According to Daily Beast‘s Nick Schager (9/13/21), A La Calle “addresses the sad state of affairs plaguing Venezuela, a country ruled by a so-called ‘socialist’ dictator who refuses to acknowledge his anti-democratic nature.”
HBO Max began streaming a documentary on September 15: A La Calle (“To the Street”). It portrays US-backed opposition leaders in Venezuela as pro-democracy heroes battling a brutal dictatorship—a total reversal of the truth. A Daily Beast article (9/13/21) promoting the film is headlined “Capturing Venezuela’s Descent Into Socialist Hell,” which succinctly conveys the film’s slant, and suggests why it found a big corporate platform like HBO Max, a subsidiary of AT&T‘s WarnerMedia.
From the trailer alone, it’s obvious that A La Calle depicts Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López as a noble democrat. That’s outrageous.
Legacy of violent coup attempts
López, a former oil industry executive, was one of the perpetrators of a US-backed coup in 2002 that briefly ousted the democratically elected president at the time, Hugo Chávez. A dictatorship under business executive Pedro Carmona killed 60 protesters during the two days it was in power. (Another 19 people, half of them Chavistas, were killed in violent confrontations just before the coup.) López—along with another prominent politician, Henrique Capriles—led the kidnapping of a Chávez government minister while Carmona was in power. López appeared on local TV, proudly saying that he had briefed “President Carmona” about the kidnapping.
Leopoldo López (center) and his wife Lilian Tintori (left) get a lot of screen time in A La Calle—all of it aimed at glorifying them.
Several months later, López backed a second major coup attempt, the opposition-led sabotage of the oil industry that supplied almost all Venezuela’s export revenue. The coup attempts against Chávez drove the poverty rate to over 60% by early 2003.
López supported violent protests again in 2013 after the candidate he backed, Capriles, refused to accept his loss to President Nicolás Maduro in the first presidential election after Hugo Chávez’s death. Later that year, López criticized Capriles for calling off the protests, saying they should have continued until Maduro was ousted. When Capriles called off the protests, they had already left nine people dead, all supporters of Maduro.
López initiated protests early in 2014 that led to 43 deaths: Half of them strongly indicate the responsibility of his supporters. It was only after leading that fourth US-backed effort to oust the elected Venezuelan government that López finally went to jail.
Not excusing but ignoring crimes
I watched the whole documentary, curious to see how exactly the film would whitewash all the coup attempts López was involved with, and how it would deny the violence his supporters and allies perpetrated over the past 20 years.
I also wondered how the film would excuse murderous US economic sanctions on Venezuela—acts of war that have been linked to the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans by the end of 2018 alone. By 2021, US sanctions, which have been relentlessly intensified since 2019, reduced Venezuela’s government revenue by 99%, according to UN special investigator Alena Douhan.
I expected to see bad arguments justifying all these crimes. Instead, the documentary edited them out of existence completely. None of these things were mentioned even once: nothing about the US-backed coup attempts prior to 2014, nothing about devastating economic warfare the US has inflicted on Venezuela since 2017.
Venezuelan economist Ricardo Hausmann and Tamara Taraciuk (deputy Americas director of Human Rights Watch) deserve special attention for the mendacity of the statements they made.
Distorted history lesson
“In 2004, the price of oil shot up,” says economist Ricardo Hausmann—as if oil prices hadn’t been on an upward trajectory since 1998.
In the film, Hausmann said that Chávez came to power because 1998, the year Chávez was first elected, “was an economically difficult year.” In fact, Venezuela had a few disastrous decades before Chávez was first elected. Hausmann should know, because in 1992, he became a minister in the government of Carlos Andres Pérez, which had perpetrated the Caracazo Massacre in 1989: Hundreds, possibly thousands, of poor people were gunned down during five days of protests against an IMF-imposed austerity program.
