, a few hundred activists staged a protest in western Caracas.

United in April added a one-hour stop in the Caribbean island of Aruba to its Houston-to-Caracas leg, a move analysts said was to ensure crews would not have to stay overnight in Venezuela.     Reuters

Venezuela is facing complete socioeconomic ruin. What comes next?

By Salvatore Giannavola,  Jun 3, 2017

The economic and political crisis in Venezuela is rapidly deteriorating into a monumental human tragedy. Essential goods are becoming exceedingly rare and political violence is on the rise.

We decided to analyze the Venezuelan paradox from close up. Alejandra, a Venezuelan girl who left her country about four years ago for Europe,offered us some perspective on what is happening in her homeland. Today she works as an architect in Malta. Find the video of the complete interview here at Blogstermind.

Venezuela through Alejandra's eyes

Hi Alejandra, thank you for accepting our proposal. For us, this testimony has enormous value. Let's start with the first question.

How is the typical day of a young Venezuelan?

I can answer this question as I have a 23-year-old brother. There is nothing to do because it is dangerous to walk in the streets, there is no money to devote to something other than food, water, and utilities. Those few who have the money work for the government, for criminal organizations or are tourists.

We read in the international newspapers that today electricity and other essential goods have been rationed. Is this true?

Yes, the rationing of resources in my country has been a sad reality for years and the situation is aggravated by the unpredictability with which the government operates. It often happens that electricity and water are missing for several hours without any notice and this does not allow the population an adequate organization. This economic war pushes companies, nationally and not, to impose fixed prices that increase each day.

Who are the Bachaqueros? How did this profession come out?

The Bachaqueros are marginal people willing to wait for hours in lines at the shop, and then resell the necessities on the black market for three times their purchase price. They're the "daughter-in-law" of the food shortage, which has caused endless lines in front of supermarkets, accompanied by party restrictions that allow purchases only one day a week per person.

How long have you been abroad? How often do you visit your family?

I've been twice in my country for the last four years. Traveling is only possible if you have your passport; they're very difficult to obtain because the bureaucracy doesn't even have the paper needed to print them. Those who managed to leave without a passport have serious problems coming back because then when he returns, he would not get one. There is no paper to print them in the offices.

Alejandra, history teaches us that discontent and repression cannot last long, when and how will you end all this? Do you think the Trump administration will intervene?

Power needs to change but I do not want American intervention at all. I would not like to see Trump's intervention, I hope rather than the national governments of other states pledge to help us get out of this crisis situation.       Russia Insider

People are starving in Venezuela

Four more citizens have been killed in opposition-led street violence in Venezuela

Caracas, April 12, 2017 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Four more citizens have been killed in opposition-led street violence in Venezuela, bringing the death count to a total of six since the protests began nine days ago. 

The victims are: Bryan Principal, 13, Miguel Ángel Colmenares, 36, Oliver Villa Camargo, 29, and Antonio Gruseny Canelon, 32. 

Principal, Colmenarez, and Canelon were all killed in the western state of Lara, one of the focal points of the violence, while Camargo was shot dead in central Caracas. 

According to reports, Principal was killed by opposition protestors who opened fire on the Ali Primera government housing project in Barquisimeto during a black-out on Tuesday night. He later died from his injuries in the hospital. 

In statements released following the minor’s death, residents at Ali Primera explained that the housing project had been at the centre of an ongoing confrontation between pro-government supporters and opposition protesters throughout the day.         Read More

Venezuela’s Economic Crisis Is So Bad That Women Are Selling Their Hair

By Reuters, December 6, 2016 

“I’m here because I have nothing to eat,” said one woman. 

Women from crisis-hit Venezuela are crossing the border in droves and selling their hair in a Colombian border town in order to afford scarce basic necessities such as food, diapers or medicines.

The trend, which has taken off in recent weeks, is another sign of the oil-rich country’s deepening crisis amid shortages and spiraling inflation that have millions skipping meals and forgoing costly medical treatment.

