October 2009 Archives

Ecuador President Rafael Correa made his first visit to Russia this week in the latest evolution of relations between Russia and the Latin Left, which was also the first in the history of diplomatic relations between the two countries. For now, a greatest hits list, sourced from the AP, the AFP and the Moscow Times:

- $22 million deal for Russia to provide Ecuador with two Mi-171E transport helicopters. There may be potential for at least four more helicopters.

- Agreements signed on Russia's assistance in the construction of two hydropower stations and development of Ecuador's substantial oil and gas reserves, as well as on nuclear power and telecommunications.

- Kommersant reported Thursday that Ecuador has showed interest in buying Russian jets, bombers and missile systems.

By Néstor - diario El impulse:

For four hours yesterday, the national highway between Sucre and Anzoátegui was closed for a protest by a group of residents of Playa Colorada. The reason for the closure, which began at 9:00 am, was to demand from authorities a solution to the water shortage problem, street lighting and paving, and construction of a high school. Source: Diario El Tiempo

The National Assembly (AN) on Thursday approved a partial reform to the Law on Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV), an initiative to empower the entity with control of inflation and flexible management. According to the document passed by the plenary, when the Executive signs it into law, the BCV will also check the issue of prices and the variables of employment, development and welfare. The proposal embodied in the legislature's finance committee in order to change the focus of the legal entity. According to the chairman of the commission, Ricardo Sanguino, the goal is to move away from the monetary conception of the bank in order to extend it further into the socio-economic field. "We must put the bank in tun with the tone and the service of strategic objectives of economic and social development of Venezuela in the face of a world capitalist system in crisis," he said. For Sanguino, it is also about ensuring the BCV greater dynamism in its financing operations from the removal of restrictions and expanded powers to give credit.

By Bozzone - diario El Carabobeño:

Following is the text of the resolution introduced by two Florida congressmen, Ron Klein (D-Boca Raton) and Connie Mack (R-Fort Myers), to have Venezuela added to the US State Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism." I'll comment on this action later. For now, this is simply putting out for the record just how it is that Mssrs. Klein and Mack (and by proxy, their constituents) look at the Bolivarian state:

RESOLUTION

Calling for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism for its support of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC).

Whereas state sponsors of terrorism provide critical support to non-state terrorist groups;

Whereas section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act of 1979, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 640A of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 stipulate that a designated state sponsor of terrorism is one "that repeatedly provides support to acts of international Terrorism";

Kudos to the LA Times for walking the line (Obama Administration, take note):

Just how long is too long for a president to serve? It's up to each nation to decide for itself, of course, and the answers vary widely across Latin America. Mexico, which fought a bloody revolution to end the 35-year dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz, has since limited its leader to a single six-year term. El Salvador has a five-year term without reelection; Chile has one four-year term. Like Brazil and Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador changed their constitutions to allow for two four-year terms. Whether four years or eight, all of these options seem reasonable.

But while we don't believe in one-size-fits-all democracy, we do believe in alternating governments. The longer a single party stays in power, the more likely it is to take control of the courts, electoral institutions and the national purse strings, making it harder for opposition parties to compete. This is why the move to lift term limits has been so emotional in the region, leading to everything from a fistfight among legislators in Argentina when Menem sought to change the law in 1993 to a civilian-military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya over the issue in June.

Tired of electrical failures and drought, María Elena Arrieta, a resident of the Cecilio Acosta parish in the state of Zulia, poured a glass of water on her head in front of television cameras and photographers who attended the protest, while rejecting President Chávez's call to ration water. Source: Diario Versión Final

After pledging their word before the country, and 27 days after the hunger strike outside the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) ceased, a representation of academics announced today they will travel to the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Washington, D.C. tomorrow to meet with the executive secretary, Santiago Cantón, and submit a detailed report on the political prisoners situation. The spokeswoman for the committee and student director of the University of the Andes, Gaby Arellano, said that the meeting with Cantón will take place on Friday at 3:00 pm at the headquarters of the IACHR. It should be noted that on October 1, after seven days of the hunger strike, 160 students were scattered throughout the country, including the 69 at the OAS headquarters, discontinued their protest after Cantón agreed to hear their grievances. The demanded that the IACHR be allowed to visit the country to formally acknowledge the political prisoner situation, the release of detainees and the review of sentences of convicts.

Buried in a story that purports to be about the Barrio Adentro programme, Reuters unearths some more stats from Datanalisis on the makeup of the Venezuelan electorate:

According to a survey published this week by local pollster Datanalisis, 21.5 percent of Venezuelans consider themselves pro-government, 17.4 percent pro-opposition, and 54 percent without affiliation.

"Next year it's going to be a real fight," said Karen Hooper, Latin America analyst at U.S.-based think tank Stratfor. "It's not a question, though, of when the opposition will win, but rather when Chavez might lose."

Buoyed by disgruntlement over social problems, Venezuela's myriad opposition parties believe they have a real shot at taking control of the assembly. But they have few if any nationally-popular figures, struggle to show a united front, and have lost various leaders through exile, corruption investigations, or political sidelining by the state.

"About 60 percent of Venezuelans are not 'Chavista', but we have to be honest and recognize that they are not ours either," one opposition leader told Reuters in an off-the-record chat.

As if the Bolivarian Republic needed yet another money pit, Mac Margolis of Newsweek reports on La Villa del Cine, Primo Hugo's headquarters for a state-owned film studio. It would practically be a cliché, if it weren't for the dire consequences of it all:

Like most everything else in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Cinemaville was built to be noticed but not scrutinized. Chávez has a habit of inaugurating partly completed projects for the cameras and then losing interest in them. His leadership style is the stuff of cinema, replete with red berets, -camouflage-clad citizen militias, and gale-force stump speeches. But few Venezuelans would be surprised if this project turns out like so many others--impulsive, exorbitant, overstated, and ultimately cast aside. Reputable filmmakers keep their distance if they can afford to. Others grit their teeth. "Because they need the money, and because Chávez has plenty of it, filmmakers are a highly blackmailable class," says Fernando Rodríguez, an art critic for the Caracas paper Tal Cual. "I wouldn't have anything to do with the Villa if I could," a noted Venezuelan director told me, and then asked not to be named.

