Tegucigalpa Chronicles

Quico says: Folks, I'm sorry this blog has gone Honduras-crazy over the last few days. No era para menos. I'll return to blogging to stuff I know something about shortly, but I just needed to get this one last thing off my chest.

Buried in this absolutely fascinating piece in the Miami Herald interviewing Honduran army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, where the guy straightforwardly admits the ejection of Zelaya from the country was illegal - but justifies it anyway - we find this hallucinogenic passage that seems to encapsulate OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza's bizarre behavior throughout the crisis:

Zelaya has said he will try to stage a brazen comeback on Sunday. The Organization of American States' secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, arrives in Tegucigalpa Friday to try to lay the groundwork for Zelaya's return. Insulza refuses to meet any member of the new administration led by the former head of Congress, Roberto Micheletti.

Wait, wait, wait...how do the last two sentences in that paragraph even make sense together? Does Insulza intend to "lay the groundwork for Zelaya's return" by negotiating with the hot dog hawker in front of the presidential palace? What exactly is the plan here?

Pardon my rampant Teodorismo here, but you don't need to be a ranting anti-OAS fanatic to say Insulza's not exactly covering himself in glory here. At times of crisis the continent needs serious diplomacy from the head of the Inter-American system, not this kind of permanent grandstanding.

(Seriously, though, check out that Miami Herald piece. It's a blockbuster. This Bayardo Inestroza guy's a piece of work.)

Hugui Go Home

Quico says: Here's a question worth pondering: how come Roberto Micheletti woke up this morning in the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa instead of across the hall from Carmona in whichever flea-bag hotel in Bogotá he lives in now?

Having led a universally reviled military coup in one of the smallest, weakest, poorest, most aid-dependent countries in the Americas, how the hell has Micheletti managed to hang on through thick and thin as a head of state recognized only by Israel and Taiwan?

The answer, my friends, has a first name and a last name: Hugo friggin' Chávez.

Think about it: without Chávez to use as a foil, what plausible legitimation strategy did Micheletti have?

Without Hugo's incredibly unsubtle meddling in Honduran affairs, what imaginable combination of words could have allowed Micheletti to rally an important part of Honduran public opinion behind him? Without the preposterous saber-rattling, the hypertrophied gas-baggery, the unending stream of unadulterated bullshit streaming out of Caracas, how could a guy defy all of international public opinion and stay in charge of a country so aid dependent, it basically lives off of the kindness of strangers?

Seventeen years on from his own coup, Chávez is still the Latin American coupster's best friend: the one way people in Micheletti's position get to approximate some kind legitimacy. Without Chávez, the idea that Zelaya's powerplay fit into some larger international plot to do in Honduras's democratic institutions wouldn't even make sense. But with Hugui - and the petrochequera, obviously- lined up behind him, the contention becomes scarily, straightforwardly plausible.

And that, when you think about it, is why the destabilization rap against Chávez sticks: not just because he makes it easier for people like Rafael Correa to get away with the stuff Correa gets away with, but because he also makes it easier for people like Micheletti to get away with the stuff he - insólitamente - gets away with.

The wolf decries the plight of the sheep

Juan Cristóbal says: -As I write this, the deposed President of Honduras is giving a speech to the UN.

As I write this, all TV and radio stations in Venezuela are forced to carry the speech live. Yes, you read right: all TV and radio stations are carrying the speech live.

Hard to believe? No. This is the sort of abuse of power that happens in Venezuela every day.

Let me be frank about this, because there's no way of making this latest outrage literary, elegant or erudite: who in Venezuela gives a rat's ass about the fate of the Honduran president? And why should Venezuela's TV-viewing, radio-listening public be forced to submit themselves to the diatribes of a deposed Juan Valdez-lookalike who, for all we know about him, violated Honduran law and simply got what he had coming to him?

Ever since this whole telenovela started on Sunday, ordinary bloggers like myself have been forced to delve into the obscure machinations of Honduran politics. I have received mass emails quoting the Honduran Constitution - four times! And now, Hugo Chávez forces Mr. Zelaya's speech down the throat of every cantina-dweller, every taguara-owner, every radio-listening truck driver in Venezuela, just because he can, just because he has unchecked power.

But the above does not constitute the biggest downside of all of this.

I said it before and Alvaro Vargas Llosa agrees: the greatest sin that Honduras' golpistas have committed is that, thanks to their actions, Hugo Chávez, Raúl Castro and Rafael Correa have transmorgified into the defenders of Latin American democracy, putting them at the forefront of the fight for the rule of law. Pretty soon, I expect Robert Mugabe will make an appearance in Managua to express solidarity toward Mr. Zelaya, and Burma's generals will withdraw their Ambassador to Honduras in protest for this grievous offense to freedom-lovers everywhere.

Somebody pass the barf bags.

Grand Theft Opinion

Quico says: So I wrote up a thing on the Honduran mess over at The New Republic's mass blog, The Plank. A taste:

If anything, the hemisphere's unanimous, outraged reaction to events in Tegucigalpa--which, for once, saw Washington and Caracas in strong agreement against the coup--underlines the region's pathologically imbalanced veneration of presidential power. After all, in 1999, when Hugo Chávez, with the agreement of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, moved to shut down Venezuela's democratically elected congress, we heard nary a peep from the OAS. And in 2007, when Ecuador's own neoauthoritarian president Rafael Correa moved to shut down congress with the Supreme Court's approval, nobody cried coup. In neither case were those closures allowed by the existing constitution, yet nobody would've taken cries of a "coup" seriously.

Somehow, though, when the Honduran Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, moves against the president, the continent's foreign affairs ministries fly into deep crisis mode.

And, erm...if that reads to you suspiciously like Juan's take in the comment thread yesterday...well, there's a reason for that.

Two faces of Hugo Chávez

Juan Cristóbal says: - Hugo Chávez on last week's events in Iran:

"The Bolivarian government of Venezuela expresses its firm rejection of the ferocious and unfounded campaign to discredit, from abroad, that has been unleashed against Iran, with the objective of muddying the political climate of this brother country. We demand the immediate end to maneuvers to intimidate and destabilize the Islamic Revolution."

Hugo Chávez on today's coup d'etat against Honduran President and ally Manuel Zelaya:

"If they swear in (Congress President) Micheletti, we will overthrow him. We will overthrow him, it's that simple. We will do anything we need to do in order to put Manuel Zelaya in power once again."

The Trouble with Mass Expropriations...

Quico says: ...is that, these days, the world just isn't set up for that way of doing things. Take the Eastern Shore of Lake Maracaibo oil service company expropriations. Chávez never stopped to calculate that if you just grab the boats that those companies were using to service the rigs, you leave their property in some weird kind of international limbo. Which matters, because those boats are insured internationally. If you grab them, you find yourself holding a bunch of boats that somebody else has already taken out insurance on.

Not surprisingly, the international insurers weren't about to take that sitting down. The scarily named Joint War Committee - basically a talking shop London-based maritime insurers have set up to monitor conflict zones around the world - has put Venezuela on its "War, Strikes, Terrorism and Related Perils" list alongside such tourist hotspots as the Gulf of Aden, the coast of Yemen, the Indonesian island of Ambon and the Niger River Delta.

The decision activates the War Exclusion Clause on the insurance contracts covering - as far as I can tell - all vessels operating in Venezuela. Which means that nothing that floats within 12 miles of Venezuela's coastline can be internationally insured.

Peachy.

Bugbear to All

Quico says: It's remarkable to realize how much of the political life of Venezuela these days is about Globovision: an influence entirely out of proportion to the station's coverage, both geographic and ratings-wise, that seems proportional to nothing so much as the scale of its demonization at the hands of the government.

