I, Guaicaipuro, you, Diego de Losada (or how to reinvent history)

Guaicaipuro, according to the PSUV party, is











the intelectual great-grandfather of these "revolutionaries"




















From left to right: former Acción Democrática and now V-Republic hero Aristóbulo Istúriz, PDVSA boss Ramírez, former special police force Freddy Bernal and old IV Republic-turned Chavista Chaderton

And according to them,



evil Conqueror Losada is the intellectual father of

Socialist Ismael García, union leader and socialist founder of Causa R, Andrés Velázquez, and independent Corina Machado (yes, her background is as posh as that of Chaderton)


The Chuzpah

Former guerrilla man and current president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, Fernando Soto, made clear what understanding he has of history and democracy when he stated (here the official version) that "yesterday's persecutors and persecuted meet today at the Venezuelan National Assembly". He was referring to the fact he, as a guerrilla man, was persecuted in the sixties and "the others", apparently, where his persecutors. He was implying that people who do not agree with the Chávez regime are "from the IV Republic". He needs to have some chuzpah for that. When he came from Cuba on a boat to start the violent opposition against a very dysfunctional but still democratic government in 1967, Corina Machado and Julio Borges had not been born yet.

Most deputies from the opposition are actually younger than Chavista deputies, with some notable exceptions like Enrique Mendoza (born in 1945). Among the Chavistas there is Aristóbulo Istúriz (born in 1946), who first belonged to the infamous Acción Democrática party and then to the Causa R party and now pretends he did not have anything to do with the IV Republic. Among the "revolutionary" guys, there are also people like Freddy Bernal (born in 1962), who was a notorious police agent during that IV Republic, one who was active in the Special Forces of the Carlos Andrés Pérez government, and one who sympathized, as his father did, with the extreme right and had a crush on former dictator and right-winged military Pérez Jiménez. Bernal is also someone who has been accused of corruption on different occassions, but nothing happens. Fernando Soto talks in the VTV interview about opposition deputy Mazuco. Mazuco can indeed be a criminal or not. I have read some articles against him and some defending him. I think it would be interesting to have a public inquiry with independent judges to judge him and to judge people like Freddy Bernal. Wouldn't that be fine?

When the new Chávez deputy team - with almost 2/3 of the seats for 48% of the votes through recent gerrymandering, not just "circuit majority" - came in, they "took an oath" in the name of "their fathers", Guaicaipuro and Bolívar.

Guaicaipuro was a native American who was killed by the Spaniards. Bolívar is the most hyped caudillo that ever existed in America. In any case: the Chávez movement has a capacity to resell time after time the same story: we are the persecuted and they are the persecutors. We are the Indian-Africans and they are the European descendants. We, 52% of the voters who rejected the Chavismo system, seem to be the children of conquistador de Losada, the one who sent Infanta to capture and kill Guaicapuro.

This is really pretty silly. Very few Venezuelans have not a lot of European ancestry - from the XX, from the XIX, from the XVIII century or earlier. That goes even for dark-skinned Aristóbulo, who is "lighter" skinned than many of my cousins. Very few have not native American or African blood (and that includes freckled, blond cousins of mine as well). The vast majority of Venezuelans today have little to do with the IV Republic. It is true the poorest still tend to have a stronger African or Indian component and the richest still have a more European component, although that is much less the case than in most other nations I have been able to see.

And yet the Chávez regime will keep on telling people through VTV, through national broadcasts through all radio and TV stations that those who opposed them are the Eternal Evil and they, they are the eternal revolutionaries. We are the compradores. They are the anti-imperialist fighters. Never mind our economy is as dependant of oil exports as before. Never mind the Chinese are buying our oil at half the price and sending it to the US in exchange for some cash now.

Eternal Fight for what really?

Minister of Foreign Affaris, Nicolás Maduro, declared yesterday that "Venezuela is a country in permanent fight". Sure, we have a permanent fight now. We have more murders in one week in Venezuela than what we got during the Battle of Carabobo. We do not struggle to attain development but a permanent fight to blame it "on the others".

Maduro also justified the actions taken by the government "to rescue lands from the latifundistas". As I wrote in previous posts, the funny thing is that the average size of those lands taken now by the military is smaller than the lands many Boliburgueses have. It would be nice if Ramírez Chacín's family and Chávez's cousins and brothers declare how much land they have. Hacienda El Cristo someone? Hacienda La Malaguena someone else?

Revolution my foot.

Some interesting reading in Spanish about the boliburguesía here.