Dozens of middlemen, known as “draggers,” stand on a bridge linking San Antonio, Venezuela, to Colombia’s La Parada, calling out: “We buy hair!”

Some 200 women a day are taking up their offer at one of seven makeshift stands dotting La Parada, according to estimates from five middlemen. The locks are then sold as extensions in the western Colombian city of Cali.

Celina Gonzales, a 45-year-old street vendor, stood in line for an hour to sell her mid-length brown hair for 60,000 Colombian pesos, or about $20 – the equivalent of a monthly minimum wage and food tickets back home.

“I suffer arthritis and I need to buy medicine. This won’t be much, but at least I can buy painkillers,” said Gonzales, who had not told her family what she was doing.

Venezuela‘s leftist government blames the crisis on businessmen waging an “economic war” to sabotage it. The Information Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

‘THEY GO BUY FOOD’

As the economy teeters under a third year of recession, Venezuelans are increasingly ending up empty-handed despite long lines for heavily-subsidized food. Non-subsidized food is far too expensive, with a bag of rice sometimes costing around a tenth of monthly earnings.

Many are forced to survive on starches or forage through garbage for scraps. In recent months, hundreds have drifted across to Colombia to buy groceries.

In the border towns, the hair business is booming.

“I can take off volume, cut strands here and there or make a ponytail and cut all the hair,” explained Jenifer Nino, 31, a so-called dragger, as she stood next to informal hair salons housed on street corners, sidewalks and even a tire store.

“Most of the women come here with little kids and after cutting their hair they go buy food,” Nino added.

Some women complain the haircuts are sloppy and end up regretting the decision, while others are turned away.

Maribel, a poor woman from Venezuela‘s Tachira state traveled to Colombia after her brother told her about the hair business.

“I’m here because I have nothing to eat,” she said, but was later rebuffed because her hair was too short and thin.                      Fortune

The Other Explanation for Venezuela’s Economic Crisis

March 24, 2016 COHA 22 Comments Chavez, chavismo, Maduro, Peter Bolton

By Peter Bolton, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

To download a PDF version of this article, click here.

Reports in the English-language press last week highlighted a series of small-scale street protests in Venezuela that bemoaned the scarcity of certain basic products, chronic shortages of medical supplies, and continued power and water outages throughout the country. According to Reuters, for instance, more than a thousand such protests occurred in January and February and, taken together, “show the depth of public anger” and “could become a catalyst for wider unrest.”[1] News accounts proclaiming Venezuela’s state of emergency are not new but in recent weeks have reached hysterical levels, with the Boston-based Global Post claiming that Venezuela’s economic situation is now “worse than 1960s Cuba.”[2]

The mainstream narrative explanation is that the crisis is the result of economic mismanagement and the ideological rigidity of the country’s “authoritarian” Chavista led-government. For instance, Andreas E. Feldmann, Federico Merke, and Oliver Stuenkel, writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote last November that “Venezuela’s steep recession has been worsened by economic mismanagement leading to mounting inflation, a widening fiscal deficit, and growing shortages of essential goods including food, soap, and diapers.”[3] Similarly, Arlecchino Gomez at The Daily Signal, wrote, also last November, that Venezuela’s recession “was largely due to government incompetence and mismanagement.”[4]

The Workings of the “Free” Market

These sentiments are strongly predicated on the standard line of economic thought prevailing in the Western media and political class: that stringent price and currency controls are distorting the mechanisms of the “free” market and have led to stagnant production, soaring inflation and a burgeoning black market in U.S. dollars and consumer goods. The explicit or strongly implied conclusion is that the crisis proves beyond doubt that socialism “doesn’t work” and that the solution to Venezuela’s ills is a return with gusto to Chicago School economic policy and hence a restoration of the unimpeded mechanisms of the market. Making this point in Forbes magazine, Tim Walstall goes so far as to compare the situation in Venezuela with the collapse of the Soviet Union; he argues that the solution “is to do as Russia did at the end of their socialist nightmare… [and implement] an immediate move to full blown free marketry [sic].”[5] To achieve this, “regime change” is presented as an imperative prerequisite and the only viable way for things to improve. Michael Shifter, writing in Foreign Affairs, says that even though many on the Latin American left initially found Chavismo an “appealing alternative to market-based approaches,” these days “few dispute that it has failed.”[6]

