Rescate Venezuela was the NGO that started the engines for the entry of the humanitarian aid. This Sunday, February 17th, the humanitarian camps exercise officially began. This is the chronicle of one of them in Macarao, Caracas.
With a Live Aid concert scheduled for Friday 22nd and volunteers rallying to the call for help, February 23rd is shaping up to be a showdown between the democratic forces and the dictatorship, though it’s not an endgame in itself.
While some professional pessimists complain about the speed of this transition (because toppling a dictatorship must take a couple of magic tricks,) the dictatorship keeps shrinking its action range under international pressure.
After three weeks that felt like a year, the Venezuelan transition process feels a bit stagnated. An article in Bloomberg reminds us that the usurpation is far from over, and that many things could still go wrong. But there are also reasons to not freak out (that much) about it.
The caretaker president seems free of an old, strong tradition common to chavismo and opposition: politics is about following a man. By acting always in the name of the National Assembly, Guaidó works on a critical return to institutionality.
Amidst Venezuela’s complex humanitarian emergency and with a criminally negligent state, national and international organizations are in urgent need of help from organized citizens, as long as they’re well trained and informed.
2019’s protests have unfolded in a rather peaceful and predictable manner. The plot twist nobody expected today was a direct command to the Armed Forces from the caretaker president, for what might be the key moment of this struggle.
Desiré Cumare, a nurse from Maracao, at the southwestern tip of Caracas, saw how the regime’s death squad killed his son kicking his head, “just because we can”. They also sacked the apartment. “It’s a war on us.”
Virgilio Jiménez was detained during a demonstration, in November 2017. On February 5th, he died in jail due to an infection he would've recovered from if he hadn't been severely malnourished. He’s the 12th Venezuelan inmate to die in such circumstances in 2019, and in the same state: Lara.
Four weeks after Nicolás Maduro started a presidential term not recognized as legitimate by most of the international community and with that a full constitutional crisis of global resonance, social networks and streets are again a racing course between believers and discouraged. But this time, Team Hope looks way closer to the trophy.
We’ve been able to hang on for 22 years in one of the craziest media landscapes in the world. We’ve seen different media outlets in Venezuela (and abroad) closing shop, something we’re looking to avoid at all costs. Your collaboration goes a long way in helping us weather the storm.
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