The View from Your Window

Denver, Colorado - 10:00 a.m.

Feel like sharing the view from your window? Send a snapshot along to caracaschronicles@fastmail.fm

Post 43 of 100. Ufff...some of you read from exurban wastelands...who knew?

Censoring the Latifundists of the Steelmill

Quico says: TalCual leads today with an even-more-stomach-turning-than-average case of censorship. Because we're not talking about censorship against the "latifundists of the airwaves" anymore, but instead against the steelworkers of Guayana. Yesterday, at the end of an emotional union meeting where SIDOR's workers complained bitterly about the deteriorating safety conditions that have seen six of their colleagues die in industrial accidents in the last 10 months, the National Guard forcibly searched all the journalists who attended and seized as many photos, recordings and videos as they could.

Of course, in this day and age when everybody and his cat in Venezuela owns a Blackberry, it was a hopeless exercise, and images like the one above still got out. More than a real attempt to impound the compromising material, what the Guardia did was a rank exercise in intimidation.

Post 42 of 100. La revolución avanza...

Noticias24 Knock-off Watch: NoticiasVE

Quico says: In our continuing quest to flesh out the imagination-free zone that is the world of Venezuelan Noticias24-style knock-off, we come to NoticiasVE, possibly the most egregious representatives of the genre. These people couldn't even think of a name for their knock-off that wasn't 7/9ths the same as Noticias24's!!

Here's what I always want to shout to these people as I shake them by their lapels: why does this site exist!??! What does it do that Noticias24 doesn't already do, and better!? Does it get updated more often!? NO! Does it have more original content?!! NO! Does it handle multimedia better?!!? NO!!! Do the girls in bikinis have bigger breasts?!? NO!!

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE?!???

Francamente...

Post 41 of 100. Can you tell the knockoffs get on my nerves?

Michael Lisman on Micheletti As Liability to the De Facto Government

Quico says: As the one guy I know who's spent a fair bit of time actually in Honduras over the last few years, the Interamerican Dialogue's Michael Lisman is an invaluable source on all the craziness happening there recently. I talked to him on a not-necessarily-all-that-clear Skype connection. The guy says Micheletti, in particular, is quickly wearing out his welcome even within the coupsters' ranks. Audio's after the break.

Michael Lisman on the Honduran Crisis

Caracas Chronicles Podcast

Check out Michael's take on the Nicaraguan angle in The Latin Americanist.

Post 40 of 100. Hondurrific...

Our rats are the biggest, pibe

Juan Cristóbal says: Read in an Argentine tourism webpage:

"In the vast area where the capybara lives (which spans Panama, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay), it is in the Argentine Republic where you can find the best specimens and the greatest populations."

Is it any wonder that, try as we may, Latin Americans are doomed to not get along?

Post 39 of 100 ... the real Katy sent me this link!

When life meets mental-health-break

Quico says: In his cadena today, Chávez dropped this bombshell:

"When I was 18, I was into show business. I even MC'd a couple of beauty pageants, once with Gilberto Correa and with a super-opposition lady whom I won't mention, we shared a stage. One time, I was on Popy the Clown's show. Remember that show? MCing, incredible. Thank God there's no video of that. But I was on that show MCing a program with Popy."

We always suspected...now we know...

Post 38 of 100. Popy!

Mental Health Break: La Reina del Rock Nacional

Juan Cristóbal says: -

Post 37 of 100... nothing like a cheesy 80s video to lighten the mood.

On cue: "Venezuelan Diplomats Refuse to Leave Honduras"

Quico says: Boy, that was predictable. So, if I'm following this, Venezuela's position now is that its diplomats must remain in Tegucigalpa so they can continue to represent our country's interests to...whom exactly?!?!

Post 36 of 100. No sweat.

Teodoro, the wuss

Juan Cristóbal says: Teodoro Petkoff is a favorite of Quico's, but I have to bring him to task for today's Tal Cual editorial. Petkoff devotes it to a story about some friends of his who were recently mugged (or maybe they only perceived they were being mugged). Anyway, Teodoro asks Chávez, in an unusually polite manner, to think about the consequences of his violent discourse. This because the muggers, after running off with everything Teodoro's friends had, said,"this is class struggle, and you people are part of the Bourgeoisie."

(Kudos to the muggers for using a word I have trouble spelling.)

My beef is with Teodoro's tone. Isn't it obvious that we are way past the point where politely asking Chávez to moderate his language is appropriate? By all accounts, we crossed that line ten years ago. The prodding towards class struggle, the violent discourse - it's all in Chávez's nature and he ain't gonna change it. Of course muggers feel emboldened by the discourse. Of course Chávez ain't gonna change his tone.

This editorial is dramatically anachronistic. Because, Teodoro, the Scorpion in the title of the book - that's Chávez.

Post 35 of 100 ... I wonder if I'll get more hate mail for picking on Teodoro than for saying something sexist.

Post-Coup Etiquette Conundrums

Quico says: What do you do when a government you don't recognize expels your diplomatic delegation? Come to think of it, given that you didn't recognize them, what was your diplomatic delegation doing in their country in the first place? Shouldn't they have self-expelled themselves as soon as the leader you recognized got tossed out of the country? In fact, if the guy your ambassador presented his credentials to gets deposed, to whom exactly are your diplomats representing your country's interests? And if a country whose government you don't recognize expels your diplomats and you refuse to acknowledge its right to do so, how is that government entitled to react?

Is there a rule book for this sort of thing? Cuz, honestly, I'm confused.

Post 34 out of 100. This is a piece of cake.

Chávez calls Mono Jojoy and/or the late Tirofijo Big Fat Liars

Quico says: How else to interpret Chávez's declaration that the stories about FARC funding Rafael Correa's election campaign are "a great falsehood"? After all, it's Mono Jojoy on that video reading Tirofijo's letter explicitly admitting that. So is Chávez's point that Mono Jojoy is lying to his own guerrilleros about what Marulanda wrote? Or that Marulanda was lying to Mono Jojoy (and, by implication also to his fighters) by writing knowing falsehoods to them? Or both?

Or is the party line going to be that, somehow, the guy who looks and sounds exactly like Mono Jojoy on the video isn't Mono Jojoy?

Chávez doesn't say, of course. Cuz rule one of chavismo is never to acknowledge you've been caught with your hand in the cookie jar even when EVERYBODY can see you've been caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Still, we'd like to know...now that he's publicly insulted two of their top leaders, how will Chávez's relationship with FARC weather this storm?

