The CardBoard
OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - Printable Version

+- The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board)
+-- Forum: C-House! (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The CardBoard (https://thecardboard.org/board/forum-5.html)
+--- Thread: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas (/thread-6777.html)


OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - BostonCard - 02-24-2014

On the Bootleg I hang out mostly on the Current Events Board these days, but it seems to be out of commission.  Being worldly sorts here and given that we have a former Central America Bureau chief for the Miami Herald (a paper that knows, or at least knew, a thing or two about Latin America), I thought I would toss the events in Venezuela out, particularly since they are not exactly being covered by the media (including, perhaps surprisingly, by Fox News, which never misses a chance to bash Hugo Chavez and his anointed successor, Nicholas Maduro), and I lived there for 10 years in my youth.

Anyways, the country, which has been on a slow train death spiral seems to have reached a tipping point.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but my guess is "not well".

Meant to add, here's a useful primer to what is going on: http://caracaschronicles.com/2014/02/21/the-venezuelan-outcry-faqs/.  Caracas Chronicles is sympathetic to the opposition, but it is relatively moderate.

BC

Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - jcbowman - 02-24-2014

I too have been following Venezuela carefully. It sounds as if Maduro is more Chaveznista than Chavez, if that is possible. The crime rate, the inflation. I have read nothing that says his power is on the outs, but discontent is certainly rising. This is a real tragedy for a wonderful country.

Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - Stymie - 02-25-2014

Chavez was a weird dude, but life in Venezuela gets weirder and weirder every day..... :(

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=chavez+daughters&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb&gws_rd=cr&ei=PcEMU-HtE7Gd7ga7woGoBA

Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - BobK - 02-25-2014

A number of MLB players are speaking out over the crime, etc.  12 Giants are from Venezuela, one was kiddnapped when a teen

Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - BostonCard - 02-25-2014

A couple notes:

1) CAP (Carlos Andres Perez) was one of Venezuela's most venerable politicians, but he was also one of the most corrupt (at least until Chavez came around).  The running joke when he was elected for the second of his non-consecutive terms (until Chavez, Presidents couldn't serve consecutive terms) was that he had stolen so much his first term that he didn't need to steal any more.  That being said, it was par for the course, and Chavez has been as corrupt or more than his predecessors.  I assume Maduro and the rest of the "Boligarchs" will be the same.

2) CAP's impeachment was a bit more complicated than you portray.  There was a week worth of riots when he raised bus fairs (the exchange rate was probably 100:1 at around the time, so 10 centavos was 1/10 of 1 cent; FWIW, he also doubled the price of gasoline from 10 cents/gallon to a whopping 20 cents/per gallon) that resulted in about 500 people dying when the National Guard was called in.  I was in Caracas at the time and I later joked that while kids in America had snow days, I had riot days.  He was later the victim of an attempted coup by Chavez, but it failed (this shortly after I had moved to the States).  Officially Chavez was ousted for embezzlement, which he was likely guilty of, but as I said, that was par for the course [there's even an expression in Venezuela that people are either "vivos" (wise guys) or "pendejos" (chumps), a statement akin to the old SEC quip that if you ain't cheatin' you ain't trying']. Unofficially, things weren't the same in Venezuela after the Caracazo (riots) and the deaths produced.  For the same reason, things may not be the same in Caracas after the recent deaths.

3) Politicians of all stripes have failed the Venezuelan people.  The populist streak you describe could be satisfied quite easily if they were given merely competent government.  There are a lot of parallels to Argentina, (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21596582-one-hundred-years-ago-argentina-was-future-what-went-wrong-century-decline), which is facing its own issues.  Maybe it's the paradox of plenty (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21596582-one-hundred-years-ago-argentina-was-future-what-went-wrong-century-decline) As an aside, I took a course from Terry Karl on the Political Economy of Development, she once quipped that the election between Chavez and Irene Saez, a former Miss Universe, was "Beauty against the Beast", and Karl is no righty.  She was also one of my favorite professors at Stanford, along with Mike McFaul, the now former US Ambassador to Russia.

