A couple of weeks ago, CC fellow blogger Audrey M. DaCosta wrote about Tamara Adrian, Venezuela’s fist-ever transgender candidate for public office. Her story made headlines and shone a much needed spotlight on the LGBT agenda in Venezuela. Now, thanks to Chavismo’s handling of their own gay and transgender candidacies, Adrian’s run for office has…
You’ve heard it. Everyone’s heard it. In the early 1990s, the Venezuelan economy got so bad, poor people were forced to eat “Perrarina”, the popular dry dog food brand. But…is there any substance at all to this story? El Pitazo, one of the new crop of Venezuelan digital media outlets created followed the dismantling of the…
Rigid price controls, coupled with strict controls over the movement of food from one place to another, can break down society’s ability to feed itself. It’s a lethal combination. Put them together with enough political repression and the result can be famine. In Ukraine, in the 1930s, the combination of policies that made it impossible for…
Some images really do sort of speak for themselves.
This shaky footage, clearly the work of a trembling hand, is good enough to make out the basics: In broad daylight, in an alley behind some buildings, three or four lifeless bodies lay scattered across the ground. An SUV arrives and several police officers get out of the car. One of them scouts the area,…
Remember Jesse Chacón, Venezuela’s Electricity Czar? The guy’s useless at getting power flowing smoothly, of course, but you do have to give him credit for absolutely incredible, titanium-plated cojones. It was way back in April 2013 that Jesse famously promised to resign in 100 days if electric supply problems were not fixed. The supply problem was,…
Friend of the blog and Economist DAUZ shares a guest post about the Indiana Jones-meets-Wolf of Wall Street reality that is dealing in Venezuelan debt instruments. Interested parties (read: tropical adrenaline junkies, Bloomberg enthusiasts, and PDVSA bondholders) will surely geek out on this colorful, slice-of-life from the trading floor. It’s days like February 10th, 2015, that…
General Raúl Baduel was granted parole yesterday after serving six years out of an eight year sentence on trumped up charges of embezzlement. Chávez’s one-time Defense Minister, and the man who organized his return to power by mobilizing the Parachute Regiment in his defense on April 13, 2002, General Baduel had been tried on transparently…
There’s no doubt about it: The central government has a huge “bachaquero” problem, that is, thousands of people buying regulated goods and reselling them at black market prices to make ends meet. Instead of attacking the roots of this problem, that is, the spectacular price distortions that make waiting in line one of the most lucrative jobs…
Non-reading TSJ magistrates and Central Bank economist can rest easy, thanks to Nelson Bocaranda´s feature of Anabella and Barbara´s open letter to the TSJ in his prime-time radio show today. Maybe TSJ folks just needed our request in audio format to get the memo. Yeah, that´s probably it. Listen in to Anabella´s on-point interview, which…
Caught the red eye to Barcelona. Barcelona, Anzoátegui, that is. Blood-shot eyes. Mosquitoes big as helicopters, and the wait. That absurd time-bending wait while an immigration officer chats on her phone, one kid cries, the other drools over your shoulder, and you are about to lose your connecting flight. As the immigation officer giggled, a…
Estimado TSJ, Nos enteramos de que rechazaste la demanda que Transparencia Venezuela interpuso contra el presidente del BCV, Nelson Merentes, por no publicar indicadores macroeconómicos, por considerar que no presentaron “ninguna prueba” que demuestre que le solicitaron cumplir con su obligación de publicar “las principales estadísticas económicas del país”. Somos economistas, así que no nos movemos…
Carolina Acosta-Alzuru has a good riff about the need to wait until a country is ready to tell its stories. Venezuela isn’t ready to start telling its story yet, but one day, when the dust has settled and the country begins to find its voice, it’s going to be incredibly spoilt for choice: the one item where production has…
Last Friday saw the end of a nasty and self-destructive struggle for supremacy within the opposition coalition for the right to nominate the candidate for the safest opposition seat in the country: the Este-del-Este‘s Miranda Circuit #2. The outcome was…discomfiting: an AD-Voluntad Popular stitch up that sold Maria Corina Machado down the river in a nasty, vindictive slight…
RunRun.es has a blockbuster piece on Tocorón Prison in Aragua State, quickly becoming the epicenter of #PranNation. Run by a business savvy “Pran” (prison gang leader) with a growth vision, Tocorón has been on a building frenzy of late, blurring the lines between vacation resort and jail. Charmingly, the jail has become the one place…
Caracas Chronicles 