EfectoCocuyo has fresh details on several companies connected to disgraced, jailed former Venezuelan Soccer Federation chief Rafael Esquivel that were handled by a small group of relatives and associates. According to EC’s report, Esquivel himself is personally involved in four Florida-registered companies: La Isla Corp., Esqui-care Center, Grupo Esquivel and Grupo Los Robles. Esquivel’s nephew, Luis Damián…
The 2015 Pan American Games ended last Sunday in Toronto. The U.S. delegation came on top in the medal table, followed by the host country Canada, which achieved their best performance ever in the history of this continental multi-sport event. What about the Venezuelan delegation? How it went up north to what the central government…
Have a careful read at the “subtitles” under the Obama speech here: I’m going to go ahead and guess our favorite spokesman Jim Luers wrote that speech. The screen above is at the waiting room for SAPI (Servicio Autónomo de la Propiedad Intelectual), the public office in charge of “protecting” intellectual property in Venezuela, inasmuch as…
The national football team (a.k.a. La Vinotinto) returned to the country yesterday after its first-round elimination of the 2015 Copa America held in Chile. But the way back home for most of the Vinotinto players (some left Chile on their own) and crew was more complicated than expected. Sports newspaper Meridiano reports that the original plan…
Good news, everyone! With the blessing of the central government, North Korea will open its embassy in Caracas. More than a year has passed since the formal request, but in the end the self-described “dictatorship of people’s democracy” will finally have its own diplomatic post right inside the proletariat stronghold of… Las Mercedes. This should…
Huge news out of Zurich today, where several high ranking members of FIFA were arrested for alleged corruption and money laundering. One of them is Rafael Esquivel, chairman of the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF) for the last 27 years and first Vice-President of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) since March. You read that right, twenty…
See if you can detect the tension between these two recent news items: April 17th: In an interview with Barquisimeto newspaper El Impulso, Electrical Engineer Luis Vásquez Corro said that if there’s no rain in coming days (due to the El Niño phenomenon) Guri hydro-electric plant would be forced to shut down its turbines. Two days later,…
The central government has some good news for the people of Valencia: At the end of this month, the first two stations of the subway’s Line 2 will finally be opened. Víctor Moreno, chairman of C.A. Metro de Valencia announced this to State news agency AVN during an inspection: “At the end of this month, we will start…
Two great pieces from two friends-of-the-blog, both of them at Harvard University, both of them in Spanish. First off, Francisco Monaldi goes deep on hyperinflation in El Nacional. Francisco is lucid when discussing why this traumatic phenomenon occurs – governments basically print money out of control because they refuse to adjust to changing commodity prices. Oil producers, however,…
What makes the new normal for ordinary Venezuelans? Beside the most obvious things like waiting in line and spending time looking out for everyday products, here’s another part of our routine: visting the closest available ATM (or cajero). And then another one. And another one. Thanks to the combination of relentless inflation, the continuous printing overdrive…
After 15 years of having a recruitment center in the country, the Seattle Mariners are packing their bags and leaving town for the Dominican Republic. It’s the latest Major League Baseball team to abandon Venezuela (sixteen in the last decade), leaving only four MLB franchises in the Venezuelan Summer League (VSL), a league dedicated to…
Last week, the municipal council of Guasdualito, deep down in Apure State held a special session to oust mayor Lumay Barreto. With the vote of five of its nine members, the PSUV majority declared that Barreto, a member of Leopoldo López’s “Popular Will” (VP) party, “abandoned her post,” and named one of their own as a temporary…
If you follow football closely, you might know that every January is winter-transfer market time. In Venezuela, it wasn’t so different. Yeah, the players involved are not as exciting as those in the Premier League, the Bundesliga or even the MLS, but that’s the deal we’re stuck with. But days after the market closed, the…
Back in March 2014, Vice-President Jorge Arreaza formally re-opened the Bartolome Salom Airport in Puerto Cabello, after spending ten years closed. With almost a year or remodelling works and a large investment, the airport started to receive domestic flights later that month and planned to get international flights as well in the forseeable future. More…
Public attention in the last few days has been all about the long, long queues in the country’s supermarkets, and the shortage of food and other basic products. But the other main problem for Venezuelans continues: unabated, relentless crime. Last Thursday afternoon, a burial took place at the local cemetery in the town of Turmero (Aragua State),…
Caracas Chronicles 