Post 33 of 100. I am blogger, hear me roar!

Mental Health Break: Fiat Uno

No comment...

Post 32 of 100. Are we having fun yet?

The Filipina Tibisay

Juan Cristóbal says: - Alek Boyd sends us this link about Smartmatic's latest "business ventures." It appears our friends with the magical machines have been hired to provide support for the Phillipine elections.

Funny, I would have thought President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would have been like the anti-Chávez, what with the chumminess between her and George W. Bush. But it turns out some people think she's the closest thing we have in this crazy world to a female dictator. And get this, her father's name was Diosdado.

Post 31 out of 100...thanks Alek.

Chavista meritocrats

Juan Cristóbal says: - Sounds like a misnomer, right? But there they are, people in the oil industry who stuck it out, did not join the oil strike and now belong to the top echelons of chavista bureaucracy. Who are these people, anyway?

Well, here are a few. There they sit, on Citgo's Board of Directors. Their CVs read like those of many other petro-bureaucrats: years spent working for la patria in places such as Veba Oel, Intevep, El Palito. How did they get here? I would love to know more.

Have any stories on Alejandro Granado, Frank Gygax, Eudomario Carruyo, Juan Carlos Boué, Asdrúbal Chávez? Send them my way. As public servants, they should be held accountable, and we deserve to know more about them.

Post 30 of 100 ... someone brought a box of doughnuts for breakfast that is going to mean the death of me.

Chavocracy in Barinas

Quico says:In today's NYTimes, Simón Romero has a lovely take on Barinas as Chávez family fiefdom. To wit...

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas. Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Post 29 of 100. Yo nací en esta rivera del Arauca vibrador...

The Culture of Permanent Provisionality

Quico says: Probably the most shocking aspect of the Supreme Tribunal's unceremonial dumping of Judge Alicia Torres is that no laws were even broken in this travesty of justice. As a "provisional judge", Judge Torres had no tenure. She worked "at the pleasure" of TSJ's Judicial Commission, which means it was perfectly legal for the chivos in TSJ to fire her for any reason, or for none at all. Like 80% of lower court judges in Venezuela, Judge Torres had less job security than the janitor who mopped her courtroom's floor at the end of the day. He is protected by Chávez's inamovilidad laboral decrees...she isn't!

Ten years ago, when Manuel Quijada and Luis Miquilena were appointed to oversee a wholesale overhaul of the judicial system, chavismo claimed ending this culture of permanent provisionality was among their top priorities. But nothing has changed. The vast majority of lower court judges remain, essentially, disposable...absolutely in the hands of their patrons on TSJ and the higher ranking courts.

Of course, cases like Torres's, where a straightforward order is refused and matters come to a head, are a very small minority. Like anyone else, lower court judges need to pay the rent: in Chávez era Venezuela, where the state controls more and more people's ability to make a living, people don't imperil their livelihoods lightly. Only sporadically does a case like Torres's come up, and then the government finds itself compelled to make an example of her, pour encourager les autres.

Under normal circumstances, judges aren't kamikaze. They do what they're told.

Post 28 of 100. I think I can, I think I can...

RSF on the Media onslaught

Quico says: Reporters Without Borders today warned of the dangers of legal changes announced by the Venezuelan government in the past few weeks with the sole aim of punishing media taking an editorial stance contrary to government aims. Fun quotes after the break...

“Does the Bolivarian government seriously believe there will be general acceptance of its policy of obstructing or censoring media that are not compliant enough for its liking?” the worldwide press freedom organisation asked. “Does it really think its citizens are not sufficiently adult to form their own opinions?

“These legal manoeuvres are supposed to ‘protect the mental health’ of the people. Regulations and laws changed or reinterpreted by a government to impose what it sees as the only possible media truth are just the instruments of an ideological crusade that is already well under way”, it said.

“We urge the government to shelve steps contrary to fundamental constitutional principles and inter-American jurisprudence on freedom of expression.”, it concluded.

Post 27 of 100. Quick, somebody give the man who invented cut-and-paste a prize.

In defense of the Ombudsbeing

Quico says: Human Rights Defender Gabriela Ramírez's speech to the effect that what's really out of control in Venezuela is the perception of crime fits the classic definition of a gaffe: an inadvertent expression of an impolitic truth. Maddening as it is to hear an official say something like that, Ramírez's opinion is actually borne out by more evidence than you might think. Indeed, over the last 10 years, there's been a clearly growing gap between people's perception of insecurity and their reports on how often they - or their immediate families are - victimized.

Lets be clear here. There are three main ways you can measure crime. The first - the overall number of crimes reported to the police - is the least reliable, since it includes the most potential for bias, misreporting or underreporting. The second is murder statistics - which is more reliable than overall crime reported to the police since, as anyone who's seen The Wire knows, you can report a felony assault as a misdemeanor disorderly conduct, but how can you make a body disappear?

You can't, which is why, paradoxically, murder statistics are a more reliable proxy for overall crime than overall crime statistics.

But there's a third way to measure crime: survey data. Take a sample of a few thousand people, and ask them how many times they - or their immediate families - have been victimized by crime in the last month. Survey data is subject to a lot less bias than overall police crime data, and because it asks about overall crime, rather than focusing only on murder, it's arguably more reliable than murder statistics as a proxy for overall crime. (Though opinions differ on this score.)

The thing, in Venezuela, is that there is a gap between the second and third indicators. While murders have been rising fast in the last decade, self-reported victimization in surveys hasn't been going up nearly as fast. Meanwhile, the perception of insecurity has been tracking the murder curve...which is well ahead of the self-reported victimization curve.

Which is all a way of expressing that, while certainly impolitic and arguably incomplete, Gabriela Ramírez's speech wasn't quite as entirely off-the-deep-end as some of the more excitable commentary would have you believe. It genuinely is true that people feel more and more unsafe, and that that feeling is growing at a speed that can't be accounted for by the rise in the number of times they or their families become victims of crime.

[Note: all the data this post is based on comes from Latinobarómetro, which is behind a subscription firewall, so no - no links.]

Post 26 of 100. Steady as she goes.

Marta Colomina Quote of the Day

Marta says: "What kind of 'New Man' are they talking about? Ché Guevara is their model, by God!"

Post 25 of 100. Cheat.

The Revolution must be advertised

Juan Cristóbal says: - The attached press note from a speech given by People's Ombuds-person Gabriela Ramírez says a lot about why our country is mired in an unprecedented crime wave. It also speaks volumes about the priorities chavista bureaucrats place on publicity and advertising above all else.