This week, The Economist reviews the little-station-that-could's travails in a write-up that brings a welcome Economist-style sense of balance to the whole affaire. Well worth a read.

Of course, in covering the issue, this blog has been basically centered on The Economist's second-to-last paragraph, much more than on the rest of the story. To wit,

Globovisión has faults. Although its reporting is professional, its commentators are sometimes shrill and monotonous. Its owners abuse their power to choose which opposition voices are heard and which not. It is not much of an exaggeration to say, as government spokesmen do, that it behaves as if it were a political party. But contrast it with the government channels, which are both turgid and inflammatory, and it is a journalistic paragon.

There is, of course, much more to it than that, and I can fully grasp why, in writing for a worldwide audience, that graf ends up pretty far down the page.

But for a more Venezuela-centered audience, I feel that speaking forthrightly about Globo's many and very serious shortcomings, from within the opposition fold, is a needed corrective against the tendency to lionize the fairly grubby, often self-defeating operation these guys run out of Alta Florida. The alternative is a kind of atavistic oligophrenia. I mean, things really have come to a head when the viejas del este start turning out en masse to be, essentially, volunteer tax collectors for the chavista state.

But there I go again, off on an anti-Globo rant. I really can't help myself, y'know. Which is why it's good, now and then, to step back and look at the bigger picture.

¿Qué pasaría en Venezuela si no existiera El Chigüire Bipolar?

Quico says: "Indispensable" is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. But this story demonstrates why El Chigüire Bipolar has become genuinely indispensable in Venezuela.

In three paragraphs, they deconstruct the dysfunctions of the oppo media more incisively than what you'd get in bucketfuls of pixels on Caracas Chronicles.

Plus, you laugh your head off, too.

The Exporter

Quico says: "Así estarán las vainas que when we manage to get the National Guard to show up at our factory, we celebrate," The Exporter says, savoring how counter-intuitive his sentence sounds.

"Huh?"

"Well, sure. They make you jump through so many hoops before they'll even send an inspection team over to certify your shipment, it's a bit of a victory just having them there."

Bewildered? So was I.

Welcome to the world of The Exporter: a topsy-turvy universe where businesses positively relish the chance to get shaken down by some fat Guardia Nacional bloke who's holding their business plan hostage.

"Check it out, by the time the National Guard deigns to send an inspection team over, that means we've already gotten the Cadivi permits, the certificate saying that the internal market is already fully supplied, and we've finished the crazy little Treasure Hunt through the Caracas offices of the ministerios to get all the various permits: health ministry, tax office, labor ministry, the works. The export certificate has to have nine official stamps on it by the time you're finished and - credit where credit is due - that's actually the new, streamlined procedure because until a couple of years ago you needed seventeen!"

"Even nine, though, is a mighty struggle, especially because it turns out the last stamp has to be signed by the same MILCO official who signed the first one. Not the same agency, mind you, the same official. So if the guy is out sick, or on vacation, or just didn't feel like coming in that day...you're out of luck. The guy knows he can hold up your entire shipment so...as you'd expect, wheels have to be greased. Biggest racket in the world, that one..."

"So yeah, by the time that nightmare's over and you finally have all the papers you need to get the Guardia to come over to the plant, you're de fiesta."

Yowza. "Y ¿entonces?" I ask.

"Well then these guys come into the plant and they go through your shipment box by box, crate by crate, pallet by pallet, actually physically inspecting each one before putting a big plastic sheet over the pallets and an official Guardia Nacional seal on them."

I'm a bit puzzled by this.

"To make sure you're not over-invoicing, I guess?" I add tentatively.

"Well, in part," The Exporter says, "but mostly to make sure there aren't any drugs hidden away in the shipment. And that part, of course, you can understand. The Guardia doesn't want any competition, y'know? If any cocaine is moving through the country, they want a cut..."

"Anyway," The Exporter, who's in full swing now, goes on "you'd think now that your package is fully permisologized, inspected, signed and sealed, that's the end of it, right? No, mi amor. Not a bit of it, because then you have to put it on a truck and ship it off to a port where, the second it gets there, it gets stopped by...wait for it...La Guardia Nacional. That's right, a second set of Guardias take off the old Guardia seal, undo all the plastic and inspect it all over again, box by box, crate by crate, pallet by pallet. And when they're done they put a new plastic on it, and another seal on it, which, actually, looks just like the first."

"It's a nuthouse, Quico," he says, laughing, "and the really insane part is that, on average, a shipment takes 4 to 6 weeks to move out of the ports in La Guaira or Puerto Cabello. But the Guardia seals expire in three days! So every three days you have to suck up to them to get them to come back, take old seals off and put new seals on...and, of course, every three days you gotta pay someone off to do that!"

I'm staggered already, but it gets worse.

"But lets say somehow you manage to jump through all the hoops and you put your stuff on a ship, send it abroad and sell it...guess what? At the start of the entire process, you had to tell Cadivi you were going to export this stuff, so you're forced, as a matter of law, to take no less than 90% of the dollars you get paid and give them to the Central Bank, at which point they'll turn around and give you the princely sum of two bolivars and fifteen cents for each dollar worth of exports!"

"That's what?" I say, "maybe a third of what a dollar is worth, in purchasing power terms?"

"Right," The Exporter replies, "But since they've been inspecting you inside and out for weeks, they know exactly how much you exported and there's just no getting around it. If you don't hand over the dollars to BCV, you'll never get another export permit again."

"The way it works, basically, is that you have to go through that whole sprawling, steaming mass of hassles just for the privilege of having Chávez confiscate two out of every three dollars you earn. Or, to put it more delicately, tax your export revenues - your gross export revenues - at something like a 60% or 70% rate. Because that's the implied tax when they force you to hand over a dollar worth Bs.6 or 7 and they pay you just Bs.2.15 for it."

"Que bolas," I say.

"Nice, huh?" He's smiling this big masochist smile of his. "Es que not even PDVSA buys bolivars at the official rate anymore - or did we forget all about Rosemont already? It's basically occassional confused gringo tourists and us - those are the only pendejos left who'll fork over one full dollar for Bs.2.15."

It takes some time to digest The Exporter's story.

When you take it all in, it's no wonder that Venezuelan non-oil exports have collapsed to historic lows this year. The real wonder is that anything at all continues to be exported in these circumstances. Basically, the only firms that export are firms that have absolutely no other choice because there's no market for their products at home, or because they need to keep a presence in foreign markets if they're to have any hope of becoming competitive again some day in the future.

On this blog, we used to have some debate, now and again, on what an appropriate, progressive development policy for Venezuela might look like. But seen against the light of the utterly insane reality The Exporter describes, seriously, those kind of debates look so incredibly misplaced it's embarrassing.

Needless to say, these kinds of stories are the ones that first-world researchers miss by a mile. Somewhere, in an ivy-covered computer lab, a twenty-six year-old trade economist is running a regression and concluding that Venezuela suffers from a terrible case of Dutch Disease, a technical term that helps explain why oil-exporting countries export little else .

But it's not just Dutch Disease. It's not the over-valuation of the currency that is the main factor holding our non-oil exports back. It's the fact that the entire apparatus of the State is mobilized to stop you from exporting.

A change in perspective is in order. Any export regime that isn't certifiably bonkers would be a massive improvement over what we have now.

Leopoldo endorses opposition primaries

Juan Cristóbal says: - Leopoldo López, the former mayor of Chacao and an early front-runner for the 2012 opposition Presidential nomination, made some important news this morning.

