Latin American Left Indulges Maduro (Brazil Workers Party loves him)

[Bacchus4.0]

Ballots were still being counted in Venezuela the day after, but one result of the July 30 vote to pick a national assembly to write a new national constitution is already in. The Latin American left, which roundly cheered the vote, is a big loser.

Start with the obvious. Even by the standards of Venezuela's damaged democracy, the plan to write yet another Venezuelan constitution -- the nation's 27th, mind you -- was a travesty. The government never bothered to consult Venezuelans about whether they wanted a new charter, as the current constitution mandates, and answered public outrage over such fiat with brutal repression; some 125 people have died in the backlash since April, at least 10 of them on Sunday.

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You might think all that would give backers of democracy pause, and yet leading figures on the Latin American left have been all but mute when they haven't outright blessed the Maduro government's folly and attacked dissenters as capitalist tools or proxies for gringo imperialism.

Brazil's Workers Party, once hailed as a beacon for the new Latin American left, has led the way, with party president Gleisi Hoffmann enjoining the faithful at a meeting of a regional leftist compact to show "support and solidarity" as the Maduro regime faces the "violent offensive of the right" in its "new phase of neoliberal capitalism."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-31/latin-american-left-indulges-maduro

[Oneironaut]

1. Lol No one has jobs in Venezuela. The irony is rich.

But wait - CIA! Big Oil! Etc.

[Fluke a Snooker]

2. And yet, we have Trump now. At LEAST we have the ability to kick him out.

Mueller and Russiagate will put Trump in prison, but Venezuela was the result of Reagan-Bush-era oil policies that allowed Venezuela right-wing extremists to control the economy, forcing Chavez to repatriate the country's resources for his people, which went horribly wrong.

[Marksman_91]

3. Venezuela's oil has been nationalized since before Chavez. Don't get what you're talking about

In fact, the country was actually going in the right direction before Chavez came in and fucked everything up. Sure, there was a CIA-backed coup attempt, and sure, all it did was make people sympathize with Chavez's regime more and gave him more power, but then again, he also had all the resources at his disposal (oil barrels at over $100) to have turned Venezuela into the most developed nation in Latin America, but instead he and his goons decided to take most of that money and put it in their pockets instead of actually properly investing it in the development of the country. A good example of a country with oil that did this? Norway.

Now the remaining Chavista goons know they fucked up royally and are too afraid to lose their billions. They know that if they lose political power in Venezuela, all of their money laundering and drug trafficking will be uncovered, and will have to pay up for their crimes. So desperate they got that they decided to dig their grave deeper and deeper with increasing totalitarian measures and persecution of opposition political figures, and now they're simply stuck between a rock and a hard place, forcing their hand to hold an illegal constitutional assembly with the collaboration of a bought-off Supreme Court and Electoral Council to stay in power forever.

Too bad there probably won't be any place they can go to now outside of Venezuela except maybe for the usual Caribbean shitholes and nations ruled by hardcore leftists like Bolivia and Nicaragua.