Caracas Chronicles

Another fun tidbit from R.G.Aveledo’s N24 interview comes at 9:06 (in the video link), when he’s being asked about a “secret Capriles plan” to phase out the government’s misones (social programs.)

As Aveledo notes, it’s Chávez’s program that explicitly calls for “redimensioning” the misiones. But that’s clearly a euphemism for “scaling down”, because if they were thinking about expanding them, they’d obviously say it explicitly, and probably make a big thing about it.

It’s funny to think of Chávez giving himself over to this kind of weaselly, jargony, managementy newspeak. “Redimensionar” is half a step removed from the kind of management consultant sophistry that turns “layoffs” into “downsizing” into “rightsizing”.

Tanto nadar en el mar de la felicidad para ahogarse en la orilla semántica…