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…
Today’s edition of Ciudad Guayana daily Correo del Caroni had terrible news for its readers: its daily edition will cease this Friday, July 31st and the following Friday the paper will become a weekly paper. One of the few independent media outlets in the entire Guayana region, Correo del Caroni has struggled since last year thanks…
Between August and October of last year, eight Twitter users were detained by the Venezuelan intelligence service (SEBIN). To this day, five remain jailed in the Helicoide. Four have plead guilty to minor charges in exchange for lesser sentences and were pressured to change their defense lawyers (from NGO Foro Penal) for public defenders. But how…
One full year after El Universal, one of Venezuela’s oldest and largest newspapers, was bought by HegemonCorp., its opinion pages have been purged, journalists have been fired, its main cartoonist Rayma was unceremoniously dumped and its new editorial line has become insipid. HegemonCorp.’s alleged 120 million dollars takeover has paid off, even at the cost of the…
June 27th was Day of the Journalist in Venezuela and instead of being simply an occasion to celebrate, it was a day to protest the continuous erosion of free press in the nation. Journalists and press workers took the streets on Friday to demand respect for free speech and to demand an end to the…
Sometimes, buying newspapers in mysterious ways or depriving them of their most basic resource to keep running isn’t enough. Sometimes, the hegemony needs a classic newspaper closure. That’s what La Guaira newspaper La Verdad de Vargas went through last Friday, when several local and national government agencies decided to make a visit to its newsroom. Allegedly, the…
The hunger strike – an essential tool in the non-violent struggle against tyranny – has an uneven history. Mahatma Gandhi undertook numerous hunger strikes, most of them succesful. According to this Wikipedia page, Gandhi took part in seventeen hunger strikes during his lifetime, and not all of them against the British. Some of them were to call…
For the first time in more than a year, Leopoldo Lopez spoke to Venezuelans in a video smuggled out of Ramo Verde prison. In it, he announced the beginning of a hunger strike, calling Venezuelans to take to the streets this coming Saturday. Prior to the video being made public yesterday, the government entered into full freakout mode. López’s co-prisoner,…
Barquisimeto’s main newspaper El Impulso has announced that starting May 12th the paper will reduce its daily edition to only 8 pages. In an editorial, the paper explains the reason behind this drastic decision, putting the blame on one culprit: The Alfredo Maneiro Editorial Complex (CEAM), the State-owned provider of newsprint in the nation. The creation…
You probably know about the strange case of the fake child kidnapping that has served as an excuse for Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Diaz to propose to regulate social networks. Not that she has not tried to do so before… Regardless of the strange circumstances that motivated her proposal, or the context in which her proposal was…
Valencia’s newspaper El Carabobeño could be the newest victim of what I call as”Newsprint-geddon”, the ongoing (and quite deliberate) shortage of newsprint for publishing. The paper informed their readers on Sunday that their reserves consist of only enough print for nine days and that they have requested the CEAM (the State’s company in charge on selling…
After a long battle, the central government can finally say they took down the real mastermind behind the evil “parallel dolar”: DolarToday’s mobile app. Sure, it couldn’t be done without breaking the Venezuelan internet by blocking all content hosted by Amazon’s S3 cloud service, one of the world’s largest, which hosts literally trillions of pieces of content and…
After 15 years, Caracas newspaper TalCual will stop publishing its daily edition on February 27th. In a written statement, the paper confirmed the bad news (leaked earlier by some of its columnists) but insists that they’ll try to continue as a weekly publication and through its website. But the statement also leaves clear who they…
After days of rumours, it was finally confirmed that Notitarde, one of Valencia’s main newspapers (the other one being El Carabobeño) was sold by its largest shareholder Ricardo Degwitz to Spanish businessman José Rodríguez Álvarez, the owner of the Hesperia WTC Hotel, one of the biggest in the city. Degwitz made the announcement to the…
Over the weekend, there was a massive outage of the Internet by the State-owned company CANTV, which affected most of the country. Even if CANTV apologized and said that the service had been restored, many customers have complained in the following days. The reasons behind the outage are still unexplained, as it was the largest failure since…
Caracas Chronicles 