In an article by Roberto Giusti in today's El Universal, López makes a whole lot of sense. He says the opposition's current non-strategy simply isn't viable, calling for primary elections to make up a single slate of candidates for the coming city council and National Assembly elections.

His main argument stems from the lessons we all should have learned in last year's Regional Elections. In spite of some notable successes, he calls a spade a spade and says that our side underperformed. He makes a strong case, pointing out that the opposition lost 76 mayor's offices and two governorships due to lack of unity, highlighting Barinas, Bolívar, Chacao and Baruta particularly as the most egregious cases (although in the case of the latter two, our side won).

He thinks the lack of unity and the ugly spectacle of backroom deals to hatch half-baked unity pacts turned off the opposition base. He points to Datos polling numbers showing that support for opposition politicians fell from 25% in early 2008 to 11% now.

How do we address this?

Easy: doing things differently.

He says primaries would enable our own base to participate in making unity lists, and that this would add legitimacy to our candidates, not to mention that it would allow the political parties their proper weight instead of giving each one an equivalent seat at the table.

"If we don't consult the voters," he says, "and define a clear perspective in the medium run, we are going to reach January without a shared strategy that generates enthusiasm and shows change in political leadership, and this would just be a rehash of the mistakes of the past."

He says that choosing candidates from the base would show the opposition endorses "a new way of doing politics", and thinks such a process can provide leverage and enable the opposition to harvest local leaderships named by the communities themselves.

Personally, I think this is exciting news. I have argued for a change in opposition tactics, spearheaded by a change in the opposition's leadership. I've been a latecomer to the idea of primaries, but the failed experience of last year convinced me that this is the only alternative to have an opposition movement that is national, organized, and credible.

The lackluster, haphazard, recently created "Mesa de Unidad" has generated zero enthusiasm. The government was quick to label it as a re-thread of failed experiments in the past, and guess what, they are right.

The last few weeks convinced me even more that only a bold approach can work. I've been waiting for months for an opposition bigwig to come out and endorse this idea, and I'm glad to see it happen.

While I have always recognized his talents, I've been critical of López in the past, and I'm not entirely sure I agree with his idea of inviting the CNE to organize the primaries. But by coming out and stating the obvious, by being the only opposition heavyweight willing to show a little bit of vision, I'm burying the hatchet.

López is now my favorite opposition politician.

Let's hope the others catch on to the idea of primaries and start understanding a simple fact: this is a necessary condition for the opposition establishing a new majority, our only (and perhaps last) hope.

Gone To The Dogs

Quico says: The sun was setting by the time he got to the farm gate, so it wasn't immediately evident to Kenneth that the guys loitering there were soldiers. Sure, they were toting assault rifles, but they were wearing plain olive-green t-shirts over their camouflaged pants. No uniforms, no insignia, nothing like that.

"Stop!" one of them said as Kenneth approached, raising his rifle. "Identify yourself!"

"Ummmm..." trying to piece together whether he was about to get robbed at gunpoint, Kenneth struggled for a way to say the next few words without sounding entirely preposterous, "es que...we, uh, made reservations."

Blank stares. Turns out the flunkies who'd been sent to expropriate this particular farm had no idea that, alongside their agricultural business, the old owners ran a posada - a kind of farm lodge for tourists.

"Reservations?!" the soldier barked back, "¿cómo es la vaina!?"

"Bueno, officer, you know, because normal hotels won't take this many dogs, so..."

Even blanker stares. Of course, if the soldier didn't know about the posada, he certainly didn't realize that its location - just outside Valencia - made it a favorite lodging place for dog breeders, owners and handlers heading to last weekend's big Pedigree Dog Show there.

Kenneth had been driving for hours and hours by this time, having toured Caracas to pick up the dogs and then taken on the massive traffic jam in Tazón before hitting the highway with 22 - that's right, twenty-two - dogs in kennels piled in the back of his van.

He was tired, and just wasn't prepared for any of this...five minutes earlier, his mind had been entirely occupied with worries about last minute grooming and such ahead of the big show the next day.

"Dogs?" The soldier didn't look much older than 18, and this stuff about dogs this took things from weird to downright surreal. "What dogs nor what coño?!"

"Sí, sí, you know, for the big dog show in town...we usually stay in this posada cuz they don't mind about the dogs..."

At this, the kids at the gate realized they needed to take this to their higher-ups. One of them headed into the farm. A few of minutes later, a fat army officer came out to Kenneth's van to figure out what this was all about.

"Bueno, we took control of this farm yesterday, ya sabes, para la nación. Now, what's this about dogs?"

Kenneth explained what was going on. Said he had no idea the farm was about to get expropriated. Showed the officer his printed out reservation. And the dogs.

...ud. no lo va a creer, pero hay escuelas de perros, y les dan educación...

"Officer, um, what can I say? How were we supposed to know about this invasi...erm, expropriation? We've been driving since this morning and the show's tomorrow and de pana que you gotta let us spend the night here!...there's just nowhere else we can stay in Valencia with twenty two dogs at this time of night."

The officer looked over the reservation papers, looked over the dogs, thought about it for a second and then, to Kenneth's astonishment, waved them in.

As the van rolled into the farm, Kenneth noticed the soldiers still following it with their rifle barrels...

---

Kenneth's friend, who turned up a few hours later, had a rather rougher time of it. When he turned up, the soldiers had left the gate unguarded. A regular at that posada, he just jumped out of his truck and started trying to open the portón to the farm himself, like he'd done many times in previous years.

Seeing this the soldiers freaked out, ran over, and started screaming at him to stand back, at one point holding their Kalashnikovs up to his nine year old daughter's head as they shouted questions at him.

It was not a pretty picture.

---

"Coño, nobody told us they were running a posada here," the officer said over beers with Kenneth later that night, almost apologetically.

"All we knew was that they were planting sugar cane on the farm, and you know, sugar cane's no good. I mean, for the revolution, it's just not a priority. Ecologically too. That stuff fucks up the top soil. So we took it over, for the pueblo."

Kenneth looked at the fields all around, though, and something wasn't quite jiving for him.

"Ummmm," he said, a little hesitantly, "well, y'know, I'm no farmer, but that stuff looks like corn to me."

"Sí claro," the officer shot back, "the owners got wind that we were evaluating a takeover a while back so, sure, this year, those vagabundos planted corn. Y'know, just to take the heat off. But last year and the year before that, and for a long time, they were always planting sugar cane."

"Ah, gotcha, understood," Kenneth said, letting it slide.

What he didn't say, for obvious reasons, was what he was really thinking, which ran more along the lines of "holy fucking shit! these guys got expropriated because, years ago, they used to plant stuff the government later decided it didn't like!!"

Followed closely by "what the hell does this guy mean sugar-cane isn't a priority?!!? hasn't he ever heard of CAAEZ?! of rum!???"

Staggered, Kenneth got back to tending his dogs.

---

At the show venue, the usual community of dog freaks from all over the country had come together to show off their mutts. Kenneth's story made for something of an amusing anecdote backstage.

Not that he'd want to make too much of it, though. This is a dog show, after all. Non dog-related talk is strictly frowned upon at these things.

"Well, that's The Process for you...hey did you see that beagle from Maturín?! What a beaut..."

Kenneth, along with his 22 dogs, spent two nights total at the posada.

The last day, as he got ready to pack up his dogs and head back to Caracas, he couldn't help but notice that the revolutionization of the farm had started. Literally the first thing the soldiers had been ordered to do was to take the whitewashed façade of the main farm-house, paint it bright red, and stencil a silhouette of Che Guevara onto it.