In a recent article (FAIR.org, 8/26/21), Justin Podur and I reviewed Venezuela’s economic history, showing that it had always been plagued with shocking poverty and inequality, despite Venezuela being a major oil exporter since the 1930s. Of course, “Venezuela’s Descent Into Capitalist Hell” is not a headline you are likely to find in corporate media coverage from the pre-Chávez era.
After deceptively explaining why Chavez was first elected, Hausmann moved on to bigger lies. “Hugo Chávez, in the first five years, changed many things,” he said, “but the economic situation did not improve.”
That’s a very crude lie of omission. Hausmann neglected to say that within those first five years, Chávez was hit with two major US-backed coup attempts that devastated the economy. By surviving those coup attempts, Chávez was, in 2003, finally able to get control of the state oil company, PDVSA, the country’s main source of hard currency.
Hausmann then deceived viewers again by saying, “In 2004, the price of oil shot up. Suddenly Hugo Chavez realizes that he has a lot of money.”
The price of oil had actually been rising since 1998, the year before Chávez first took office. Fortunately for most Venezuelans, oil prices kept rising for several years after Chávez finally wrested control of PDVSA from saboteurs. The economy was therefore able to quickly recover from the coup attempts and begin a period of dramatic poverty reduction.
Poverty in Venezuela fell sharply not when oil prices rose but when President Hugo Chávez broke the opposition’s efforts to sabotage the economy. Source: INEC via CEPR (3/7/13)
No ‘recent’ precedent?
Tamara Taraciuk of Human Rights Watch asserts that violent protests have “no precedent in recent Venezuelan history”—which suggests a very limited knowledge of recent Venezuelan history.
About 40 minutes into the documentary, Tamara Taraciuk of Human Rights Watch says that the violent protests of 2017 (which the film shows Leopoldo López encouraging from his jail cell) have “no precedent in recent Venezuelan history.” The word “recent” does a great deal of heavy lifting in this absurd statement.
Was the April, 2002 coup attempt (which killed 79 people, overwhelmingly supporters of Hugo Chávez, and briefly overthrew the government) not “recent,” deadly or politically significant enough to offer a “precedent” for the protests in 2017, which left 126 people dead? Also, it’s not clear if most of the victims in 2017 were opposition protesters. Some of the protesters perpetrated gruesome atrocities, like burning alive Orlando Figuera, a 21-year-old Afro Venezuelan government supporter.
What about the Caracazo Massacre of 1989, which was perpetrated by a pro-US government? Does it count as “recent Venezuelan history”? In five days, the Caracazo death toll surpassed, possibly by an order of magnitude, the combined death toll on all sides during US-backed protests against Venezuela’s Chavista governments in 2002, 2013, 2014 and 2017. (Incidentally, the Caracazo Massacre also had no impact on friendly US/Venezuela relations, or on the flattering US press coverage of the Venezuelan government at the time—FAIR.org, 8/26/21.)
About an hour and 28 minutes into the film, Taraciuk says that any “decent government” in Venezuela’s dire economic situation would “ask for help,” but that Maduro has “closed the door to international aid, which is available.” This was a commonly told lie around February 2019, when Trump’s government, fresh from recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, demanded that Venezuela’s military defy Maduro and allow about $20 million of supposed “aid” to enter from Colombia (FAIR.org, 2/12/19).
Even at the time, this quantity of “aid” was a rounding error compared to the impact of economic sanctions that Trump had imposed since August 2017. Taraciuk never questions the “decency” of Trump deliberately choosing to strangle an economy that was already in crisis. That alone makes her comment obscene, but also, contrary to what she claims, Maduro had requested international aid that Venezuela was receiving prior to the US-led aid stunt of 2019 (FAIR.org, 2/12/19).
Committed to debunked propaganda
A New York Times analysis (3/10/19) showed it was a protester and not the Venezuelan government who set fire to an aid truck.
The documentary is so committed to debunked propaganda from 2019 that it also gives the impression that an aid truck on the Colombian border was set on fire by forces loyal to Maduro. “Three or four trucks entered into Venezuelan territory, but one of them was burned,” López says on camera. The Grayzone (2/24/19) and a bit later even the New York Times (3/10/19) refuted that lie at the time, noting that video shows that the truck was set on fire by an opposition protester.
