What do you call it when a country throws its military assets behind a campaign to bully and intimidate a much smaller, poorer neighbour for the purpose of spooking away foreign investors and preventing it from carrying out strategic investments? If the words “Economic War” are to mean anything, shouldn’t they mean that? This post is a call…
Tomás Straka has a blockbuster post over on ProDaVinci on the Deep Historical Roots of last week’s field battle for control of San Vicente. A taste: Pero tal vez el ejemplo de Tomás Funes es el que mejor calaza para ilustrar el fenómeno que estamos describiendo. Representante de los caucheros muy disgustados por los tratos…
Venezuela’s economic crisis is showing no signs of abating, and people are increasingly frustrated – and rightly so. In lieu of this, the opposition umbrella group, the MUD, has called for street protests this Saturday. That people should take to the streets demanding some sort of solution should be a gimme. No government should be…
The decades-old feud between the US and Cuba is coming to an end. After exchanging political prisoners – one Alan Gross in exchage for three Cubans held in the US – Presidents Obama and Castro will make major announcements today. Sources are confirming they will announce the end a major easing of the embargo, and future diplomatic relations…
I have a theory as to why Maria Corina Machado gets under chavistas’ skin so much. No, it doesn’t have to do with her gender. I’ve thrown that around before, but it doesn’t leave me entirely satisfied. The opposition has other female leaders, but none is quite as controversial as Maria Corina. Neither is it…
Typically, when discussing a particular country’s fortunes, Investment banks, NGOs, Multilateral Development Institutions, and society as a whole expect some of its former heads of state to speak out about the country’s challenges. Their wisdom is often used as a barometer, their opinion on how they might address problems is sought after when an electoral…
Jaime Lusinchi, whose 1984 to 1989 presidency is remembered as possibly the least competent of the 1936-1999 period, died last night in Caracas. The last of the old-style Acción Democrática populist apparatchiks to run the country, Lusinchi’s ruinous term in office was marked by rampant corruption, a pig-headed refusal to countenance evidently needed reforms, the accumulation of…
In his 2011 ProDaVinci interview with Rebelión de los Náufragos author Mirtha Ribero, Moisés Naím launched into a well-rehearsed little rant about the inevitability of economic reform when he came into government in 1989. People didn’t understand or accept that there was no alternative. You could give speeches, you could grandstand, you could bleed for…
As the H1N1 outbreak which started last month is still affecting the country, a very different health concern is now among us. The Venezuelan Society of Infectology is denouncing that the number of malaria cases has reached a new high this year. Though this outbreak is mostly limited to the Southeast of Bolívar State (where illegal…
The family mausoleum of 19th century General and President Joaquín Crespo (1841-1898), located in Caracas’s main public cemetery (Cementerio General del Sur) has been found empty. The remains of Crespo, his wife Jacinta (of “Misia” fame) and other family members are unaccounted for, according to the municipal office in charge. The desecration of graves is a…
On February 5th, 1992, Caldera sided with Chávez and Fidel Castro sided with Carlos Andrés Pérez. I’ve always been struck by what a grubby, squalid little Myth of Origin the putsch of February 4th makes. Next the glories of the Sierra Maestra, next to the romance of Granma, next to the whole majestic sweep of the Bay…
The new Chavista governor of Mérida Alexis Ramírez has decided to roll up his sleeves and do some serious work, with the help of the State Legislature (controlled by the PSUV). Is this about solving the never-ending problem of trash recollection? No. It is about building a necessary new road for the state? Nanay. Or…
The small island of Cubagua (part of Nueva Esparta State) was the location of Nueva Cádiz, the first Spanish settlement in Venezuela and South America. After running out of pearl oysters (the main source of local income, and the reason Margarita used be called “la perla del Caribe” until some place in Belize apparently snatched…
Juan’s latest is as good an excuse as any to repost my partial translation of J.M. Briceño Guerrero’s 1979 screed El Discurso Salvaje. It’s not an easy read, and certainly not for everybody. But it’s essential. If you put in the time and attention it takes to wrap your mind around it, this is a text…
Here’s another thing you almost never see: a Venezuelan documentary in the local cinema. It’s rare to find them in theaters for a reason, you’d have to be mad to pay money to see the average Venezuelan documentary. But now we have a breakthrough Venezuelan doc for our times. “Tiempos de Dictadura” (Era of Dictatorship)…
Caracas Chronicles 