You've got to know when to hold'em and when to fold'em

Juan Cristóbal says: In the last few months, the government has ratcheted up the pressure against the only opposition TV station left in Venezuela, the small all-news outlet Globovisión. Chavismo is going all out, charging the company and its executives with everything from tax evasion to psychological war to environmental crimes (on account of a few head of stuffed moose hanging in the walls of the station's owner), not to mention a relentless propaganda campaign on state media against the station.

It's not hard to piece together that the outcome of this whole charade is Globovisión's shut down, and soon. Today we even learned that the Supreme Tribunal decided, against the Constitution, that the government could impose prior restraint (a.k.a. censorship) whenever it wants to.

So in light of all this, it's fair to ask: is it all worth it?

When you think about it, something doesn't fit. The government has all the power to shut Globovisión down. It has had it for a long time. And yet, they're still broadcasting. Why?

Inside sources suggest elements in the government are open to some sort of cohabitation arrangement. Chávez's furious tone in ordering, on national TV, a harder line against the station hints at his frustration: his orders aren't getting followed, because they're meeting resistance from some of the less suicidal elements in the administration.

People like Diosdado and Jesse Chacón know full well that shutting down Venezuela's last independent station could carry tremendous political costs. The benefits, on the other hand, are obviously limited. Globovisión's audience is tiny, overwhelmingly urban, largely cable-or-satellite-TV subscribing, resolutely middle class, and rabidly antichavista to begin with. So it's not like the station costs Chávez any swing votes as it is: Chuo Torrealba's heroic efforts notwithstanding, Globovisión no sube cerro.

In light of this, maybe Globovisión editor Alberto Ravell can save some of the jobs his station provides and keep an important source of independent information for Venezuelans alive if he gave a few of his most shrill anchors the boot.

Perhaps he should give himself the boot.

Envision this scenario: Alberto Ravell comes out and says that their editorial line is wrong and that they are going to tone it down. He says he is resigning to make way for a more impartial editorial voice, that he is laying off some of the shrillest voices (Adiós, Ciudadano?) in the channel and that he is hiring more unbiased reporters and anchors. Imagine a new editor coming in and saying that, for the sake of balance, they will hire (gulp!) a chavista anchor.

The Maria Alejandra Lopezes of the world would, of course, go apoplectic. But the government may end up backing down. Sure, some of the radicals will continue to huff and puff, but is it entirely out of the realm of possibility to imagine them saying something like "well, we'll continue to monitor them and see if they live up to their promise of balance" ?

I believe that, in terms of costs and benefits, it's better to have a moderate outlet where to voice our ideas than to have none at all. And let's face it, it's not like the shrill tone is convincing anyone out there that isn't already convinced. Hell, it may even be good for their ratings.

I'm no media insider, so I don't even know if compromise is at all possible. I have been paying attention, though, and I haven't heard anyone on either side seriously exploring this possibility.

I know I'm not the right person to be writing this post. I haven't watched Globovisión for some time now, and I've never been a big fan. But I recognize the importance of Globovisión's right to exist.

I don't watch Venevisión, a channel that chose to water itself down for the sake of survival. I'm not suggesting Globovisión become Venevisión or, God forbid, the government-propaganda sewer that is VTV.

But if there is room for compromise, it should be explored. Venezuela is better off with some independent media than without it, even if said media is a milder, blander version of Globovisión.

Thanks!

...to everyone who came last night. You reminded me of why this blog's biggest asset is its readers. And if you missed it, well...what happens in 360, stays in 360, 'mafraid.

Iran-alogy

Juan Cristóbal says: - Thousands of citizens march on highways, demanding the elites in power recognize popular will. Students protest against a fraudulent election, the power of a petro-state hanging in the balance. Armed government militias roam the cities freely, attacking civic-minded protesters with total impunity. The streets of the capital stained with the blood of pro-democracy activists.

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but Venezuelans have seen this movie before. Hell, we've lived it. And there's no happy ending.

What will happen in Iran? Is the Islamic Republic really hanging in the balance? What lessons can we learn from the Venezuelan experience?

Sadly, if anything, Venezuela's experience does not provide much hope for Iran's Mousavi backers. I'm no Iran expert, but judging by what we've gone through, this slow kabuki dance will be long on drama and short on substance. We learned long ago that not to underestimate a petro-dictatorship's ability to ignore what happens on the streets. Marcha no mata mullah, chamo, y Twitter no mata dictadura. Just ask the Burmese monks.

First off, the facts. The government claims Ahmadinejad won in a landslide. The opposition, as well as many foreign journalists and "experts," believed the election was going to be much closer, with reformist Mousavi gaining significant momentum.

But with very few reliable pre-election polls, the only fact out there is the scarcity of facts. Skim the Iran-related articles in the website fivethirtyeight.com and you'll see that (gasp!) there is already a paper out there "showing" there was fraud by applying la bendita Benford's Law. What's the term in farsi for "here we go again"?

I don't really know where the truth lies. The marches in favor of reform have been impressive, but so were Manuel Rosales' marches before the December 2006 Presidential election, which Chávez won in a Mahmoud-sized margin.

It's easy to forget Iran is a relatively poor petro-state, and we all know what that means: great power (and popularity) for the incumbent, even more so if he's a populist. We also know that there are no checks and balances, and that Ahmadinejad and his status-quo-lovin' posse are the types of fellas that will stop at nothing to maintain their grip on power.

In fact, a provocative article on Politico.com argues that it's very likely that Ahmadinejad won the election, that the thousands of middle class Iranian students are not representative of the majority of Iran's population, and that we should all get over it and move on. The article alleges that the current perception in the West - that Mousavi was robbed - is a product of shallow understanding of Iranian politics and demographics. In other words, Iran-watchers better get their heads out of their escuálido asses, 'cause Iran ain't Chacao.

So while the election was, to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, a sham, and the Islamic Republic is not a democracy by any meaningful standard, it may also be true that Ahmadinejad's victory reflects the will of the people. In that scenario, is it healthy to harbor hope that the current events will result in a dramatic shift in power? And what tools do the green masses have at their disposal to effect change?

Just like in Venezuela, what happened in Iran could be a combination of fraud and Ahmadinejad being the legitimate winner. Faced with Mousavi's surge, it is perfectly reasonable for the government to tweak the vote in order to give it a more comfortable margin of victory. If that is the case, this lends legitimacy to both camps' arguments.

Whatever happens in Iran, it's undeniable that the opposition has shown a force not seen in thirty years, and this could sow the seeds for the future demise of the Islamic Republic. In that scenario, the medium-term effects of the protests may be more important than the likely short-term effects.

In that context, there are at least three lessons that Iran holds for us. One is the advantage of having a visible, courageous and, most of all, free leader. If it were not for Mr. Mousavi being free and at large, it's hard to imagine the current movement going as far as it has.

Another lesson is the importance of participating, even when elections have little chance of bringing change about. Had Mr. Mousavi and his backers abstained, they would have no legitimate argument to be out in the streets, and their ability to pressure and make change happen would be even lower than it is now.

The other lesson is in the power of alternative media as a way of overcoming official censorship. As we see the last independent TV station in Venezuela gasping for air, it's easy to think of its demise as the end of the possibility of regime change.

But the world is changing, and old media is not the only media out there. The role of alternative media sites such as Facebook or Twitter or (hell, why not) blogs in the current crisis should be carefully analyzed, specially by Venezuela's hapless opposition.

They have yet to take advantage of new networks and XXI-st Century forms of communication. They better learn quickly. 'Cause pretty soon, they may be the only weapons they have.