In it, Ms. Ramírez , a former chavista congresswoman and the head of the State's human rights office, actually said that the first thing the government needed to do is "reduce the sensation of lack of safety people have." She seems to think that people's perceptions of crime are not mired in reality.

Of course, Ms. Ramírez is probably surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards, so she feels perfectly safe. But the problem, Gaby, is that people don't feel safe because, well, they aren't. Statistics don't lie.

But she goes on. Crime, she says, is a byproduct of a "lack of proportion of social rights." It's caused by advertising that places a person's value "on what they possess," and because advertising "perpetuates social inequalities."

So there it is - we will advertise our way out of this crime wave.

Which begs the question - after ten years of "vindicating social rights" and "eliminating social inequality" - why is it again that crime is also going up? Shouldn't it be backwards? Oh, right. That pesky word again, logic.

Chavismo really struggles with the idea that sometimes reality is real, aside from perceptions. What can we expect from a government that puts up billboards praising Chávez for building something months or years before said thing is built? What can we expect when the government is more worried about the handicapped being able to get government transmissions in sign language, but not so worried about the handicapped having access to Metro stations?

Post 24 of 100 ... and I haven't even had coffee yet.

Noticias24 Knock-off Watch: Minuto59

Quico says: Has anyone else noticed the way the runaway success of Noticias24 has spawned this whole ecosystem of copy-cat sites on the Venezuelan internet? Minuto59 is just one of the bunch: people who saw that, "wait a minute, these N24 folk must be making a ton of money freeloading off of other people's work...we want in on that game!" What could be more Venezuelan? By which I mean what could be sadder, lazier, and less creative?

Folks, Venezuela already has a Noticias24. We don't need another one. Notice all those posts on your site with Zero Comments? There's a message in that for you. Think about it.

Post 23 of 100. G'morning!

The View from Your Window

La Paz, Bolivia - 11:04 a.m.

Share the view from your window. Send it along to caracaschronicles@fastmail.fm

Post 22 of 100. Evo-licious.

FInding a partner is hard to do

Juan Cristóbal says: - File this under "important stories we are not paying enough attention to:" the government's efforts aimed at finding partners to develop the Carabobo Block in the Orinoco heavy-oil producing region are hitting some serious roadblocks.

As you may recall, a few years ago the government changed the entire legal framework under which the oil industry operated. It nationalized - took over, some would say - several foreign oil companies and demanded that, in any future projects, foreign investors had to be minority shareholders. Much revolutionary pomp ensued, and much-needed foreign investment quickly dried up.

Carabobo, with the potential to produce 400,000 barrels per day, is the first real post-nationalization investment opportunity the government has opened up to bidders. PDVSA is in desperate need of capital and technology. Carabobo seems the perfect bait to lure both into the country.

In spite of its importance, it's not working.

We hear reports that the criteria to select the winning bids is changing. One of the points of contention was that the oil companies were not pleased with PDVSA's demands that any winner provide it with an up-front cash bonus of between $500 million and $1 billion. The amount was considered too high even for the oil industry, more so in a scenario of weak oil prices.

Another point of contention is arbitration. Most foreign investment contracts include clauses for deciding conflict through arbitration. PDVSA is adamant that Venezuela is "sovereign" and will not submit itself to freign arbiters. Yet in a sign that it is loosening up its criteria, we hear they have partially reneged and are willing to allow arbitration for the financing portion of the contract - not the investment portion. How they plan to differentiate financing funds from investment funds is not clear at this point.

Obviously, the State's rapaciously high tax structure, as well Carabobo's costs of production of up to $20 per barril, are making oil companies think twice. If the price of oil were at its 2008 levels, this would be a no-brainer, but in the context of low prices of oil and scarce international credit, some people are expressing doubt. The Ministry, in a sign of a weakening bargaining position, has even agreed to revise its tax structure in order to lure better offers.

How will this play out? We'll soon find out. The opening of the envelopes is scheduled for July 28th.

Post 21 of 100 ... good night everyone.

Trends

Juan Cristóbal says: - Today I read about two eye-popping trends. The first - McDonald's is reporting that sales in Venezuela are increasing, despite the country's dramatic shift to socialism and the evident slowdown in the economy. This is not surprising - the passion Venezuelans have for McD's was the muse for one of my favorite posts. But it underscores the disconnect between the political discourse of those in power and people's priorities on the street.

The other is not a trend, but a figure. The state-owned Industrial Bank of Venezuela lost US$ 185 million the last two years. That's roughly $7.40 for every man, woman and child in Venezuela.

In a country where a significant portion of the population makes less than $2 per day, it's simply unacceptable to ask them to sacrifice three days of work so the State can continue supporting the BIV and its employees. This is a point that needs to be hammered. People must open their eyes and realize that when the State gobbles up yet another bank, it's el pueblo picking up the tab.

Post 20 of 20 ... one more and then off to bed

The reason why Capriles bailed on Washington

Juan Cristóbal says: - There was a high-profile meeting today at OAS eadquarters in Washington between OAS diplomats and Antonio Ledezma, Pablo Pérez and César Pérez Vivas. The absence of Henrique Capriles Radonski did not go unnoticed, and several journalists in Venezuela have questioned the Miranda governor's motives. Wondering what the real story was, I called up my sources close to the Governor, and here is what I found out.

Apparently, when Ledezma announced his Washington trip, he did it with no prior notice, no heads-up to the people that were supposedly going to go with him. Capriles was not pleased, although he was not surprised either. Ledezma is known amongst opposition circles as someone who goes off message. Apparently, there was supposed to be a prior meeting to coordinate what was going to be said, but Ledezma ran with it and focused the announcement on his own agenda.

While the Capriles people have no problem working with Ledezma, there seems to be a growing sense that Ledezma is taking the "opposition leader" mantle way too seriously. This would not be a problem if Ledezma aligned his priorities with those of the other sectors of the opposition, which is apparently not how it is perceived. For example, one thing my source mentioned was that Ledezma "complains without providing solutions," and that he gives the OAS "too much importance." Capriles, for one, doesn't seem to think going to the OAS is going to solve anything.

I should stress that, according to my source, there is fluent communication between the Zulia, Táchira and Miranda governors and the Mayor of Caracas (the governors of Carabobo and Nueva Esparta are sitting on the sidelines). But at the same time, there is some friction.

