Waiting for Hugo Godot

Another weekend came and went, and still there is no real news about Hugo Chavez. Nothing. The only information the world gets, is through VP Nicolas Maduro and his team, who in a series of contradictory messages paint an image of Hugo Chavez as the president who is both present and absent. Jokes are going around about the enigmatic president - one that he is the true Santa: no one sees him but everyone has to believe in him. Needless to say at this point, the government hasn't done anything to dispel rumors about the true condition of Hugo Chavez. If anything, the contradictory reports from within the government itself have only fanned them to new heights. But attention of the Venezuelans is gradually turning to their everyday problems such as the devaluation, the scarcity of products, and above all the rampant criminality. Even the opposition media are paying less and less attention to what is happening politically. Everybody is getting tired of this hide-and-seek game, even the chavists.

But the social networks, specially Twitter, are fuming with wildest rumors, truths, half-truths and downright lies. There was one rumor, last Friday just after I closed my blog, that there was a quarrel between VP Maduro and the defense minister admiral Molero, in which Maduro supposedly wanted to sack Molero for insubordination and Molero replied that the only one to sack him is Chavez personally, and no one else. Nobody has confirmed this news / rumor, but I personally don't discard it. The army have been very silent these last days, their political conman Diosdado Cabello has kept his mouth shut as well while Maduro and his civil neocommunist club have been endlessly blabbing and contradicting each other. It is advisable to watch how the armed forces, this dark horse, the source of power and coup d'etats, will behave the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, on the economic front things are going from bad to worse. Something is not going right with the importations. There are signs that the chavist government is strapped of cash with the barrel of oil at around 100 bucks (???). That could explain in great part the puzzling shortage of even sugar! This country exported sugar! Now it seems most of the white sweet stuff is coming from capitalist Brazil. The government is doing everything to contradict this even with the use of plain lies. According to this socialist government, there is no shortage. "Hamstering agents" of the "ultraright fascist groups" under orders of the "foreign imperialists" are supposedly sabotaging the blooming socialist economy, planted by the "endless wisdom of Chairman Mao, sorry Comandante Chavez" blablabla. The same endless communist blabber which I heard in the seventies and eighties. Anyone suffering of so-called "Ostalgia", or nostalgia for Soviet times, should come here. For me, it's like riding a time machine over and over again. With of course knowing that this movie, called Socialist Venezuela, will end in total and utter failure.

But back to the news. The expected devaluation is now 3 weeks old, but independent economic analysts are already stating that Venezuela will suffer a second devaluation. If that is true, and I think it is, the devaluation will take place after the July elections, putting the country under a very tough situation till that month, when it probably will get worse. To erase all doubts: the economic decline in Venezuela started right after Chavez started the conversion to a marxist economic structure in January 2007, after his second reelection. It has virtually devastated the country's non-oil production, making the country even more dependent (over 90%) on its oil revenues. Despite heavy warnings from all side, the Chavez team is bent on keeping and even radicalizing its marxist course, thinking maybe that the oil revenues will wash away all mistakes. But to me and countless others living this downward hill ride with horror and amazement, things in Venezuela will get worse, much worse. This neocommunist Jurassic Park will throw Venezuela to the level of Castrist Cuba.

Unless people open their eyes. This however is a wish, not a statement built on facts. Venezuelans are still much too cozy in their semi fantasy world, fueled by the world's cheapest gasoline, to really understand what is coming to them. And the poor? Always been poor and ignorant, always will be. To them, Hugo Chavez will remain a redeemer for the time to come, even as this regime is starting to crumble away under the crushing weight of its own ineptitude.

Back again! Reloaded!!!!

