On Friday, January 2nd, Brent crude oil prices closed at around US$57 per barrel. Two days later, an alarmed Nicolás Maduro announced that he would travel to China for the China-Celac Forum, and to several OPEC and non-OPEC countries “to continue high-level efforts (to create) a strategy for a recovery of oil prices.” Everyone knew Nicolás was…
(This week I am starting a new Caracas Chronicles column: the weekly Friday-afternoon-suggestion-for-a-controversial-conversation-topic-over-Sunday-lunch post. Many extended Venezuelan families get together around the lunch table on Sundays, and after the meal is done, they engage in the “sobremesa,” a sacred Venezuelan tradition where people have dessert, drink coffee, chat, gossip, and generally bitch about the government. The sobremesa is…
My first post for FiveThirtyEight.com is up on their site now. Behold: It’s easy to lose sight of just how central Venezuela’s oil largesse has been to the Cuban state’s financial strategy. Following a landmark 2003 “Cooperation Agreement,” Venezuela has been sending 115,000 barrels a day to the island. The Cubans re-export some of the…
(Apologies for the source of the above video, it was the only version available on YouTube) The bloggers of Caracas Chronicles held a cyber-conversation on today’s announcement by Henrique Capriles, where he abandoned infighting within the opposition and called for unity together with increased street pressure on the government. Juan C: So … main takeaways? To…
Remember 1991? Back then, you heard about signs of trouble from several quarters. One day it was an important intellectual such as Arturo Uslar Pietri warning about a coup, the next day it was a political operative saying the government needed to do this or that if it was to survive. We all know how the story…
From Hugo Chávez’s 2012 campaign platform (emphasis is mine): “We wish to continue building XXIst Century Bolivarian socialism in Venezuela as an alternative to the savage capitalist model, and through this ensure the greatest sum of social safety, the greatest sum of political stability, and the greatest sum of happiness for our people.” “We wish to…
Public attention in the last few days has been all about the long, long queues in the country’s supermarkets, and the shortage of food and other basic products. But the other main problem for Venezuelans continues: unabated, relentless crime. Last Thursday afternoon, a burial took place at the local cemetery in the town of Turmero (Aragua State),…