There is a great deal of solidarity between the leaders, and they certainly seem to like each other, but the disagreements on a more strategic level are undeniable. This was evident last week when, for example, Capriles went to visit Ledezma and while he praised him for his courage, he also promptly asked him to desist from his hunger strike.

Some people will read this and think that somebody (either Ledezma or Capriles or both) is being childish, putting their own interests first. Other will read this and see the necessary growing pains of an opposition coalition, one in which instances of dialogue cannot be subservient to the priorities of the caudillo-du-jour.

One thing is certain though - if Antonio Ledezma really wants to be the opposition's leader, he is going to have to make a stronger effort in order to pull the team together.

Post 19 of 100 ... just hittin' my stride

In praise of barbarism

Juan Cristóbal says: - Several readers have chastised me for using sexist language in two of my stream-of-consciousness posts today. I called Cilia Flores a whore and I also called Luisa Estella Morales hormonal and menopausal, and it was probably unnecessary (I've fixed the language on both posts to avoid further offense). I apologize for that. I live as the lone male with five women, so I'm no sexist - I'm a slave to women! Still, the comments were juvenile, petty and sexist and readers were right in calling me for it. And yet...

There is something about what each of them said that made me go for something really hurtful. Whether it's the way Head Justice Morales treats enquiring journalists who are only doing their job, or the way Ms. Flores uses homophobic taunts and petty name-calling to frame an issue that is actually the subject of serious discussions the world over, well, let's just say it makes me want to go for the jugular. Because we've all been told we should take the high road, we've all been taught to walk away from a street fight. But is that always the best recipe?

I went to an all boys' school, and one of the first things you had to do there was caerte a coñazos, get into a fist fight. It was a rite of passage that even the nerdiest of us had to go through at least once in your life. You were simply looked down upon if you didn't get into a fist fight, as if something was wrong with you. How dare you follow your gut instinct to prefer reasoning to violence? Talk to the knuckles, dweeb.

Well, so it is with chavista hoodlums. Our first instinct when they drag us down to the gutter is to resist, to stay above the fray, to use reason and logic and rely on our values and our belief that we can be better than that. But isn't it true that, once in a while, you have to fight fire with fire? And wouldn't it be nice if every time, say, Chávez said something outrageous and offensive, someone in the opposition snapped back at him with something even more outrageous and offensive?

Anyway, that would be a disaster. What I did today was wrong, it was uncivil and uncalled for. But I can't deny there is a primal part of me that is glad I did it. I'll do my best to keep that part under wraps.

Post 18 of 20 ... I'm hittin' 20 posts before the clock strikes twelve even if it's the last thing I do

Andrew Sullivan is an Animal

Quico says: I close day one with a newfound appreciation for the high-volume blogger's craft. I simply blogged as much as my imagination could sustain, with a friend's help, and still didn't hit my 20 post quota for the day. The thought that this guy Sullivan's been doing this, day in and day out, for 10 years, is just staggering.

I'm off to bed. G'night, and good luck...

Post 17 of 100. Day one, and we're already behind...

Bureaucracy as it should be

Quico says: So, a little over a year ago, I wrote this epic post about going to get my driver's license in Caracas. In this blog's seven year history, it's one of the posts I'm proudest of: I just think it captured something special about both the glories and the miseries of Venezuelanity. Alas, last week I had to go trade in that hard-earned Venezuelan license for a new one so I can drive here, so I thought the time was ripe for a bit of compare and contrast. Because the contrast really couldn't be more complete: Quebec's provincial bureaucracy operates with simply bone-chilling efficiency, minimizing both your aggravation and the chance to make real human connections with the people you share the experience with.

The first thing you have to do here is make an appointment with the SAAQ, the Societé de l'assurance automobile du Québec, which is a kind of hybrid DMV/public insurance company. See, everyone knows Canadians get socialized medicine, but I guess not that many people realize that Québec just had to one-up the RoC (Rest of Canada) by socializing their damn car insurance, too. Figures.

When you call, there's usually a couple of weeks' wait for an appointment. Mine was set for last Wednesday, at 1:40 p.m. I turned up at 1:40 on the nose, but of course the 1:40 p.m. appointment people still hadn't been let through. A guard at the door pointed us to a waiting room off to the side of the entrance lobby where we had to wait for the call, which came, by my watch...at 1:42 p.m.

We went through to the reception where you present an ID. The receptionist crosses your name off of a printed out appointments sheet, asks you what you're there for, and gives you a little printed-out number. Then you're told to go to a larger waiting room inside, where about 8 different computerized lines move along in parallel to each other, with numbers called out by the computerized system.

Anyway, I had about a 20 minute wait there. The crowd was seriously mixed. Maybe 70% of us were obviously immigrants. Arabs and black Africans and Brazilian oligarchs and lots of chinese families with kids in toe. The other 30% were Quebeckers - basically teenagers there with their parents to get their learner's permits, most of them nervously paging through their heavily dog-eared Driver's Handbook just before their tests. At 2:03 p.m., by my watch, my number came up.

I sat down in semi-private booth with a SAAQ official and explained my case, which was slightly unusual in that I'm a new immigrant, but I also have an old SAAQ dossier from when I lived here with my parents back in 1997-98. He listened carefully, asked me for all the documents required, looked me up on the computer, meticulously updated my file, within 20 minutes, was charging me the $78 it costs to issue a replacement license. He left me with a handshake and a smile. By 2:30 p.m., I was cycling back to my house.

Obviously, the contrast with what happened to me in Los Chaguaramos couldn't have been more complete. On the one hand, the entire procedure was freakishly devoid of aggravation. On the other, nobody but nobody in the SAAQ waiting room would've dreamed of trying to strike up a conversation with anybody else in that line. We sat, silently, anonymously, safe in the expectation that the state would fulfill its minimum duty to us to treat us with professional courtesty and not to waste more of our time than is necessary.

In the SAAQ waiting room, we were dehumanized, but we were equal. Nobody could skip ahead of anybody else in that line - there's no way to bribe the computerized queue-management system. In fact, our dehumanization was the guarantee of our equality: it's precisely because the computer treated us all as ones-and-zeros-on-a-file that we could be certain nobody would get special treatment.

And that, in the end, is what bureaucracy does. In Venezuela Bureaucracy is, of course, a dirty word, but it really shouldn't be.

Real bureaucracy - rational bureaucracy of the kind that Canadians are so damn good at and Venezuelans so catastrophically hopeless at - is the truest guarantee of equality. In the SAAQ's hands, you temporarily trade in your individuality in return for equality, because in the SAAQ's eyes, you are not a person, you are an abstraction - an object that pre-determined rules are simply applied to.

