Chavez wants his Gestapo


This Weil cartoon in today's Tal Cual on the new "intelligence law" conveys so much that it is astounding.

It has a most exquisite yankocriollo pun: "getsapo" which could be lousily translated into "let's become finks" as any of the Chavez police gets close to us under his new "intelligence law". Sapo is fink, informer, snitch, stoolie.... Get sapo, gestapo, well, you get it....

The pun carries the mockery of the system, the difficulty that Chavez will have in trying to turn us into a nation of informers. Remember that it was in Venezuela that the El Dorado legend started, so as to distract the attention of the Spaniards conquistadors and send them elsewhere to look for gold in deep jungles from where they were never heard of again. Venezuelan wit will find ways to give so much false information to these incompetent police that the system will be soon unworkable. Or at least this is what we all hope for.

And yet there is also painted the scare factor too, as the system will work in some instances, particularly among chavistas which will be the first victims of the law.

-The end-