The Alternative Thesis

Within Venezuela itself, however, this analysis is just one of two competing narratives, both of which are discussed and taken seriously in discussions of policy, governance, and economic dynamics. The economic mismanagement thesis is the natural position taken by the Venezuelan opposition and its allies. But the fact that it is practically the only narrative reported in the English-language press misrepresents the intricacies of Venezuela’s economic problems while revealing how Western media heavily favor the opposition’s analysis, often by its own admission. (Rory Carroll of The Guardian, for instance, boasted that he moved almost exclusively in opposition elite circles while based in Caracas as the paper’s Latin America editor.)

But there is another narrative, favored by the government and the pro-Chavista social movements and civil society sectors, which, it is important to stress, are independent of the government. This perspective can loosely be called the economic war thesis. It explains the crisis in terms of the economic and social dynamics at play outside policy and governmental action. It holds that business sectors friendly to the opposition are waging an aggressive and protracted campaign of economic sabotage to deliberately stir up social unrest to destabilize and discredit the governing Chavista bloc and in the ensuing chaos bring about an end to the PSUV government and the installation of a new one made up of opposition parties. The central pillars of the economic war thesis are that these hostile sectors have been engaging in acts such as hoarding and price speculation and have purposely generated scarcity in pursuit of calculated chaos.

Naturally, all of the allegations that make up this narrative are dismissed out of hand by the opposition, which argues that they amount to a desperate propaganda stunt to shift blame from the government’s own incompetence onto its political opponents. President Nicolás Maduro’s use of the term “bourgeois parasites” in particular has been seized on by opposition commentators to portray him as a hopeless buffoon desperately holding onto to power and flailingly seeking to prop up a failed political project. Friendly commentators in the Western press are equally disparaging, with the aforementioned Michael Shifter, for instance, claiming that these accusations “have no merit,” but do serve to “show that any semblance of cooperation between the executive and the assembly to alleviate the country’s economic collapse is, at least for now, far-fetched.”[7] Similarly, Jeffrey Taylor writes in Foreign Policy, “Maduro’s response [to shortages and currency crises] has been to blame everything on scheming “Yanquis,” Venezuela’s “far-right elite,” the “parasitic bourgeois,” and, of course, the opposition, “even though he has effectively neutralized its leadership.”[8]

But though more scholarly research is necessary for a detailed and considered analysis of the myriad factors contributing to Venezuela’s economic situation, it is worth giving the claims of Chavismo a fair hearing. A fuller picture shows that this alternate thesis should not be so glibly dismissed.

Take hoarding, for instance. Before Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998, the economic levers of society were near-exclusively in the hands of a social elite of overwhelmingly light-skinned Venezuelans: the inhabitants of the wealthy neighborhoods of Venezuela’s urban centers and wealthy landowners of the campo. Not only were they in charge of importation, distribution and wholesaling of all manner of goods for the Venezuelan markets, but they also had a stranglehold over the state apparatus needed to profiteer from effective importation in the first place. A central goal of Chavismo was to wrest control of the economic levers from this elite and more evenly disperse it throughout society. The Chávez and Maduro administrations have sought to democratize economic decision-making and predicate it on serving the public interest rather than the pursuit of private profit.

