The Other Side of the Atlantic part I

Hi everybody. In this months I was informed about things I've never heard before. So the title of my article. I'm going to talk about Venezuela situation. No one does it, no one wants to know it. Let's start with some history.

Chavistas take the power in 1999
In that time a new Constitution was redacted and voted.
People feel new fresh air in politics, and blindly deposit ther trust on this new political movement leaded by Hugo Chavez.
As I said, these man came and raise to the power with a huge popularity, and people claimed at him as prophet, some kind of god that will fix all chaos remaining from what its called Cuarta Republica (Fourth Republic).
It's important to notice that Cuarta Republica was born by abolishment of Marcos Perez Jimenez dictatorship in 1958.
After 1958, many presidents were elected.
In 1992 Chavez make an coup d'etat to Carlos Andres Perez (actual president in that time).
But he got arrested.
And in 1994 Chavez got relasead from prison by a presidential orders.
In 1998 he runs for president and he won.
Chavez got in the power and as I said, for the people this man is a prophet, he would save Venezuela.
So, he remain in the power for 15 years.
Until his death.

During that time all public powers were practicly kidnaped, incluiding Electoral Power.
By consequence, every election Chavez and it's political party always won.

So that's an really accurate story of why Hugo Chavez's government is in power. Now, I think we must look closely on social struggles and this populist speech of anti imperialism that has led us to the state we are in right now.

For example critics have become the norm in grassroots worker's because, the state is the major employer in this country and has been failing to rediscuss collective contracts with workers of the main industries like steel, aluminum etc (the Venezuelan government expropriated many private companies).
So, these workers have been striking trying to be heard by the state and only got repression and accusations of fascist agitators. That's the case of for example Rubén Gonzalez that was put in jail for protesting.

 http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr6086-11


Something really strange coming from a suposedly revolutionary and workers government.
One of the most significative modifications of this new constitution is that for the first time, indigenous historical lands, culture and laws were recognized as "official" by the state. That was supposed to be a GREAT advance on the situation of these indigenous.
But the governmet just used them to get support from these indigenous ethnic group.
So is the case of Sabino Romero. He belongs to "Yukpa" an ethnic group that lives near Colombia on the North-west of Venezuela.

Those lands were Yukpa historically have lived in, has a really rich quantity of oil, and coal (they just wanted to seduce them with their speech).
So, oil being Venezuela's main commodity to produce money the government (not only the current) have been exploiting oil, gas and coal and also segregating these comunities from their land.
Also many of this lands were occupied by landlords, that raise cattle and are very Very rich.
Yukpas started to reclaim their historic territories that were recognized by the state. And obviously there was a clash of interest between the State, landlords and Yukpas.

Summarizing, Sabino and his people tried to recover their lands and got kicked out by the National Guard several times. They even came to Caracas to ask the president to intervene and of course they did not get response. Eventually Sabino and part of his family got killed in very very strange situation.
Sabino became a problem to landlords and specially Zulia's State Governor Francisco Arias Cárdenas.
He has a particular interest in exploiting Coal in this area, totally unnecesary because the energy is produced by a hydroelectric dam on the East of Venezuela. Much cleaner energy than an open mine of coal...
So this politics contradicts what the Bolivarian Government was promoting so called "ecosocialism" but instead is displacing communities, kiling his own people and selling the land to multinational interests!


http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english.html


There is a huge inflation, of 63% at least. Scarcity in basic needs products like milk, diapers, coffee, corn flour, sugar.
People in goverment are very very rich, but they sell themselves as humble and poor people : they are the new bourgeoisie.
Salaries are practically beaten up by the inflation.
So, whoever earnes minimum wage is in very BIG trouble and that's a LOT of people but they manage to keep up because all members of the familiy go to work.
Scarcity is so heavy that people make looong lines to get any product, like deodorant, shampoo, sugar, milk, coffe and those things that dissapeared from the shelves.
Government says that people line up because they have too much money to spend.

Scarcity it's an issue from two years ago
You could imagine the social consequencies
You could get killed just for food
And what's really sad is people thinking that we are on crisis, when the real crisis is about to begin.

It's a really long article but it's worth it reading.

Thanks to R. , O. and C. for this.

M.