Caracas Chronicles

A while back, our old comrade blogger Alek Boyd opened a blog called Infodio. In Alek’s trademark, no-holds-barred style, the site has become an indispensable source of information (some call it gossip, others slander) on the comings and goings of the boli-bourgeoisie. One particular fixation of the site is the so-called bolichicos, the young-ish “entrepreneurs” behind Derwick Associates, a firm with … oh, never mind, just check the link.

Alek started becoming quite notorious in Caracas circles avid for information on the powerful. Conspiracy theories about him began popping up, and it was quite amusing when, on my last trip to Caracas, several people asked me out of the blue if Alek was indeed a real person.

It seems, though, as if Infodio has been rocking a few too many boats – a few weeks ago, the site was banned in Venezuela.

This wasn’t bombasted through the airwaves, mind you – it wasn’t blasted on cadena nacional like the ban on NTN24 or the censorwhip of Twitter. No – the ban was implemented on the down low, in the shadows, where Infodio’s subjects like to dwell.

I have no way of knowing if the ban is still in place, but people will surely get around the information block. After all, Infodio’s latest juicy detail is about a lawsuit that alleges Diosdado Cabello received kickbacks for electricity plants (shocking!), and it was picked up by the Miami Herald, among others. Now that Infodio is being quoted by other news outlets, the ban seems sillier by the day.

Alek likes to push the envelope in his research, and that gets him into trouble sometimes. Regardless of what you think of him, in today’s Venezuela sites like his are necessary to have some semblance of accountability.

In anything that resembles a normal democracy, powerful, politically connected businessmen don’t get to just take down websites that publish things they rather weren’t published. Then again, the normal rules of the game don’t really apply to the bolibourgeoisie.