The Colombia/Ecuador/Venezuela Mess or Let's Place Bets on How Long Before the U.S. Backs a Colombian War With Venezuela

that def a big piece of it but the currency + price controls don't work so well either. the oil collapse sparked the crisis but the economic system exacerbated it.

The Chavez years had an economic stability that hadn't been seen since the 70s iirc, largely by virtue of high oil prices. The social and development programmes he implemented came at a price that wasn't sustainable in a crash and, having come in on the back of twenty years of disaster, there wasn't much chance to build up reserves that would allow them to ride it out.

http://www.npr.org/2016/06/08/481225008/bust-times-in-oil-rich-venezuela-the-banks-dont-have-money-to-give-out

Terry Gross interviews NYT reporter Nicholas Casey about Venezuela

CASEY: Well, yeah. A lot of people are looking at who or what is to blame. There's a lot of things going on right now. One of them is the legacy in the years and aftermath after Hugo Chavez. There was a huge amount of hope throughout the left in Latin America when Chavez came to power.

He was saying many things that no one else was saying and talking about inequality in terms that hadn't been heard in Latin America for years. Unfortunately, what followed was years of mismanagement on every level - a lot of corruption, misunderstandings of how the economy worked or how to fix it.

You know, I'll give you one example that you see a lot. It is causing a lot of the problems in Venezuela - is price controls. During those years, they brought the price of selling something lower than what it cost to make it. So if you wanted to get milk, it was at a very inexpensive price, which was great if you were poor.

The problem was if you were a farmer or, you know, owned an operation that was producing milk. And you couldn't produce it for the price that it was going to be sold for. So what happened next? Well, you just didn't produce it anymore.

So you started to see this huge collapse of production throughout the country. People stopped making beans. People stopped making rice. Venezuela went from being an exporter of meat to importing it. And one by one, all of these things stopped being made in the country.

Well, it wasn't the end of the world then, because there was so much money from the oil that you could just buy it. You could buy it for dollars. And the response was - well, we'll just import it. We can bring all these things in. It's a rich country. Well, this continued for years.

But the problem next came when the price of oil collapsed. And there wasn't any money to buy the imports. And there was no way to make them. So just what happened was - everything started to disappear. So that's part of the reason why Venezuela is where it is. That said, called the proximate cause - is years of mismanagement from these policies, dating back to Hugo Chavez.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/world/americas/venezuelans-ransack-stores-as-hunger-stalks-crumbling-nation.html

A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found.

About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation.

In April, it found that a family would need the equivalent of 16 minimum-wage salaries to properly feed itself.

Ask people in this city when they last ate a meal, and many will respond that it was not today.

fuk

Not binding and is unlikely to derail the whole process but...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/02/colombia-referendum-rejects-peace-deal-with-farc

"No one is so foolish as to prefer war to peace". In your face, Herodotus! The modern era has sure proved that wrong.

Has anyone heard what the agreement would have done with the right-wing paramilitary groups under the agreement? Were they to lay down arms, would they not get amnesty also?

I may be wrong but i think the demobilisation of the right-wing paramilitary groups more or less happened in the mid-2000s, with lots being granted amnesty / immunity outside of a conventional 'truth and reconciliation' process.

The main successor groups are seen, officially at least, as criminal gangs divorced from the political process. Some have requested that they be allowed to participate in the peace process - essentially with a view to wiping the slate clean of all post-demobilisation crimes - but this hasn't been accepted.

As part of the peace process (which now may not go ahead) there was going to be a commission to look into ties between paramilitaries and politicians, though i don't think new amnesties were planned.

Ok. Yeah, from a quick scan it seemed that the political ties were brought to light in the 00's. I would have hoped the gangs were included in the peace deal, though, that they were forced to lay down arms as well. I have no love for FARC, but not a lot of trust that new conservative massacres couldn't easily happen in the areas they used to dominate.

I mean, whatever legitimacy farc had as a revolutionary movement is long gone. It reminds me of the ira problem - they fund themselves by trafficking guns, drugs etc., and then they choose leaders who are better at doing that in order to in erase funding, and before you know it they're just a mafia, a cartel, a criminal gang. I do think that farc had a period of legitimacy, though.

Erase = increase

oh this is where we're discussing this

http://crookedtimber.org/2016/10/04/notes-from-colombia/

did anyone read that amazing piece about FARC that NYT ran serendipitously earlier this year?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/world/americas/colombia-farc-rebels.html?_r=0

In a move that Venezuela’s opposition decried as a “coup,” Venezuela’s Supreme Court effectively shut down congress, saying it would assume all legislative functions amid its contention that legislators are operating outside of the law.

The decision will undoubtedly increase tensions in the South American nation where the opposition-controlled congress was seen as a last bastion of dissent. The move is also a slap to the international community, which just this week was pressing the socialist administration to respect the role of the legislature and to hold new elections.

On Thursday, Peru broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, calling it a “flagrant breach of democratic order” in the country.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article141655519.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article141655519.html

so...

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/leftist-lenin-moreno-declared-winner-ecuador-s-presidential-election-n741866

Where all the Lenin joeks at?

what the hell

Venezuela crisis: Helicopter launches attack on Supreme Court

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/08/venezuela_is_collapsing_and_no_one_seems_to_care.html

interesting piece.

what a damn mess. hard to see how things improve from here

i don't think there's anything that gets me madder than sophemoric, "anti-imperialist" boilerplate takes on Venezuela (pollyannaish pro-opposition takes suck too)

Otm. That and anti-imperialist boilerplate takes on the Yugoslav civil war. Those two things are the worst for me.

agreed. although of course milosevic was not guilty of all charges and was killed in jail by nato ...

