Caracas Chronicles

• Venezuela reached new levels of poverty. According to the Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida (Encovi): 
  • 94.5% of the population (based on income) is in poverty, out of which 76.6% live under extreme poverty, the highest figure ever recorded in the country. 
  • Professor Luis Pedro España said we arrived at the highest level of poverty possible since 5% of the population has more income and methods to maintain them. 
  • Multidimensional poverty is at 65.2% and Spain explained that the indicators point at Venezuela being the poorest country in Latin America. 
  • In 2012, the poverty rate in Venezuela was at 32.6% and extreme poverty at 9.3%. 
• There are 7.6 million workers in the country and 8.1 million would work if they had the opportunity, meaning the population that’s active in the economy is only 50%. 

Only one-third of women are active in the economy, men make more money in all sectors, and in executive positions, the gap is 76%. 

• If the income was distributed among the population, every Venezuelan citizen would get one dollar per day. 
• Encovi estimated that the total population is 28.7 million people, because of immigration and the mortality rate increase. 86% of migrants have left the country because of the need to find employment. 
• Over one million students dropped out of the school system between 2019 and 2021.

This was our take last year, on a study that shows what chavismo did, in all its horror

The EU decided to send an electoral observation mission for November and the CNE reported that they made an agreement with the EU delegation in Caracas for establishing the observation mission. 

• Stalin González said that the merits of having an EU mission are “part of the efforts and the work we’ve done, united.” 
• Ramón José Medina assured that the opposition must return to political rationality, prefacing the mistakes he thinks the National Assembly of 2015 made. He didn’t mention the persecution, detentions, exile, illegalization of political parties or the TSJ orders or the National Constituent Assembly. 
• Juan Guaidó called on Venezuelans to take to the streets to demand electoral conditions and a presidential election. He said that the 2018 election was a fraud and that this caused Maduro not to be recognized as the legitimate president. He assured he’ll be touring the country and reiterated there are no conditions that will guarantee a democratic election in November, so he called on citizens to mobilize. “I’m going to say it straight, Maduro, you’ve been defeated because we’re united in this fight because there’s a possibility of a national salvation agreement, you lost because you don’t have any legitimacy,” he said before he blamed Maduro for the 94.5% poverty rate registered by Encovi 2021.
• The president of the Asociación Capital de Clínicas, Germán Cortez, reported that 75% and 80% of ICU beds with COVID-19 patients and that most of them weren’t vaccinated. Later, PAHO’s Ciro Ugarte assured the country hasn’t reported saturation of the health system. 
• Monitor Salud Sida that 457 cases had been reported in the sector until Wednesday and that “this proves the pandemic’s exponential growth. However, it doesn’t affect the whole country, that’s why it’s urgent to create an epidemiological fence in the most affected areas,” they warned. 
• Workers of the J.M. de los Ríos Hospital protested today and union leader Pablo Zambrano demanded a plan to face the currency redenomination and their low wages. 

FundaRedes denounced that 248 people have disappeared and 742 were murdered and there were 268 clashes in border states in 2021. 

• Andreína Baduel, the daughter of Chávez’s minister of Defense Raúl Isaías Baduel, denounced that the political prisoner was taken from La Tumba (SEBIN headquarters) in Plaza Venezuela to El Helicoide. 
• Tareck El Aissami said that Primero Justicia is trying to put some distance between the party and “the cases of CITGO and corruption”  and assured that Julio Borges allowed these operations: “Juan Guaidó, Henrique Capriles, Julio Borges y Leopoldo López are responsible for the sanctions,” he said. 
• David Vallenilla’s father assured that the appeal “is a fake move, to say they’re doing something (…) while they investigate this judge, the sergeant (Arli Cleiwi Méndez Terán) who committed the crime is already free.” 
• The black market dollar closed at 4,467,830 on Wednesday, according to Monitor Dólar.
• The Chilean government announced that they’ll exhort several shelters in northern Chile to assist hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who are stranded after illegally crossing the border.  Maduro’s ambassador went to Iquique to offer refugees the “Plan Vuelta a la Patria.” Most of them didn’t accept his offer.