(Hats off to the great Lucía for providing some of the insights in this article)

Labor's Love Lost

Quico says: My trip here's been extremely hectic, so I apologize for the sparse posting. Every day, I seem to add one or two topics to my list of issues-the-media-really-isn't-covering-nearly-as-well-as-it-should. And I notice that a lot of those have to do with labor issues.

More and more, labor activists find themselves facing criminal charges over work disputes with state owned firms. The charge is typically some variation on the theme of "boycott" and "sabotage"; words whose meanings have been extended to delirious new extremes. The problem is compounded by the fact that the state refuses to conduct further collective bargaining talks with its own unions, and refuses to implement the few it does complete (e.g., the Caracas Metro.)

The real irony here is that, from an organized labor point of view, dealing with the bloodsucking fascist private sector is now immeasurably preferable to dealing with the revolutionary workers' state. Private companies can't get away with a tenth of the shit state firms pull without some Inspectoría del Trabajo flunkie getting up their nose. But work for an SOE and you get no collective bargaining rights and, como si fuera poco, threats of jail time if you do something about it.

Go figure.

Chavista Hopes Die Hard

Quico says: Last year, these posters blatantly politicizing Venezuela's olympic team made a bit of a splash in the opposition media - especially after the government's brazen stunt catastrophically backfired when "the sporting revolution" failed to bring home a single gold medal from Beijing.

So much for that, I thought. One more petty official idiocy come, gone and forgotten...

Except that, almost one year on, the posters are still up! Bizarrely, they're plastered all over Caracas Metro stations even now. And we're not talking one or two posters the apparatchiks forgot to bring down, mind you: there're dozens of them, in high visibility places, throughout the Metro network.

What's the thinking here? Is the idea that, with just that extra little bit of encouragement, these guys still have a shot at some of those gold medals? What gives!?

...then again, all of the advertising in the Metro these days is political propaganda. As in, literally 100% of it. So, realistically, the alternative to these preposterous Beijing posters is just more mindless boosterism for the world's most expensive Cable Car.



Yeek.

Roger and out

Juan Cristóbal says: - My friend Roger used to be my mole in the government. A committed escuálido working undercover deep inside chavista bureaucracy, he somehow managed to tolerate the mind-numbing paper-pushing and the constant backstabbing from colleagues and underlings alike, to say nothing of the forced participation in chavista rallies.

But over the last year, Roger also got a crash course on the true nature of chavista bureaucrats, people for whom corruption, inefficiency and amateur Machiavelianism are the norm.

Unwilling to play along, Roger got fired last month.

---

Roger is a classic example of the underpaid overachiever. After getting his law degree in Venezuela, he went to Switzerland on a scholarship and got his doctorate. There, he specialized in an obscure area of international law that, luckily, is also incredibly relevant for Venezuela.

As it happens, he never got around to signing the recall petition against Chávez so he's not in the Tascón or Maisanta Lists. Long story short, that meant he could get a job in the government institute that handles the exact area of his expertise, doing the things he was actually trained to do. His legal knowledge and his ability in three languages became important assets and helped him stand out in the many international conferences he went to.

"Deep inside," he fesses up, "I kidded myself with the idea that I was giving something back."

These days, Roger whiles away his afternoons in his apartment in La Urbina, where he lives alone with his computers, his books and his view of Petare. He hasn't worked in weeks and is living hand to mouth.

And yet, he's at peace with himself. When I ask him the story behind his firing, he is almost wistful, disconcertingly zen about the whole thing.

He says the beginning of the end of his public service career came when his institute got a new chairman a few months back, his fourth new boss in as many years.

"This last guy took part in the 4-F military coup," he says. "The fact that he was dispatched to a relatively obscure technical outpost of chavista bureaucracy as compensation speaks volumes about his performance that day."

From day one, the chairman decided he didn't like Roger one bit. His language skills, the depth of his knowledge and his personal demeanor all rubbed him the wrong way.

"The problem is that you don't fit in with the culture," one of his assistants told Roger.

How so? he asked.

"Well," she said, "you don't socialize, all you do is come in, do your work and you're out. You don't joke around with everyone, you don't seem to like us. You're very Swiss that way."

Roger spent six months trying to get a meeting with the chairman, trying to get him to read his reports. In six months, he got nothing.

Well, not quite. He did get a lot of work on weekends.

In the months leading up to last November's State and Local Elections, Roger got dragged to election meeting after meeting and rally after rally. On several occasions, he was part of special PSUV cleanup operations in the squares and plazas of Caracas.

The demands on public employees before elections became difficult to put up with. Right before February's referendum, Roger was forced to sell BsF. 1,000 worth of raffle tickets to raise funds for the PSUV's campaign. Needless to say, Roger couldn't think of anyone who would want to buy his tickets, so he had to pay for them out of pocket.

"Did you at least win anything in the raffle?" I ask, all hopeful.

Hardly. As it happens, the raffle tickets were fake. The real ones were supposed to have a serial number and a bank account where the funds should be deposited. Roger's had none of that. The chavistas in the office forcing him to sell them had given him tickets chimbos.

Under the new chairman, office life soon took a turn to the bizarre. One Saturday, the guy decided to stage his own little backyard version of "Aló, Presidente." He made all senior and middle management go to work and sit in a conference room, from 8 to 4, hearing him talk about whatever was on his mind.

His secretary, who is actually his mistress as well as the niece of one of Chávez's ministers, was in charge of filming. During the proceedings, she would point the camera and focus on managers who looked bored, were staring at the ceiling or sending text messages. The chairman would review the tape and reprimand managers who weren't devoting 100% of their attention to the boss.

The level of paranoid control just kept getting ratcheted up. During regular weekdays, all managers had to text message the chairman every time they left the office. The Saturday seances soon became compulsory, with attendance strictly enforced. One Saturday, Roger arrived an hour late and was asked to provide the reasons why he was late ... in writing. Needless to say, he had to suck it up and say it wouldn't happen again, just like ministers do on Aló, Presidente when the big guy humiliates them.

In the Chávez administration, imitation has gone from highest form of flattery to outright obsession.

One of the problems Roger faced was the lack of personnel. Even though he was technically a manager, he never got an assistant or a secretary, so all his department's work fell on his lap.

Conveniently, the 28-year old daughter of his longtime nanny was looking for a job. Thanks to her mother's hard work, Judith had received a technical degree and had just arrived from a stint living in London.

Since she was bilingual, qualified and available, Roger pushed hard to hire her as his secretary. After many interviews and even after sucking up to all the right people, he was told they couldn't hire her because she was in the Tascón List. Roger was forced to apologize, saying he didn't know and simply forgot to check. Had he known, he said, he never would have insisted.

Judith is still unemployed.

In the weeks leading up to his firing, Roger got assigned an "advisor." Edgar, a PSUV apparatchik, had a simple job: sit across from Roger's desk every day and make his life miserable. While Roger tried to focus on his work, Edgar would talk on his cell phone non-stop, only pausing to bark at Roger demanding he finish his reports so he could take them up to the chairman and pass them off as his own. Roger later found out Edgar was making twice as much as he was.

The day Roger was fired - by Edgar, of all people - he received several anonymous text messages. "The institute is rejoicing," one read, "so much for your fancy degrees and your languages. Go eat shit, you show-off."

I ask him what the source of so much animosity is. It turns out that, with Roger being in charge of international legal analysis, his office was responsible for most of the trips abroad. The decision of who to send in each delegation frequently fell on Roger, and he obviously preferred sending the few qualified people available.

