What Is Happening in Venezuela?

[Judi Lynn]

What Is Happening in Venezuela?
Greg Grandin on March 2, 2015 - 1:42 PM ET


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Opposition supporters protest against the Venezuelan government and in support of jailed opposition leaders Leopoldo
Lopez and Antonio Ledezma in Caracas on February 28, 2015. (Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins)
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Coups and countercoups. Crackdowns. Economic crackups. Seven cents for a tube of toothpaste and $755 for a box of condoms. As a result of the latter, Bloomberg says, “Venezuela has one of South America’s highest rates of HIV infection” (disturbing, and, Bloomberg didn’t mention, exactly the same rate of HIV infection as in the United States). Falling oil prices. The arrest of an opposition leader. Washington plots. Human Rights Watch tweets. South America rallies.

What is going on in Venezuela? I have no idea. I’ve been too busy trying to track down the cameraman who accompanied Bill O’Reilly to El Salvador, where he didn’t report on the El Mozote massacre. So I asked a trusted panel of experts. Here’s what they say.

Above all, Miguel Tinker Salas, a professor of history at Pomona and author of The Enduring Legacy, a history of the Venezuelan oil industry, insists we have to keep perspective. Mexico, where the bodies pile high and the country is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportion, gets a “free pass” by the United States. Not so much Venezuela (where things might be bad but not 83,000-corpses bad).

Tinker Salas, whose timely Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know will be published in April, writes:

Reporting on Venezuela in the US, and depictions of the country by the Washington political establishment would lead anyone to believe that the country is once again on the verge of a precipice. The recent death of a student in Venezuela is tragic. But unlike in Mexico where impunity reigns, the policeman responsible for the student’s death was immediately arrested which didn’t stop the state department and Secretary of Kerry from issuing a rebuke(Editor’s Note: compare Venezuela’s Interior Minister Carmen Meléndez response to the killing of Kliver Roa with recent events in Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland….) In the current context, the government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela is depicted as losing popular support and purportedly relying on repression to stay in power (again, compare with Mexico). Sensational headlines typically focus on the lack of toilet paper and condoms as a way to ridicule the country and the political leadership that was elected after Chávez’s death. In Mexico, where over 50 percent of the population lives in poverty, and millions of poor and indigenous people lack access to food, or basic services, deplorable conditions go unremarked. Millions either emigrate or become displaced, and the tens of thousands of deaths are blamed on the drug cartels, thus absolving the US ally and financed government of responsibility. Most reporting seldom acknowledges the fundamental political and social change that has occurred in Venezuela in the past fifteen years or the empowerment of millions of people. The future in Venezuela is unclear and the crisis deep, and dissatisfaction has grown, yet the government still retains support.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/199681/what-happening-venezuela

[Marksman_91]

1. Really? As far as I know, Venezuela is 25,000 corpses A YEAR bad. That's way worse than Mexico

This author is delusional. He also forgets to mention that the population in Mexico is about 4 times that of Venezuela, and Mexico still has a lower murder rate.

[COLGATE4]

2. Well, he IS a Professor of History at Pomona.

[COLGATE4]

3. A repeat of a previous post written by the same Prof

whose claim to fame seems to be the invention of the new diversion, "Why don't they pick on Mexico, too?". Perhaps that can be the title of his next book.

[uhnope]

7. yeah, these propagandists on The Nation and Counterpunch etc tend to rehash the same article over &

over again. They must get paid by the word, and probably not only by the one-percenter who own The Nation but also by PR firms or think tanks that get money from the governments they shill for.

[COLGATE4]

8. I guess the idea is that it is somehow more credible

if you see it posted several times on DU.

[Marksman_91]

4. Here's a nice video of Vzla's ambassador to the OAS talking so nicely about anyone in the opposition

Roy Chaderton says "when a bullet passes trough the head of a 'cabeza escuálida' ("escuálido" is the typical term that Chavitas use to refer to anyone in the opposition. It roughly translates to emaciated), the bullet goes faster and sounds hollow", around the 17 second mark. Essentially he's saying, with a very serious tone, that the head of someone in the opposition (which could refer easily to the over 7 million that voted against Maduro back in 2013) are hollow. Tell me, who are the inhuman assholes again?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Many would see this as an illustration of the emptiness (vacuum) of an oligarch's head.

To attempt to twist it to claim the man is advocating wanton murder would be odd.

[Marksman_91]

6. So are you saying all the more than 7 million people who oppose Maduro are oligarchs? n/t

[COLGATE4]

9. You really need to learn Spanish. The 'gentleman' isn't talking

about oligarchs but about a person in opposition to Maduro:

"...the difference between a Chavista's head and the head of a filthy member of the opposition is that when a bullet goes through the dirty member of the opposition's head it does so rapidly because his (the opposition's) head is hollow." Obviously a graduate of the Nicolas Maduro School of Charm and Diplomacy.

[Judi Lynn]

10. What he said is clearly not advocacy for murder, as I said. You can't spin it. n/t

[COLGATE4]

11. First of all, that's not what you said, so let's not

try and change the topic. Your contention was that he was referring to 'oligarchs', which is patently untrue. Secondly, the "Ambassador", demonstrating the elegant language that characterizes the Chavista gfolks, refers to his political opponents as "filth". I guess he learned that by aping Chavez who started that charming custom. Finally, talking about shooting opponents in the head is as base and tasteless as anything you'd find on a KKK convention, particularly after the noble Bolivarian Police did just that very thing with a 14 year old "opponent" just a few days ago. Or do you want to pretend that talking about putting a bullet through your opponents' head is normal conversation?