Briefing

After the Coup: Broke and Authoritarians

ANC-imposed prosecutor general Tarek William Saab reported they had arrested three workers of PDVSA’s Gas Comunal. Journalist Kevin Arteaga, from El Carabobeño newspaper was served a subpoena by FAES officers. Chile authorized a military deployment on their border with Bolivia to control the flow of migrants, as a response to the death of two immigrants on Wednesday.

Naky Soto
  • There was a violent attack on Venezuelan democracy on February 4th, 1992. The failed coup against Carlos Andrés Pérez became chavismo’s foundational date. Venezuela is now the most authoritarian country in Latin America, even more than Cuba. Every variable criticized in 1992 got worse. Deputy José Guerra used several economic indicators to make the task of measuring the magnitude of the tragedy easier. Between 1999 and 2020, Venezuela received 991 billion dollars. All of that was misspent, but they also put the country in debt: Chávez got credit lines for over  $130,000 million. 
  • Chavismo reduced our economy and our income, generated hyperinflation and wiped out our currency and salaries and multiplied poverty. The late Hugo Chávez received the dollar at 574 bolivars and when he died, the dollar was 2,395,000 bolivars. Maduro achieved that the dollar surpassed the 107 billion bolivar mark in December 2020, considering he took eight zeroes off our currency. The minimum wage went from 417 dollars a month to under two dollars a month.  Venezuela went from having a little under 30% poverty rate in 1998 to 96% in 2020. They destroyed the oil industry, production dropped by 81%. Inequality got worse. Venezuela doesn’t have international reserves anymore and has been defaulting debt payments since 2017. It’s been 29 years from the first deaths caused by chavismo, 29 years of resentment, destruction and arrogance. 
  • Chavismo commemorated the anniversary. Diosdado Cabello said: “We took arms because we were rebels and because it was necessary. Worse things were happening in Venezuela. Then he said that “there are problems in the country” but Venezuelans will solve them, not the EU, not the U.S. Another officer who participated in the coup, José Gregorio Vielma Mora, described the preparations for Operation Zamora as if it had been a success without casualties to mourn. 
  • Maduro’s AN completed the nominations for the CNE, appointing ten citizens to join 11 deputies in appointing new candidates to the National Electoral Council. There were a total of 163 nominations. 
  • ANC-imposed prosecutor general Tarek William Saab reported they had arrested three workers of PDVSA’s Gas Comunal. The workers had a corruption network charging dollars to fill up cooking gas canisters.
  • Saab also reported that Richard Grillet Álvarez, a security guard at the National Assembly, has been charged with terrorism, treason and association to commit crimes.
  • After the creation of second vice presidencies for Assembly commissions, Maduro’s Assembly gave eight of these posts to members of Maduro’s prêt-à-porter opposition, to pretend power is distributed among many sectors. 
  • Yesterday, Buenos Aires police detained Irineo Humberto Garzón Martínez, accused of raping an 18-year-old Venezuelan woman. She drugged her and abused her while she was interviewing for a job. Garzón will await trial in prison. 
  • Journalist Kevin Arteaga, from El Carabobeño newspaper was served a subpoena by FAES officers.  Yesterday he found out that a Carabobo court subpoenaed him for covering a neighbors’ protest. 
  • Thousands of Venezuelans in Trinidad and Tobago will have to update their contact Security Minister Stuart Young. 
  • UN Special Rapporteur for Migrants’ Human Rights Felipe González questioned the militarization of the Ecuador-Peru borders to contain the entry of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, assuring that actions like these violate migrants’ human rights. Several NGOs published a letter for the Peruvian and Ecuadorian presidents expressing their concern. 
  • Chile authorized a military deployment on their border with Bolivia to control the flow of migrants, as a response to the death of two immigrants on Wednesday. 
  • Dollars used to pay in stores will be sold in currency exchange businesses approved and apponinted by the financial authorities in late 2019.  The BCV and the Banking Superintendency haven’t posted the rules for payments made through these accounts. 
  • German Secretary of State Miguel Berger said he had an interesting meeting with Leopoldo López, and told him that his country is still backing the democratic forces and achieve free, fair and credible presidential elections. 
  • Alex Saab was interviewed in Cape Verde. In 2017, Saab sued Armando.Info journalists and forced them into exile because he said he was profiting with the CLAP system. Today, he admits it without hesitation and he even thanked Maduro for all the companies he managed to have in the country, which according to me generate 100,000 jobs. Saab said he’s a businessman, contractor of the State and a diplomat at the same time. 

 

Naky Soto

Naky gets called Naibet at home and at the bank. She coordinates training programs for an NGO. She collects moments and turns them into words. She has more stories than freckles.

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