This, of course, did not sit well with the rest of the sprawling bureaucracy. Thanks to Misión Cadivi, going to one of these international trips was a quick and easy way of landing some hard currency in the form of juicy per diems, which everyone simply kept and later sold in the black market. Plus, you could have a good time abroad too. Roger recalls one particular conference in South Africa where the head of the delegation simply did not show up for the meetings, preferring to go on safari with his mistress instead.

I ask Roger about the laws Chávez has passed, banning the firing of employees. He tells me he really isn't an employee. Since the institute is relatively new, they have not established the positions and their role in the larger picture of the government's bureaucracy.

This is on purpose. Done this way, everyone is under contract and can be fired at any time. Plus, this allows the institute bigwigs to bypass regular budget laws and just hire all their friends, giving them cushy jobs as payback for political favors.

---

These days, Roger is reinvigorated. Leaving all those negative vibes behind, he says, he's starting to enjoy life again. He'd gotten to the point where he was spending most of his energy thinking up ways to outscheme the schemers out to get him. Now, he says, he's glad to have the time off, getting in touch with his friends again, teaching.

"It's funny," he says, "but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Of course the government doesn't work. My former boss is an ex-con, a convicted felon, an anonymous military man whose sole claim to fame was to break the very oath he had taken and violate the democracy he had sworn to defend. Of course they don't believe in building institutions! Their only talent, the thing they spent years planning, is how to do away with them. What was I supposed to expect - decency?"

My sense is that Roger is going to be OK. He may have lost his job, and may well end up having to live abroad, but he is well on his way to getting his life back.

The Pundit

Quico says: The Pundit feels at home here. We're in one of the restaurants he promotes on his show. The waiters greet him by name. He sits down and orders a rum with orange juice, but my feeling is that the order is superfluous. They know that's what The Pundit drinks.

Me, I'm launching into my pitch. I'm telling him about Caracas Chronicles 2.0, telling him about my plan to relaunch it in two languages, explaining to him the need for a Noticiero Digital For Sane People, an online space where cool-headed people can come and have a real debate about political events and ideas that doesn't immediately get drowned out by the usual hyper-polarized shit. I'm telling him I see a massive gap in the market, an odd mismatch between Venezuelans' confirmed taste for discussing politics and the lack of online spaces where they can do so without getting drowned out by the chaos. I'm telling him about the need for news in Spanish that digs beneath the superficial crap we get on El Universal, El Nacional and Noticias 24 on a daily basis.

The Pundit smiles. "Yeah," he says, "it would be great to have a news outlet in this country."

It's a provocation, and he knows it.

"A news outlet?" I say, walking right into it, "I mean, I do realize this country is already crammed full of news outlets..."

"Except it isn't," he says. "This country is crammed full of news, yes. And this country is crammed full out outlets, certainly. It's just that the outlets we have don't actually publish any of the news that happen here."

With this, the pundit launches into a rant I can sense is well rehearsed, but one his broadcast listeners never get to hear. Frustration pours out of every orifice in his body as he gets going.

"The media here have built a fence around democracy - around the possibility of democracy. That's the thing. The opposition media is full of black spots, of taboo subjects that you're just not allowed to touch. The newspapers are vast silences - sheets crammed full of words but drained of content. Because they have no sense of news, no feeling for what actually constitutes news, as opposed to politically useful information."

"Think," he says, "of yesterday's story on the opposition's Unity Table. An actual news outlet might have told you what that was about. They might have told you that the opposition parties were under such pressure from a few powerful interests to show some unity they really had no choice but to come together and make a statement together. They might have mentioned the actual power politics behind the whole shindig, the news behind the news event. But it turns out that those powerful interests are the media owners themselves. So the story, the actual news of what happened yesterday, doesn't get told. It can't get told. Because the media is structurally barred from reporting the news. In its place, they give us Interested Opinion packaged as news, passed off as news, treated as news, smuggled as news."

He's grabbing my arm now, peering straight into my eyes.

"Los medios le tienen un cerco a la democracia, chamo...but you can't say that without immediately getting creamed, written off as a chavista, or blacklisted by Ravell."

The pundit is in a position to know. He's been working inside the oppo media establishment for too many years to dismiss. A mass of frustration shines through as he speaks. This stuff gets to him.

"The escualido media is a minefield of taboos. On almost every story, there's a pre-determined interpretation you can tell, you can get through. Stray beyond that, and you walk into a thicket of taboos. Even on totally banal subjects, on topics where you might think the heterodox position is too well establish to really sting anymore."

"One time," he recalls, "I got invited to do one of the morning talk shows on TV alongside Manuel Felipe Sierra and Armando Durán. I argued that the Paro Petrolero (back in 2002 and 2003) had been a failure, deluding myself in thinking this was too obvious to qualify as controversial anymore."

"The other two lost it, turned on me like I'd just started chanting 'Uh! Ah! Chávez no se va!' All I'd done was say something anyone with a pair of eyes already knew. Cuz hell, Chávez is still there: by friggin' definition the paro was a failure.

"But I'd stepped on one of their taboos. They couldn't deal with it, turned on me like I'd just said the Holocaust never happened. The opposition media has become a mechanism for furiously repressing truths everybody already knows, and for preserving and upholding the hysterias of a tiny slice of people living in the East Side of Caracas."

"Coño, pundit," I say, "I thought I was critical of the media, but my stuff is mild compared to this."

"Son vainas que no se pueden decir," he says, turning bitterly ironic, "cuz apparently the defense of freedom of the press demands that they be hushed up. But the problem we have, fundamentally, is only secondarily about chavismo's intransigence. The underlying problem with political discourse on our side is that the opposition media son una mierda."

"These days people think Chávez made it up. They think that, because he says it, it can't be true. But how did elections use to get decided in this country? RCTV would have their guys and Venevision theirs. And they fought it out, in those terms. Los nuestros contra los de Uds. Our guys against yours. Chávez, of all people, knows how that system works - how do you think that presidential seat got warmed up for him?"

A lady from a nearby table comes by to talk to him. "Muy bueno, Pundit, I love your show" she says, "keep sticking it to the government like you do." She obviously hasn't been listening in on us. Pundit is gracious, but annoyed. She's broken his flow. She seems on the verge of asking for an autograph, but doesn't.

As she walks off, he turns back to me,

"Convéncete," he says, "the way the private media operates in this country is incompatible with the exercise of democracy. Chávez knows that, by attacking it, he makes it certain that the opposition will reflexively align itself with the private media. So he has every incentive in making the opposition line up behind a media system that makes democracy impossible. It's win-win for the guy. For the umpteenth time, he's playing us."

Settling back out of rant mode, he seems to remember that this was supposed to be a business meeting, of a sort, and comes back to my pitch.

"But seriously, the thing you want to do with your blog," he says, "it's viable. You could do it without too much money. And it will reach a few thousand people, a smallish but influential elite that wants to, needs to, look beyond the tiny little horizons the escuálido media serves up to them. And that, in itself definitely makes it worth doing, because like you say, those people don't have a place to turn to online."

"But your idea can't drive the news cycle. It can't challenge the wall of normal news consumers get. For that, you need a newsroom, a staff, a bunch of journos dedicated full time to breaking, one by one, the layers upon layers of taboos that the oppo media elite is dedicated to protecting. And that, that you can't do with a few thousand dollars. You just can't."

And The Pundit, I realize, is absolutely right.

Caracas Chronicles @ 360

Quico says: Mark your calendars. On Wednesday, June 17th, I'll be hosting a Meet & Greet at 360, the skybar on top of the Altamira Suites hotel. Come one, come all.