After 2019, Western media actually moved on from pushing the lie that Maduro rejects international aid, largely because Trump, and now Biden, became so blatantly sadistic with their economic warfare on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 3/25/20, 7/21/21).
About 70 minutes into the documentary, Taraciuk strongly insinuates that votes were not secret during the May 2018 presidential election that Maduro won by a landslide, saying that voters “had to go through the punto rojo to register their vote.” The puntos rojos (“red points”) are kiosks the government has always set up near voting centers for exit polling. Even an anti-Maduro writer who attacked these kiosks as “blackmail” conceded that the government can’t know how people voted.
It’s also profoundly hypocritical to allege that Maduro coerced voters, while ignoring the obvious threat the US has sent Venezuelan voters since 2017: that crippling economic warfare against Venezuela will continue and intensify until Maduro is overthrown.
In any case, Maduro’s vote count in 2018 was in line with the level of support a Pew Research poll (hardly a pro-Maduro outfit) suggested he had several months later. It found that 33% of Venezuelans “trust the national government to do what is right for Venezuela.” That’s also a level of support among eligible voters that routinely wins elections in Canada, the US and UK (Mint Press News, 1/28/19).
Part of the Western media herd
A BBC journalist frowns at Nicolás Maduro in A La Calle.
Throughout the film, numerous clips from big media outlets reinforce the film’s dishonesty. Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas says, “Venezuela is crumbling under the weight of Maduro’s oppressive regime.” A BBC journalist glares at Maduro with imperial contempt as he, quite validly, rejects the claim that his 2018 re-election was illegitimate.
Western media have long developed a kind of shorthand, repeated endlessly, that demands total impunity for US-backed politicians like Leopoldo López in Venezuela. Any legal consequences for US-backed sedition are portrayed as oppression (FAIR.org, 4/23/18).
US entertainment media have also contributed to the vilification campaign against Maduro’s government (FAIR.org, 9/18/19). Last year Ethan Hawke did a fawning interview with López (an old friend whom Hawke met while attending a private high school in New York). It’s very easy to see why HBO Max would feel comfortable streaming a documentary as ridiculous as A La Calle.
Thank you for an excellent review of trash being promoted as “an inside look.” HBO used to do ground-breaking documentaries, but this HBO Max garbage is blatant right-wing propaganda.
There’s an old saying: “You only get what you pay for…”. Apparently not so. Consumers who pay HBO Max a fee for the privilege of viewing commercial-free programming need to know that AT&T bought Warner Media almost three years ago, and is not interested in programming excellence when political propaganda is so much more lucrative. Buyer beware.
Mind boggling contradiction is that the same HBO featured Raoul Peck’s anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-imperialist “Exterminate All the Brutes”, a four part series that is all true!
Goodbye HBO
Great article, thank you! I sure wish a lot more people could hear these kind of things!!
As a Venezuelan living in venezuela during the protest and becoming an inmigrant for what the dictatorship did to my country this article is just full of lies, and every venezuelan that read it will agree with me Hugo Chavez Goverment brougth poverty, missery, and decadency to my country, Leopoldo Lopez was not the president did not take any of the decision that made properous enterprise broke down, Us the people that went to protest in 2014 were victim of violence and torture from the GNB and the police we were students , and civilian people that from families that did not have guns , another outrageus lie is that all the people that die were part of the goverment , the goverment send people dress a civilian to figth again women, students and mens , Venezuela is a country where the minimun wage is $4 thats doesnt have anything to do with Leopoldo Lopez, the “President” is a bus driver whom chavez choose by finger and doesnt have any knowledge of politics, the minister are criminals whom deal with cartel and main bussiness is drug trafficking , people is taking boats to leave the country and inmigration is over millions , and you are going to talk about Leopoldo Lopez??? how you call yourself a journalist when you take advantage of the ignorance of what happens in a country to make criminal look good …
All you do is repeat all too common talking points of anti-Chavistas. Can you at least back up your claims with evidence? Then we’ll talk.
