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32 thoughts on “El Gordo Bayón”

    • The weird thing is that from the picture sin some of the links, the guy was really skinny…

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      • Could be what James Hunt says but the word “gordo” is really used for both fat people and really thin people in Venezuela, as a joke. I know: a friend of my sister is called “La Gorda” and she is the skinniest in her whole family.
        I think the only people you would never link to “gordo” in Venezuela are people who are average
        or women who might be just in the zone and you might be flirting with and who might feel insulted by that.

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  2. Well.. How to explain this? How to explain what is going on in Venezuela? How to recover a country so rotten?

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  3. In any normal country, this story would give rise to a Pulitzer prize, an Academy Award winning movie, several impeachments and a decade of intensive legal reforms. Instead, I am left wondering: why was the guy taking a mototaxi back to the Hotel Alba after his meeting with the Vice President?

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    • ‘Tis a slippery slope when you start asking those types of questions. The less we know about this, the better!

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          • My other question is: if you are El Gordo and you are booked into the Alba, is your room bugged by one country, or all five constituent countries?

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            • As long as Cuba gets it, I think they all do. I think its also a given that the NSA makes a secret 6th.

              I am really curious why the detail of the room was added, but so little else that would be relevant. I guess the assumption would be the police had already stolen everything?

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              • Crime reporting in Venezuela often includes these details that don’t seem to make a lot of sense to me. There’s often a thing about license plate numbers, or makes of cars, that I don’t understand. It sounds very film noirish, is my explanation. Or it is a kind of journalistic synecdoche- in the absence of an explanation for why a guy with two court orders not to leave Bolivar state and multiple counts of murder against him is meeting with the vice president, we have certainty around the detail of his room number on said visit, so the world is not totally gone amok.

                Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot about journalism in my own country I don’t understand too, and the guy that got assigned this story..my heart goes out to him: not really much has to be said, maybe make a couple of phone calls, and we get the picture.

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              • That is a sign of lazy crime reporting. It is the Venezuelan equivalent of writing that the suspect “fled on foot.” It’s the sort of thing that has to be in a police report but absolutely does not have to be in a news article, But since the reporter has the detail he feels an obligation to use it.

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  5. Should we be expecting some 7 days of national mourning with hour-long cadenas featuring Maduro, the syndicate and maybe some colectivos talking about how this guy was an exemplary human being?

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    • I would be satisfied with a Cadena Nacional with the revolutionary Alto Mando displaying cribbed email evidence clearly showing that Leo “El Chico Esqualido” Lopez was the triggerman. Should only take 3-4 hours, tops.

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      • They would claim too that María Corina “explota-refinerías” and Enrique “maricazo-quema-gente” Capriles are the masterminds behind this.
        And somehow they’ll toss Simonovis in the mix too, just to have a “reason” to have him locked until he dies in his cell.

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  6. If I start talking about construction unions… It is exactly the same as dealing with gangs, actually they act and behave as gangs using guns and fighters to “negotiate” contracts. It is like a territorial drug war, each group “owns” the construction site on a first come first serve basis. It happened to me once that 2 unions got into my construction site relatively at the same time, it ended up with a fight between 15 guys with gun shoots and ambulances. My car was shot 15 times because I called the police and they did not like it, I have to recognize that PoliHatillo did an excellent job. They were able to control them and did not let them get into the county again.

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    • What you just described in North America is called a jurisdictional dispute. These disputes between unions are settled quickly and peacefully by independent labour tribunals through transparent processes. In the pre-modern era of labour relations it was more like what things are like right now in the construction industry in Venezuela: in the absence of laws and a functioning regulator (i.e. a labour court that worked) people sorted out their problems through beating the crap out of each other, extortion, and murder.

      The construction industry is a good example of how the absence of rule of law in Venezuela leads directly to violence. The problem is not that there are construction unions. If you are going to have skilled trades and professions, you are going to have unions, or something like unions. That is the nature of the beast. The problem is that there is no regulatory authority in Venezuela that deals with the problems that unions and employers encounter with each other. The result is burned down half completed projects, worksites that sit in limbo forever, bullets flying around, dead bodies showing up all over the place and these strange legal processes where everything goes into a black hole, never to see the light of day again. 21 Century Socialism in Venezuela has produced a weird and horrible anachronism of 19th century labour relations.

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  7. Many constructions syndicates are now controlled by blackmailing gangs that extort money from the builders to let then just carry out the construction without hindrance . The problem is that once paid they dont stay paid but at any time can come up with new exhorbitant demands for more benefits and or money.

    The worst situation happens when two syndicates fight over control of a construction site and get violent , The builder cant win, whatever he agrees with one syndicate the other will contest and denounce. That of course makes building very risky and very expensive . Something we all pay for.

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  8. Weep indeed! Que pena, que desgraciados, como estamos! Y donde me dejas el detallito que “sin embargo el Pelón, alias con el que es conocido Eduardo Natera, contactó al equipo reporteril de este medio para atribuirse la autoría del hecho.”

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  9. Y lo insólito son todas las medidas q le permitían estar en libertad. Esto esta podrido desde lo más bajo a lo más alto.

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  10. Why should we weep? If you cannot keep them in jail, then the next best thing is to shoot them down. After all this is a barbarian country.

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      • I left in ’86 and granted, there was crime and corruption back then (key reason why I left), but this is an entire new scale — I was able to move around cities, hike and camp in the countryside without this kind of fear. These guys in power are actually and deliberately using crime as a way of keeping half the population terrorized (including judges and what not).

        So I do weep for a country that was a bit more “normal.”

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  11. I wonder what happened to the poor mototaxi driver. I mean, his passenger was gunned down from another moving vehicle, he must have been hit too, or else he was extremely lucky!

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