If you're so inclined, you could see that as a terrible affront to your dignity. But believe you me, I've been through both, and I would infinitely prefer to get a driver's license in Montréal than in Caracas.


Post 16 of 100. I think this one came out pretty good...I like these licence posts.

Do U tweet?

Juan Cristóbal says: - As some of you may know, I finally caved and began using twitter a few weeks ago. (Insert shameless self-promotion here ) Venezuelan politicians also seem to be catching on ... slowwwwwly. Whether you think this is a feature or a bug, it can't hurt to know who's doing it. The only ones I have are people in PJ. My list is after the jump.

Primero Justicia

Julio Borges

Tomas Guanipa

Armando Briquet

Memo Arocha

Do you know of any others? Please share!

Post 15 of 100 ... and I'm already posting about myself - am I running out of fuel?

Remind me: which part of OAS is a champion of democracy and which part are the imperialist goons again?

Quico says: As we see OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza increasingly mimetized with Chávez over the Honduran crisis, it's worth remembering that the organization the guy leads can't even get an invite to Venezuela when the topic is human rights. Amazing though it is to think about now, the human rights arm of OAS (the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR) spent much of 2006 and 2007 trying, to no avail, to set up an official visit to Venezuela to monitor the Human Right situation there.

What follows is from IACHR's 2007 annual report:

227. During 2007, the Commission dedicated much of its time in trying to materialize a visit to Venezuela. Those efforts have been frustrated by the State’s silence on the question of a firm date for the visit. Since the Commission’s in loco visit to Venezuela in 2002, the Venezuelan Government has said that it would like the Commission to conduct follow-up activities, or arrange a visit by the Rapporteur for Venezuelan affairs, Dr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, to get a firsthand look at the changes that the State has introduced through the Missions and the Prison System Humanization Plan, among other initiatives. Thus far, however, the Commission has seen no progress on these fronts.

228. Furthermore, in early 2007, the Rapporteur for Venezuelan Affairs drew up a tentative agenda for a visit to Venezuela, which was discussed with the Permanent Representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the Organization of American States (OAS). In addition, several meetings between the President of the Commission and other members of the Commission with the same Ambassador were held in order discuss the achievement of a visit to the country. The President of the IACHR and the Rapporteur for Venezuela met the Minister and Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in order to directly discuss the visit, having sent a letter to the Government proposing specific dates for December 2007 to which the Government of Venezuela has not yet responded.

This bizarre situation is made all the stranger by the fact that, virtually alone in the world, Venezuela's constitution (Art. 23) actually gives international human rights treaties constitutional rank, explicitly saying they take precedence over internal legislation and can be directly enforced by the nation's courts! But then, the whole constitution-cum-toilet-paper theme has been sufficiently developed here (and elsewhere) that it's not really worth belaboring anymore.

Post 14 of 100. I'm going slightly crosseyed now.

Promoting gay marriage and homophobia...in one go!

Juan Cristóbal says: This video of National Assembly speaker Cilia Flores in full-attack mode packs a wallop. It shows the under-appreciated Flores promoting a motion to censure Venezuela's Catholic hierarchy for - surprise, surprise - opposing same-sex civil unions in Venezuela. The twist? Her stirring defense of gay civil rights comes bathed in a sinewy batter of homophobia.

It's her tone that's really remarkable. Not only does she (without basis) say that the Church is aligning itself with "the political opposition" and "Venezuela's ultra-right wing" (whoever that is), she goes on to say that they are fighting for gay rights "so that the bishops in the hierarchy, who are no saints, can also have the right to marry."

In other words - "take that, faggot priests!"

Gay marriage should be the subject of a civilized debate. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, demeaning the other side is simply not conducive to a consensus. Promoting homophobic epithets while fighting for gay rights - well that's just schizophrenic. And promoting gay rights while at the same time denying you're doing so - well that's just chavista.

But I guess it's in the ad-hominem gutter of political discussion where Cilia Flores appears to be most comfortable, so let's not blame her too much. It's too much to ask her for a civilized debate.

Post 13 of 100. Now we're doing Andrew Sullivan proud!

This Abuse of Power is Sponsored by Roche

Quico says: It's hard to overstate how bizarre the judicial persecution against Globovision financier and president Guillermo Zuloaga's had already gotten even before the judge put in charge of the case, Alicia Torres, got sacked today. Over the weekend, Judge Torres came under so much pressure to sign an order banning the man from leaving the country, she ended up in hospital, with heightened blood pressure and a recipe for the obligatory Lexotanil - Venezuela's cheap-and-cheerful tropical knock-off version of Valium.

This video gives you a pretty good sense of the backstory. She was plainly terrified about what the higher ups in her tribu might do to her if she refused to play ball, and told stories of physical intimidation so rank they had already made any pretense of independent justice just silly in this case, even before she lost her job.

Globovision is, to put it mildly, not my cup of tea. But as per usual, the government's sheer gangsterism in dealing with the station's critical coverage so vastly overshadows its own shortcomings, it's not even close.

Post 12 of 100. Just eight to go today.

VDM

Juan Cristóbal says: - The head of Venezuela's Supreme Tribunal of Chavista Justice had a fit of anger the other day. During a press conference, Justice Luisa Estella Morales was pressed by El Nacional reporter Vanessa Gómez on her views regarding recent criticisms of certain rulings of the court by prominent jurists.

In a deliciously candid moment, Head Justice Morales went ballistic and responded:

"Well Vanessa, maybe if you knew me from before - like others who know me, right Eligio (Rojas)? (You would know) it's dangerous to mess with me because I'm also like the spine tree that blooms in the savannah. You don't know me well, but check."

Morales was referring to a popular saying in the Venezuelan plains. It references the spine tree, which blooms in the savannah, "gives off a nice aroma to passersby, but thorns those that shake it." This saying has been used by Hugo Chávez on numerous occasions.

(Eligio Rojas, reads the accompanying note, was a journalist that was shunned from the Court because he reported on an order from Morales barring certain newspapers from circulating inside the country's courthouses.)

Morales' outburst is in the mold of former President Jaime Lusinchi. Lusinchi once threatened a TV journalist who was asking him pointed questions by repeatedly saying on camera "don't you f*** with me!"

Morales' outburst prompted IESA Professor (and friend) Pavel Gómez to write an open letter to her. It's also worth a read.