Well, it's been a very long time. Living in this godforsaken city - it will be 7 years coming July - has impeded me in keeping true to this blog. But I have made a solemn promise to myself to be a Good And Faithful Blogger.
At this very moment, I am sitting in the middle of the Venezuelan post-Chavez vortex, about 20 minutes driving from the military hospital where he is SUPPOSED to be convalescing after having SUPPOSEDLY been flown back from Havanna, Cuba last Monday.
It's now Friday on the calendar and we have seen "dick" of Chavez, nothing, not even a blurry picture. The smiling and happy-happy pictures of Chavez and his daughters, SUPPOSEDLY taken last February 14, are most probably Photoshop fakes, as countless Venezuelan Twittees have posted their own version of the picture with Chavez reading Playboy, an opposition newspaper, you name it. I have downloaded some very funny ones, one very crafty one of Hitler reading a Venezuelan newspaper of that very day. Photoshop is Magic. That was for sure. But what is happening with Chavez? Where is he? Is he still alive?
Despite Peace Noble prize winner Rigoberta Menchu and hordes of red-clad wellwishers screaming and assuring each and everyone that Chavez will be on his feet in no time, helped by astral forces and whatever, the rational look at Chavez' chances of ever reappearing, is bleak, to say the least. I personally sense that the regime of Vicepresident Maduro, which is doing everything to crush and intimidate dissenters and the opposition, is desperate to hold power no matter what the cost. A NO to Venezuela's plea for more credits from Big Buddy China has made things worse, leading the straggling economy to a dark abyss with a devaluation of almost 50% - the third in three years in a row - , rising prices, food shortages, rampant criminality and whatever else it takes to ruin my days in this country.
If Chavez is dead, or not fit anymore to hold the presidency he was reelected to last fall, then reelections are mandatory according to the country's constitution. The mentioning of this by MP's of the opposition have resulted in enormous regime yelling and screaming, threats and some of those opposition politicians being accused of corruption and persecuted juridically by the government-controlled justice apparatus. Forget any impartiality from the government's side. It's a Cuban-styled Soviet era totalitarian regime with trotskyist mannerisms. And the Chavez-wannabe VP Nicolas Maduro has made this clear to everyone caring to listen and understand. Under Chavez, this regime made its utmost efforts to show a democratic face to the world. Maduro and the cronies of his regime have no problems in tearing that mask from their totalitarian faces. Efforts are made to exclude the only independent TV channel Globovision from the new digital TV system, shutting the last critical mediatic voice down and submitting the rest to follow the regime's ideological line.
The last deed of the Maduro regime has now been to deny a former police inspector, accused of killing scores of demonstrators in 2002 in a kangaroo court with forged evidence, a more humane treatment, while medical reports clearly state that the prisoner's health is failing. The denial by a government-controlled judge will probably seal this man's fate.
Venezuela is a broke country, with all its oil richness. The country is rife with anarchy at the moment. The regime does everything now to prepare the credulous part of the Venezuelan population for what the rest already knows. But God only knows what the effect will be on a country that is feeling more like a shaken champagne bottle ready to burst.
Keep in touch, also via Twitter: @avginkel.

Obama!

Dear nightly dwellers, Caracas is saying hello to you again. I´m sure you agree with me that we are living through special times. Specially in the USA, where a special man whom I won´t need to describe became president. I had my doubts about Obama, I must admit. During the presidential campaign, he sounded too Carterish, too Clintonesque. I am a witness of the disasters resulting from Jimmy Carter´s good-willed human rights politics, and what can I say about Bill, besides Monica, blue dresses and cigars? That he was a president of smooth and nice words... but bombs kept raining on Afghanistan and Iraq during his 8 years in office, so there is something to be said in favor of George Dubya Bush - he was not the first one to be mean to Saddam Hussein, just the one who gave him the final kick.

But on January 20th, I saw a serious, calm-looking man with a noble attitude, holding one of the best political speeches I´ve heard in years. So, Mr. President, forgive my doubts. I´m sure you will be the best Democratic president since Harry S. Truman. In any case, should you ever read these lines from Venezuela, here comes some advice. Be true to yourself. And tell Chavez to get stuffed.

Hugo Chávez doesn´t like you. In fact, he is so mad at you (being that fading artist of former glory who suddenly sees his audience shifting towards that new, younger performer) that instead of using the N word and getting rid of his bad vibes, he unleashes a savage ire and fury towards demonstrating students. Ordering his police and military forces to use "gas of the best" on them, beating the hell out of them... and it was all screamed on live TV. So said, so done. Students had a bad day yesterday. But Venezuela had an even worse day. And all because Hugo is angry at you, Mr. President. Because he knows that he is no more the big star of the Third World. He could make Africans cheer at him with some free petrol tankers - but now Africans are cheering at you for free - because of you.