Students from the University of Santa Maria Campus located at the Florence campus closed the doors of a study house because of the insecurity that it suffers every day. They say that so far this month at least 30 groups have been assaulted in student areas, coupled with constant robberies in parking lots of the faculty of law and violations. The students closed access at about 10 o'clock yesterday morning and was reopened at noon, causing heavy traffic congestion on the outskirts. Source: 2001.com.ve

Venezuela's government announced the capture yesterday of suspected Colombian agents doing "espionage" work in the country. According to President Chávez, are two intelligence officials were detained while seeking information of a military character and carrying out "subversive" actions. Such accusations have been denied in Colombia by the Department of Security (DAS). "Now instructions have been given for any DAS officials to operate in Venezuela territory. As established in an internal directive, officials are expressly forbidden to travel to that country's territory, the agency said in a statement. The official further recalled that one of the DAS agents detained since September for being in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo was invited by a Venezuelan official.

Words cannot describe how laughable I find the notion of ALBA creating a new currency. So instead, I will simply appropriate the words of Business Monitor International's Risk Watchdog blog. Given their secular stance toward the politics of ALBA and Latin America in general, I'd say they're better suited to give a detached analysis of the proposed Sucre without getting caught up in promoting or discrediting the Bolivarian revolution and whatever it is that it stands for (ALBA map courtesy of BMI). And indeed, they analyse the prospect of a Bolivarian (or Sucre-ian) currency union with a completely straight face. And what they find should sound familiar to anyone who has been watching the Latin Left slowly divide against itself over the past decade: sounds good in theory, but kind of doomed to fall apart in reality:

The more pertinent question, though, is how will the currency fare beyond the medium term? For one, I don't expect a rush by other regional states to sign up for Sucre membership, as unlike the euro, which is seen by many as a sign of stability, the economic and political leadership of those joining this currency is far from stable.

A new study has some amazing numbers coming out of Venezuela on homicides:

There are between 9 and 15 million weapons in the hands of the population, according to Pedro Rangel, president of the Research Institute of Citizen Security. He was citing data from the Security and Defence Committee of the National Assembly.

Each Venezuelan home has an average of three guns under its roof, something "totally disproportionate" in the judgment of Rangel, since "the possession of weapons by civilians substantially affects violence in the streets."

Ninety-eight percent of homicide cases were perpetrated with firearms and 60 percent of the victims were killed by more than five shots.

While insecurity persists as the first problem that plagues Venezuelans, distrust in the administration of President Chávez grew significantly over the past two months. Among the "less well off", confidence fell from 48.5% in September to 33.4% for the month of October, according to a national opinion survey conducted by the firm Datanálisis between 23 September and 8 October.

Reinaldo Azevedo's blog for the Brazilian magazine, Veja, interviewed Robert Amsterdam on his recent visit to Brazil. A translation follows. The original posting is here.

Cedeño, a political prisoner of Chávez. Or: "Hello, Brazilian Senate! You must be ashamed!"

In Latin America, there is a new understanding of democracy underway which is not, in fact, democracy. It is what I have previously referred to here as "Absolutist Populism" or "Absolutism of the ballot box." According to its practitioners, provided that the population is consulted in an electoral process riddled with defects, anything is possible. Politicians consider the endorsement conferred upon them by the ballot box not as a mandate to comply with the constitutional rules that elected them, but as something to defraud as they please. This is how Chávez is consolidating a dictatorship in Venezuela. Rafael Correa and Evo Morales are following the same path. In Nicaragua, the institutional coup of Daniel Ortega is in progress. In Honduras, for now, the coup is dead in the water - or perhaps just in the embassy...

Hat tip to Caracas Chronicles for pointing us to Primo Hugo's latest hygiene advice. As usual with the CC crew, they nail it. Nothing for me to add. Just click here.

I don't why El Universal is in this habit but they've once again only translated half of an interview into English. In this case, what they omitted is the Inter-American Dialogue's Michael Shifter discussing the Colombia military base issue and Honduras.

Posted below is the interview in its entirety, translated to English, with my translation beginning as noted about halfway through. The original in Spanish is accessible here, the partial English translation is here.

El Universal: How is Venezuela viewed from Washington?

Michael Shifter: There is in Venezuela accumulation of power in the hands of a president who makes all the significant decisions and this has reduced any kind of limits to the Executive actions. This does not fit in the concept of liberal, representative democracy, with power balance and assurances for the rule of law. It is a process that has developed over the last 11 years and the obvious trend is to become more autocratic.

Before I get into this, let me just state a couple of things to be clear:

No administration or ideology is perfect and previous Venezuelan administrations certainly had their faults as well. These questions are not about those regimes. These questions are about the Chávez regime. Any attempts to redirect attention away from the question asked without answering it almost certainly will be taken as evidence of unclear thinking. Proceed with caution.

With that disclaimer aside, let's do this.

Rory Carroll of the Guardian visits the Caracas Hilton two years after its state-driven management shakeout, seeking harbingers for the recently expropriated Margarita Island Hilton. What he finds is not encouraging:

There are some striking changes. Gone are the American and European managers and well-heeled foreign guests who used to snap up jewellery and cosmetics in the shops. Red-clad government officials and Cuban delegations have largely taken their place. "Business is dead. All we'll sell is chewing gum and antibiotics," lamented one store owner.

The Italian restaurant now serves more Caribbean fare such as chicken in coconut sauce and cachapa, a corn-based pancake. The gift shop offers a range of ceramic Chávez mugs and sculptures ranging from $20 to $240.

For the defender of Human Rights, Rafael Narváez, current Minister of Interior and Justice Tareck El -Aisami must be removed from office because he has not implemented the mechanisms necessary to keep Venezuelans secure, particularly in light of the comment that "Caracas is the second most violent city in the world, followed by Carabobo, Lara, and Puerto Ordaz. Worldwide Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and Caracas are ahead of Brazil and Colombia. " Narváez said these words following a study reflecting that "112,224 people have been killed over the past 10 years." The human rights advocate said that 98 percent of those crimes go unpunished due to the shortcomings of the public prosecutor's office. So far this year the murdered include 94 children and adolescents, 39 police officers, 107 auto drivers, 400 robberies have been committed on public transport and 831 people have been subjected to express kidnappings. He explained that there are currently 15 million guns uncontrolled in the streets "without any of the 10 ministers who have been applying the policy of disarming the population"

The 20 oil workers were released from detention but must still report monthly to authorities for monitoring. The workers were arrested by the National Guard late on Tuesday while protesting peacefully outside PDVSA offices in El Menito in the state of Zulia, and then transferred to the detention center in Cabimas and were accused of the crime of obstructing work. "While crime destroys the country, those who want to work are taken as prisoners, what irony," said Aurora Medina, mother of one of those released. Source: Diario El Regional del Zulia

The executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Santiago Canton, will hold a press conference in Washington to explain the content of the complaints the agency will hear from November 2-6. The IACHR will open its 137th regular session on November 2, in which the main feature will be the complaints arising from the June 28 coup in Honduras. During the five days of public hearings, the IACHR will hear and discuss 53 cases, of which two, regarding complaints from human rights organizations in Venezuela, will be seen on camera.

