Silence is golden, words are made of lead

Quico says: You can always tell when a news story genuinely catches the chavista propaganda machine unprepared. Terrified of publishing anything that may, in retrospect, turn out to have been "off message", the state media just seizes up completely and waits for the boss to tell them how the tale is to be told.

So, 18 hours after ExxonMobil went nuclear by freezing PDVSA's assets abroad, check out what's making the "front pages" of the government's main propaganda arms:








It's pretty remarkable. If you got your news exclusively from chavista sources, you still wouldn't know anything in particular happened.

There's a heavy stench of panic hanging over this latest chavista media blackout, a deer-in-the-headlights quality to it, a deep, deep pathos...

Update: Ernesto Villegas did run with it on VTV this morning.