This comes as no surprise. Morales is no friend of the press nor of transparency, as can be seen in the video above of another outburst in front of a reporter asking pesky questions.

Yes, the woman in the video, the one going on about how "kind" and "splendid" and "humble" she is by allowing reporters to ask a couple of questions - she is in charge of safeguarding freedom of expression in our country. Run for your lives and hide the children.

Post 11 of 100 ... breathe in ... breathe out ...

The-most-expensive-city-in-Latin-America-Chronicles

Juan Cristóbal says: - Life in our fair, not-quite-socialist capital city is highlighted in a NY Times piece by Simón Romero and Gregory Kristof, only not in the "World/Americas" section but rather in the Economix blog. Check it out.

The money quote?

Walk into the San Lorenzo supermarket in Caracas, for instance, and a box of Fruit Loops costs the equivalent of $54 at the official exchange rate, which Mercer used in its study. A bag of Uncle Ben’s long grain rice costs $80, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey $98, and so on.

There you have it, Venezuela in a nutshell: a box of rice costs a little less than a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and about 100 times what it costs to fill up your gas tank.

Oh well, at least the picture they used (reproduced above) is a pretty one.

Post 10 of 100. We're just warming up...

The "Hilo Constitucional" vs. The Constitution

Quico says: Lets say that, as the ALBA block claims to believe, the interruption of constitutional rule in Honduras is simply unacceptable and Zelaya has to be restored as head of state post-haste. As soon as he's reinstated, he'll find himself once again facing a congress overwhelmingly - indeed, unanimously - opposed to his brand of leadership, and one whose claim to legitimacy rests on the same votes his claim rests on. After weeks of breathlessly demonizing those congressional leaders as goriletti's fascist goons, what are the chances that Zelaya would suddenly acceed to come back and recognize the legal role accorded to them in the constitution?

The problem in Honduras isn't just bringing Zelaya back as president. The real challenge is to re-establish constitutional rule in the country. But with their over-the-top, hyper-inflamatory rhetoric, the ALBA leaders have managed to entrench a divorce between those two goals: far from easing a return to constitutional normality, bringing Zelaya back under the circumstances Chávez has created would almost certainly mean setting back the re-establishment of constitutional rule.

After weeks of rhetoric coldly calculated to escalate the Honduran crisis (i.e., the panoply of willfully-obnoxious jabs around the "Goriletti" meme), Chávez and his cohort have driven a stake through the heart of any effort to re-establish the minimally civil, law-governed relations between the branches of government that constitutional rule relies on. Zelaya himself has grasped this, and now vows to retake power as part of an "insurrection" - that is, as part of an overthrow, rather than a re-establishment, of existing constitutional structures.

And it's no wonder, because for the ALBA block, the Honduran crisis never was about re-establishing constitutional rule, much less the kind of liberal democratic rule a constitution like Honduras's sets out. That Chávez explicitly rejects that vision of democratic legitimacy is amply established by 10 years worth of public speeches, including his dramatic and extremely public refusal to sign the Quebec Declaration establishing OAS's Democratic Charter back in 2001. All along, Chávez has been explicit: when he says he supports democracy, he means he supports the right of leftwing presidents to rule unencumbered by legal constraints of any kind.

Chávez has become a crusader for the Divine Right of Caudillos, championing their cause with absolute dedication and only the barest of constitutionalist qualification. So as Central America sleepwalks into a regional war, the thing we need to ask ourselves now is simply this: do we support the Hilo Constitucional? or do we support the Constitution?

Post 9 of 100. Time for lunch.

Fuel to the Fire

Quico says: Child rapist Daniel Ortega (a.k.a. the president of Nicaragua) has apparently decided that Central America isn't quite tense and unstable enough as it is. Fresh from rigging municipal elections last year, Ortega has just called for the Nicaraguan constitution to be reformed so that he can - wait for it - stand for re-election.

The proposal came in a speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution that was filled to the gills with over-the-top invective and the kinds of hyperventilatory bullshit Hugo Chávez has made his own.

Sigh.

Why oh why are authoritarian lefties so predictable?!

Post 8 of 100. Sagging a bit now.

The view from my window

Montreal, Canada - 10: 44 a.m.Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to send in pictures. I'll be publishing them at the rate of one per day this week, so do hang tight.

Want to share the view from your window? Take a snapshot and send it to caracaschronicles@fastmail.fm . Include the place and time. Don't try to pretty it up. And make sure the window frame is visible.

Post 7 of 100. Now we're cookin' with gas.

The socialist auction

Juan Cristóbal says: Rumors of a not-quite-overt devaluation of Venezuela's fixed exchange rate system continue to swirl. The last few months, there have been suggestions that Cadivi, Venezuela's fixed exchange-rate currency rationing body, was going to transfer some of its sales capacity to the Central Bank. The idea was to allow the Central Bank to sell the dollars banks and stock brokers needed (yes, they're still around) through an auction. The plan, which would create a third exchange market with a higher price than the fixed rate but at a lower price than the parallel market, appears to be on the verge of being implemented.

These rumors have been around for a while. Undoubtedly, the government is feeling the double whammy of having an overvalued currency. When you are the sole provider of currency in your economy and you basically give it way, you are not getting as many bolivars for as you need to keep your petrodollar stash from dwindling. This forces you to ration out the dollars you sell more and more aggressively, making them scarcer and scarcer, and sending people flocking to the parallel market, where the exchange rate soars. This fuels inflation, currently the highest in Latin America.

Shifting from Cadivi to the BCV would allow the government to devalue the currency while at the same time please some of its banker friends. The gist is that Chávez need to OK the deal. Not surprisingly, given how un-socialist it would be to have a currency auction, it sounds like it's a no-go.

But stay tuned.

Post 6 of 100. Juan Cristobal joins the fray.

Hey Correa, how about we ask Mono Jojoy if he'll take a polygraph?

Quico says: It really is a masterpiece of Ionesco-ish Latin American political lunacy: Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa responded to the video of FARC's now top-ranking commander, Mono Jojoy, reading a letter by recently deceased FARC leader Manuel Marulanda by blaming a vast-right-wing-conspiracy for the whole thing, and asking Alvaro Uribe to take a lie detector test to see who's involved with what group in Colombia. Brilliant!

Just one thing, Rafael. How about Mono Jojoy? Think he'd do a polygraph?

Post 5 of 100. Need more coffee.

88 billion of your bolivars, and counting...