First, the oil question:

June 1: Hercilio Rivas, PDVSA's R&D chief, said the company needs a "floor" of $70 a barrel to reach a target to pump 5 million barrels a day in 2020.

September 22: Oil Minister Rafa Ramirez said Venezuela aims to build an oil price floor of $80 a barrel to boost its oil production in the coming years, to double oil production to 6 million barrels a day by 2030

October 3: Primo Hugo said the government will propose a budget on Oct. 15 based on an average oil price of $40 a barrel, economic growth of 0.5 percent and inflation of 20 percent to 22 percent.

And now, the power question:

July 29: The Inter-American Development Bank approves an $800 million loan to Venezuela for the the completion of the Manuel Pilar (also known as Tocoma) hydropower project in the Lower Caroní River Valley. The IDB loan is for a 20-year term, with a six-year grace period, at an adjustable interest rate.

More catching up...I've been sitting on this one for a month and finally have gotten to reading it. Caracas Gringo has a long and very worth reading breakdown of how members of the Chávez administration have accumulated serious fortunes over the past decade while the poor that the Bolivarian revolution claims to help get none of it. There's a lot to read here, so settle in with your coffee, your cigar, your aguardiente or whatever it is you take. Names are named, relationships detailed...there's too much to excerpt and comment on in this space, honestly. Just go here and read.

Last week Andrés Cañizález had an important comment on Gustavo Azócar, a journalist currently in jail in Santa Ana in the state of Táchira, which I posted to the Spanish side of this blog but haven't had time to translate until now. So here it is:

A Judicial Web

The case of journalist Gustavo Azocar - a prisoner in Santa Ana jail in Táchira symbolizes, in a very raw way, how the justice system in Venezuela can build a web to penalize a person without ultimately having any proof that the person is guilty. So far no judge has shown that Azócar, a very critical voice in the region, is the one responsible for failing to transmit radio messages about the Táchira Lottery in 2000. Because this is the accusation that weighs on Azócar, and looking at it carefully one can understand this trial as a take air out of him, to silence him.

There's been a lot of legislative action lately in a number of Latin American countries regarding media laws, and I haven't really had a chance to keep current on it all outside of Venezuela. Thanks to Council of the Americas, I don't have to scrouge around for it now. If you click here, you'll get quick summaries of what's happening in not just Venezuela, but also Brazil, Honduras and Argentina, with relevant links embedded.

By Zapata - diario El Nacional:

Small-time gasoline smugglers protested yesterday at Simón Bolívar International Bridge on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, near Cúcuta in Colombia, for the tight control imposed by the Bolivarian National Guard to fight smuggling. Fuente:: Diario De Frente

The Spanish Senate yesterday approved an initiative urging the government to intercede with the Venezuelan authorities to respect the fundamental rights of opponents in criminal proceedings against them. The motion was defended by Senators Iñaki Anasagasti and approved by 132 votes in favor (from the Popular Party, PNV and CiU), 114 against and one abstention, Efe said. Anasagasti insisted that the aim of this initiative is to defend human rights wherever they are violated, as in countries like Venezuela, with which Spain has a good relationship. Anasagasti recalled that judges and prosecutors in that country "routinely receive the order" to impose criminal charges against government policy objectives and that their victims are vilified in the media and arbitrarily detained while their rights are violated repeatedly.

Yesterday, a wide majority of the Spanish Senate, spanning across all political parties apart from the PSOE and Entesa, approved a strongly worded motion demanding that President Jose Luis Zapatero make urgent requests to the government of Venezuela that the rights of those being prosecuted for political motives be respected.  The case of Eligio Cedeño is mentioned among many others .  The following is a translation from Europa Press:

Senate, Against PSOE Vote, Requests Government to Ask Caracas to Respect Legal Rights

The motion criticizes judges and prosecutors who "routinely" apply criminal charges against opponents of the Venezuelan government

This morning in a Senate plenary session a motion was approved by a wide majority which demands that the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero "take the necessary actions before the Venezuelan authorities" in order to guarantee "the right to defense and other fundamental rights" in open criminal processes "against individuals opposed to the Government."

The Christian Science Monitor's recent report on how the Honduras circus is dividing Congress is worth reading in full, but there are a few passages worth excerpting here. There's this:

"There's a time-honored history of members of Congress turning to Latin America to play out their ideological differences with each other and with the White House," says Daniel Erikson, senior associate for US policy at the Center for Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "It's an easy place to play politics from the perspective of Congress because it's not seen as an area of vital national security interest, as Afghanistan or the Middle East or Asia would be."

And this:

I've never watched the show Parks and Recreation, but I've just been informed that last week's episode involves SNL cast member Amy Poehler teaming up with Pawnee's sister city in Venezuela, whose parks official is played by SNL cast member Fred Armisen, most recently known for his Obama portrayals. The clip:

I kinda want to see the rest now....

I take polls with a grain of salt. All polls. Even polls by Latinobarometro. Even polls by Frank Luntz. Even polls by John Zogby. And those are the ones I most respect.

Nevertheless, they are indicative of something. And Caracas-based Datanalisis has a new one out that shows President Chávez's popularity down to 52.8 percent from 61 percent in February just after the enmienda.

The reasons for this slide: 27 percent inflation, a stagnant economy, faulty public services, violent crime and a government seen as incapable of doing much about it.

This makes sense to me. But disenchantment and action (or reaction) are two very different things. Similarly, voting against one thing and voting for another are also two very different things.

Until the opposition or the third-way student movement comes up with a viable, coherent, unified platform, disapproval will be nothing more than exactly that.

Workers in logistical support and drill maintenance halted their activities yesterday to protest against PDVSA facilities at El Menito, demanding to be put on payroll, a promise first made to them in 2005. Workers who work in transportation for contractors Transporte Rogher, Transervmaca, Tubos and Servicios and Invermaca indicated that they will intensify protests if they do not get an immediate response. Fuente: El Regional del Zulia

According to the BBC, the Interior Ministry itself estimates that police are involved in 20 percent of all crimes in Venezuela, which I of course take to mean that they are actually involved in somewhere around twice that number.

The attention grabbers...well, there's this:

The Venezuelan police are considered among the worst in Latin America in terms of corruption and violence.

"I would say they are a very similar phenomenon to the police in Rio de Janeiro or Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala" says Venezuelan criminologist Andres Antillano.

