Caracas Chronicles

Photo: Analítica retrieved

Cecodap and Prepara Familia spoke on Monday about the crisis in the largest pediatric hospital in the country, the JM de los Ríos Hospital. Carlos Trapani, Cecodap coordinator, denounced the institution’s conditions and asked the government for the necessary funds that families need to avoid their children’s deaths: “The state kills by omission,” he said. Trapani explained that the IACHR decreed an extension of the precautionary measures for 13 wings of the hospital, where they ratify the patients’ critical situation, over 1,000 children are protected under these measures and they said that the state has to take action to guarantee their lives and health, in addition to treatment, supplies, lab exams and food: “We fervently call on them to protect the children. This hospital shouldn’t be a death hospital anymore. The worst will keep happening if no measures are taken,” said Trapani. From January to August 2019, eight children have died in the JM de los Ríos Hospital’s Nephrology wing. 

Internal debt for a country without credit

Using an “Instrument with Special Law Treatment” relying on the forever-extended Emergency Economy State, Nicolás increased the internal public debt authorized for this exercise up to 36 billion bolivars, over what the ANC approved in their Budget Law of 2019, that had reached 500,000 million bolivars. In addition, the chavista administration published three decrees that authorize issuing national public debt up to 23 billion bolivars. It’s all in the extraordinary National Gazette N° 6,472. 

So:

– Decree N° 3,954 authorizes the  769° Emission of National Public Debt Bonds, for one billion bolivars for local contributions to projects.

– Decree N° 3,955 authorizes 770° Emission of National Public Debt Bonds for 12 billion bolivars to “finance the service of internal and external public debt.” 

– Decree N° 3,956 authorizes the 771° Emission of National Public Debt for up to 10 billion bolivars to finance fiscal management for the rest of the year.

Assigning blame

Diosdado Cabello blamed caretaker President Juan Guaidó of the explosion of a domestic gas supplier in Ocumare del Tuy, which happened on Saturday, August 24th. Cabello followed Nicolás’s Oil minister Manuel Quevedo’s version, who said that the explosion was due to “sabotage by the terrorist right.” As if chavismo had people to spare in their activities, Cabello criticized activities they organized this week and dismissed Guaidó’s legitimacy, condemning the fact that he’d still be holding this title after a new AN board is appointed in 2020: “The cese de la usurpación will be long, then. The opposition will have to choose whether they’re sticking with an inept man that has deceived them this whole year or upholding the agreement they signed.” He repeated the threat of moving the elections because the ANC can do as it pleases, and suggested a date: January 5th, 2020. Making his priorities clear, and despite the MBL threat of not allowing its players come to the LVBP, he said: “There will be baseball here even if we have to play ourselves.”

The non-country

• Because of the lack of resources to export or produce, the port activity in Venezuela is going through a “critical situation” and the existing obstacles in the customs process make it impossible for the private sector to issue or pay invoices, informed Eduardo Quintana, president of Fedecámaras Vargas. The expert said that not even the state is importing: “They thought they could provide for 30 million inhabitants by limiting productivity and violating the right of producers and businessmen to build an economy.”
• Gonzalo Himiob from NGO Foro Penal said that on Saturday the political prisoners in Ramo Verde were brutally beaten during a search: “Some of the prisoners were severely hurt, a very violent search went on, very intense at the hands of Dgcim officers,” who destroyed the prisoners’ belongings and stole their food and medicine. 
• 85 prisoners from the Cicpc Santa Teresa garrison (Valles del Tuy, Miranda), started a hunger strike protesting the inhumane conditions they’re in and the restriction of visiting rights. 
• Public sector workers demanded from Nicolás to establish a new minimum wage around 400 to 500 dollars a month, saying that their salaries are pulverized by hyperinflation. 
•  Carlos Salazar, Coalición Sindical leader, called for a national protest on September 4th, National Public Employee Day. 

We, the migrants

This weekend, the Ecuadorian Ombudsman’s Office registered that around 20,500 Venezuelans entered the country before they started demanding a  humanitarian visa on Monday. Ecuador joins the list of countries that have established restrictions to enter their territories, to regulate the flow of what has become the largest exodus in the history of Latin America and one of the largest displaced populations in the world. Ecuador demands an exceptional humanitarian visa and some migrants prevented regular traffic on the Rumichaca bridge in protest against the requirement. During the blockade an Ecuadorian that was coming from Venezuela died of a heart attack amid the protesters. On Monday night, some of the Venezuelans that blocked traffic in protest, knelt before the anti-riot police in prayer. Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said that the visa won’t stop Venezuelans from leaving, but it will bring irregular migration and with it, crime and higher risks for migrants. 

Movements on the board

– Colombian President Iván Duque asked during the opening of the extraordinary session period of the IACHR to investigate the Nicolás’s “dictatorship crimes”. Duque considers that the court should assume the leadership in Nicolás facing international justice. 

– “A blockade on Venezuela is coming, it will happen sooner or later,” said the Colombian Ambassador to the United States, emphasizing that “we’re witnessing Maduro’s last hours, last days.”

– The 3rd Health Ministers Regional Conference with ministers from over ten countries of the region is being held in Cucuta, to examine our migration phenomenon and to seek joint plans to address the effects of our diaspora in their health systems. 

– Since he’s interested in making the headlines, Argentinian presidential candidate Alberto Fernández said that he considers Maduro’s government as ”authoritarian” not a dictatorship, because “it’s difficult to call an elected government a dictatorship. An elected government can become an authoritarian government. The institutions there are working. A dictatorship doesn’t generally have that.” 

– John Bolton, U.S. National Security Advisor said on Monday that the United States fully backs Guaidó’s decision to “oppose legislative elections overseen by Maduro’s illegitimate regime. There won’t be fair or free elections while Maduro remains in Venezuela.” 

…

As 15 other Latinamerican countries, starting in 2021, Venezuelans will have to apply for permission to travel and stay in any of the 26 countries in the EU, according to the official website of the European System of Travel Information and Authorization (ETIAS), a measure created for citizens who aren’t part of the EU, and are therefore “exempt from visas to travel to the Schengen Zone.” This comes as part of their effort to “improve security in the region, after the recent terrorist attacks.”