Congratulations, Mr. President. I foresee a future for our world, and really - you are more inspiring already than JFK has ever been. Keep it up. I have heard enough recycled hate slogans here in this country that remind me of a drab and grey 70´s day in the Soviet Union. Enough of Che, enough of old senile men trying to play young revolutionaries. Who needs a half-dead Fidel and a worn-out Hugo when the leader of the most potent country on this planet is fulfilling a dream of millions? Without executions, without hatred, without exiles.

Long live democracy. And good luck to you, Mr. President.

Malcolm X

Good evening once again. It has been some time since I wrote my last entry, but what can you do - living in Caracas is a busy and hectic affair. That´s why I enjoy even the smallest moment of relaxation.

By the way, I love movies. Whether in the cinema or on TV or on DVD, it doesn´t matter - I´m in for most of them. I can watch some movies repeatedly, enjoying the "aha" moment, certain scenes, certain memorized quotes etc.. For me, watching a good movie is pure relaxation, whether on my own or in company.

If you are a TV addict, living in Venezuela means you´ve got to have cable. Otherwise, receiving the local TV station like Televen, Venevisión and the notorious fighting duo VTV and Globovisión will bring you the sudden cadenas or "chained" broadcasts, in which the President will take hours of your idle time to open a dairy factory somewhere on the plains, or preside over the graduation of hundreds of eager beaver students, and take his time to sing, dance, recite poems, be applauded over and over again in the best Kim Il-Yong fashion by red-shirted people, and explain to you and me, in hours-long, almost endless rhethoric repetitions why He is good and the "others" are bad. Apart from the fact that his speeches are more and more like faded carbon copies of each other, his stentorian ranting gives me a headache after approx. 10 minutes. Chávez is like certain strong drinks: don´t drink it all down in a gulp, but sip it, and sigh now and then.

Last week all records of his 10-year regime were broken when he gave a seven-and-a-half-hour non-stop monologue during the New Year parliamentary session. All ministers, red-shirted parliamentaries and invited members of the corps diplomatique were, so I suppose, sitting with crossed legs and with anguished faces, not having anything to drink, to eat or even being able to go to the toilet. Even more: this marathonic session was put on all public TV and radio stations, depriving very annoyed housemothers of their eveningly soaps or telenovelas. In fact, many cacerolazos or beating of pots and pans as a sign of protest were heard in various areas of Caracas. I tuned in on three separate occasions to check whether El Presidente was finished, and during those three times - to my big surprise - he talked about the miracles of the Barrio Adentro mission. Rather monothematic, I thought by myself. Hardly a word about the economic hurricane approaching the country with mathematical certainty, not a single word about the Real Problems harrassing the country - like the horrific insecurity, the galloping corruption and the growing unemployment. To El Presidente, these things do not exist and are mere inventions of the CIA-operated media wanting to put his Revolution into discredit. Chávez dixit.

So, in order to avoid those political things at a time you want to relax, you get cable TV. One channel which I like is the History one, and this afternoon I enjoyed once more the movie Malcolm X with Denzel Washington. Great movie, a cinematographic monument to a man who like Nelson Mandela, began as a person believing in violence to save people, and ended as a apostle of peace, understanding and a strong sense of the brotherhood of man that binds us all on this planet.

I thought, maybe if Ché Guevara, the Prophet of Leftist Hatred, had lived long enough, he would have given his ill-fated revolt a better, cleaner turn. As we know, even Fidel Castro grew more cautious, more balanced over the years. Maybe if Venezuela lets Hugo Chávez rule as Beloved President and Commander till his 75th birthday, as he so much wants it..... maybe we would meet a different, more cautious, less foul-mouthed ruler who is more concerned about social matters and less about the Everduring Battle against the US Empire. Age makes wiser, who knows.

But that, my friends, is an entirely different story. Sleep well, and till soon!

Don´t Worry, Be Happy

Venezuelan coasts give you a direct access to lovely beaches and that blue Caribbean Sea with stunning spots - for a fantastic Tropical Holiday, take a plane to Los Roques. So Venezuela should, according to Logic, have a Caribbean spirit hovering over there.