But really, as far as I'm concerned, this part is the most significant point:

By Weil - diario Tal Cual:

Eligio Cedeño will continue to be a prisoner. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, under the stewardship of Judge Luisa Estella Morales, yesterday admitted the protection action filed by the prosecutor against the decision of Appellate Court 8 - made up of judges Juan Carlos Spin, Ana Villavicencia and Fran Cevallos - which reduced the detention time of Eligio Cedeño until 8 October. Moreover, the Constitutional Court agreed with the injunction requested by prosecutors to continue Cedeño's detention pending a decision of the appeal. Emilio Berrizbeitia, Cedeño's lawyer, said that his client could be in detention for another two years "without trial or conviction."

As I've said before, I'm a huge cheerleader for Brazil, its people, its culture, its economy and its growing role in world affairs - perhaps, just perhaps, Brazil is finally realising its potential and putting to bed the long-standing joke that it is "the country of the future, and always will be."

The FT's Michael Skapinker apparently agrees and goes even a step further, nominating Brazil to be the FT's big story for next year, a country which he was about to visit for the first time when he proponed this nomination. In reviewing his first visit, he zeroes in on the crime question and in particular addresses the very specific and very important issue of how one should perceive security in countries where the statistics and the pessimists demand that you be very, very afraid:

Consider the following facts of a certain murder case:

A man, we'll call him Mr. Z, crosses a busy avenue, going about a typical day. All of a sudden, two policmen grab him from behind and shove him into a patrol car. For nearly two days Mr. Z is held incommunicado and not told why he was arrested. His questions meet with hostile stares from detectives, who would say "You know what you did." He only learns of the charges after walking into a holding cell and being asked by a prisoner: "Are you the guy accused of murder?"

Mr. Z is charged in the shooting death of a gang member from his neighbourhood. Ballistic tests show Mr. Z hadn't fired a gun. Dozens of witnesses saw him working at his workplace during the time of the murder, which took place several kilometres away. And Mr. Z had never met the victim. Still, he was found guilty by a judge at trial and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Mr. Z was accused of murder based on the testimony of a single person and nothing else. That person, it turned out, was the cousin of the gang member who had been killed and was arrested as a suspect shortly after the shooting.

This is a real story from a major Latin American city.

I definitely will say more about this later but for now will simply propose that Lula's campaign for UN Secretary General has officially begun:

I guess Michael Rowan doesn't get it that Lula also embraces Iran's pursuit of nuclear energy. But that's ok.

In any event, following the wild success of the first two entrants of our Compare and Contrast series, we now have Hugo and Lula in El Universal. Between the two of them, obviously Lula is the more preferable, though I wouldn't go so far as to call him a "success" just yet. Or to proclaim an end to the old joke about Brazil always being the country of the future. Brazil is closer to the light at the end of the tunnel than nearly all of its regional counterparts, but it's not fully out of the tunnel quite yet.

Right now Robert Amsterdam is visiting Brazil to meet with political representatives, civil society, and the media to discuss the urgent situation in the Eligio Cedeño case, where the control court has refused to obey the law and comply with a Supreme Court decision.  The following press release has been distributed announcing the trip.

Advocates Appeal to Brazil on Venezuela's Political Prisoners and Mercosur

Representatives for political prisoner Eligio Cedeño visit Brazil to raise awareness

SÃO PAULO, Oct. 20, 2009 - Representatives of the Venezuelan political prisoner Eligio Cedeño are visiting São Paulo and Brasilia this week to seek urgent support against the ongoing abuses of human rights and political persecution by the Venezuelan government. The situation for Cedeño, who is just one of dozens of high profile political prisoners in the country, is currently in legal limbo, as an appeals court of the Supreme Court of Justice has ordered his immediate release while the 38th control court has so far refused to fulfill its legal obligation to execute the order.

"Brazil is a prestigious and respected regional leader, and part of the responsibility of this role is the defense of basic, universal rights," said Robert Amsterdam, international lawyer for Cedeño. "Right now we are witnessing the Venezuelan government's open interference in the judicial process, which poses enormous risks to Brazil as Venezuela's ascension to Mercosur is under consideration."

Really, there's nothing about this that surprises me, and given Moore's track record I actually kind of expect this to be a tad exaggerated, but since we here are devoted to things Venezuelan, it at least deserves acknowledging:

José Enrique Ríos was just 7 years old. He was in the house of a paternal uncle in the San Blas neighborhood of Las Dos Ceibas del Carmen in Caracas. Gunfire sounded off in the street. José Ríos, father of the child, saw two men shooting and went for cover. Then he realized that his son was wounded. "They took him away," said in Pérez de Léon Hospital when he got the news that his son had died. "I beg President Chávez to stop spending and invest in security." Source: El Nacional

The attorney for Eligio Cedeño, Vicente Puppio, said that on Monday he introduced a habeas corpus, due to the delay that has occurred in the release of the banker. On October 10, Conference Room 8 of the Appeals Court ruled that Cedeño should be tried in freedom, and Criminal Control Court 39 was to implement the decision. He stressed that the Attorney General's Office sought an explanation from Room 8 with regard to the opinion. He stressed that it is a simple clarification, for which there should not be a change in sentencing. Puppio said his client has been unlawfully deprived of freedom for ten days now. "The judge, instead of making the decision on Friday, took the keys and did not released him," he said. It is expected that within a maximum of 96 hours, Criminal Control Court 39, headed by Judge Jesús Boscán, will give an answer to the habeas corpus petition.

A scene from bizarro land:

Father Lula: Do you, Hugo, agree to believe, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part, that the U.S. plan to install its military on Colombian territory is not a prelude to invade you but really is meant to fight narcotrafficking?

Hugo: I do.

Father Lula: And do you, Barack, agree to believe, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part, that Venezuela's blatant chase to develop nuclear power really is for peaceful purposes and not to cause regional instability?

General Raúl Baduel, former Defence Minister who helped restore Chávez to power following the coup attempt of 2002 and whom Chávez has since had arrested on accusations of embezzlement, has an exclusive interview from jail with the Nuevo Herald. Among other things, he tells the Nuevo Herald that Chávez wants to be a president for life and is afraid to end up like former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega; that the chance of a military coup in Venezuela is "scant"; that Cuban and Iranian military presence in Venezuela is growing; and that there is "increasing evidence" of a relationship between senior Venezuelan officials and Colombian narco-guerrillas. Original article in Spanish here. Photo from the AP. Translation follows the jump:

Sen. Miguel Carrizosa, head of the Paraguayan Congress, accused President Chávez on Wednesday of "interference in internal affairs'' after he said in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba that the extreme right is preparing a coup against President Fernando Lugo. At a press conference, Carrizosa was upset because "it was our president who denounced the arms race in the region and not Congress.'' "We consider and reject that the far right is plotting a coup against the president. Furthermore, in accordance with the constitution, there is a democratic tool to judge the president if necessary: impeachment,'' he said. Chávez said during the ALBA summit over the weekend that right-wing Paraguayans "take Bolivia as an excuse to attack Lugo's government, and are preparing a coup.'' Sen. Miguel Carrizosa.