What about if you move to the country and live there !? Before to have the audacity to make any statement about the opinion of someone that lived the crisis ? The common points of antichavistas ? Is the reality of why the country is in that position , do you have any idea how is living is a country where you cannot take your phone out because people will kill you to take it? Do you have any idea how is to live in a country where a chicken is $20 and you make $4 per month? Do you have any idea how is to live in a country where in order to get gas for your car you need to wait 3 days in a line? When you live that reality you can come back and have a conversation with me and believe me you are not going to talk about the antichavistas” because we don’t create the crisis.
I was in the protests in 2014, we were students in line handing out posters and the national police came to throw tear gas bombs at us, we ran out and they started looking for us in the streets to get us into their tanks and beat us, and that is not anti-Chavez arguments, it is reality. So my advice for you is when you don’t know about something because you was not there or you think that you know because you read the news and you like socialism… don’t tried to explain to someone that was there the reality because you just make a fool of yourself have a good day.
Again, typical anti-Chavista propaganda. The Maduro administration is supposed to coddle rioters and traitors? Is that it? And it’s so predictable to hear you people blame socialism for everything. Do you know what socialism is? No, you don’t. Your country is in the gutter because due to mismanagement of the economy and US sanctions from 2018.
Literally nothing you wrote addresses the US backed sanctions and coup attempts and their effects on Venezuela’s economy and Maduro’s government.
You make accusations of lies, yet you fail to name a single one. Tell us, Loysmir Russell; exactly which statements in the article above are not true other than the ones that FAIR debunks? What lies did the authors tell? Be specific and provide backing evidence, not just “you weren’t there, I was blah blah…”
Every Venezuelan expat with opinions like yours that I’ve ever communicated with shared several traits: 1) upper middle class to very rich (especially by Venezuelan standards), 2) descendants of European conquerors and settlers, 3) living very comfortably in the USA, Spain or Canada and 4) comes from a family that made its money through either the food monopoly or state granted oil leases handed out during the years prior to Chavez nationalizing the oil industry there.
So tell us as well: Why did you make an accusation of lies but then fail to back a single one of them up, and why did you neglect to mention or acknowledge the brutal American sanctions and their devastating effects on 98% of Venezuelans, mostly of non-European descent?
So let me understand what do you think that you have the right to talk to me? Because you spoke with venezuelans? Before? I’ll not waste my time I was very clear , the sanctions that destroyed a country that you never visited started in 2015 , Venezuela crisis start prior to that time , the lies? Hundred of thousands civilian and then thousands of students protesters died in 2014 protest and the number is public , so if instead that talk you read you won’t be having this conversation, this article was writing for a telesur journalist , telesur is a CCs channel pro chavistas and said that the majority people than died were pro maduro a big lie…you won’t find that argument in any media only here, about the venezuelans that make money and live in other countries , the inmmigrants from Venezuela are more than 5 million so if you think that because you talk with the richest people that really depends of your circle and their views they could be prochavistas or people that did their money before the regime destroyed their company and they have the right to have their opinion , there is people in Chile in Peru in Ecuador in USA working as dishwasher asking for asylum those are the people whom I spoke …. So go back to your circle but next time that you give a opinion to someone please talk about what you read and know … Not about the richest or wealthy people that talk to you. And the part where you said “you was there blah blah’ just show your lack of respect and ignorance. I hope that you live in socialismo un dia y sepas que realmente significa que destruyan a tu Pais , guevon. Have a good day.
I’m sorry but you’re lying to us again:
“…the sanctions that destroyed a country that you never visited started in 2015 , Venezuela crisis start prior to that time , the lies?”
No, the sanctions have been in place since 2003 at least and were strengthened under Trump in 2017 and 2019.
“Hundred of thousands civilian and then thousands of students protesters died in 2014 protest and the number is public…”
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of civilian and then THOUSANDS of student protesters DIED and the number is PUBLIC???