Confronting Entrenched Privilege

Political psychology provides important insights into the socio-economic dynamics of Venezuelan society. In his book, Angry White Men, sociologist Michael Kimmel argues that much of white men’s rage in the United States is the result of privileges that were historically bestowed on them gradually becoming less automatic. As historically disadvantaged sectors gain more opportunities and influence, the change appears to the previously favored group as a great injustice.[9] The same dynamic is evident in Venezuela: an unaccountable elite of overwhelmingly white, Euro-descent Venezuelans hold positions of influence and has had control of many of the important economic decisions. In great part the Chavista movement was based on giving voice to the country’s poor majority, which incidentally is overwhelmingly black, brown, indigenous, and/or mixed race. Hugo Chávez was himself of mixed-race heritage, with European, native Venezuelan, and African ancestry. The mere idea that such a person (or mono, meaning monkey, as the opposition frequently called him) could be president and give voice to the dark-skinned chusma was seen as a veritable insult to the Venezuelan elite.

The Chávez and Maduro governments have attempted to transition Venezuela away from a society that has been not only inherently racist and classist, but also highly rigid, stratified and oligarchic. Problems inevitably arise because this elite already holds the reins and can aggressively resist a recalibration of economic and social power. In 1998, the highly corrupt business class controlled almost every economic structure imaginable from distribution of food and production of oil to systems for obtaining dollars and importing consumer goods. As James Petras and Henry Veitmeyer argue in their 2013 book What’s Left in Latin America? Regime Change in New Times, “The government’s socialist project depends on mass social organizations capable of advancing on the economic elite and cleaning the neighborhoods of rightwing thugs, gangsters and paramilitary agents of the Venezuelan oligarchs and [Colombia’s] Uribe regime.”[10] Since these are the people who were already in positions of economic power and influence when the Bolivarian process began, their ability to throw a wrench in the government’s efforts for reform has been formidable. Ryan Mallet-Outtrim, writing in Venezuela Analysis, points out that “Venezuela’s private sector has long attacked the socialist government.” So much so, he adds, “that for years Venezuelans have acknowledged that scarcity of basic consumer goods spikes around important elections, as businesses seek to pressure voters into turning against Chavismo.”[11]

Evidence of such efforts by pro-opposition sectors has not been lacking. Immediately following the opposition victory in the 2015 National Assembly elections, for instance, social media commentators indicated that staple goods miraculously began to reappear on shelves throughout the country.[12] Tellingly, some of the products had expiration dates that suggested that the problem was not with production but rather with distribution, which is largely controlled by the right-wing business elite. By creating this kind of scarcity, the elite were essentially trying to starve the public into rejecting the revolution, a tactic influenced by the United States’ economic blockade against Cuba.

When these dynamics are taken in the wider context of Venezuelan politics over the last two decades, they begin to seem less and less ridiculous and more and more plausible. Throughout the period of Chavismo there have been times when these aggressive tactics of economic sabotage have been too obvious to allow for the opposition’s usual equivocation. During the so-called oil strike, for example, opposition forces led by Venezuela’s largest business association, Fedecamaras, orchestrated a nationwide disruption of oil production in hopes that the ensuing economic chaos would destabilize the government and precipitate a coup.[13] Taken in the context of this history of instigated pandemonium, the economic war thesis emerges as at least equally worthy of consideration as its major competitor.

