Lat/Am Daily » Venezuela

Astroturf image of the week

Peter Krupa — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:28:27 +0000

In his latest bid to sow conflict in order to direct attention away from the country’s real problems while eroding other non-Chávez power bases, Chávez is going after the Catholic Church. Allegedly, El Pueblo is behind him:

Far be it from me to stick up for the Catholic Church for any reason, but if those signs were really drawn by the people holding them, then I’m a child-diddling archbishop.

Check out the script on that “es.” Elegant!

Of course, civil society organizations staging demonstrations hand out pre-drawn placards all the time. I believe such a practice is less common among sitting governments, with the possible historical exception of the PRI, which is maybe not the first thing an aspiring democrat would want to be compared to.

The most disappointing part is that, were those signs actually drawn up by El Pueblo, they would be way more entertaining.

Bank tweeters arrested

Peter Krupa — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 11:19:45 +0000

In an interesting development in Venezuela, the CICPC (equivalent, I think, to the FBI) has made its first arrest of Twitter users: Two people who the agency says tweeted rumors with the intent to destabilize the banking sector by causing a run on banks.

According to a press release, CICPC director Wilmer Flores said:

False rumors on social networks are clearly punished in Article 448 of the banking law. This means that anyone who spreads malevolent rumors via any means, e-mail, text messages from cellular phones, through Twitter, Facebook, or any other technological tool, with their own voice or through any other means of communication is committing a crime and must answer to the relevant authorities.

Noticias24 ran down one of the allegedly felonious tweets, from one Luis Enrique Acosta Oxford, which said, “People, so you can’t say I didn’t warn you, pull your money out of BANESCO today, there aren’t many days left.”

I know, rumors on Twitter. Can you believe it?

This tweet was from June 30, a couple weeks after the government took over (deservedly) Banco Federal, intensifying an already tense situation after the take-over of about a dozen other small and medium-sized banks late last year.

Malicious speech isn’t protected anywhere in the world, and people should learn that applies to Twitter as well. But if you need a special law to protect your banking system’s solvency from the effects of rumors, perhaps the real problem lies elsewhere.

‘ta barrato, dame 600k toneladas

Peter Krupa — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:03:14 +0000

An article in El Nacional puts a nice little bow on Venezuela’s ongoing rotting food scandal, in which a government importer left about 122,000 tons of foodstuffs to spoil in containers at Puerto Cabello. From the article:

The Productora y Distribuidora Venezolana de Alimentos, Pdval, imported 597,000 tons of foodstuffs in 2008. The amount is triple its distribution capacity (191,000) and almost quadruple the sales made that year (122,000 tons) according to a management report from the company dated June 2010.

Importing three times as much perishable inventory as you have the capacity to distribute does indeed have a predictable, stinky outcome.

I’m not sure why the report examines numbers from the end of 2008, but it’s probably still a decent illustration of how the government was doing business, which is not unlike the legendary way Venezuelans have always done business when possessed of a huge pile of oil cash: ‘ta barrato. Dame dos.

I suppose I don’t need to mention that you won’t have any food rotting in any ports if you produce it locally, but there, I just did.

Playtime

Peter Krupa — Mon, 03 May 2010 03:08:47 +0000

A somewhat hilarious AP article out today profiles Chávez’ efforts to arm and train some kind of civilian militia force. Frankly, it sounds like a rip-roaring good time: Take a few days off work (unless you weren’t doing anything anyway), play army with real guns, blow things up, etc.

I have family members who do this on weekends, and have at times participated. I can vouch for the entertainment value.

But Noticias24 has gotten its panties in a twist over the fact that the drill sergeants encourage their recruits to “kill those gringos!” This brings up an interesting question that several people have asked me in the last few weeks: Do Venezuelans hate Americans?

I’ve only traveled in Venezuela three times, so my experience is somewhat limited. But what I’ve seen is that while the president of Venezuela talks a lot of smack, Venezuelans still watch baseball and drive American cars and take shopping trips to Miami and sell most of their oil to the United States. They will not hesitate to give you a piece of their minds, but they will also buy you a wijky and invite you home to meet the family.