A group of people affected by the numerous blackouts that have occurred in recent months across the country presented themselves at the headquarters of the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum to demand answers about the lack of investment in the electricity sector, while $80 million are granted to Bolivia for these services. Source: Diario La Región

Fourteen former presidents, former senior officials and human rights activists signed a letter in Prague requesting the release of 39 Venezuelan political prisoners, supporting the request for a "Christmas without political prisoners" in Venezuela. Attorney Tamara Sujú presented the letter during the conference "Democracy and Liberty in a Multipolar World" which took place in Prague on 11-13 October. During the presentation, Sujú said: "In Venezuela for a few days now we have had a slogan, we want a Christmas without Political Prisoners. Help us to realise this reality."

A fusillade of buckshot fire broke up a protest of inhabitants of Rendón, Gutiérrez and Castellón streets in Cumaná, Sucre yesterday morning after three days without electricity. The protesters said they were peaceful albeit with closed streets, burning tires and taking such measures after being tired of awaiting action by Cadafe. Showing the red pellet wounds on their bodies, the injured denounced the police aggression and displayed the empty buckshot shells. Jesús Rondón said "we were protesting because we have had three days without light, the transformers burned out and for six months now we have endured the chaos of having electrical blackouts several times a day and for several hours. When police arrived and began shooting, I was hit twice." Source: Diario Región

Eligio Cedeño's attorney, Vincent Puppio, announced that Cedeño's case is under review for release in Control Court 39. He also said that in the next 24 hours he expects the court to order Cedeño to be freed. Puppio explained that in the course of two years and eight months his client cooperated with the law and at no point was a flight risk nor was there any other reason to justify depriving him of liberty. Cedeño was charged in November 2005 and in February 2007 the the 3rd Control Court of Caracas agreed to the custodial measure.

Chris Sabatini of the Council of the Americas goes old school, bringing us back to Latin American Studies 101 (or was that 201?) with Jeanne Kirkpatrick's famous 1979 Commentary article as a premise for discussing the double standards on display with the Venezuela-Honduras situation.

As is the practice among the wonk crowd, he puts what journalists call the "nut graph" at the end:

On the Left and Right the consensus over a fundamental freedom--I fear--has frayed. We've reached a point where for partisans of the Left and Right this is somehow a dispensable liberty that we can have a double standard when it comes to the nature of the regime and the views of the media owners and the opinions they espouse.

On the long list of questions I have for Chávez defenders is of course the issue of the state's promotion of anti-semitism. What I didn't realise is that Honduras is now getting in on the act as well:

"Sometimes I ask myself if Hitler wasn't right when he wanted to finish with that race, through the famous holocaust, because if there are people that are harmful to this country, they are the Jews, the Israelites." - David Romero Ellner, Executive Director, Radio Globo, Honduras, Sept. 25, 2009

Meet one of Honduras's most vocal advocates for the return of deposed president Manuel Zelaya to office. He's not your average radio jock. He started in Honduran politics as a radical activist and was one of the founders of the hard-left People's Revolutionary Union, which had links to Honduran terrorists in 1980s. A few years ago he was convicted and served time in prison for raping his own daughter.

Oil workers radicalised their protest on Tuesday, cutting their skin outside the La Campiña headquarters of PDVSA in Caracas, demanding the state to rehire them.

PDVSA is planning an estimated $3 billion bond issue for the second half of October, denominated in dollars, with a maturity of two to three years. PDVSA issued $3 billion in 2011 "petrobonds" in July, mainly to pay debts to service companies. The government also raised $5 billion with another issue of 2019 and 2024 paper last week. Part of the proceeds of this month's bond issue would be used to pay service providers in the exploitation and production sectors, who are owed some $1.4 billion. President Chávez recently said PDVSA would pay $5 billion to service companies in the fourth quarter as part of the country's economic stimulus measures. According to PDVSA figures, Venezuela's national crude production had averaged 3.04 million barrels per day so far in 2009, and was projected at 3.08-3.11 million bpd in 2010. The 2009 figure is below the 3.17 million bpd PDVSA and the government had projected for the year, but way above estimates of nearer 2.1 million by both the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency. PDVSA has said it is planning to invest "no less than" $16 billion in 2010, compared to $15 billion this year.

The Christian Science Monitor's Tim Rogers cuts through the rhetoric to update us on that evolving multi-headed hydra known as Latin American socialism, circa 2009 A.D. The case study here is Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, who since returning to power in 2007 has amassed a practical monopoly on revenues from petroleum distribution, energy and cattle, in addition to preferential access to lucrative business opportunities not available to the common man. ¡Viva la revolución!

There are a lot of quotes and findings in this report worthy of detail, but to me the most interesting ones come at the very end:

Embattled Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma gave an interview the other day to the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de São Paulo. The most eyebrow-raising comment:

O Estado: What assessment can you offer us regarding the proposed entry of Venezuela into Mercosur, to be addressed by the Brazilian Congress in the next few days?

Ledezma: I say this very sincerely: it is imperative that Brazil and the other member countries accept Venezuela into Mercosur. And this is for a reason that seems logical to me: Chávez is far more dangerous in isolation. For us, the opposition, it is important that Chávez is a part of the Andean Community, the OAS, Mercosur and many other international forums which could put limits on his actions. That would be a very positive step for Venezuelan democracy.

It's a rather inflammatory headline, isn't it? Let's be specific - the actual headline of Rory Carroll's latest piece in the Guardian is "Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez accused of turning tyrant."

Now, let's just be clear on something before I go on: every day I receive emails from various people linking to articles to post on the blog here that call Primo Hugo all manner of names. I wind up bypassing most of them principally because the simple notion of yet another random person deciding to argue that the Chávez administration is a dictatorship is simply not new nor is it news.

What Carroll's recent report from Venezuela discusses, however, are not just ramblings from any old random people. They are criticisms from people who in some cases were once on Primo Hugo's side and rather prominent in making news coming out of Venezuela:

Time's Tim Padgett asks exactly this question. The answer, according to the experts he interviews, appears to be: it ain't happening overnight.

Johanna Mendelson Forman, a senior associate for the Americas at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.: 

"It's still too early to tell what Venezuela is really doing."