Internal and External Challenges to the Revolution

None of this is to say, of course, that there are no legitimate criticisms of the central government, far less that the opposition’s explanation for the economic crisis should be dismissed as casually as it dismisses the government’s. Yet there are mitigating factors that must be raised in the government’s defense. The Bolivarian process has attempted not just to pay the social debt that was owed the country’s poor majority, but also to radically transform society by offering an alterative development model to the neoliberal consensus of the 1980s and 1990s that plunged the entire region into disarray. The Chávez and Maduro administrations have attempted this task while facing constant hostility not only from an aggressive internal political opposition that has often resorted to violence, but also from the hemisphere’s hegemon, the United States. Washington, which almost instinctively has been opposed to Chavismo from day one, has consistently interfered in Venezuela’s internal affairs in the hope of crushing the Bolivarian process. From a Bush administration-backed[14] and CIA-aided[15] coup in 2002, in which then-President Chavez was nearly removed from power by force, to refusals to recognize Chavista electoral victories, threats of sanctions, and covert funding for opposition candidates, the United States had been determined to do everything possible to ensure that it would fail. The United States has viciously opposed anything that threatens the dominance of the unfettered neoliberal capitalist vision that it has sought to defend, and then spread, throughout the world. As William Camacaro and COHA Senior Research Fellow Fred Mills wrote early last year in Counterpunch, “A great deal hangs in the balance with regard to the feasibility of advancing a democratic socialist project while under the continuous attack of a U.S.-backed opposition, elements of which are bent on restoring the neoliberal regime.”[16]

The U.S. mainstream media, overwhelmingly owned by large corporations and loyal to their interests, naturally reflects and promulgates the ideological contours of this worldview. Herein lies the explanation for why the debate has been so narrow, so inordinately skewed toward the opposition’s account of the situation, and so disregarding of the complexities and subtleties of the discourse regarding the admittedly tragic and desperate circumstances in which the Venezuelan people find themselves.

By Peter Bolton, Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Please accept this document as a free contribution from COHA, but if re-posting, please afford authorial and institutional attribution. Exclusive rights can be negotiated. For additional news and analysis on Latin America, please go to: LatinNews.com and Rights Action.

Featured Photo: Venezuela Central Madeirense. Taken from Wikimedia.

[1] “Small Protests Proliferate in Simmering Venezuela,” The New York Times, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/03/17/world/americas/17reuters-venezuela-politics-protests.html?ref=americas&_r=0.

[2] “Venezuelans in the US say their country is worse than 1960s Cuba,” Global Post, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.globalpost.com/article/6749177/2016/03/21/venezuelans-us-say-their-country-worse-1960s-cuba.

[3] “Venezuela’s Political Crisis: Can Regional Actors Help?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, accessed March 21, 2016, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/11/30/venezuela-s-political-crisis-can-regional-actors-help/im9t.

[4] “Venezuela’s Economic Crisis,” The Daily Signal, accessed March 21, 2016, http://dailysignal.com/2015/11/09/venezuelas-economic-crisis/.

[5] “Venezuela’s Economic Catastrophe Isn’t About To Happen, It Has Happened,” Forbes, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/02/07/venezuelas-economic-catastrophe-isnt-about-to-happen-it-has-happened/#41880a0a5a1e.

[6] “Venezuela’s Meltdown Continues,” Foreign Affairs, accessed March 21, 2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2016-03-10/venezuelas-meltdown-continues.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Venezuela’s Last Hope, Foreign Policy, accessed March 21, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/10/venezuelas-last-hope-leopoldo-lopez-maduro/.

[9] Angry White Men: A Book Review, Huffington Post, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tristan-bridges/a-review-of-angry-white-m_b_4611216.html.

[10] James Petras and Henry Veitmeyer, What’s Left in Latin America?: Regime Change in New Times, Routledge (2016).

[11] How Bad is Venezuela’s Economic Situation?, Venezuela Analysis, accessed March 21, 2016, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11832.

[12] Basic Goods ‘Suspiciously’ Begin to Appear in Venezuela Stores, TeleSur, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Basic-Goods-Suspiciously-Begin-to-Appear-in-Venezuela-Stores–20151214-0018.html.

[13] “Venezuelan general strike extended,” BBC News, accessed March 21, 2016, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1918189.stm.

[14] Venezuela Coup Linked to Bush Team,” The Guardian, accessed March 22, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela.

[15] “The CIA Was Involved In the Coup Against Venezuela’s Chavez,” Venezuela Analysis, accessed March 22, 2016, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/800.

