Caracas Chronicles

(Written in conjunction with Juan C.)

• Outbreak

You know those silly Hollywood movies about a mysterious illness breaking out in a small-knit community, the massive quarantines, the government’s attempts to silence those speaking out, and the ultimate spread of the disease? Yeah, that never happens.

• Transformers

Maduro said he wanted the new Economics Vice-President to write a “manual” on how to transform Venezuela into an exporter. The manual should include a recipe, as in: Step 1) stop doing everything that you’re doing. As soon as he finished saying this, he extended the whole “closing-the-border-with-Colombia” scheme, blissfully unaware of his own internal contradictions.

• The Sting

While everybody was running around like their butts were on fire with this week’s news about Citgo’s sale, Hinterlaces, your friendly chavista PR-firm-passing-for-a-polling-company, published a tweet saying that the deal was signed a month ago. We can move on, there is nothing to debate here anymore.

• Inside Job

Many renowned economists have been speculating on the possibilty that perhaps the reason why the Venezuelan Central Bank hadn’t published the numbers on inflation and let three months go by was because they weren’t sure about the recipe to properly cook the country’s books. Well, they finally published the figures, and guess what? It reeks of mama’s chicken cacerole.

• Witness for the Prosecution

And nothing else … Leopoldo López’s sham trial continued, with the defense unable to present any evidence to, you know, actually defend him.

• Seven

As if we weren’t already dealing with enough, it seems we have a serial killer (or several) in our hands!

• The vanishing

Just as members of the PSUV were investigating who got Cadivi dollars in the last few years, the Cencoex page has ceased showing past information. The Cadivi page has stopped working. Pretty soon, the government will say that Cadivi never existed, that it was all a right-wing conspiracy.

• Richard III

While the traditional media has been gagged, Venezuela has become quite fertile for conspiracy theorists. Sometimes, though, we need to take some of these seriously. Case in point: Prodavinci just published an article by the seriously-well-sourced oil-focused journalist Mariana Párraga who throws around a theory on what’s going on with Ramirez. According to Parraga, Ramirez may be pulling an Underwood to get closer to a long-sought presidential candidacy, just in case Nicolás Maduro’s government implodes.