Where is the number? Where is it public? You tell us, Loy-Smear!
There were no sanctions in place in 2003.
You are right that broad sanctions targeting the general population didn’t happen until Trump. Sanctions under the Obama administration were targeted at individuals with the alleged connections to corruption or narcotics with little impact to the broader economy. The August 2017 sanctions on PdVSA were the first sanctions to cause broad impacts to VE’s public finances.
Lysomir is right that the situation was awful prior to any broader sanctions. Inflation started in 2014 and turned hyper in 2017, even prior to the August 2017 sanctions on PdVSA. The inflation problem that was caused by capital controls and printing of money by the VE state.
It seems like there is a concerted effort to distort the timeline for some sort of political purpose. The documentary distorts the timeline and so does Joe.
There is plenty of blame to spread around. Most of what we know about VE is highly distorted. No, Chavez wasn’t a great revolutionary leader that needs to be lionized in socialist circles. He was a corrupt leader that was lucky that oil prices peaked when they did. If he had not died in 2013, maybe VE would be better today. Maybe they wouldn’t have printed money. Maybe they would have gone after corruption. That’s not clear. However, it’s clear that the bus driver isn’t up to the task. Maduro drove VE off a cliff and Trump poured gasoline on the wreck to make sure the survivors couldn’t climb out of despair.
The sanctions he was talking about were in 2004, not 2003. Coup attempts have been non-stop since 2004.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2004-09-26-0409260226-story.html
“The United States imposed sanctions against Venezuela this month because of its allegedly poor record on human trafficking, straining already stretched relations between Presidents Bush and Hugo Chavez.
Bush ordered the sanctions Sept. 10 against six nations the U.S. State Department deemed are failing to combat human trafficking, an underground industry that generates at least $10 billion annually and involves at least 800,000 victims a year.
The sanctions mean that Venezuela could lose up to $1 billion in loans from international financial institutions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank for a $750 million hydroelectric plant, and projects aimed at clean drinking water, Amazon rain forest protection and judicial reform.”
There have been economic sanctions on Venezuela, enacted by the US, since 2004. Non-stop.
Further, it’s actually possible that ‘unofficial’ or ‘extraofficial’ sanctions were in place in 2003. We know that the Bush/Cheney regime was actively attempting coups that early.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela
Tell the truth you live in a suburb of Miami, you’re rich and light skinned, from the Colonial lineage like the other 10% of Venezuelans that want the US Military to overthrow the democratic elected government of your country so Exxon and BP can come take control of the oil. You keep saying this is all lies but you haven’t listed a single thing that was a lie because this article just stated facts, nothing even controversial really.
You said “this article is just full of lies, and every venezuelan that read it will agree with me.”
Not only did you not, and you cannot, point out the lies in this article about HBO’s false propaganda, because this article is true, and perhaps a few points they made were incorrect, that’s possible, but to have the temerity to say “every venezuelan” would agree with you, at least about this article, is totally ridiculous and false. You think we don’t speak to Venezuelans? Where do you think we get the information? From Venezuelans. Yes, we know about the economic and crime problem. But the protests and guarimbas were actually trying to bring down the government. That’s not just a protest. That’s called an attempted coup. We know the right-wing Venezuelan leaders wanted a coup, not negotiation or democracy. It comes from their own mouths, you aren’t fooling us. If you care so much about democracy, truth, and the well-being of Venezuelans, you would be AGAINST false propaganda shown in HBO and spread by right-wing/fascist Venezuelans, and you would be AGAINST US sanctions, which seriously continue to damage the economy. If you are passionate and are protesting against the sanctions, I’ll give you credit though.
Hello Loys:
I think that your pants are on fire—-along with your brain.
This piece also distorts Venezuela’s (VE’s) history, attributing poverty reductions to Chavez’s policies and not to commodity prices. It’s widely discussed (even for boosters of Chavez and Maduro) that VE is an oil-dependent one-trick pony. Oil has been a benefit in good times and a curse in bad times. Chavez and Maduro (and everyone before them) never bothered to diversify in a meaningful way, so VE’s fortunes have been correlated to the price of oil.