[16] “Revolution, Counter Revolution and the Economic War in Venezuela,” Counterpunch, accessed March 21, 2016, http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/27/revolution-counter-revolution-and-the-economic-war-in-venezuela/.                                     COHA

Venezuela’s government accepts proposal for Vatican mediation in crisis

President Nicolas Maduro has accepted a proposal by the opposition to ask the Vatican to facilitate dialogue with Venezuela’s socialist government.

The Union of South American Nations’ Secretary General Ernesto Samper met late on Thursday with Maduro and afterward announced that he would ask Pope Francis to send a representative to Venezuela. Samper was in Caracas along with former Spanish President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero in an effort to revive a two-month-old attempt to bring the sides together to resolve the country’s economic and political crisis.

The opposition has pushed for Pope Francis’s intervention but also conditions its support for dialogue on the release of people it considers political prisoners and a commitment by Maduro to hold a recall referendum this year.

Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said on Friday that “in the past, the Holy See has manifested its willingness, in case the basis is there for its contribution to the dialogue.”

He added: “However, at the moment, no formal communication has reached the Nunciature or the Secretariat of State spelling out the substance and details of such a request.”       Catholic Herald

Prepare for the worst: Venezuela is heading toward complete disaster

By Editorial Board February 11

THE POLITICAL drama in Venezuela, where a populist, authoritarian government is attempting to cling to power despite losing a legislative election by a landslide, tends to obscure a deeper crisis. Though it is awash in oil, the country of 30 million people is facing an economic collapse and a humanitarian disaster.

Venezuela already suffers from the world’s highest inflation rate — expected to rise from 275 percent to 720 percent this year — one of its higher murder rates and pervasive shortages of consumer goods, ranging from car parts to toilet paper. Power outages and the lack of raw materials are forcing surviving factories and shops to close or limit opening hours. According to a local survey cited by the Economist, the poverty rate is 76 percent, compared with 55 percent when Hugo Chávez, the late founder of the regime, took power in 1999.

Worst of all, the country is running desperately short of food and medicine. Venezuelans spend much of their time waiting in lines outside stores, but increasingly the shelves are bare. The head of the nation’s pharmaceutical association recently appealed to the World Health Organization for aid, saying that distribution of 70 percent of basic medicines was disrupted. The chairman of the largest domestic food producer has said that if the government does not quickly seek aid to import food, it “will cause grave harm to ordinary Venezuelans.”

The math behind these warnings is stark, as economist Ricardo Hausmann recently outlined in the Financial Times. At current oil prices, Venezuela will earn less than $18 billion from exports this year, while it owes $10 billion in payments on the $120 billion in debt it has racked up. That leaves $8 billion for imports, but even after contracting 20 percent, imports were $37 billion in 2015 — and Venezuela now imports most of its food. Even with a debt default that the markets expect, it’s hard to see where additional hard currency will come from: The country broke relations with the International Monetary Fund almost a decade ago, has no ability to obtain private loans and has nearly exhausted its liquid reserves. It already owes China, its latest benefactor, $50 billion.

Facing this calamity, the government of President Nicolás Maduro appears paralyzed. Mr. Maduro and one of his ministers have spoken of taking desperately needed common-sense measures, such as raising the price of state-retailed gasoline, now below 1 cent per gallon, and altering a currency exchange system under which the U.S. dollar is worth 150 times more on the black market than it is at the official rate. Day after day, however, the government does not act; in a Facebook post Wednesday, Mr. Maduro hinted at disputes among his ministers, one of whom argues that inflation does not exist.

Leaders of the opposition’s new parliamentary majority, who are locked in a public power struggle with the regime, are said to be negotiating with it behind the scenes. A pact between the two sides on emergency measures, coupled with an appeal to the IMF, is Venezuela’s best chance of rescue. Sadly, it doesn’t look likely — which is why its neighbors, and the United States, should be preparing for an implosion.          Washington Post