Probably their essential Caribbeanness has something to do with it.

But also, the thing is, to hate people from another culture, it helps to have been personally hurt by that culture in some way. All the macroeconomics, international politics, and military strategy that Chávez alludes to in his lengthy Sunday ramblings are perhaps outrageous, but abstractly so for your average Venezuelan.

In my experience, you’re much more likely to get hated on for your gringoness in Nicaragua or Mexico, where direct interaction with norteamericanos has often been distinctly unpleasant. In contrast, for many decades Venezuelans got employment, training, an improved standard of living, and some pretty decent-sized piles of oil cash from their contact with the gringos.

So if you want to see real gut-level gringo-hating in Venezuela, I think you’ll have to wait till US Marines are camped out in Miraflores and drawing mustaches on the Bolivar portraits. Until then, it’s just a game.

Chávez tweets UPDATED

Peter Krupa — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 02:32:14 +0000

Hugo Chávez now has a Twitter account: @chavezcandanga, which roughly translates to “Chávez candanga.” That is to say, if you think you can translate candanga, please, give it a shot. As far as the Venezuelan executive’s eloquent use of Venezuelan slang in an official capacity, it’s reminiscent of the “vergatario:”

Anyway, all trips down memory lane aside, @chavezcandanga now has 14,000 followers and counting. Chávez has said he has a “team” of people working his Twitter, and to watch to see what happens as of midnight. As of before midnight, he has twitted no tweets.

UPDATE: The feed is live. Here is Chávez’ very first tweet. We will bring you more updates on this gripping new development, like, pretty much never.

The curious case of the Ice Cream Spies

Peter Krupa — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 16:56:13 +0000

Enforcement of the law in Venezuela is highly selective these days, so when a well-publicized arrest takes place, there’s usually some reason. In the latest international tiff between Venezuela and Colombia, Venezuelan law enforcement arrested eight Colombian residents for taking pictures of power lines and transformers. The eight were owners and employees of an ice cream factory in Chávez’ home state of Barinas.

The question is, why were they really arrested?

Today, El Tiempo has published a long and generally interesting article on the Ice Cream Spies. One detail in particular stuck out:

The news of the Colombians’ arrest fell like a bomb on the village of Barinitas (about 40,000 residents, half an hour from Barinas, where the Giraldo family has lived for 11 years), and not only because they are widely recognized as working people dedicated to their ice cream factory, ‘Maky Helados.’

People were also surprised because the Giraldo family is close to the ‘revolutionary process’ and friends with Narciso, the brother of President Hugo Chávez. They helped him in promoting the candidacy of the current mayor of Barinitas, Ana Lucía de Cartier, a member of the ruling party.

Did the Colombians somehow cross the Chávez family, which rules Barinas like a fiefdom? It wouldn’t be the first time a former ally got thrown under the bus. Another more quotidian yet plausible explanation is that Chávez is using that time-honored trick of nationalist autocrats everywhere, Blame Your Problems On The Other.

Colombians are to Venezuela as the Mexicans are the United States or the Haitians are to the Dominican Republic or the Nicaraguans are to Costa Rica or the Guatemalans are to Mexico: The low immigrants on the totem pole. You can always lambaste them in public to direct attention away from your leadership failures and whip up a few extra votes.

Hence the hilarious accusations of not only espionage, but sabotage. So far, the Colombians haven’t even been charged with anything, though Venezuela’s head of state is already working to convict them in the court of public opinion.

Good luck getting a fair trial.

More fear than greed

Peter Krupa — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:05:52 +0000

Miguel at The Devil’s Excrement has posted a great piece on Venezuelan bond prices and how they stack up to the rest of the developing world. During last year’s financial crisis, lots of money flooded into developing market bonds, pushing their yields down. The one exception: Venezuela. Its 5-year dollar-denominated bonds are paying around 11%, while state oil company PdVSA is paying a whopping 14%.

