Caracas Chronicles

Normally, we save these “Venezuela on the Web” columns for stuff written in foreign media we want to alert readers to. But now and again something comes out locally we really think you ought to read.

Take this piece by UCAB’s Luis Pedro España in El Estímulo. Discussing the institutional breakdown that’s set off the current hyperinflationary spiral, it airs the kind of dark thoughts we generally keep private, but which the extremes of the crisis threaten to render mainstream. To wit:

Considering what other countries in the region have been through with this issue, and which will surely happen with us, hyperinflation is a kind of cleansing-through-blood, a  learning things the rough way.

It may be that at this stage of decomposition and given the impossibility to dialogue we’re suffering from, the new national consensus we need will come out of an economic shock the likes of which we’ve never seen. Perhaps genteel learning and making changes through the spaces politics opens up, stopped being a real possibility for us a long time ago.

Por lo que ha sido la experiencia de otros países de la región con este tema, y que de seguro ocurrirá con nosotros, la hiperinflación es como un lavatorio de sangre, un aprender por las malas.

Es posible que a las alturas del desajuste que tenemos y de la imposibilidad de diálogo que padecemos, el nuevo acuerdo nacional que necesitamos sea producto de un shock económico que nunca antes habíamos vivido. Quizás ese aprender por las buenas, el hacer los cambios por la vía de la política, desde hace mucho tiempo dejó de ser una posibilidad para nosotros.

It’s an ugly though. But who here hasn’t thought it these last few months?

Oh and, before you go, could you take a minute to tell us what you like of these kinds of posts that mostly just link to outside content we like?

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