Caracas Chronicles

The National Assembly

One year later, things have changed, in that they haven’t changed at all

One year ago, about 15 of my friends and I were at my house, standing by the window  in a football team lineup, and screaming La Vida Boheme’s El Zar at the top of our lungs. We had coordinated Miguel Pizarro’s sala de totalización. Victory was ours.

One year later, things have changed, in that they haven’t changed at all. We’re just further down the line in the regular path of self-destruction that’s become routine for Venezuelans. Yesterday’s AN session was a mess. They meant to discuss CNE rectors, somehow got into a thing about Venezuela’s Mercosur problems, and ended up fighting about what this year has meant. Conclusions? None.

Oh, but the imports

Hardly anyone can deny the lack of food and medicines anymore, so the government has taken a different approach. On the one hand, Jorge Rodríguez left the Meliá hotel yesterday saying that hundreds of boats full of chicken, meat, and pork are entering the country. It’s a thing worth watching how they don’t even bother with national production anymore.

Never fear, though. Vladimir Putin has assured us we’ll have all the wheat we need, directly from Russia. We’re also signing a military cooperation agreement. If any of this sounds terrifying, that’s because it is.

And back to our signature-verifying-AN-bashing Libertador mayor, he also said that we’ll be receiving big load of food and medicine as a loan from the Dominican Republic and other countries. Which is reassuring, I’m sure. The funny thing is, though, that la vaina está tan jodida that we need to borrow food from the likes of Santo Domingo and Putin, and that’s not even the whole problem. To give you a small but symbolic show of the state of affairs, 40% of the buses that are supposed to go from La Guaira to Caracas are broken down. So nothing gets to Caracas. No food, no medicine, and no people.

Massacres

Lately it seems as though massacre are a thing now, which cases such as the Cariaco, Tacarigua, and Barlovento massacre. On the latter, Tarek William Saab announced that there are two new detainees, which raises the number to 14. This is just one of the many episodes from the OLP, the military “security” operation which has, in the opinion of many, established a de facto death penalty in Venezuela, with at least 400 dead at the hands of military officials in 2016. Even chavistas have begun to protest against OLP.

And of course, the dialogue

Yesterday was supposed to be a big day for the diálogo. I can’t stress enough how pointless it all looks from my viewpoint. The mediators -who, by the way, the government has taken to calling acompañantes, which is a huge red flag to me- generically asked the government to not, well, be dictators. The two parts did not meet, but rather met separately with the mediators. Chúo kept saying nonsense about how the pressure on the government has been effective, and they took a new proposal from the mediators.

Meanwhile, the President was quite unabashedly ranting on MUD, insulting Henry Ramos Allup, and saying that this has been the year of the dialogue, with the people. Total disregard from the so called dialogue, which should be another enormous red flag. The day concluded with the notion that the dialogue will be reactivated on January 13th. This means over a month of nothing.

You’re all smart people, so I’m just going to ask. Is there any doubt whatsoever that this is a waste -and source- of time?