(A guest post by friend-of-the-blog Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez) It’s amazing how little of the truly delicious ridiculousness spouted by the regime’s members gets noticed abroad, isn’t it? Since the death of Chávez, whose personal musings regarding, say, Martian economics or eau de azufre, would sporadically find their way into international news, today equally delectable morsels cooked up by his…
In a rare bout of justice, Venezuela’s Prosecutor General has charged five government intelligence agents with the murder of two people on February 12th. The two people in question are student Bassil Da Costa and chavista activist Juan Montoya. Initially, government blogs had said the opposition had killed Montoya. Government paramilitary gangs known as “colectivos”…
The government has decided to create a brand new security agency, which will be specially dedicated to protect… only high-ranking members of the Venezuelan State. The Special Protection and Security Unit of State Personalities (yes, that’s the name they went with) will be at first part of the Presidential Honor Guard (the army group attached…
Here’s one that’s flying under the radar: in a resolution dated February 13th, the government-controlled Supreme Tribunal gave itself the authority to decide which specific judge will hear which specific “sensitive” case, in 18 out of 23 states in the country, rather than using the long-established method of drawing lots to determine which judge hears…
Desde la puerta de ‘La Crónica’ Santiago mira la avenida Tacna, sin amor: automóviles, edificios desiguales y descoloridos, esqueletos de avisos luminosos flotando en la neblina, el mediodía gris. ¿En qué momento se había jodido el Perú? Those are the first two sentences in Mario Vargas Llosa’s masterpiece Conversation in the Cathedral. As he wistfully…
If, as the old cliché has it, “journalism is the first draft of history”, then blogging must be the note hurriedly scribbled on the napkin of history. A blog post, by nature, is a product of its moment – it’s either written “hot” or it’s not worth writing at all. I say that because it’s…
These tumultuous days, as I was glued to Twitter, reading Facebook comments, listening to opinions on the street, and watching the students debate on CNNE, I finally “understood” Venezuela’s deep polarization. After 15 years of war speech, we have become two distinct countries, two societies that haven’t been able to reconcile in more than a…
