Caracas Chronicles

Wanna know what’s going on in Venezuela? You won’t have it easy.

State media newscasts are just propaganda. Private ones kinda report the news, but focus more on infotainment and human interest stories. Newspapers try to fill the void, but many are either getting bought by mysterious people or dealing with the constant lack of newsprint. Just today we learned that Venezuela’s oldest newspaper, Barquisimeto’s El Impulso, will stop circulating because it has run out of newsprint.

Is there an alternative? Yes. Online that is.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ezequiel Minaya has written this story on the sudden rise of news and opinion web portals in recent months. The onslaught of communicational hegemony is forcing many journalists to go online in order to show what’s happening, and offer channels for people to express their views. This blog is a tiny contributor to that movement.

The State knows this, and it is working on ways to try to impede access and even control those spaces: Arleth In Vitanza’s recent report tells us how the hegemony is looking to block online content, including pushing for legal measures and even some real-life arrests as a form of putting pressure on those using the web to air their views. And then … there’s the issue of having the slowest Internet in the region.