For the sake of comparison, Colombian 5-year debt yields 4.28%.

The truth is that PDVSA is yielding roughly ten times more (10x) than Brazil until 2015. Investors are saying they have no fear in buying Brazilian bonds at 1.2% until 2012, but they are worried (really worried!) with PDVSA bonds which yield 10.35% if you keep them for the next 16 months. Whatever their reasons, these investors are agreeing with Morgan Stanley, there may be a cash crunch in foreign currency and Chavez may decide to tell investors to bag it.

Of course, this is just what the market says, and markets often turn out to be a high-tech equivalent of 5-year-olds playing soccer. A 10.35% yield on debt from a major international oil company with exclusive access to some of the largest reserves in the world is hella good.

Miguel says he actually owns PdVSA debt. Something to think about.

Insulza stepping out

Peter Krupa — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 01:10:10 +0000

A week after his reelection to a second (and final) five-year term as Secretary General of the OAS, Chilean José Miguel Insulza is coming out swinging. First he demanded Venezuela release the head of an opposition television channel jailed for insulting the president, then he requested Cuba release its infirm political prisoners, then he urged the FARC to release all its hostages, not just the handful released this week.

For a guy who by some lights tended to tread softly on matters near and dear to the hearts of Chávez and his allies, this is kind of an about face. What happened?

Basically, politics.

Presidents gunning for a second term generally need to avoid pissing off voters. The OAS has 35 voting members, 15 of which are in Chávez’ Petrocaribe oil give-away program and two others of which are in his ALBA tree fort. So angering Chávez or his allies could easily have meant thumbs down for Insulza’s second term, or at the very least a loud enough tantrum to make the other OAS countries put their support behind a less controversial candidate.

(If there’s one thing Chávez and his allies are good at, it’s tantrums.)

Now that he’s slipped quietly into his second term, however, Insulza has five years ahead of him and no chance for another reelection, so he can take aim at whatever he likes, free from the bonds of electoral politics. Maybe he’ll try to build himself a legacy, the kind that evaded him during his first term. It would be wonderful to see OAS bodies turn both barrels on the human rights violations of some of the larger, more influential member states, like Mexico and Brazil (or, ahem, the United States).

Fortunately for human rights victims in the Americas, Insulza now has nothing to lose.

The truth is out there

Peter Krupa — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 04:01:00 +0000

Rumors and accusations have been floating around for some time about links between the Chávez government and the FARC. Now Adam Isaacson at the Plan Colombia and Beyond blog has done us all a great favor by compiling all the evidence that’s come out over recent years in one place.

The conclusion? There is no conclusion. Though there have been accusations from both the Colombians and the U.S. government, as well as statements of support for the FARC and its members from the Venezuelan government, so far hard evidence is scarce, inconclusive, or circumstantial. Yet people – especially North American-type people – keep talking:

Words matter. Colombia could interpret (misinterpret?) the [Obama] administration’s message as a “green light,” a signal that Colombia would be justified in taking military action in Venezuelan territory, and that Colombia would have U.S. support in the political and military firestorm that would follow such action.

Precision is important, because it will determine what actions follow. The question the Obama administration needs to answer unambiguously, then, is: does it believe that Venezuela’s government, as a matter of policy (as opposed to the actions of corrupt or rogue elements), is aiding and abetting the FARC today?

The important thing, Isaacson says, is for governments on all sides stop accusing Venezuela of supporting the FARC until some hard, irrefutable evidence emerges, as such support would basically be grounds for war. Should evidence of Venezuelan support for the FARC emerge, Venezuela and Colombia should take their dispute to the UN Security Council before the shooting starts.

Good for a laugh

Peter Krupa — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:08:28 +0000

I give you, the Venezuelan version of People of Wal-Mart, Solo en Venezuela (Only in Venezuela).

“The door bell doesn’t work, please knock with the hose.” OK, fine, one more: