Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Venezuela: Where was Sean Penn?

Last Friday I asked, Speaking of sh**holes, where were you?,

Were you outraged when Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez declared himself a Marxist and took over private property and the media? Would having people kill zoo animals for food qualify a country as a shithole?

Today Rachel Campos-Duffy wants too know Who is Sean Penn to lecture Trump about compassion?

So what has Sean Penn said about these horrible indignities and abuses suffered by the Venezuelan people? Nothing. Where is his “compassionate” op-ed to show concern for the victims of Venezuelan socialism and repression? Silence.

Well, I dug through this blog’s archives, and found this gem from 2011: Back then Hugo Chávez was still alive, and Sean had  invited Charlie Sheen to Haiti, as if the blighted country hadn’t had enough yet, and Charlie accepted.

I posted,

Sean’s meeting with Hugo Chávez (link in Portuguese) this weekend to discuss Hugo’s proposal to send a goodwill peace commission to Libya. Chávez claims (link in Spanish) Sean’s worried about what’s going on in Libya, as if there weren’t enough reasons to worry about what’s going on in Venezuela.

Once Sean and Hugo work out the Libya situation, Sean will be heading to Haiti with Charlie next week.

I never did find out if Charlie made it to Haiti, but Sean later on became pals with Argentina’s Cristina Fernández and Mexico’s drug lord El Chapo.

Sean wasn’t the only American actor hangin’ with Hugo. Kevin Spacey and Tim Robbins also did, and Hugo bankrolled Danny Glover to the tune of $20 million to produce two movies, [CORRECTION old link; go here for a current link] one of which was – wait for it – a bio of Toussaint D’Overture, the Haitian slave that led the revolt against the French and declared himself emperor.

Haiti’s per capita GDP is US$739.60.

So I ask again, where are they?

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Venezuela: RCTV shut down 10 years ago

The great Joel D. Hirst remembers RCTV – The Day the Music Died.

Hugo Chávez denied by decree RCTV’s license renewal, not by due process of law. Hirst writes,

Ten years ago now – ten years. Maybe that was when it ended. It certainly was dramatic. Hugo Chavez had just won a landslide re-election in a contest that was free but not fair (a distinction without a difference, thanks Jimmy Carter!). Rapid change was going to begin. 2007 – that was the year; nationalizations of Venezuela’s oil fields, collapsing Chavez’s own tri-color support base into one monolithic political party called – wait for it – the Socialist Party. A referendum on a new constitution that would do away with democracy once and for all. And, some payback. Ending the last public TV station whose editorial line did not bow to the whims of the despot.

Even then I knew this was a crucial moment. I did a podcast and posted on it, knowing democracy was done for in Venezuela. I can’t explain why I knew; maybe it was simple speculation that Chávez would never stop accruing power.

I even remember making the actual podcast from my kitchen table during a very warm evening. This is the only podcast, out of hundreds, that I specifically remember making.

RCTV was closed. Its assets were seized.

A year later, its anchorman was stabbed to death in his apartment.

Cross-posted at WoW!Magazine.

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Venezuela: Hugo Chavez house burns to the ground

Thor Halvorssen posted yesterday on Facebook:

Earlier today in the Chavez family stronghold, the Venezuelan state of Barinas (where Chavez’s brothers and father have held control of every inch of government for more than 15 years), a 19 year-old student was killed with a bullet to the chest by a member of the Chavista National Guard. The student, Yorman Bervecia, was protesting. The local population, enraged by his death, has reacted in a manner that captures the frustration with the dictatorship and the collective rage against the architect of their current suffering. This home was recently turned into a museum with the goal of celebrating the birth of Chavez. No more.

At the Chicago Tribune (emphasis added),

While demonstrators are decrying current President Nicolas Maduro for the country’s triple-digit inflation, rising crime and shortages of food and medicine, they have also destroyed at least five statues commemorating Chavez, Maduro’s mentor and the founder of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian revolution.”

Demonstrators lit the house in the city of Barinas where Chavez spent his early years aflame Monday afternoon along with several government buildings, including the regional office of the National Electoral Council, said Pedro Luis Castillo, a legislator who represents the area.

After Chavismo, what’s next?

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Brazil: Lula trial reveals ties with Chavez

As you may recall, Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on trial.

All sorts of things are coming out. For instance, Lula personally recruited

Mônica Moura and her husband João Santana, a couple whose marketing strategies helped keep Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party in power for 13 years

for help in Venezuelan Hugo Chávez’s 2012 campaign. Current dictator Nicolás Maduro (emphasis added)

Mr. Maduro, then Venezuela’s foreign minister, personally handed Ms. Moura $11 million in cash in his Caracas office, she said in the testimony given in court to Brazilian prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence on corruption charges. Brazil’s two largest construction companies, Odebrecht SA and Andrade Gutierrez, which are under investigation in Brazil for allegedly paying bribes to Mr. da Silva, wired her an additional $9 million to an offshore account, Ms. Moura said.

As the article correctly points out,

Under Mr. Chávez, Odebrecht became the biggest contractor in Venezuela, receiving roughly $11 billion over 14 years for projects ranging from irrigation channels to airports.
. . .
Odebrecht admitted to paying $98 million in bribes in Venezuela.

Now

The heads of Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez, as well as Mr. Santana and Ms. Moura, are all in jail or confined to their homes after being convicted on corruption charges related to Car Wash.

And they’re willing to talk.

Will this have any effect on Venezuela’s deteriorating condition? I doubt it; but it will have repercussions in Brazil.

Stay tuned.

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Venezuela, socialist basketcase

It didn’t just happen overnight. It didn’t start after Hugo Chávez’s death. It was a long time coming.