If you've never been there, the 360 is simply gorgeous. If you get there early enough, you get to see the most spectacular sunset over Caracas. So I'll be there from 6:00 p.m., if the weather permits on the roof terrace, eager to meet lurkers and regulars alike.

Altamira Suites is on the 1era Transversal & 1era Avenida in Altamira, one block Northeast of Plaza Altamira, just next door to CAF. The scheduling is after-work-drink friendly. But stick it out 'til the bitter end and you'll (likely) get the extra bonus of seeing me drop-down drunk.

"The rich are not human"

Quico says: In Caracas, sleeping through the constant ringing of car alarms can be a challenge. It seems as though every half hour an alarm goes off and the sound bounces from the walls of the Ávila, echoing through the entire city. When you think of the sounds of Caracas, you think of the sapitos at night, and of car alarms.

But it's the alarms coming off of the political world that are most worrying. And nothing is as alarm-worthy as Chávez's straightforward, dehumanizing discourse against his critics.

In this clip, we hear Chávez argue, repeatedly and vehemently, that "the rich are not human", to the applause of his accolytes. It's not something that slipped out. It's something he says four or five times, underlining it by saying "and I take responsibility for this" just before repeating it yet again.

The rich man, we're told, is an animal in human form. It's not just that "being rich is bad." It goes way beyond that.

The use of superheated, over-the-top rhetoric against anyone who fails to toe the President's ideological line has been one of the mainstays of chavista rhetoric from the very beginning. But the final step, the out-and-out denial of the humanity of those who criticize him, that step is new.

I think at this point we at least owe the President the courtesy of taking him at his word. He has told us, many times, that Venezuela's Constitution is second to none in protecting human rights. We note with some concern, however, that the constitution is silent on the topic of the rights of animals in human form.

We know, from history, that the deployment of dehumanizing discourses is a necessary pre-condition for the physical extermination of one human group by another. As Michelle Maiese puts it,

Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence breakover has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.

Parties may come to believe that destruction of the other side is necessary, and pursue an overwhelming victory that will cause one's opponent to simply disappear. This sort of into-the-sea framing can cause lasting damage to relationships between the conflicting parties, making it more difficult to solve their underlying problems and leading to the loss of more innocent lives.

The spread of dehumanizing discourses are a typical feature of pre-genocidal situations. We know that the Rwandan genocide was preceded by a long and dedicated campaign by Hutu extremists to convince their people that Tutsis were not human in the same sense they are.

We know that a decade of Khmer Rouge propaganda on the dehumanizing effects of urban life was necessary to prepare its followers to accept the need to empty the cities and kill their inhabitants.

We know that Sudan's arab militias are bombarded with messages equating Darfuris with apes and slaves to soften them up to commit acts of mass murder.

We know how important the dehumanization of Japanese people, their portrayal as a subhuman race of near-chimps, was in American military propaganda ahead of the decision to indiscriminately firebomb Tokyo and to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations.

And the German example is too notorious to need more than a mention.

Dehumanizing discourses are a necessary - if not sufficient - precondition to genocide. Hugo Chávez declares that he takes full responsibility for a discourse that explicitly denies the humanity of his critics.

I hate to sound alarmist, but you do the math.

"Nos fueramos quedao con las contratistas"

Juan Cristóbal says: - (Note: An anonymous reader gives us a first-hand impression of what is going on in the eastern shores of Lake Maracaibo after Chávez nationalized most of the local economy - see here for background).

The situation is dire. Ciudad Ojeda, traditionally a city with lots going on, looks like a ghost town. There are few cars out on the street, few people in the local banks. Friday the 8th of May, the day everything was nationalized, right before Mother's Day, they were practically empty. This past weekend, end of the month, there were fewer than 20 people in each of the three banks I went to. Normally, these are so crowded that ATMs drop out of the network due to congestion.

Everyone owes everyone else. Yesterday, during the protests, local TV showed a few people saying "Nos fueramos quedao con las contratistas" ... "we should have stayed with the contractors." Another said, "I support 12 people, my wife, my children, my parents, and I haven't been paid in three weeks. I want to be paid so that I can at least sell Panorama in traffic lights."

(Translator's Note: In Zulia, people refer to "newspaper" as "Panorama", the name of Maracaibo's leading daily)

My students at the University are terrified - they are being affected, either directly or indirectly. Their parents either work in some of the expropriated companies, or in the services sector that is seeing their customers disappear. Many of them are on scholarship and believe at any moment the state government will stop paying them. Two former students who are doing their internships and dissertations in some of the expropriated companies were literally crying to me yesterday, not knowing what to do because PDVSA won't acknowledge the work they have done, and if the employer doesn't validate their work, the University won't deem it sufficient to graduate.

Two students told me yesterday about how workers haven't been paid since Chávez took over. Another one told me his father made BsF 4000 a month (about US$700 at black-market rates), and now he will struggle to reach BsF 1500. The few that got paid were paid roughly the same, BsF 340 for the first week with PDVSA, and they weren't paid on Friday as is customary but the following Wednesday. Private clinics don't want to see them because they don't have anything to pay with, drug stores won't fill their prescriptions for the same reason, and the latest rumor is that Chávez is going to take over the region's three private clinics in retaliation.

Many service boats have burnt-out engines, other have been "cannibalized" in order to sell the spare parts. Many boats haven't been out yet because PDVSA has not complied with the customary logistics (water, ice, food for employees, etc) and the workers refuse to board.

The picture is bleak.

Clueless in Caracas

Juan Cristóbal says: - President Chávez canceled a trip to El Salvador last Monday, alleging concerns regarding a possible assassination attempt. The finger points to the usual suspects - the CIA, Luis Posada Carriles, the opposition.

Normally, this wouldn't deserve the slightest of interest. We've lost count of the number of times Chávez has denounced someone was *this close* to killing him, and by now it's pretty clear to everyone that he's bluffing.

Why do we think that? Are we that naive? After all, Interior Minister Tarek El-Aissami came out today saying that the plot was in the later stages of development, and that forensic work indicates the plan was "almost perfect."

What he didn't give were details. In fact, nobody in El Salvador, Venezuela or the US has been arrested for this foiled "conspiracy," no details have been given, and no evidence has been presented. That's probably because they have nothing. That, or they're still cooking up the evidence.

A couple of things set this staging of the President's "they're-out-to-get-me" kabuki apart from past ones. First of all, it marks the first time he is accusing the Obama administration of trying to kill him.

Sure, Chávez may say that he believes Obama has good intentions and isn't involved. But how can anyone with a minimal knowledge of how the US government works believe the CIA would be planning to kill a head of state without the President's knowledge?

Perhaps he thinks Leon Panetta has gone rogue on Obama. Perhaps he thinks the CIA behaves like the Disip, with a mind and an agenda of its own.

But the CIA is no ISI, and Obama is no Zardari. Furthermore, it would make no sense for the CIA to be acting on its own toward a country the administration is actively seeking to mend fences with. The administration has had its run-ins with the CIA and it may be true that the agency is doing a few things on their own, without the White House's knowledge. But the imperial bureaucracy in Langley would never go so far as to risk their necks for Hugo Chávez. He's just not that important.

So if you believe the plot was real and that the CIA was behind it, you believe Barack Obama is trying to have Hugo Chávez murdered. There's no two ways about this. Good luck selling that one.

