Joel Hirst

Via commenter Old Timer,

Northern Brazil under State of Emergency over Mass Immigration of Venezuelans

The regional government of northern Roraima in Brazil has declared a state of emergency following the mass immigration of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s crisis over the past months.
. . .
The mass exodus of Venezuelans “has created serious difficulties for the teams in charge of providing logistical support (reception and shelter) at the border,” states the decree, and mentions health and safety concerns for both immigrants and Brazilians.

Campos recalled that Roraima received a third epidemiological alert last week from the Pan American Health Organization about the possibility that, as a result of migration, the region might experience a measles outbreak similar to the one that has affected the Venezuelan state of Bolívar for the last six months, where 38 cases of the disease have been confirmed.

It’s not only Brazil and Miami, there’s also Colombia’s Venezuela Problem

An imploding economy, marked by product shortages and hyperinflation, has driven almost half-a-million Venezuelans to live in Colombia. That number includes a 50-percent rise in the past three months alone as thousands of new migrants arrive each day in search of medicine, food, and work.

These are symptoms of a larger problem: Joel Hirst writes about The Arriving Ordeal

Fragility and conflict. Those were the words for the post-cold war period, which is now over.

Read the whole thing.

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.

Brazil: North in crisis over Venezuela migration

Venezuela, socialist basketcase