"double standards" are normal under dictatorships, get used to it

Two little items in the news got my attention.  In themselves they are not that great compared to other disasters made by chavismo, but they attracted my attention because they are each one in a way the demonstration that chavistas not only think of themselves above the law, but they are the right owners of that law to screw up anyone or anything that stands in their way.

The first item is the PSUV trying to remove the parliamentary immunity of a newly elected MUD legislator from Zulia, namely the Cabimas district.  Apparently Hernan Aleman did a misappropriation of funds when he was mayor of Cabimas.  In Venezuelan language that does not mean he stole the money, that means that he spent some budgeted money for something else than what was originally budgeted.  That is, he took money to buy, say, police cars and used it to pay municipal employees because the regime did not send the funds it was supposed to send by law.  This "crime" in Venezuela is enough to have you barred from public office.  Ask Leopoldo Lopez who is rich from birth, who does not need to steal a penny from the treasury and who still got barred from running for who knows how many years, WITHOUT a trial and conviction, just because some comptroller somewhere reported that money was spent on Y instead of X during his tenure.

There are three problems with this story.

First, Aleman might be a thief, or not, but he deserves a fair trial.

Second, it was the Cabimas district that elected him, tired of chavismo wrecking the economy of the area when it confiscated the business of hundreds of PDVSA providers rather than pay them the due money.  Removing artificially Aleman from office is certainly not the sure way to recover the affection of the locals, and in fact, if partial elections were to be hold chavismo would probaly lose even more this time around.  Of course, unless the CNE allows for cheating.

Third, and most important.  We must note the speediness at investigating Aleman and trying to unseat him.  But the heavy dossier that has been submitted for investigation on the tenure of Diosdado Cabello as Miranda governor has remained gathering dust.  I can assure you, I can bet my life on it, that the dossier contains not only severe misappropriations but also plain robbery.  If Aleman is ousted, well, Diosdado should be in jail under a life sentence instead of sitting prettily in the new National Assembly (who I am afraid is fast on its ways to become a Nazional one...).  And let not get me started on Chavez own misappropriations!

The second item comes form an art blog that I follow, one of the very few blogs that I have in my blog roll on the side.  In her latest entry Lisa Blackmore confesses that she came late into the realization that Pastor Maldonado was going to make a demonstration of Formula 1 racing in Caracas.  Although her blog tries to stay away from politics she cannot help but be surprised that the regime, the socialist regime of Chavez is spending a declared 20 million dollars on sponsoring the jump to Formula 1, a "sport" that is elite second only to sailing, and I am not even sure of that one.  Let's just say that more people watch car racing than sailboats but cost wise I am pretty sure Formula 1 spends way more money.

Pastor comes even with a chavista rugged look of sorts......

Poor Lisa, being as aware as she is of the needs in the art scene of Venezuela, even at the low level of preservation of the rare masterpieces we have, seeing that 20 million are going to be blown away on a chavista kid just so that a bankrupt PDVSA can pretend to be a good company must be quite wrenching.  Because Pastor Maldonado, fresh from his minor league success has had no qualms embracing Chavez.  Either for interest, likely, or because he has been living outside the country for so long that he has no idea how vulgar his sport is in the eyes of many in Venezuela considering the sums involved by PDVSA, sums for the glory of Chavez more than for the glory of Maldonado.

There is another thing that I am willing to bet on: it is going to cost Venezuela more, way more than 20 million, if anything after you factor in all the chavistas that are going to travel at governmental expense to attend the Formula races that Pastor will run in. And I will let you speculate at ease on the real payment that the Williams house received when hiring Pastor.  For reasons that escape me, Formula 1 is well followed in Venezuela.  I do not get it, the mere noise of it is enough to make me run away from any TV set passing a car race.  As such it is, we must admit, a good move for chavismo propaganda because under the pretense that car drivers are athletes newspapers will have to cover those races and root for Pastor, just as they root for any Venezuelan, ANY, that makes it to any B team in the US....  A strange phenomenon that one, to root for Venezuelans overseas while we let languish the ones here...  But this is another story.

Fortunately Lisa has historical memory and she ends her post with the tale of our one before last dictator who paid a lot of money to have a Grand Prix race run in Caracas in 1957.  Indirectly demonstrating that at least under democracy Venezuelan government did not get shamefully involved in car racing the way dictators do.  And socialist dictators at that, unfucking believable!!!!

PS: Alek Boyd had a negative entry on that topic a few months back.  Contrary to me he likes car racing and yet he was equally outraged.