Furthermore:

A recent intelligence report put out by the government of Israel, which considers Iran's nuclear program a direct threat to its security, said Venezuela was already supplying Iran with uranium. But experts say it's hardly certain Venezuela even has much, if any, uranium to provide Iran or anyone else. Officials there have long estimated the country is sitting on 50,000 tons of the radioactive ore, concentrated mostly in western Venezuela and in the Roraima Basin along the country's southeastern border with Brazil and Guyana. (The U.S. has uranium reserves of about 340,000 tons.) It may be high grade, says James Otton, a uranium-resources specialist at the federal U.S. Geological Survey, a reference not to its quality but to the "tremendous quantities of uranium in a given volume of rock" found in places similar to Roraima, a virtual Lost World of Precambrian geology.

In the last month criminalization of labor protests has increased in Guayana through practices such as detention of directors and restrictions on the free exercise of union activity. Late last month the secretary general of CVG Ferrominera, Rubén González, was arrested for his involvement in the protests of workers from that company in August this year. The crimes he allegedly committed are illegal assembly, damage to public property and closure of roads, as stated during his court hearing. González is now in his house, but not free: the judiciary committed him to house arrest, pending the next hearing which will decide whether or not his trial proceeds. But the rest of the labor union of CVG Ferrominera is not safe. There are arrest warrants against five of the six directors of the union which have not yet been executed.

Big ups to Caracas Chronicles for doing something that I was wanting to do before travel got in the way and now since they've already done it, I can just point you to them and then move on to other things.

The topic, one of my favorite, is Venezuela's parallel currency market and what to make of the simultaneously swirling Merentes announcements + forthcoming economic measures + general global dollar weakness + upwardly trending oil prices +...

Okay I'm getting a little carried away maybe. Basically Quico just breaks down very concisely how to interpret BCV guv Merentes' pledge last week to shore up the bolivar in the parallel market.

Honestly, I really don't have anything to add. Just go here and read.

If you read this blog with any sort of regularity, I don't need to list all the things about this recent opinion in the Nation that I find utterly ridiculous, propagandistic, pie-eyed, half-informed, premature, imprecise, outright false, misleading and otherwise generally inaccurate. Also, it's really not my style to spend time deconstructing point by point anything from a media outlet with a skew toward any extreme - be it the Nation or Fox News - as any semi-plugged in person should be well aware of what to expect from such sources. But frankly I found so many statements in the opinion to be flawed in some way or another that I thought it might be an interesting exercise to just strip out the sentences to which I have absolutely no objection and then put them all together to see how the prose flows just for kicks. So with that as preamble, here's what would remain were I atop the Nation's masthead:

From 2002 to 2009, left or center-left candidates have won the presidency in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador.

El Universal reports:

According to figures provided by the Central Bank of Venezuela, the impact of rising prices in September was 2.4 percent on the high-income sector of the population, whereas the impact in the poorest households was 3.1 percent.

Furthermore:

Official statistics show that Venezuela's low-income families spend VEB 45 out of every VEB 100 to buy food items, while the proportion in higher-income groups is only VEB 15 out of every VEB 100.

The fact that these data are from government sources should in and of itself turn your head since it is precisely the Chávez government who continuously claims to be on the side of the poor.

Or, in the words of Stuart Smalley, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."

The Venezuelan representative to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Germán Saltrón, gave this interview to El Universal. There are a lot of jaw-droppers in here, but I'll just point you to what I consider the most noteworthy:

El Universal: Does the Venezuelan government insist that it does not have any political prisoners?

Saltrón: There are none. We consider a political prisoner one who is detained without trial, who remains in detention with being presented in a court and without a ruling and here in Venezuela there are no such cases.

Rocío San Miguel, director of Citizen Control, discusses in an interview with El Universal a low-publicity reform to the armed forces law that establishes the creation of a Bolivarian militia, which appears to be setting the stage for a clash with the armed forces (original here):

El Universal: You have said that the reform of the law violates the constitution. Can you develop this argument?

San Miguel: During the past 10 years there have been three big reforms to military legislation: in 2005, in 2008 and the one that has just been approved by the national assembly, pending the president's signature. We have urged (Chávez) to think hard about the language used in the reform because the constitution allows only the national armed forces and its four components to have a monopoly on weapons of war. The reform additionally authorises other security agencies of the state, civil agencies, to use weapons. Where, then, is it articulated that the militia can use force and therefore weapons of war, when this is not authorised by the constitution?

"The only way to lower homicides, robberies and kidnappings is national disarmament. If we know that there are 15 million guns in the street, why not disarm these people?" asked the human rights activist, Rafael Narváez. "If that's true, the underworld has several armies and in this situation the national government looks cowardly in the face of rising insecurity. The mob won the battle against the state, the mob is the one who confers and gives the license to kill," he said, alarmed at the increasing rates of insecurity and killings in the country. He recalled that at Miraflores "there have been 10 Ministers of Interior and Justice. All of them promise disarmament but never actually move forward. In the national assembly they are discussing an arms, munitions and explosives law that could be merged with disarmament, but time moves onward and the crime rate increases.

There's been a lot of resumed chatter about the Honduras situation and given that I've been traveling again lately, am only now having the time to catch up to it.

Poder 360, a publication which I am only somewhat familiar with, has a 3,500 word story recounting the Zelaya saga. Two passages jump out at me, in reverse order. First, on Zelaya's conversion into card-carrying member of Club Hugo:

Chávez didn't go down well in conservative Honduras, but Zelaya blamed lack of help from the U.S. and others for his left turn. "I've been looking for projects from the IADB and Europe, and found a modest response. They don't have emergency funds and I've been obligated to attract new forms of financing like ALBA," he told Reuters in an interview.

Let me first say up front: I am a big cheerleader for Brazil, its people, its culture, its economy and the growing chorus in support of its increasing role as regional power. In keeping with this stance, a couple of things have recently caught my eye.

First, a Newsweek interview with Lula published last weekend, in which he states the following:

Newsweek: Mercosur allows only full democracies that respect human rights as members. Does Venezuela qualify? 

Lula: Give me one example of how Venezuela is undemocratic.

Newsweek: Thirty-four radio stations closed by the government in one weekend. Repression of trade unions and persecution of political rivals. 

Lula: Let's be frank. Each country establishes the democratic regime that suits its people. It's a sovereign decision of every nation. And remember that [Hugo] Chávez was the victim of a coup. He also was tested in four elections. Right or wrong, the Venezuelan people will judge.

