Caracas Chronicles

For Friday, October 14, 2016. Translated by Javier Liendo.

The PSUV has focused all of their efforts in obsessively presenting three key arguments: (1) The National Assembly doesn’t exist anymore and the opposition themselves are to blame, because they diminish the institution’s authority by not complying with the TSJ’s decisions; (2) the TSJ’s Constitutional Chamber is fully empowered to assume Parliament’s functions and (3) doing whatever they want is established in the version of the Constitution that the Constitutional Chamber has been creating. Since the legality of their outrage is their weakest argument, they’ve focused more strongly in the first two.

An idiot like lawmaker Hugbel Roa (PSUV, Trujillo) is today known to most of the country because he disrespected a couple of cardinals and threw a microphone at the person who demanded his respect. It was memorable when he opened his arms after throwing the microphone and asked: “¿Qué pasó, mamahuevo?” (What, cocksucker?). Parliament decided to suspend his speaking rights; hopefully they’ll also charge him for the microphone. This event shut down the discussion about the Agreement to recover democracy and respect for the Constitution.

Interior minister Néstor Reverol used Twitter to report the OLP’s war dispatch yesterday in five states of the country: 19 people murdered, whom they say were criminals and from whom they confiscated 20 firearms. But don’t worry, because Venezuelan demanded president Barack Obama to invalidate the Executive Order before the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, because declaring that the country’s an unusual and extraordinary threat is an unjustified decision and at least deserves that the adjectives be reviewed. It’s shameful to demand this when the court just announced the start of the trial for the presidential couple’s nephews, who were using diplomatic passports and had other privileges from power.

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What hit me the hardest were the pictures and videos of the looting of a truck transporting sugar in Fuerzas Armadas avenue. Several people crouching on the street, picking up the sugar in small handfuls, putting it in their pockets or in their tied shirts. So much dirt mixed in with the white sweetness. National Guard officers tried to disperse the people by throwing kicks around, but they were overwhelmed by the sheer amount, incapable of showing their usual ferocity when they stand as shields against opposition marches. Smiling motorizados carried packs of sugar between their legs. Women chased motorizados to ask them for some sugar.

There’s a joy associated with the looting that I find incomprehensible, the satisfaction for chaos, the delight for robbery; and the laughter, that laughter.

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We keep on.