The systematic destruction of Venezuela: take notice, friends out there!

Venezuela is becoming a red desert.

In order to “save energy” Hugo Chavez decided to shut down the country during all Easter week. This means almost no one could work. Factories, schools, shops and restaurants were forced by the military to keep their doors closed. In the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez the state oil company has been dedicated to import and distribute subsidized food and to finance all government political and social events. In so doing it has lost some 800,000 barrels per day of oil production capacity and is now forced to import natural gas from Colombia. The lack of maintenance in its refineries keeps them operating at a low capacity, obliging the regime to import gasoline at international prices, some $90 a barrel, only to sell it in the domestic market at $12 a barrel, at an enormous loss for the nation.
The ineptitude of the Chavez bureaucracy in the management of basic services has produced a deep electricity crisis in a country that possessed, during pre- Chavez times, one of the most sophisticated electricity networks in the Americas. The Guri Dam, capable of generating up to 10,000 megawatts, has been in danger of shutting down completely as water levels approached the point in which turbines could no longer be safely operated. The reduction of hydroelectricity generation due to this situation has not been compensated with thermoelectrical power since the existing facilities of this type are in a sad state of disrepair.
Invasions of productive lands promoted by Chavez in his drive to capture political following has caused a collapse of agriculture. Today, up to 70 percent of the food consumed in Venezuela has to be imported. Imports have been running at the level of some $40 billion per year. As oil income has decreased by half from 2008, money for imports has also decrease, resulting in acute food shortages, higher prices and long waiting lines in establishments managed by the oil company that sell highly subsidized, low quality items.
Although Chavez has instituted a policy of handouts of basic foodstuffs, free transport and basic health services, the long-term, structural, solutions to poverty, ignorance and disease are being neglected. State hospitals are very deteriorated and incoming patients have to provide their own medicines, food and, even, bed sheets. Schools lack the most essential supplies and, often, chairs for students to seat. Half of the installations of Barrio Adentro, a health program designed to attend the poor in the marginal urban areas, are closed down for lack of doctors, medical supplies or because of the danger posed by criminals who own the streets.
Venezuela is now one of the most dangerous countries in the world, with a rate of 55-60 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, only second to El Salvador. About 15,000 Venezuelans are being murdered every year, four times as many as during pre-Chavez years. The country also has the highest rate of kidnappings in the western hemisphere. The problem is compounded by the fact that members of the Venezuelan police forces execute many of the killings and kidnappings. It could be said that Caracas, the capital, is like Gotham City without a Batman.
As popular protests increase the Chavez regime has stepped up its repression: TV stations are being closed down, members of the oppositions are being imprisoned and dissident members of the National Assembly are being stripped of their immunity and persecuted. From being merely autocratic Chavez has now graduated into full-blown dictatorship. His regime has no checks and balances and no tolerance for political opposition. The president controls all government institutions and transparency and accountability in the management of public funds have ceased to exist.
Tragic as this material destruction of the country is, there is an even more tragic process of spiritual destruction going on. Chavez has been preaching class and social hatred, poisoning the poor with the notion that the “rich”(meaning anyone who owns a home and a car) stole their money and that the white are guilty of the poverty of the colored (in Venezuela 90 percent of the population is a blend of white, Indian and black in diverse proportions). As a result Venezuelan society now exhibits a degree of racism and social resentment that had not existed since the XIX century. Children are being politically indoctrinated and Castro Cubans have been brought in by Chavez to control sensitive aspects of Venezuelan social life, such as documentation.
Venezuelan quality of life is very low, although the Venezuelan Institute of Statistics, controlled by Chavez, keeps talking about paradise on earth.
Increasingly frustrated Venezuelans are, finally, showing strong signs of rejection against this state of affairs. Chavez is now running at some 40 percent popularity and is becoming a clear political minority. Chavez’s so-called revolution has stalled and his hopes of turning Venezuela into another Cuba have largely evaporated.
The damage to the country, however, has been enormous. After he is gone, the task of reconstructing the country will be as challenging as that of a country destroyed by an earthquake.Venezuelans have suffered a social and spiritual cataclysm from which they could need more than one generation to recover.