In great part this is true. Of course, there is that conquistador thing rushing through minds and hearts..... Venezuelans on the whole are, like their other Latin brethren, easily offended. Like a coin that has two sides, so do Venezuelans, in a way very appropiate for a country at cultural crossroads. You have the Spanish influence with easily flared-up tempers (watch it at times!), but flipping the coin, you´ll find that enormous, warm smile of the Venezuelans, their happy spirits, their boisterous partying and their joking about all things in life.

In that way, they are very similiar to Cubans. Cuba has just celebrated its 50th birthday under a repressive, post-sovietic regime under the Castro brothers, who in their drive to create homo socialisticus have dipped the island into an everlasting poverty. Still, Cubans drive out the bad vibes with their fantastic music and their happy spirits. There is a Cuban song whose refrain goes like: How I´m doing? I´m older than yesterday and younger than tomorrow. For Cubans in general, today is what counts. Today is the real reality.

That pragmatic way of looking at life is found among most Venezuelans. OK, so Caracas is quickly becoming the most violent capital on the planet. And yes, Venezuela has, between military dictatorships, known few good or even decent governments. To many, the only real difference between Chavez and his bourgeois predecessors is that the latter stole and then stepped down, while the former steals and stays on.

But still, Venezuela is a happy country. Problems at home or at work? Venezuelans retreat to the beach, the countryside or that parking lot I spoke about earlier, they set up their BBQ´s, put the domino game on the table, take out that cooler box full of beer out of the 4x4 and enjoy life, guys and gals alike. No serious talk please! Joking around, fooling around, enjoy salsa tunes and find any possibilty to just have a party, or an after-party party. The more grimly reality stares at the Venezuelan, the more happily he will grin back.

How many ordinary Venezuelans are shot to death on Saturday or Sunday night coming home from parties? You read about them every week in the newspapers. It sometimes baffles me how strong the good spirits of these people can be. It must be the true strength of the Venezuelan, his hard core which no corrupt politician nor power-hungry military can ever squash to death. And as I wrote earlier, that Red Grinch has tried it so hard, fearing his Revolution may go off the boil..... still he didn´t succeed. Venezuela kept on partying as well as possible.

If you ever want to experience a country with so much poverty and violence, and yet such high spirits, come to Venezuela. If you can make it in Venezuela, you can make it anywhere. And with a Don´t Worry Be Happy smile, I wish you a pleasant evening from Caracas, the ugliest and yet most wonderful city I know.

¡Uh Ah! ....Feliz Año Nuevo!

Dear nightly dwellers, after a Christmas full of presents and too much goodies (the pannettone was too good, simply), here I am again. We are leaving an interesting year (for me it was), 2009 will be a year full of suspense and hickups, as a good friend of mine put it. Well, besides a world financial crisis, to which I may add yet another conflagration in the scorched Middle East (will they never learn???), we are facing an exciting year.

Chavez has changed from being a local revolutionary leader to Grinch, the guy who stole Christmas. He has managed to violate an unwritten law in Venezuela, and that is to let its people, rich or poor, celebrate their Christmas IN PEACE with hallacas, pan de jamón, dulce de lechosa, pannettone and of course many more goodies full of carbs and lethal to that figure you worked on all of 2008. He doesn´t want to be president for ever, he keeps on repeating with an oh so slight irony - only till 2021 and maybe 2030, by which, if the Lord may be so gracious as to keep this president in good health, he might be over 75 years old by then. So he needs the applauding from "the people",and he will do so by pushing through a constitutional amendment which will make it possible to rerun a president - who else but Chavez, read the small print - as many times as you like. Good stuff of course, provided the candidate in question is an able, well-spoken ruler.

The only thing that has made many many Venezuelans weary and even angry, is that he kept on droning about this heart wish of his every day through the December month, disturbing the pre-Christmas celebrations with revolutionary verbal violence, and apparently had to be convinced at the last moment not to intrude into the Christmas celebrations with his long monologues about his unimitable revolution and his Humble Self on national TV and radio. But still, after the customary Christmas messages from the presidential palace, together with the all-too-accustomed anti-Western haranguing and even some free additional insults directed at the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Chavez restarted his campaign, and for the first time Christmas songs or gaitas are being sung in his honor on state TV and radio. Now, where have we seen this before? Communist China, North Korea, fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany..... no wonder there wasn´t any real Christmas spirit on the Caracas streets, as the Red Grinch again had stolen Christmas from the people.

