Monthly Archives: August 2010

I’d always figured the claims you hear about Venezuela being more violent than Iraq or Afghanistan were just a bit of criollo hyperbole. You know, nothing to be taken literally. Until yesterday’s staggering revelation in El Nacional sent me off on … Continue reading →

This is the first time in months the public has gotten access to any kind of official-looking number. 19,133 people. Most of them – 81% – were men. Most of them – 80.7% – between the ages of 15 and 44. … Continue reading →

If there was ever a video that deserved to go viral, it’s this topical one by Venezuelan artist Onechot. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14210701&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0   Rotten Town from El Flying Monkey on Vimeo. It’s stunning. Original, challenging, unblinking. And so, of course, the government wants … Continue reading →

Here’s another ad I found on the web. This one is from Primero Justicia. http://www.youtube.com/v/5bAfEFzfuDs When the car reached the fork on the road I kept hoping – don’t veer left! What’d you think? I thought it was good, although … Continue reading →

For an analyst, the big frustration this election cycle is that we don’t have available the type of circuit-by-circuit polling widely seen as the gold standard in an election like this. But armed with the expanding data trove in the … Continue reading →

So the improved Swing-o-meter is nearly done. The more I fiddle with it, the more convinced I am that 26S is an incredibly volatile election: relatively minor changes in the distribution of the popular vote yield big, big changes in … Continue reading →

Today, Venezuelans woke up to a violent, macabre image in their newspaper: the word "Censurado" splashed across the front page of El Nacional. This is the product of yet another mistake from the chavista judiciary, stemming from at least two … Continue reading →

Yesterday, Hugo Chávez went shoplifting again. This time, the axe fell on the neck of Seguros La Previsora, a large insurance company, owner of an iconic, pyramid-like building in Caracas’ Sabana Grande district. I don’t know the reasons why Chávez decided … Continue reading →

Venezuela’s debate on crime and punishment is as impoverished as our most miserable barrio. Sucked into the fiendish dynamics of polarization, it leaves out just one thing: serious, considered discussion of what to actually do about rampant crime. Sooner or … Continue reading →

So remember how barely two weeks ago we were speculating that the Central Bank might be secretly financing State Owned Enterprises directly? Well, a few days later, BCV confirmed that that’s exactly what they’re now doing: openly printing new base money … Continue reading →

In a country where nobody takes responsibility for their actions, where everyone is a political actor, and where the only thing that matters is obtaining and holding power, the problems faced by ordinary citizens fall by the wayside. They are … Continue reading →

So I’ve been reading Pascal Bruckner’s classic 1983 cantankerous screed, "The Tears of the White Man." In English, the book is subtitled "Compassion as Contempt" but, from a Venezuelan standpoint, a better subtitle might by "An Archeology of PSFery." Bruckner … Continue reading →

For governing party spokesman Héctor Navarro, the fact that the murder rate has tripled in Venezuela since 1998 is the fault of…the last government!

Lets be clear: to really forecast September’s parliamentary election results with any degree of accuracy, you would need detailed, circuit-by-circuit polling in key marginal seats, the so-called "swing districts."  We don’t have that. We think, contrary to their claims, nobody does. … Continue reading →

Teodoro Petkoff is on fire in his TalCual Editorial today, dealing with the El Nacional morgue photo controversy. Long story short, after Telesur chief Andrés Izarra got a bizarre case of the giggles during a CNN debate on crime, El … Continue reading →