Still, the information is filtering out in bits and pieces, exactly as the government wants it. Yesterday, it was Chávez denouncing the plot. Today, it's El-Aissami saying basically nothing. Tomorrow, they will show pictures of some random machine gun that was supposed to knock down Chávez's plane. Friday, it will be an unfortunate member of a mara who will be blamed. Saturday, the government will threaten the media for not taking this seriously enough. Sunday, Chávez will insult Hillary Clinton.

Just like that, a made-up story has given the newspapers a week's worth of news, a week in which they don't talk about the economy, labor problems, shortages, inflation, crime. The whole thing is so transparent it almost plays out like a game of Clue - this week, it's Posada Carriles, in El Salvador, with a bazuca. Next week, it'll be Guillermo Zuluaga, in Los Chorros, with the stuffed head of a moose.

There is no ridicule they will not touch to distract us from the real issues.

The Most Important Story Nobody's Talking About

Quico says: While Caracas is consumed by gossip about whether Chávez stood up Vargas Llosa or Vargas Llosa stood up Chávez, some serious trouble is brewing on the Eastern Shore of Lake Maracaibo, the so-called COL (for Costa Oriental del Lago) which is still Venezuela's number one oil producing area.

Last month, the government seized control of a wide array of oil service contracting companies in the region, vowing to absorb the workforce into PDVSA. But of the nearly 8,000 workers who should've been put on the state oil giant's payroll, fewer than 300 have apparently been processed so far. That leaves a huge floating workforce, suddenly out of a job, all concentrated in a single area, milling around and getting increasingly pissed off by the delays.

The knock-on effects of all those de facto layoffs for the local economy are pretty severe. For instance, Union Radio reports that 80% of Lagunillas municipality's income was directly related to the service companies, meaning their effective confiscation sets off, among others, a local fiscal crisis that threatens to force the municipal government to make drastic budget cuts.

Today, the situation was tense on the COL, with the main thoroughfare (the "Intercomunal") closed down, rumors of a "paro cívico" making the rounds, stores shutting down early to avoid trouble, groups of protesters milling around, and military patrols rumbling up and down the street.

And unlike 2002-03, it's not just a white-collar problem over there anymore. This time around, everyone's mad.

Thousands of families have seen their livelihoods collapse in the last few weeks, making for a volatile stew of labor unrest that the Caracas-centric media really ought to be covering, but isn't.

How PDVSA can continue to operate in the area even though they're short by thousands of service suppliers and amid this level of social tension is anybody's guess.

BlackBerry Nation

Quico says: So I flew into Maiquetía yesterday and man, what a let down. Not one dirty look, or extra check or even the vaguest hint of intimidation. Buenas noches - stamp - in you go. And that was after I'd announced I was coming, right here on CC!

My Q-Score must really be in the dumps. Or maybe el-que-te-conté's not so scared of the mouse as some would have you think.

First impressions are the usual jarring juxtaposition of an extremely visible consumer society still trying desperately to convince itself that everything's gonna be alright with the just-as-unmissable-signs that it's really not.

At the luggage pick-up area in Maiquetía Airport, a gigantic "Building Bolivarian Socialism" sign looms over the Banco Federal ATM (Maestro & Cirrus welcome.) On the highway into town, massive billboards for Heinz Tomato Ketchup (¡Picante!) jostle for space with others lauding the takeover of transnational corporations' assets by the revolution.

Just to look at it, you can't avoid the sense Venezuela suffers a bizarre case of social schizophrenia: it's half all-encompassing state-control-of-everything, half wannabe-Miami-mall-culture.

The state-control-of-everything part is the one we always hear about, but it takes coming back here to be reminded that, after all these years, bits and bobs of the professional middle class is still here, still rich, still totally weirdly disconnected from the country's problems.

Caracas is still a place where thousands of people wear suits to their offices five days a week and make a comfortable living in investment banking, or corporate accounting, or software consultancy. And they're not the least bit shy about flaunting the money involved, either. Turns out that, per capita, Venezuelans are the second highest buyers of BlackBerries in the world. (If your model is more than 9 months old, you're a nobody.)

It's also a place where the most visible initial sign of the revolution is that the bulbs lighting up the shanty-covered hillsides around Gramoven are now an energy-saving pale blue rather than the traditional yellowish-white. Es que el país cambió...

I should add that, media-wise, the first thing you notice is just how relentless the campaign against Globovisión has gotten on State TV. It's become the new obsession on VTV: just about every other spot is a furious rant against JunkBroadcasting and the dangers to your mental health of watching heterogeneous ideas on the toob. Softening up the base for a manotazo, it seems to me.

Yeeks...

Mad with Power Chronicles

Quico says: I swear when I first heard that Chávez wanted to do a 96-hour marathon version of Aló, presidente to celebrate the show's 10th anniversary on the air, I just took it for granted the story was a Chigüire Bipolar-style spoof.

But no. He's really doing it. It just started...runs through Sunday night.

Radicalism and its consequences

Juan Cristóbal says: - In the last few months, the Chávez administration has gone into overdrive radicalism. Whether it's the forced takeover of vast sectors of the economy, the harassment of private opposition media, the passage of draconian new legislation, the attacks on opposition politicians or the massive tax increases recently passed, there seems to be few aspects of public or private life that are safe from the government's scorched-earth approach to governance.

But has it hurt Chávez's standing in public opinion? Yes, to a point.

Alfredo Keller's latest survey shows a couple of interesting trends. One of the most important one is the graph on whether people think things are going well or not. (click on image to enlarge)

For the first time since the middle of last year, more people think things are going badly than well. This is a flip from the first quarter of 2009 of almost 20 points. And lest you think this is not important, remember that the 59-40 margin in the fourth quarter of 2006 roughly coincided with the 63-37 margin of Chávez's election that year. Also worth pointing out that in the fourth quarter of 2007, when the opposition won the Constitutional Referendum, a majority of Venezuelans thought things were going badly, but by the first quarter of 2009 when the government won, a majority thought things were going well.

Is this margin reversible? Certainly. Nothing is set in stone. But the trend is there.

Another interesting result came about when people were asked whether or not their problems had gotten better or worse.


A large majority of Venezuelans think the country's problems have either stayed the same or gotten worse in the last year. Crime is, of course, the main concern, and deteriorating safety conditions are clearly being felt by everyone. The government's bright spots are "poverty", "housing" and "the economy," and even there the percentages of people that actually think things have gotten better are a paltry 27, 35 and34% respectively. Keep in mind those are the issues most vulnerable to the current economic downturn.

One of the arguments being bandied about is that Chávez is much more popular than his government. There may be some truth to that. A slim majority of Venezuelans now think Chávez is becoming a dictator, as can be seen in this graph.


Likewise, a less slim majority think Chávez is doing things the wrong way, mostly because they are starting to realize Chávez wants to mold Venezuela after Cuba's communist system.

The troubling thing about this is that a whopping 47% of Venezuelans don't think Chávez is becoming a dictator, and 45% of them think he is doing things right, even though all the major problems in our society have gotten worse.

Clearly, the teflon effect is still there, though not quite as strong as it used to be.

Finally, people were asked who they would vote for in a hypothetical election - for Chávez, or for someone else.


This is always a tricky question. It's one thing to say "the other guy/gal", it's quite another to actually go and vote for, say, Antonio Ledezma. Nonetheless, there is something to be said about the fact that, for the first time since the IVth quarter of 2003 (six years, though the graph is abbreviated), a majority of Venezuelans would rather vote for a hypothetical other than for Chávez by a six-point margin.

Clearly, the government's radicalism has not gone unnoticed. The challenge (protracted sigh) is for our current opposition leadership to capitalize on this. Will they be able to? Will this even be a possibility? Who knows, but don't keep your hopes up.