Feeling the anti-imperialism everyday tbh

The outcome that is satisfactory is for the reforms that have benefitted the majority of the people over the years to be built upon.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/02/labour-concerns-on-venezuela-raise-pressure-on-jeremy-corbyn-to-speak-out

I hate the concern-trolling from MPs.

Those reforms depended on oil income that simply isn't there anymore. They were always unsustainable without broadening the economy. Which is not to say that what came before was any better, or that right-wing austerity would do anyone any good apart from IMF connected cronies. But there doesn't really seem to be any foundation to build anything upon.

From my reading on it the oil was used to build quite a few organisational schemes and a mass of social movements. That is the foundation that won't just disappear overnight, whether there is oil money or not.

You need money to run programs. Also and not trivial in the slightest: there are now shortages of p much everything. Which obv effect the poor most acutely.

Sanctions will obviously work a treat of course and not exacerbate humanitarian crisis

Venezuela is a specific situation however I don't agree that a country is purely restricted by a natural resource and that everything is lost...

there are now shortages of p much everything. Which obv effect the poor most acutely.

Is there any good analysis of how this has affected Maduro's popularity with the poor, in particular? Lower-income voters, who have been most affected by shortages, still appear to be the core of the Bolivarian / Chavista movement.

I'm not sure it's that simple. The states that still supported the movement in 2015 elections were on the one hand quite poor, but on the other hand agricultural, and probably less hurt by shortages. I haven't read any really good analysis as well, and I think it's hard to do when no statistics are that trustworthy.

There are substantially more GPP voters in the areas that they lost than the ones they won, though.

I can't really recall any good pieces about the nature of the 2015 swing in places like Caracas or how the support has held up over the last two years either.

I've got students whose parents scrounge for food in garbage cans in Caracas.

There are substantially more GPP voters in the areas that they lost than the ones they won, though.

I can't really recall any good pieces about the nature of the 2015 swing in places like Caracas or how the support has held up over the last two years either.

― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), 3. august 2017 11:47 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, of course there are more GPP voters in those areas, they are far more populated, period. There are also more Trump-voters in California and New York than in Nebraska, but this doesn't really say anything. But I don't know, I don't have the information I would want to have, so... Who knows, you might be right.

there are now shortages of p much everything. Which obv effect the poor most acutely.
Is there any good analysis of how this has affected Maduro's popularity with the poor, in particular? Lower-income voters, who have been most affected by shortages, still appear to be the core of the Bolivarian / Chavista movement.

― Wag1 Shree Rajneesh (ShariVari), Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:35 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno but PSUV lost the parliamentary elections in 2015 under maduro quite handily to the opposition and with a swing of 16% away from the government under conditions that were not necessarily completely fair https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-idUSKCN0SZ33U20151110

Yep, they got a heavy beating in 2015 but still retained about 40% of the vote in the middle of the crisis. I'm interested in understanding how much of the 40% they have retained and how that breaks down demographically.

It's basically impossible from press reports (whether it's Telesur or the Washington Post) to get a sense of who is still supporting Maduro and why.

Indeed, however its safe to assume a coup won't go well and the people calling for democracy in this coutry behave in a rather undignified way on other issues so I won't pay lots of attention to what they have to say.

#Venezuela: a army unit from #Valencia (#Carabobo) has announced its defection from the regime. Stating its now in rebellion against #Maduro pic.twitter.com/PviOhpX7vN

— Thomas van Linge (@arabthomness) August 6, 2017

That didn't last long
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40843494

https://deleteyouraccount.libsyn.com/renovate-the-state

Might be worth a listen.

Anti-imperialism = still good k tx bye

Athletics Weekly‏Verified account @AthleticsWeekly 35m35 minutes ago

Before London 2017, Venezuela's best placing in a World Champs event was 8th. They now have gold (W triple jump) and bronze (W pole vault).

Dunphy and Giles vindicated

Really nice piece -- written around August -- on all sides of the conflict:

https://monthlyreview.org/2017/10/01/venezuelas-fragile-revolution/

And then there's this:

Some upper-class pockets in Venezuela can still afford to eat out. Inside Casa Bistro in Caracas: https://t.co/WOi1zeAICL

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 20, 2017

Yes, we know there is food scarcity driving up prices. The piece explores some of it and adds more.

The tension between social justice and socialist efficiency plays out on other fronts. One issue is the widespread practice of granting free or excessively low-priced goods and services to poor and working-class communities. The case for the policy is compelling, namely that the government has a responsibility to pay what Chavistas call the “social debt” owed to the most exploited sectors. Yet such artificially low prices on goods produced by state companies undermine their ability to achieve self-sufficiency, and are partly responsible for the chronic scarcity of many products and the emergence of an exploitative black market.

Last night @NicolasMaduro told the #Venezuelan people that the ultra-right in Colombia & Venezuela were responsible for the attack, which he also said was "financed from #Florida". Maduro said ex-Colombian President @JuanManSantos was involved in the plan https://t.co/JnLt4DNESr

— venezuelanalysis.com (@venanalysis) August 5, 2018

Yeah.

After a lot of attention on this earlier, now seems to have gone quiet. I'm not sure what happens next, Venezuelan elections aren't until the second half of 2024

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-guyana-presidents-meet-amid-territorial-dispute-2023-12-14/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-09/ecuador-under-emergency-as-drug-lord-fito-escapes-jail/103298002

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/ecuador-gangs-wave-terror-state-of-emergency

Insane situation.

Second time he has escaped!

ugh

This footage is gnarlsberg:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/ecuador-gangs-wave-terror-state-of-emergency