To understand VE’s economy in context of macro-economic trends, compare it with a neighbor — like Peru. It’s a controlled experiment between two economic models. Both PE and VE started about the same place in 2004 (58% poverty in Peru vs. 53% for Venezuela) and ended about the same place in 2011 (28% poverty in Peru and 27% poverty in VE). Peru had a slightly bigger decline in poverty from 2004 to 2011 than Venezuela, but more importantly they had the same trajectory despite very different economic models. So, we can conclude that both Bolivarian socialist and neo-liberal economic model can derive similar results during boom times. It’s hard to argue in good faith that it was Chavez’s policies and not macro-economic trends (e.g. commodity prices) driving the change during that period. If it was something else, we’d expect different results. In fact, the whole region saw declines in poverty during the period. The Chavez myth and cult of personality doesn’t deliver anything substantively different for the objective observer.
It becomes more obvious after Chavez’s death when the oil price tanked. By 2015 poverty had increased to 30.3% in VE (the same level from 2006). Why? Primarily, the price of oil tanked from over $100 in 2014 to less than $40 in 2015. Maduro had some awful luck. First, he inherited an oil dependent country that failed to diversify for a decade under Chavez’s leadership and second, the price of oil tanked and he could no longer pay for Chavez’s policies. So, he printed money, causing crazy inflation. That same year Peru got down to 21.8% poverty (a reduction of 6% since 2011) versus VE’s 30.3% poverty (an increase of 4% since 2011). VE’s fate was closely linked to the price of Oil. Peru’s fate was more diversified (e.g. copper, petroleum, fishing, and agriculture). VE’s decline started in was all prior to the August 2017 sanctions. Things were already unraveling for Maduro and the PSUV in 2013. At this point and poor policy decisions only made it worse – e.g., printing money. Since 2015, Peru reached a plateau and got to a pre-pandemic 20.2% poverty in 2019.
Venezuela stopped keeping count, but with sanctions imposed since August 2017 the situation accelerated and, worse, the situation cannot improve. Poverty is now over 90%. Venezuela used to be a haven for Peruvians (including my uncle) during the reign of terror by the Shining Path and MRTA. Now Peru is that for many Venezuelans.
It’s true that the Maduro government made some bad policy decisions, but the context cannot be discounted or ignored. The U.S. sanctions and constant coup attempts played a big role in the edginess of some of those policies, such as printing money.
That said, you’re correct – one of those poor decisions was putting all of the eggs in the oil basket and not trying harder to diversify the economy. But there were also internal forces – mostly the current opposition – who helped drive the bus in that direction.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia conspired to cause oil prices to fall in order to hurt Russia and Syria, but also Venezuela.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Did-The-Saudis-And-The-US-Collude-In-Dropping-Oil-Prices.html
Now, you may accuse me of promoting a Russian/Syrian “conspiracy theory” because there is currently no proof of an agreement btwn. the US and Saudi Arabia (perhaps one will leak in the future), but there is no denying that Venezuela was *at least* collateral damage in Saudi Arabia (and the U.S.?) actively working to drive oil prices down.
https://theconversation.com/venezuela-crisis-is-the-hidden-consequence-of-saudi-arabias-oil-price-war-82178
Here’s a thought. End the sanctions. Now. All of them and let’s see how quickly Venezuela can recover. I would guess without further sabotage and coup attempts, they can do it. But the U.S.A. will never allow for a socialist success story to happen in what we like to call our “backyard.”
“This piece also distorts Venezuela’s (VE’s) history, attributing poverty reductions to Chavez’s policies and not to commodity prices.”
How? Oil was up and Chavez put more of the oil profits into reducing poverty. Period. It’s not even controversial or remotely incorrect to say that. Of course they put all their eggs in the oil basket which wasn’t smart, but given the contextual realities of the global market and SWIFT system, what else could they have done? Start mining lithium? Selling straw baskets in large numbers?
