A few months ago, Nicolás Maduro appointed former general Hugo Carvajal to be Consul General of Venezuela to the Dutch island of Aruba. Yesterday, as Carvajal laid low in the island waiting for the Dutch government to approve his position, he was detained. The US had asked the Netherlands to incarcerate and extradite him. Carvajal was head of…
Quico and I had a non-quibble a few days ago about poverty. I criticized poverty measures, and he beat me up about it. Truth is that I agree with him. Poverty is a very complex thing with many definitions: income, savings, choices, and even expenditure. People have tried to package it in a single indicator, but numbers end…
An interesting interview with Henrique Capriles, by the team of Juan Carlos Zapata and Elizabeth Fuentes, from the new Internet site konzapata.com. In it, Capriles tones down his criticism of the #LaSalida gang, and offers a more nuanced explanation of his views. Several money quotes: What I proposed was giving the economic and social crisis time to…
Well, well, well… how about that? Days after publicly denying it, Caracas Transformation Minister Ernesto Villegas is supervising the eviction of La Torre de David this morning, along with Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres. Looks like his view of “dignification” really means “Pack your bags. You’re out of here at the end of the week.”…
Ruben opened the buttons of his shirt to show me the tattoo on his chest. It was a large image of a 2-year-old’s face, with big sad eyes and thick lips. “That’s my son. I wasn’t able to have kids because I had a health problem but fíjate, after I was made a saint, I was able…
In recent years, self-censorship has become commonplace in Venezuelan media, and more so in the outlets controlled by the private arm of the communicational hegemony (HegemonCorp). It’s been more than a year since Cadena Capriles, the largest group of newspapers in the country, was bought by a still-mysterious investor(s). However, its swift change of name (to…
One week after a press report mentioned the possible sale of the high-rise slum “Torre de David” to the Chinese (and, consequently, the eviction of the 1,200 families that currently live there), the Minister of the Transformation of Caracas (yes, that’s a Ministry, given to the guy who lost the election for Caracas mayor) Ernesto Villegas…
A few days ago I wrote about how nobody knows what the MUD is up to these days. To make matters even more confusing, today we hear that Roberto Enríquez, president of COPEI, one of the parties in the MUD, is asking Diosdado Cabello to join them in a transition government. His elevator speech? “Radical” chavistas…
Five years had passed since the first time ¨El Chivo¨ drew something on a wall and discovered how the adrenaline “rushes through your body when you alter public property,” and how “you feel you own part of the street when you leave your art hanging there, freely expressing how you feel.” “I started drawing sketches on…
Last week, Argentine newspaper Clarín offered some juicy details on the alleged sale of overpriced rice from Argentina to Venezuela thorugh a company linked to Julio De Vido, Cristina Kirchner’s longtime Planning Minister. The head of the Argenitine Rice Producers’ Federation (Fedenar), Jorge Paoloni, has denounced that a company named Bioart SA has taken over all…
Ahhhh.. everlasting love. Just the thing you need instead of basic food supplies and neoliberal announcements. Happy anniversary to the first couple (Thank you Capriles) of our failed state. May you have loving years of whiskers and salsa until 2019 (Thank you Capriles).
Almost two months ago,while visiting Maracaibo, PDVSA President/Oil Minister/Economic Vice-President Rafael Ramírez tried to justify the drastic reduction of international commercial flights to Venezuela in recent months: “Aquí nadie se va de este país, las aerolíneas esas que andan yéndose están desviando aviones para el Mundial de fútbol. Pero no es que se estén yendo…
On July 3rd, our Twitter TLs were filled with the rumor that Rafael Ramírez would leave PDVSA to occupy the Executive Vice-Presidency of Venezuela. On July 8th, President Maduro said that Ramírez would stay in the cabinet “because he is the leader of the economic cabinet, the economic team, and the goal is to destroy…
Our pal Setty has a thoroughly researched, hugely important story on a little footnote in the PDVSA financials. It turns out that, long ago, PDVSA seized some ships from one of its partners, and yadda yadda yadda, Venezuelans lost $644 million. In minute detail, Setty goes through the job of untangling this particular ball of yarn. The…
Dark suspicions have long clung as to the deeper MUD’s loyalty. This is one of the longer term effects of Henrique Capriles’s botched messaging following his April 2013 election loss: his simultaneous claim of fraud and refusal to call his supporters out into the street in protest scrambled everyone’s circuits, leaving many to wonder about secret agenda’s in…