4) The comparisons to Cuba are interesting.  I do think that because Cuba has been under communist rule much longer, there is no viable opposition.  People in Venezuela still remember a pre-Chavez world.  Also, Raul is a blood relative of Fidel, and has been in the power structure for decades.  Maduro is a former bus driver and union guy, who has ridden Chavez' coattails to power.  Most importantly, there is the oil issue.  Venezuela and its governments are absolutely dependent on oil revenue to run the country.  You can say what you want about Chavez' predecessors, but one of the few trappings of good governance in the decades pre-Chavez was that they left PDVESA (the oil company) alone, and it was reasonably well run.  Chavez installed his cronies in the company as a response to a strike against his meddling. Those guys knew nothing of running an oil company, and consequently Venezuelan oil production has been cut by about a third (it doesn't help that many of Venezuela's reserves are heavy crude that require a fair bit of capital investment, which is not going to be forthcoming under the current conditions).  Chavez stayed afloat because the price of oil went from $30/bl to over $100/bl during his term.  But oil prices have stagnated and even fallen, and Venezuela has a budget mess.  So, unless the price of oil rises again, Maduro is going to be screwed, because he simply won't be able to continue using oil revenue to feed the populist streak.

BC

Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - TriangleTree - 02-25-2014


Agree that the parallels to Cuba today are limited.
Whether by choice or not, Venezuela has maintained a market economy that has been hobbled but persevered. There are still too many that have too much to loose, in contrast to Cuba where by now the majority knows nothing other than life under communism.
The Venezuelan situation is likely more comparable to 1961 in Cuba before the Bay of Pigs, when there was growing discontent and many still felt that regime change was realistic.
Still, back then Cuba could rely on another superpower to back them up without risking complete isolation. Today's Venezuela can rely on Argentina and Bolivia, not exactly worldbeaters and who knows for how long. That will limit his options particularly around repression. Governments like Brazil will be forced to withdraw support if these get out of hand, and at some point the US will also have to make a call on oil reliance, which I think the shale bonanza makes more realistic. It will be interesting to see the course Maduro takes, but he's pretty cornered up. The oposition has moved to the center so there is no much room to move in that direction. He can try to accelerate the move to the left but he has clearly no broad support for it, and he can only achieve this through repression. I also don't see him stepping down as he can always hang his hat on being "democratically" elected.
Ukraine II (or is it III now?) seems like the more likely outcome, the difficult thing is that unlike Ukraine, sympathies do not show a clear geographical divide. In Venezuela's case, the divide takes place even at family level.
This one is more difficult to predict than than the Oregon game...


Re: OT: What the hell is going on in Caracas - BostonCard - 02-25-2014

I agree with you about CAP.  There is a mistaken tendency to look at things as black and white; Chavez' defenders (and there are an appalling number of left-of-center defenders of Chavizmo) neglect his anti-Democratic and corrupt side, while Chavez' opponents tend to look at the opposition as pure as the driven snow and reflect nostalgically on the pre-Chavez era.  If Maduro is toppled, we don't know what the country will get.  It could get a competent and technocratic leadership that learned from its three decades of mistakes dating back to the 70's, or it could get a bunch of corrupt guys who are in it for themselves.  History doesn't bode well, but there are examples of competent governments in Latin America.  As for Perez, he was corrupt, he did deal with the riots poorly, and 500 people or so did die when he called in the National Guard.  He was also legally impeached.  But corruption in Venezuela is like gambling at the Rick's cafe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME

I went to Stanford a couple decades after you.  Karl was still a lefty at that point (as I point out), but even she called it right on Venezuela and Chavez.  She was no fan then and considered him a thug.  Even if you agree with Chavez' stated philosophy of bringing some of Venezuela's resource wealth to the poor, who had been dramatically left out, and even if you agree with his methods of doing so, I wish more liberals would acknowledge that a) despite the veneer of addressing inequality, Chavez and the rest of his party were more interested in enriching and empowering themselves than the true needs of the poor and b) he is horribly anti-Democratic in a way that none of his predecessors were.

BC