Briefing

The Travelers’ Rebellion

Venezuela is the only country that hasn’t presented a report on its immunization plan; Venezuela is the next to last country in Latin America in the Global Index of Food Security 2020.

Naky Soto
  • On Thursday, a video of passengers skipping the new protocol that demands paying 60 dollars for a PCR test to sole provider Laboratorio Casalab 2000 upon arrival at Maiquetía airport was posted on social media. The alleged goal is to minimize COVID-19 cases from abroad, but the truth is that travelers have to prove they had a PCR test 48 hours before they even board the plane. Today, passengers refused to get the test or pay 60 dollars. “Several passengers left without paying but other passengers weren’t as lucky and had to wait from three to four hours to get the test in cubicles that were set up mere hours earlier,” explained El Pitazo. Social media users positively reviewed this rebellion, and saw it as a civil disobedience exercise. 
  • Yesterday, José Brito, a deputy in Maduro’s Assembly, presented a report of alleged irregularities by deputies elected for the 2015 Assembly, and demanded that opposition deputies and their wives be subpoenaed including Fabiana Rosales (Juan Guaidó’s wife), Lilian Tintori (Leopoldo López’s wife), Diana D’Agostino (Henry Ramos Allup’s wife) and Rosaura Valentini (Yon Goicoechea’s wife), among others. 
  • About Maduro’s statement on having a more aggressive mutation of COVID-19, Dr. Julio Castro said: “There’s no evidence that any of the variants of COVID-19 are more lethal, only more infectious.” He also said that methods to discover new variants are very complex and require sophisticated tests that very few Venezuelan labs can run.
  • Dr. Zulma Cucunubá explained that genome studies in Latin America are minimal:
    We don’t know what’s happening with SARS-CoV-2 variants in the region,” she said. 
  • Several hospitals ran out of the vaccine already. We’re the only country that hasn’t presented a report on its immunization plan. 
  • The most recent report by Freedom House assures that democratic conditions in Venezuela have drastically diminished in the last ten years. We’ve lost individual and civil liberties, there’s no Rule of Law, no impartiality before the law, no plurality in politics and the State commits crimes against humanity. 
  • According to the map developed by Freedom House, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are the only countries in Latin America that aren’t free. We share this characteristic with Zimbabwe, Angola, Sudan, Egypt, Mali, Russia, Belarus, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, among others.  
  • Venezuela is the next to last country in Latin America in the Global Index of Food Security 2020, published by The Economist. We’re 96 out of 113 countries, barely over Haiti and African countries like Angola (97), Congo (98), Mozambique (99) and Nigeria (100). Venezuela is ranked too low in two main categories: purchasing power of food and its availability. Most Venezuelans can’t afford the basic food basket because of the high prices and their low income. 
  • The day after it was announced that Maduro is raiding the gold reserves at the Central Bank of Venezuela, comptroller Elvis Amoroso accused Juan Guaidó of being the leader of “a band of criminals” that is seeking to ruin the country. 
  • Amoroso said that the case of the Assembly elected in 2015, brought him to reconsider some of the laws that sanction corruption acts, a preface to demand creating a law where, after a “considerable period of time”, the assets recovered from corruption “can pass to the State” and can be immediately liquidated. 
  • The Foreign Minister of Grenada, Oliver Joseph, thanked Maduro for the help they’ve received from Venezuela, after he revealed that they gave 200,000 dollars to buy vaccines against COVID-19. In April 2020, Venezuela also donated rapid-response and antigen tests to Grenada. 
  • Ana Rosario Contreras, the president of the Caracas’ Nurses Guild, will be awarded with the Department of State’s International Women of Courage Award. 
  • The International Contact Group rejected, with several days of delay, the regime’s decision to expel the EU Ambassador to Venezuela. Argentina and Bolivia voted against this measure. The communiqué says this decision contradicts dialogue and respect which must prevail in international relations, and that it will only contribute to isolating Venezuela even further. 
  • The government of Mali admitted that there’s gold trafficking from their country to the United Arab Emirates, but they don’t know for sure if it’s coming from Venezuela, as the caretaker government’s Foreign Commissioner Julio Borges assured. Alexis Dembele told Reuters: “If this is true, we’ll take all the necessary measures.” 
  • In a hearing on the Venezuelan crisis, representatives on the Sub-Committee for Western Hemisphere Affairs demanded that Congress and the Biden administration develop  an integral strategy to tackled the security and humanitarian crises in Venezuela.

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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