Quico says: Bloomberg has an excellent piece on the scale of the fiscal sink hole the government is in these days. Facing a budget deficit worth as much as 7% of GDP, the government is hitting up Venezuela's banks hard, borrowing more and more of the bolivars you put into your bank account. At last count, the commercial banks' domestic currency holdings had risen over 50% from last year, to Bs.88 billion. The upshot of all this? Morgan Stanley expects the economy to contract by 5% this year.

Post 4 of 100. This is going to be hard.

When Good Neighbors Become Good Friends

Quico says: Killer fact: 17% of all the cocaine produced in the Andes moves through Venezuela, now that the volume of coke trafficked through the country has risen four-fold from 2004 levels. That and other tidbits in the widely-leaked US congressional report on Venezuela-as-narcohub are scary enough in their own right, but only take on their full, macabre dimension when seen alongside late FARC leader Manuel Marulanda's deathbed letter to his guerrillas. In it, Tirofijo speaks repeatedly, matter-of-factly and in some detail about FARC's close and vital ties to the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, often mimicking chavista rhetoric and stressing again and again his trust in and affection for "el amigo" - as he typically refers to Chávez.

Put that together with the fact that two of the three Venezuelan military officers on the US Treasury Department's list of drug kingpins (DIM head Hugo Carvajal and International Man of Mystery Ramón Rodríguez Chacín) are generally regarded as the liaisons between the Venezuelan government and FARC, and you get a tidy image of what this story's about: a highly effective way for the Venezuelan government to ensure FARC remains lavishly funded without having to directly fork over oil money and while preserving at least some bare-bones deniability.

Grave. Muy grave.

Post 3 of 100. This is fun!

Does Chávez want a proxy war in Honduras?

Quico says: Mel Zelaya's grandiloquent announcement yesterday that he intends to now lead an "insurrection" in Honduras as he walked out of the US-backed mediation effort in Costa Rica might be just hot air, but it might also be the start of a terrible human tragedy. In the end, it was too much to hope for, thinking Chávez would allow the US the propaganda triumph of having the Arias mediation mission succeed.

The proposed compromise (allowing Zelaya back under amnesty but nipping any talk of a constituent assembly in the bud) would have been a disastrous setback for the ALBA block. Because the chavista's real interest in Honduras is establishing the precedent that leftiss presidents have unbridled authority, regardless of what the constitution says, and have almost a duty to do what they can to stay in power for life. The deal on offer in San José emphatically did not get them there.

A war in Honduras just might.

It's a thought that's been batting around the back of my head ever since the Honduran crisis started: with the maximalist rhetoric, the demonization of the other side, the presence of a long, porous border with an ALBA member country, and the region's history of violence, wouldn't you say Honduras looks like a perfect stage for Chávez's long-hoped-for baptism-of-fire? A symbolically loaded shooting war able to establish his brand of legitimacy like the Bay of Pigs established Castro's?

In some ways, the scenario seems scarily plausible to me: Venezuelan money, Venezuelan logistics, Venezuelan weapons, Nicaraguan base camps, Honduran dead. Chávez could set up his own little coalition-of-the willing, a coalition which, if anything, could claim much broader legitimacy than the force the US set up for Iraq, seeing hos the UN General Assembly voted virtually unanimously to reinstate Zelaya.

Very sketchy.

Post 2 of 100. Just warming up.

Why on earth would you want to write 100 posts in five days?

Quico says: What follows over the next few days is an experiment: a shot at re-imagining what Caracas Chronicles might be like under a different, more Andrew Sullivanesque publishing schedule. Going Sullivan would entail more or less reversing the way I typically do business. Normally, I read through the papers looking for one or two interesting stories I might write something substantive about, and launch into it. If you've ever read Sullivan's amazing blog you know he stands that model more or less on its head, writing just a note or two about almost everything even marginally interesting he reads online.

As a result, reading The Daily Dish is a little bit like being invited to eavesdrop into the guy's brain. You get it all. You get it all. You get it all. And you get it now.

I think it's a fascinating, possibly trail-blazing model. It may not be the best thing for one's mental health to try to emulate it, but then, that's what the mental health breaks are for.

One last thing: one reason Sullivan's blog works so well is that he has an army of readers pitching him links via email for him to trawl through. So don't be stingy with interesting stuff you find online. I need it!

Post 1 out of 100. Here we go.

Read More about the Andrew Sullivan Blog Challenge

Quico says: As part of our mad dash to write 100 posts in five days next week, we've added the infamous "Read more..." button to the blog. For the next few days, only the first paragraph of each post will be visible on the main blog. You'll have to click through if you want to read the rest.

See, that wasn't so hard, was it!?

We'll be doing this next week on a trial basis, and because it makes sense when you're posting very very often. If y'all hate it, we'll get rid of it when the publication schedule goes back to its normal, lethargic state.

The Andrew Sullivan Blog Challenge: 5 Days, 100 Posts, No Excuses

Quico and Juan Cristóbal say: So, we've just noticed there are now 1900 posts in this blog's 7 year archive...now that we're so close to the 2000 mark, we thought, "why not shake things up around here a bit?" So, next week, we're going to be trying a bit of an experiment on Caracas Chronicles:

• Five days. One hundred posts. No mercy.

If you've ever read Andrew Sullivan's blog, you know the drill. Lots of posts. Mostly short. Some better than others. But an unrelenting stream of them.

Starting Monday, we're going to give it a go. Just so you know.

Why are we talking about Antonio Ledezma in the first place?

Quico says: So over the last few days readers have been complaining, both in the comments section and over email, that we never wrote anything about Metropolitan Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma's hunger strike at the OAS office in Caracas.

Ledezma's protest, over stalled financial transfers from the Central Government that were making him late with payments to municipal workers, dominated the opposition's newscape throughout much of last week. And so this blog's silence on the subject struck readers as, to say the least, dissonant.

"Everybody's been talking about this," the typical email said, "what's with you?!"

I've had a hard time formulating my discomfort with these attitudes, but I think they come down to this. After last November's state and local elections, I assumed that the opposition's three big wins - Ledezma's in the Caracas Metropolitan Mayorship, Carpiles's in Miranda State, and Ocariz's in Petare (Municipio Sucre) - had positioned those three to fight it out for the mantle of opposition leader.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the big Ledezma-Ocariz-Capriles Battle Royale for oppo leadership: Globovision decided there was no need to bother with it. Ravell had one glance at the threesome and made a decision.

The candidate in 2012 is going to be Ledezma. End of story.