By Rayma, from El Universal:

Residents of blocks B3 and B4 of the municipality Los Cocalitos de Guanta closed the road leading to Puerto La Cruz and Sucre state last night. The protest was because there has been no light since last Saturday. At 9:00 pm the event ended when the mayor promised to resolve the problem. Source: Diario El Tiempo

Promoting growth, maintaining employment and curbing inflation are the three main objectives of the government, as announced Thursday by the Minister of Planning and Development, Jorge Giordani, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Ali Rodríguez Araque, and the governor of the Central Bank of Venezuela, Nelson Merentes. The press conference of the president's economic team did not cover the expectations the president himself generated when he admitted in mid-September the need to increase spending to reverse the contraction of 2.4% in the second quarter of this year amid the collapse of international oil prices. Ministers recognize that inflation is a complex issue and estimated that prices will rise 27% this year and between 20 and 22% in 2010.

The vice president of the National Assembly (AN), Saúl Ortega, warned that "the Venezuelan government will not approve the visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) while Santiago Cantón is its executive secretary. "For Venezuela it is a matter of principle, this gentleman and the OAS supported the dictatorship of Pedro Carmona, after the coup of 2002. As a result, as far as the government is concerned, nothing will happen as long as Cantón and his promoters of dictatorships are in charge, he said. More than a hundred students went on hunger strike to demand that the Organization of American States (OAS) send a delegation of the IACHR to Venezuela to confirm that there are political prisoners and political persecution in the country. Recently, José Miguel Insulza, secretary of the OAS to which the IACHR is attached, said that the visit requested by the opposition can only be made if it is accepted by the government.

Tired of enduring a week without electricity, residents of La Floresta B, a sector of the Sotillo municipality (Anzoátegui), yesterday closed access to rural areas of the jurisdiction and of Bolívar. The lockdown lasted eight hours on the outskirts of the asphalt plant of Vidoño as people demanded a transformer. The crossing was opened at 1:00 pm when equipment arrived from the mayor of Buenos Aires. Source: Diario El Tiempo

The Bar Association in conjunction with the Venezuelan Penal Forum, will go to the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers from the Organization of American States (OAS), not only for the National Assembly's trampling of lawyer Tamara Sujú, but also of union members targeted by the regime. Ivette Lugo, president of the board of that corporation, announced the presence in Venezuela for next Thursday of the Human Rights Commission of the Inter-American Bar Association, to which the Caracas Bar Association belongs, to assist in the defense of lawyers who at the moment have been "taken over by the regime." Lugo read from a document entitled "Bar Association fixes position on the institutionalization of the criminalization of the practice of law", which indicates that it is facing a clear policy of state terrorism, as evidenced in the systematic criminalization of the practice of law through persecution and character assassination of lawyers, that exercise of autonomy and independence run counter to the interests of the regime.

Also in La Verdad today, an interesting assessment of the hunger strike as negotiating tool. In particular, the following passages I thought were worth translating.

Even though marches will not be displaced, hunger strikes have gained space in the face of the attempt to criminalise street demonstrations, showing even greater effectiveness in achieving objectives.

That was how Antonio Ledezma, metropolitan mayor of Caracas, and a group of City Hall employees succeeded in getting the government to allocate resources for payroll; and the students achieved a release of their colleague Julio Rivas and a pronouncement from the Organization of American States (OAS) regarding the petition for the organization to visit the country to verify the existence of prisoners and political refugees.

Inés Quintero, from the National Academy of History, gave the following interview to La Verdad de Zulia (photo: Eduardo Méndez):

La Verdad: How has history been addressed in the past 10 years?
Quintero: As an historian, I have various differences with how the past has come to be viewed in the past decade, because history is a discipline that is plural and critical and disagrees with the possibility that it can be viewed according to only one vision, which furthermore intends to establish itself as the only and true vision.

La Verdad: The government intends to impose a single vision of history?
Quintero: It is the government's intention to do that, but it all will depend on what society wants to accept. The tendency of the professional historiographer always has been that history maintains a diversity of perspectives.

By Rayma, diario El Universal:

A measure was ratified today to deprive the journalist Gustavo Azócar of liberty in the state of Táchira. José Oliveros, a new judge on the case, said a new trial for Azócar has been opened and on Monday the first hearing was held. The students who were on hunger strike for five days decided to temporarily lift the protest. Although they did not secure the release of the journalist, they considered suspending the protest because Azócar's case is being considered under a new trial. The students believe that this measure is a step forward for the release of the journalist. José Vicente García, a student at UNET said the decision came after a march consisting of students and civil society of Táchira reached the protest site to commit to the fight that they have been involved in for a week now. "It was decided to form a group of students from around the country to start doing various acts of protest and demand the release of political prisoners," said García.

Two things stand out from Juan Forero's latest from the Washington Post, and for those of you unfamiliar with this case, Forero manages to integrate the relevant facts of the case into his story, so I leave you to read it separately and then come back here (Photo: Juan Forero).

The first item that stands out is this passage:

There are more than 40 political prisoners in Venezuela, and 2,000 Chávez opponents are under investigation, the groups and human rights lawyers say.

In the first eight months of this year, 2,079 demonstrations took place, up from 1,602 in 2008, according to a recent study by Provea, a human rights organization, and Public Space, a policy group that monitors free speech issues. Nearly 500 people were hurt and 440 were detained, the study said.

Compare these numbers with our 30 September post here and the 24 September coverage of the Espacio report here. I have not actually seen the report in question but I think it probably goes without saying that these sorts of figures are usually expected to be underestimates.

Second item that jumps at me is this:

To paraphrase an old Dirty Harry quote, opinions in Venezuela are like Chávez speeches - they never end.

So it was with no small sense of relief that I read a recent economic opinion of Angel García Banchs from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, who has given without a doubt the most concise breakdown I've seen so far of the Venezuelan economy. But as someone with training in both finance and journalism, I take issue with some of his phrasing, and this goes beyond mere translation. So with all due respect, I have translated his article (original is here) into English, edited it and now posted it below.

President Chávez promised a revolution that, in addition to being political and social, would also be economic, in all senses of the word (but, in practice, what has happened is an involution); supposedly, we were going to diversify our economy and transform it forever, but today, apart from oil, and one another, the only thing we export abroad are our jobs and government-issued bonds. From this, I ask: what happened to Chavistanomics that, despite the huge oil revenues, instead of driving Venezuela into an economic, technological, and productive revolution, has led to more and more debt and dependence?

I'm not sure why, but El Universal seems to have all the goods today. Following is an interesting interview with the Venezuelan sociologist Antonio Cova about the collapse of socialist revolutions. For some reason - and this is not the first time I've seen this happen - El Universal has only translated a portion of into English. So first here I will post the portion of the interview El Universal decided to translate, followed by the second half of the interview which is my translation. The original in Spanish is here and the newspaper's English version is here.

