Venezuela Good Times...

[Ceviche]

I have traveled to Venezuela a few times in last 1 year. Feel free to ask me specefic questions about the life there.

 

[scotttswan]

The best explanation of this type of revolutionary "socialism can be found In an excellent video posted by Camberiu featuring Gloria Alvarez a Guatemalan senator about a year ago. However,It is all in Spanish ..
As she adroitly points out, if the Latin American elites had alloted only a few ladders to the poor and lower income groups to climb up to a better economic condition thru social mobility,revolutionary movements like in Cuba and now in Venezuela would probably never have happened.
But,unfortunately,for them and ,in the end,for their entire populations their elites failed to do so.Cuba,as is known,can point to great strides in health and education but then full stop .Venezuela is a complete failure.However,as the saying in Spanish goes,"se lo buscaron ellos mismos".The elites asked for it by their inaction and they got it.Full bast.
I was in Caracas in the 1960s with Perez Jimenez and one could feel the hate between the social strata all the time.It is going to take a huge effort on the part of all Venezuelans and the rest of all of the Americas to help them come out of this with any modicum of success.

She was talking about populism not socialism. Populism can be on both sides of the political spectrum.

 

[Noesdeayer]

ejcot en argentina;
True.G.Alvarez was speaking specifcally about populism.
However,I wrote "revolutionary "socialism which is what has happened.For brevity's sake google -revolutionary socialism definition
What started out as a more or less a democratic socialist political experience has been converted into exacxtly that.
Nonetheless,the root cause was the same as in Cuba and other Latin American countries The inability of the poor and low income strata to find ladders of social mobility to improve their condition due to the oppression of the elite.

 

[camberiu]

Dear Argentina,

Look at the bullet that you have just (barely) dodged.

 

[Noesdeayer]

Camberiu.
Once again I love your stuff. This one I just sent to friends in Cali.It's too good to pass up
As a yearly visitor to Colombia,I am more and more impressed with the progress especially now that the peace with the FARC
And to think that 25 years ago it was the other war around with Colombians pouring into Venezuela to work

 

[Pensador]

He is stupid bus driver what do you expect. Not say all bus drivers are stupid.

 

[camberiu]

Amnesty International: Venezuelan regime effectively adopts slavery

Maybe some UBA students and the La Campora folks should be shipped over there to lend a hand.

 

[EJLarson]

Amnesty International: Venezuelan regime effectively adopts slavery

Maybe some UBA students and the La Campora folks should be shipped over there to lend a hand.

Don't stop with the students: let's let those professors like Kicillof rush over there to work the fields in a show of solidarity with their Venezuelan compañeros. They should be eager to go. After all, it's all about the poor and needy, right? And Chavez/Maduro have managed to manufacture a whole country full of those.

 

[Noesdeayer]

Interesting piece.
Erika Guevara Rosas Amensty International's rep in Venezuela says it amounts to "slave labor"
I remember another Guevara -Argentina's own Ernesto Guevara Lynch "El Che" who had no qualms about forcing all sorts
of Cubans especially students to go and cut sugar cane in "la zafra" from1959 all thru the '60s.Those who did not were labled "gusanos"--anti-revolutionary worms.All this sugar cane and who was buying it? Not the damn Yankee imperialstas anymore.So the Russians had to pick up the bill which they hardly needed to do what with all the sugar the made from their large beet production for their borsch.Finally,the Cubans smartly ditched sugar exports for tourism.When I visited Cuba in 2005 I made it a point to ask Cubans about "El Che".What they told me was a whole lot different from what we used to hear from Kristina and La Kampora.

 

[ElQueso]

The bigger the government's purpose in the life of the people, the more authoritarian, at least to those who don't agree. The more governments want to do things that are against human nature (or the majority of humans' natures), the bigger the government has to be. Until each individual him- or herself is nothing but an individually unimportant cog, whose destiny is decided "for the greater good". Of course the individuals and their families and their friends don't like it when the get caught up in the cogs, so the government has to force people to do things. Collaboration among citizens is not collaboration when it is forced, it is indeed akin to slavery.

But then it's all a matter of degree. Too many people are happy being slaves to a government as long as that government is doing what they think is right, or takes care of them - then they don't feel like slaves. But the others do...

I have to say - if I was a citizen in a country like Venezuela is right now, I'd likely want to work to help grow food. I wouldn't have to be forced into that labor, all other things being equal. I'd be more likely to actually eat than if I had a "high-paying" job writing software, when there is no food available. As a short-term solution, I wonder if they couldn't get volunteers to work in the fields? Maybe people are afraid of how they would be treated in both the short term and the long term?

I feel bad for the Venezuelan people. I wish there really were a Hell so Chavez is roasting alive and his buddy Maduro would follow him...