2009 will be an exciting year indeed. To you all.... a happy new year, and hope to see you all next week.

Revolutionary Times

Dear nightly visitors, at the beginning of this blog I have sort of promised not to comment on politics here. I have to break that promise, as Caracas and the whole of Venezuela are at the threshold of a new era. A revolutionary era?

We first have to define "revolution". In the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, you will find the definition "open fight against authority". To that, as a historian, I might add the following: a revolution in the social sense means a change, an overturn of its structure and resulting in new social structures. I guess that Marx, Lenin, Mao, and even Mussolini and Hitler might agree with me posthumously. Because all these leaders wanted their societies to change irreversebily, and true fascism kept talking not about that marxist word "revolution", but about a new country, a new society. Which sums up to the same. All these leaders had one thing in common as well, and that was their wish to smash parliamentarian democracy to pieces. I myself think, for that reason, that fascism/nazism and communism are two sides of the same coin. Despite their ideological differences and hate for each other, their means will always be justified by their ends. Whether you have Hitler who killed millions of human beings to save the purity of his own people, or Che Guevara who, in order to save humanity, saw it necessary to kill scores of human beings with his own hands - please show me the real, essential difference between these two extremes. I never have seen it, and I still don´t. To say that Hitler killed more people than Che.... Stalin killed more than Hitler. So where is the difference between these strains of "socialism"?

After a promising start, the regime of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is bogged down by incompetence, corruption and the plain refusal of even his anarchic "socialist battalions" of redshirts to adopt a true rigourous socialist discipline. Because despite its anti-American and anti-Western ranting which sounds like a carbon copy of the Soviet era rhetoric, America is still big here. Chavists, as all other Venezuelans, love to go to Miami, shop for US goods and goodies online, drive around in the newest Chevies and Fords and keep up a US capitalist living style, with lots of beer, BBQ and parties on the beach. As a resident here, the best example I have seen of this moral duplicity of the chavist revolution was a Chevy Tahoe truck with new number plates and three stickers on its trunk: one of Chavez, one of Christ, and one of Che Guevara. If someone can explain to me the combination of a symbol of US imperialist capitalism adorned this way, in a rational way, I´ll award a prize!

Or if someone who likes Chavez can explain to me why this president called himself a Trotskyist, liking the thought of an "eternal" non-stop revolution. Anyone who can read, should know that Leon Trotsky died defending an idea contrary in all its essence to what Hugo Chavez is doing. And that idea was, that the collectivity of a party should be more powerful than the thought of its leader.

We are living in revolutionary times, so they say. But as Chairman Mao, a professional revolutionary of his time, said: a revolution is not a tea party. And to weave on this thought, there is no such thing as a "nice revolution", as Chavez has labelled his plans. He seems to have grown aware of that, judging by the way his regime has grown in a more and more authoritarian way. Anyone living in Venezuela and not closing his or her eyes to daily life, will know about the enormous damage done to the venerable structure of the Caracas Town Hall on Bolivar Square by redshirted hoodlums after their party recently lost almost the whole capital to an opposition they declared dead and buried. Or about the sacking of other townhalls by departing regime officials who before ceding their posts to the new opposition officials, left them without even PC´s to work on. They will know about the still-present bands of redshirts at strategic corners in downtown Caracas who have already shown their eagerness to attack opposition members and journalists on the streets.

But the same "socialists" won´t talk about accusing their own officials of proven massive corruption and theft of public property. Which leads me to the conclusion that Orwell was a true revolutionary. In his Animal Farm, he stated the following, attacking totalitarian regimes: at Animal Farm, everybody is equal. But some are more equal than others. Which to me, seeing a fatbellied "revolutionary" elite in this country beating with a stick in one hand on capitalism and with the other hand accepting tons of money from it, is more than true. While on the other side, a population poor in their pockets and even poorer in their minds, is still trying to grasp certain obvious facts and pull itself out of the mud of the 19th century. Venezuela and other Latin American countries have yet a long, hard way to go.

A good night to you all.