Last night, while Maduro was rambling on TV about how he and Russia will stabilize world oil prices, the El Valle river flooded. Before signing off from his weekly TV show, the disaster was brought to the President’s attention, and he went on to criticize the ultraderecha twitter commentators who blamed his administration for the flood. “Imbeciles” he…
Last night, Tarek el Aissami, ex-Minister of Justice and current Governor of Aragua, was in charge of reading part of the State of Emergency Decree which will rule over five municipalities of the Western Venezuela border state of Táchira. The decree which, according to El Aissami, reflects “the supreme importance that Central Government places on Human…
“Mommy, can we get some French fries?” asked my daughter as we drove past the massive granite monolith that is the McDonald’s store of La Castellana in Caracas. “There are no French fries in Venezuela, baby” sentenced my wife. My daughter’s eyes dampened like that was the saddest thing she ever heard. And perhaps it was.…
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,…
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…
Milagros Socorro broke Twitter yesterday with her reporting of a guajiro upheaval in the border town of Sinamaica. The Zuliana journo summarized the story in 26 tweets and then filled in the blanks with an article at Konzapata. Turns out a pissed wayuu crowd raided -as vikings do- the town hall of the Bolivarian Municipality of La…
On Tuesday the CNE – our very neutral elections authority – explained that the gender quota would not apply to the candidates elected in the primaries. Seems like someone in the government party did some number crunching. As Eugenio Martinez explains in Prodavinci, only 28 women from a total 113 districts were elected in the PSUV primaries. If the…
La Villa del Cine is working on a movie about Hugo Chavéz’s brief deposing during April (11th, 12th, and 13th) 2002. This is a core moment in Chavista mythology, it revamped Hugo Chávez’s weakened popularity and defined a new pace for Venezuelan politics for the years to come. Así se rueda @abrillapelicula basada en el libro de @VillegasPoljakE…
We are three weeks into the race for the parliamentary elections (scheduled for December 6th) and the Venezuelan government has already imposed three over-the-top hurdles for the opposition. First, the Elections Council (CNE) issued a set of rules establishing a gender quota which they knew the opposition didn’t have. This was a genius move, because…
Not like we’ll be posting the price of the black market Dollar every time it spikes, but just one week ago it hit the 500 mark. DolarToday’s closing rate for this evening was Bs. 611.88. That’s a hell of a leap. [Or yeah, maybe we’re the jerks who scream the new price of the Dollar whenever it…
Remember Caraemuerto? Luidig Ochoa (a.k.a. Caraemuerto) was the alleged criminal in recovery who survived fifteen shots (three in the face), created a successful web series, and the love interest of T&A slapstick comedienne Jimena Araya (a.k.a. Rosita). They dated until the day of his death, when he was shot three more times and ran out of lives to survive them.…
It’s been a week since the Diosdado/Shannon picture show and we’ve read many hypothesis over what had to happen to get that photo opp. Both Jackson Diehl and Heinz Dietrich believe it had to do with Leopoldo Lopez’s release. While Diehl says the US is looking to release tension on the region by the release…
Nelson Merentes, the President of the Central Bank of Venezuela (“BCV”), seems to have a bit of a soft mutiny in the ranks. A group from the bank’s technical staff has been leaking information to the media on the mismanagement of the institution, including the craziest bit of news this week: the one about the Central Bank printing…
Melanio Escobar is an honest man, a good father, and a stubborn human rights activist. We had a chat last year in the midst of the student protests, due to his viral coverage of the imprisonment of thousands of protesters. I was impressed by this well spoken ex-punk rocker and journalist with a name that would…
I was writing a post on how screwed we were since the black market rate of the Dollar crossed the 300 Bolivar threshold a couple of days ago. Never mind. Just deleted the whole thing. This tragedy is self explanatory. Translation: According to DolarToday the black market rate just hit 402 Bolivars per 1 US…
Caracas Chronicles 