All in all this is just a ridiculous comment within the overall context of American sanctions and Saudi-American manipulation of oil prices via Saudi capacity (also used to drive fracking/shale out of business in US and Canada) to drive the ppg down enough to make Venezuela, Syria and Russia think twice about exporting what was, at the time, affordable oil.
How is it ridiculous when sanctions weren’t even in effect at the time that VE was unraveling? The oil price tanked and basically anything that the Chavez did that was positive and “revolutionary” became history. His legacy is smoke and mirrors. His poverty reductions were less than neoliberal peer countries despite having more resources at his disposal. If anything, it points to his incompetence and corruption. It’s also odd how the Chavez family is now super rich too. Must have been from his book sales.
Did Chavez really do anything noteworthy that wouldn’t have happened without him? No. He had a decade to improve and diversify the country. He had a decade to invest in the oil infrastructure. Instead, he cut investment into VE’s primary industry. And he appropriated businesses and ran them into the ground. Both policies served to make the oil imbalance worse. Nearly everything he did to improve the lives of the poor was superficial and mere public relations because all of it unraveled prior to the sanctions. None of it was built to last.
Saying that the US and Saudi Arabia were manipulating oil to punish VE is conspiracy level arguments. It overstates VE’s importance. VE is NOT important geopolitically. KSA and OPEC (VE’s a member) was trying to drive out US shale oil producers (Non-OPEC) by pushing down prices. This is widely known. Insignificant VE wasn’t part of the equation for KSA or US shale oil producers. They were too busy competing with each other in a race to the bottom.
The sanctions on the VE people are brutal and need to stop, but Chavez/Maduro own the situation up to the point of sanctions. Sanctions didn’t create hyper-inflation. Sanctions didn’t start the emigration of millions of Venezuelans. It’s hard to even argue that the initial sanctions would even impact VE’s economy as they were targeted at the wealth of patrician government officials and their families, not the proletariat. It really wasn’t until the August 2019 sanctions that the people were broadly impacted. The 2019 embargo needs to be reversed. Who cares if Maduro can’t access his ill-gotten millions in his offshore bank accounts?
Actually, sanctions began under the Obomber regime, to punish Venezuela for using oil revenues to build schools, clinics, and homes, instead of to enrich North American banksters.
Why is my reply “awaiting moderation” when I said absolutely nothing controversial?
I’m not going to donate any more to FAIR with your crummy understaffed and ineffective comment moderation; it’s actually pathetic. c
Venezuela should considering suing HBO.
As for scum Lopez, Guaido and their ilk, just jail them for life if you get an opportunity [and the laws allow for it, and they’re found guilty]. Come on.
What can we do to restrain the US from interfering with other governments? All we do is sow more poverty and suffering.
Excelente artículo periodístico…guao!como manipulan los hechos en pro de su objetivo: el poder.
The August 2017 PDVSA sanctions (Obama) where the first sanctions that broadly targeted the VE’s revenue. Largely because VE uses PDVSA as a piggy bank. The 2019 sanctions were the kicking them when they are down sanctions by the Trumpers.
The clinics and schools were failing long before the August 2017 sanctions. Money was worthless by then and teachers didn’t show up. They were all built with connected firms leaching off funds. Their benefit was only temporary. Many never got built. In VE, the rich are still rich, and the poor and middle class are poorer than ever. Corruption is the rule and Chavistas aren’t immune.
There were sanctions before August 2017. They were sanctions on rich, government connected individuals. These only impacted their personal finances — they couldn’t get to their offshore accounts and properties in Panama and Miami. You can read about how things work in VE in the Panama and Pandora papers.
Here are some names to get you started:
Javier Alvarado Ochoa
Nervis Villalobos
Adrián José Velásquez Figueroa
Claudia Díaz Guillén
Alejandro Andrade
Raul Gorrín
Josmel Velasquez
Naman Wakil