Essential reading by Joel Hirst: Venezuela’s Ongoing 25 Year Coup

25 years ago – all the people of Venezuela have known since is Hugo Chavez. Chavez in the morning, Chavez at night. Chavez in the soup and on the ricebags and stamped across the ever-scarcer toilet paper. Dressed mostly in red – until the occasional blue became necessary to bury a political rival. Then back to red. The visage of the man fattening out before the ever-watchful eyes of the cameras as his grip upon power solidified; until he swelled with disease that seemed to mirror the bloated, infirm county he refused to release from his wicked grasp. His every absence a source of controversy; his every word a promise and a threat. He seemed to stand across the very top of the continent – calling all the people unto himself as some sort of mestizo messiah of the poor and the destitute and the angry and the jealous. And come they did; from Argentina and Chile and Brazil and Mexico, more powerful countries but without so great a leader. They came out of fear lest he find in them an enemy and seek their downfall. They came for opportunity; because they too had hate in their hearts. They came for handouts; they came to take advantage. All that Hugo Chavez really cared about was that they came – to pay homage to him, that poor boy from that mud house in the Venezuelan Great Plains.

It was a great party indeed, for those who like that sort of thing – until the morning-time; because national hangovers are an awful thing.

Read the whole thing.

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Hugo Chavez: Banned in Venezuela

Nicolás Maduro apparently has solved all of Venezuela’s problems, so now he’s watching soap operas, and he’s not amused (video in Spanish):

Hugo Chávez TV series faces backlash from family and President Maduro. El Comandante, which Maduro called imperialist ‘trash’, retells the Venezuelan leader’s rise to power, claiming his policies contributed to current economic crisis

Produced by Sony Pictures Television, El Comandante premieres this week throughout Latin America and in the spring will be broadcast in the US by the Telemundo network.

Conceived by a staunch Chávez critic, the 60-episode series aims to retell the leftist leader’s improbable rise to power from his roots in poor, rural Venezuelawhile showing how the former tank commander’s authoritarianism laid the groundwork for the country’s current economic mess.

Former Venezuelan trade minister Moisés Naim said he came up with the idea after spending years trying to explain Chávez’s hold over Venezuelans to friends in Washington, where he now lives.

Sixty episodes. Yikes. Andrés Parra, who played Pablo Escobar, is cornering the villain market.

Hardly surprising, the new series is banned:

. . . in Venezuela, the National Telecommunications Commission banned the series and launched a campaign Tuesday urging Venezuelans to “report any cable channel that insults Hugo Chavez’s legacy by broadcasting the series ‘El Comandante.'”

Adán, Hugo’s real-life brother and Maduro’s Minister for Culture, announced not only new propaganda shows documentaries on Hugo but also

that two new Venezuelan productions would faithfully retell Chavez’s story: a film called “Chavez, El Comandante” and a series called “Chavez de Verdad” (The True Chavez).

It makes you wonder how they’ll be paying for all this.

In other Venezuela news from Prof. Hanke,

No matter what, El Comandante Will Not Be Televised.

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Venezuela: Odebrecht and the missing $11billion UPDATED

Hugo Chávez awarded Odebrecht $11 billion in infrastructure contracts, and (surprise!) the projects were never finished:
Brazil Scandal Leaves Dreams Undone in Venezuela.Hugo Chávez contracted Odebrecht to build grand projects costing billions, but most remain frozen

The company paid $98 million to intermediaries for services in Venezuela, knowing the money would be passed as bribes to officials, according to a plea deal signed by the company and published in December by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Hugo and his friend Lula were involved,

Brazilian prosecutors accuse Mr. da Silva of illegal lobbying to win Odebrecht contracts in a number of countries outside Brazil, including Venezuela, according to a spokeswoman for the prosecutors. His lawyers deny any wrongdoing by their client, who also faces other charges in Brazil.

Mr. Odebrecht’s in the clink, Lula’s under investigation, and Hugo’s dead.

$5 says they’ll never find the missing $11billion.

Read the full article here.

UPDATE
Peru, on the other hand, wants cash up front: Peru demands cash from Odebrecht ahead of plea deal talks

Peru has demanded a “significant sum” of cash from Brazilian builder Odebrecht before starting talks toward a plea deal that would reveal the names of officials it bribed over a period spanning three presidencies, the attorney general’s office said Monday.

Hamilton Castro, lead prosecutor investigating the company, declined to specify how much Peru was seeking initially, but said Odebrecht would have to pay a bigger sum later in a final agreement after it provides details on crimes it committed in Peru.

Last month Odebrecht, a family-owned conglomerate at the center of Brazil’s biggest ever graft scandal, signed a plea deal in the United States. It acknowledged distributing hundreds of millions in bribes across Latin America, including $29 million in Peru from which it got more than $143 million in benefits.
. . .
Last week the government of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said Odebrecht would be barred from bidding on public contracts thanks to new anti-graft rules and that it might sue the company for damages.

Smart moves.

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Hugo Chavez mural up in the Bronx

Inaugurated, for all to see,

“The young artist knows nothing about the character, he gets paid to paint”

Paid by the Communist Venezuelan regime. Independent journalist Maibort Petit tweeted that only journalists pre-approved by the Venezuelan government were allowed to get close, and that Delcy Rodríguez, Minister for Foreign Affairs attended the inauguration.

Let’s hope the artist was paid cash up front.

As you may recall, Chávez used to send cheap heating oil to the Bronx under the aegis of Joe Kennedy II.

Now the oil is gone but the propaganda lives on.

In other Venezuela news, No recall vote for Nicolas Maduro in 2016. Electoral authority rules that a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro cannot be held this year.



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