And so, for the last 8 months, Antonio Ledezma's had a kind of automatic open invite to Aló, ciudadano. Every chavista outrage against him has been covered in the kind of technicolor detail that your average oppo politico can only dream of. While you need to turn to the inside pages of El Nacional to find out about the National Guard's power grab against the Miranda State's police barracks in Caucagua, every stapler taken out of Ledezma's power has been news-cycle leading stuff. While only wonky insiders get to hear about Ocariz's 60%+ approval ratings in Petare, even Ledezma's wife - his wife! - has become a regular on Globo.

Which explains why his protest at OAS gets picked up on the WashPost Editorial page but the stuff Ocariz and Capriles do is seen as the stuff of deepest Inside Baseball.

None of which is necessarily to criticize Ledezma - arguably, his ability to put Globovisión in his pocket is a sign of his political skill - but rather to note that there's a certain naïveté to readers' outrage that we failed to jump on the Ledezma hunger strike wagon.

People have a sense that, you know, "this must be big time news, after all, it's on Globovisión round-the-clock" without the insight to see that, in fact, it's big news because it's on Globovisión round-the-clock. Ten years into the Chávez era and we still haven't quite grasped that "news" isn't some platonic category that exists outside and beyond what the media choose to highlight. Instead, it's the media's decision to publish something that turns that something into news.

I freely admit that I'm sore about this, in part, because I think Globo is backing the wrong horse: Carlos Ocariz, in particular, has the street cred, work ethic, political wits and generational appeal to absolutely dwarf Ledezma, and I'm sure that would've become clear if he'd had a tenth of the access to Globo's airwaves Ledezma has had. Even Capriles breaks the old genetic-adeco mould in ways Ledezma will never be able to.

But that's by the by. The point is that, for the Nth time, Globo has ended up playing a role it has no right to play: final oppo arbiter. Unelected, unaccountable kingmaker.

The upshot is that the kind of open debate the opposition needed to have for itself with itself about who should lead it never took place. It wasn't allowed to take place. It was pre-empted by an editorial decision in Alta Florida.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Globovision's role confusion (are we a news station?! are we a political party?!) has been tremendously damaging to the opposition.

Joaquín Villalobos and the Legacy of the Honduran Crisis

Quico says: What a long, strange trip this Honduran coup has been. It takes a crisis of this magnitude to reconfigure the hemisphere's idea of itself, to cast players in new roles or, rather, to recognize players in the roles they've been playing, quietly, for some time.

Deprived of that old, faithful narrative of the all-controlling Bushista-CIA-gone-wild, Chávez has struggled mightily to try to implicate the US credibly in the coup. And stripped of the US as foil, what has come to the foreground, instead, is a new clarity on Chávez's outsized ambitions and destabilizing influence in the region. With the crisis on its third week and Chávez still devoting "48 hours a day" to Honduras, he has unwittingly cast himself as puppetmaster. Nobody can seriously doubt, any longer, that Chávez is the real power behind Zelaya, his only true power resource.

Because, when you think about it, Zelaya's entire post-coup strategy has depended on Venezuelan resources: Venezuelan airplanes, Venezuelan TV stations, Venezuelan diplomacy and Venezuelan money. This fact - which has been lost on absolutely no one who follows hemispheric affairs - has managed to transform the Honduran soap opera into a kind of proxy coup: a conflict that is about, first and foremost, Chávez's idiosyncratic understanding of democratic legitimacy.

Joaquín Villalobos, the former FMLN guerrilla leader from El Salvador and current Central American pundit savant, writes a mordant analysis of the Honduran coup that exemplifies the way the crisis has recast Chávez's role in the region. The piece got picked up today in Tal Cual. This is my translation of key bits:

With images of tanks and soldiers bringing back old memories and passions, it's costly to say that what really happened in Honduras is that they put a stop to Chávez's meddling. The illegality with which Honduran politicos and military men acted attests to that country's incomplete democratic transition, but make no mistake about it: Honduras is the victim, Chávez is the culprit, and Zelaya is a poor ingenue who was used to create this conflict.

When the Colombian military crossed the border and went into Ecuador last year, the situation was similar: Colombia was the victim, the most strategic of FARC's camps was on Ecuadorean territory, and the formal sin was to violate another country's territory.

Recently, Peru suffered more than 20 casualties, most of them cops, in a conflict with indigenous people; chavista meddling was also a factor in that occasion. To that we can add the suitcase full of cash in Argentina, the support for Ollanta Humala in Perú, as well as for the Colombian FARC and the Salvadorean FMLN.

Without Chávez's money, Daniel Ortega would not have been able to commit electoral fraud in Nicaragua.

In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Cuba took on a policy of supporting insurgencies that fought dictatorships, as part of its strategic defense against US attacks. Chávez, on the other hand, destabilizes democracies even though nobody is attacking Venezuela, there is no blockade, there are no contras, no assassinations, and the US remains his number one oil buyer.

Chávez, Ortega and Correa's role in attempts to bring back Zelaya to Honduras are part of a policy to govern outward, creating or worsening others' conflicts rather than solving the problems in one's own countries. The use of the Venezuelan state owned network Telesur to coordinate "diplomacy" with street brawling, the involvement of Venezuelan planes and pilots, the calls for rebellion, all these speak for themselves: Chávez needs dead hondurans.

The upshot is that, whether we like it or not, internationally isolating the Honduran government increases the risk of violence.

What we need now is a policy of mediation to aid the reconciliation between Hondurans, not supposedly diplomatic initiatives that actually escalate the confrontation. We need to persuade, not impose and, most importantly, we need to look at the entire problem and not just this coup.

It may be that the Honduran problem can be resolved through negotiations, but it's only a matter of time until Chávez provokes another conflict somewhere else and perhaps another government will decide to stop him using methods that break the law, as Colombia and Honduras have already done. But the international community can hardly demand that Honduras reinstate Zelaya if it won't do anything about the fraud Ortega committed in Nicaragua or lift a finger to put a stop to Chavez's interventionism.

It's still far from clear how the Honduran crisis is going to play out in the end and - to my mind, much more importantly - what collective lessons Latin America will learn from it. But Villalobos puts his finger on one way Latin America will clearly be different after the crisis than it was before: Chávez's determination to impose his understanding of legitimacy can no longer be doubted. The systematic nature of the threat to hemispheric stability he poses can no longer be softballed.

By the time it's all said and done, the Zelaya crisis might be remembered as a kind of Debutante Ball for Chavista Imperialism.