El Universal: The hunger strike staged by university students ended all of a sudden, taking into account that the government very quickly gave in to the first of the requests made. What is your opinion?

Cova: The strenuous, fierce action against a young student, whose only crime was to take part in a march of the Venezuelan democratic movement, forms part of the regime's strategy of punishment. The idea is to damage sensible, very specific areas to a certain extent in order to handle the reaction. This was the purpose of Julio Rivas' detention. However, as a matter of fact, the students of the province, basically eastern Venezuela, based on the experience of (Caracas Metropolitan Mayor) Antonio Ledezma, went on hunger strike on the same site where the mayor was on strike, and this caused a chain reaction. But the government did not anticipate such phenomenon. Therefore, it could not find the way to react to an unprecedented event.

You may recall that in the final week of September President Chávez suddenly woke up to the "emergency" facing the country's health care sector and the subsequent "too little too late" declaration from Douglas León Natera, the president of the Medical Federation of Venezuela who also pointed out the farcical qualifications many imported Cuban doctors have.

You may also recall our September 30 photo of the day from Antímano, where the Barrio Adentro mission once operated.

Well, now we get the sum of the parts in the latest announcement on the health care front, an eye-popping $5.6 billion (yes, that's a 'b') spent on Cuban staff in 2008. This comes on the heels of an initiative that brings a new group of Cuban doctors to reinforce Barrio Adentro.

Of all of the analysis in this account in El Universal, the passage that most strikes me is the following:

Carlos Ayala Corao, the former president for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had a number of things to say to El Universal about Venezuela's reaction to the recent student hunger strike demanding permission for the organization to visit the country:

"Democratic countries are open to visits by UN representatives and the IACHR. Authoritarian or dictatorial regimes are the ones who are closed to these types of visits."

"There's always an excuse. The excuse of (Augusto) Pinochet to not allow more IACHR visits to Chile was that the IACHR was being manipulated by the left-leaning ideologues around the world, and Fidel Castro's excuse for not allowing visits of the IACHR to Cuba is that it represents international imperialism. Regardless of its political leanings, authoritarian regimes are always going to agree to hide behind sovereignty to avoid such visits and inspections. "

Yoneiba Parra Barillas, former Venezuela prosecutor who ordered the incarceration of Eligio Cedeño was formally requested on arriving in Miami last month to give testimony before a federal court in south Florida. According to Casto Ocando of El Nuevo Herald:

The notification invoked a little known law that allows a federal court to summon potential witnesses in cases that are aired in foreign courts.

In accordance with an order issued by the federal court, Yoneiba Parra Barillas was required to testify under oath about her involvement in the case of Eligio Cedeño, who remains in jail in Caracas on charges of alleged tax evasion, smuggling and diversion of finances. As a prosecutor, Parra ordered his imprisonment in 2007.

Brazilian senator Tasso Jereissati (pictured at right), from the Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and member of the Foreign Relations Committee of the lower house, has the following to say:

"Despite the argument that rulers are transient and states are permanent, in Venezuela there is a process of dismantling democratic freedoms, designed to perpetuate President Chávez's hold on power."

The "revolution" led by Chavez leads toward the "militarization of the country and promotes a project of political-ideological expansionism and constant intervention in the affairs of other countries."

"Political changes promoted by the Venezuelan government favor official candidates" and opponents who are elected to public office "are practically prevented from governing."

During the weekly show Alo Presidente!, which most recently broadcast for six hours, President Chávez criticized the actions of the student movement such as the hunger strike at the headquarters of the OAS and the march on Saturday that concluded some protestors lowering their pants to demand the presence of representatives of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to recognise the existence of political prisoners in Venezuela. "It's a shame, I feel sorry that some of the youth are calling for that (...) Now imagine calling political prisoners corrupt people who are being detained by robbers or murderers who then do the same to demand their freedom and for the OAS to come," he said.

By Rayma - diario El Universal:

It's an all-spanish day today. Deal with it.

"Ya van 55 denuncias de magnicidio y todavía no hay ninguna prueba contundente". De esa forma Manuel Rosales, ex alcalde de Maracaibo, desestimó desde Perú las más recientes acusaciones que pesan en su contra, a través de las cuales se le implica como autor intelectual de un presunto plan de magnicidio contra el presidente Hugo Chávez que data del año 1999. Asilado en tierras incas desde abril, el dirigente y fundador del partido Un Nuevo Tiempo aseguró: "El único plan para liquidar a Chávez en el que he estado es el plan electoral y así lo haré en las elecciones presidenciales de 2012". Exponiendo diversos recortes de periódicos donde se demuestra su participación como alcalde marabino en diversas actividades de la corporación municipal en diciembre de 1999, Rosales echó por tierra las acusaciones que han formulado en su contra voceros del partido de Gobierno, fundamentadas en una entrevista que diera el paramilitar colombiano Geovanny Velásquez a medios internacionales. "El Gobierno venezolano quiere vender la idea, a través de la prensa, de que yo promoví desde 1999 el asesinato del presidente Hugo Chávez, eso es falso".

Twenty days without a drop of water was the trigger for the inhabitants of Tiquire Flores in the state of Aragua to protest by blocking the Panamerican highway. The Aragua government's riot squad tried without success to break up the demonstration. There are 14 buildings affected by the absence of water. Neighbors continued protesting until the end of the afternoon. Source: El Clarin

At 9:30 pm, after 155 hours of fasting, students who had been on hunger strike since last week outside of OAS headquarters in Caracas and in various other cities around Venezuela decided to suspend activity as they had achieved their objectives. Roxana Rojas, a student from Monagas, was responsible for making the announcement. After thanking the Venezuelan people for their support and the more than 200 students who participated in the strike, she said that with the protest had successfully led to the release of student leader Julio César Rivas; also, representatives of the Inter-American Human Rights (IACHR) reaffirmed their intention to visit Venezuela to assess the political prisoner situation and commit to request information on them from the government. In what she called a "marathon for freedom and democracy," Rojas said it was a good sign that the IACHR extended an invitation to a delegation from the student movement to present their complaints to OAS headquarters in Washington and considered as a success the request yesterday from OAS secretary general José Miguel Insulza that Venezuela allow an OAS visit to the country. Through yesterday, 73 youths were registered in Caracas, 25 in the city of Valencia, 12 in Anzoátegui state, 7 in Nueva Esparta, 10 students outside the Ombudsman's Office in Táchira, 12 in Maracaibo, 5 in Barquisimeto, 18 in the city of Maracay and 6 in Mérida.