David Frum. “Will Venezuela abandon Chavismo?” CNN.COM. 19. Feb. 2014. Web.Apr.7.2104. David Frum, CNN contributor and also editor at The Daily Beast. He is the author of eight books, including a new novel, "Patriots," and a post-election e-book, "Why Romney Lost." Frum was a special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002. The author in the article “Will Venezuela abandon Chavismo?” considerate the possibility of a changed in actual politics in Venezuela. He relate his own experiences, when he visited Venezuela in 2010, everybody was talking about elite Cuban paramilitary police units that Chavez had supposedly borrowed from Fidel Castro. But change is coming to Cuba too, and if the units ever existed, they certainly have not been visible in the past's week’s clashes. This article offers a good comparison between other countries situation and Venezuela. For Example, he mentioned that Perhaps the Syrian inspires Maduro to hope that he can hang on if his forces just kill enough people. But the real situation is Venezuela is located in a very different neighborhood, close not only to the United States but also to democracies in Colombia and Brazil that take a dim view of murderous dictatorship. As the Castro regime in Cuba has demonstrated, a moribund authoritarian system can take a long time dying. But the Castro brothers were serious about hanging on to power. Chavismo was serious about nothing. Diego Ore and Brian Ellsworth. “Venezuela protest death toll rises to 33”. Reuter. 22. Mar.2014. Web.4.Apr.2014. Diego Ore and Brian Ellsworth, two journalist of Reuter explained that the cause of the protest are complaining of soaring prices and product shortages have vowed to remain in the streets... ... middle of paper ... ...ns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD., and also a Senior Fellow and Director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute in Washington,D.C. offers on this article a synopsis about Venezuela’s economic. Steve Claims Venezuela’s downward economic spiral began in earnest when Hugo Chavez imposed his “unique” brand of socialism on Venezuela. For years, the country has sustained a massive social spending program, combined with costly price and labor-market controls, as well as an aggressive foreign aid strategy. This fiscal house of cards has been kept afloat barely by oil revenues. As the price tag of the regime has grown, the country has dipped more and more into the coffers of its state-owned oil company, PDVSA, and (increasingly) relied on the country’s central bank to fill the fiscal gap. This has resulted in a steady decline in the bolivar’s value.
“A revolution is not a bed of roses ... a revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.” – Fidel Castro, 1961. This statement was certainly true for Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries during the Cuban Revolution, an armed revolt that took place between July 26th 1953 and January 1st 1959, which ended successfully. During this revolt, many of Fidel Castro’s fellow revolutionaries were killed in this process of violent revolution (My Life, p133, 2006). However, Castro and his accompanying revolutionaries, of which he was the leader, also caused their fair share of deaths using brutality in the name of revolution and political justice. Using various combat tactics, the most prominent being guerrilla warfare, the Cuban Revolution was certainly won through the use of violence and brutality.
In today’s world, a leader of a country has an immense power. That person can either wisely nurture the nation he or she has sworn to guide, or be responsible for the steps backward that country will be doomed to take at the end of their rule. There is no in between. Venezuela, a South American country that has a coastline on the Caribbean Sea, is a prime example of this truth. Venezuela is an oil-rich country that suffers from a multitude of problems created by previous governments, most notably the Chávez regime. Under Chávez’s rule, the country was guided down a devastating and highly controversial path (Rohter). Although this oil-rich nation had been lead by flawed leaders before, Hugo Chávez was the man who is ultimately responsible for the fact that Venezuela is currently spiraling out of control. A champion of the poor, his legacy in Venezuela can be felt still today (Rohter). Although he died over a year ago, the ultimately disastrous choices Chávez made for Venezuela have culminated into violent protests that began in February 2014. Hugo Chávez was a highly controversial leader whose socialistic ideologies and policies that focused on elevating the poor continue to affect not only the current president, Nicolas Maduro, but the country as a whole by providing the fuel to the violent protests occurring in the country due to issues such as inflation, government corruption, terrible crime rates, and food shortages.
Ellner, Steve, and Daniel Hellinger, eds. Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2003.
Hugo Chavez was the president of Venezuela, when he was president he advocated an end to corruption, increased spending on social programs, and redistribution of the country’s oil wealth. Just like Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez wanted to represent the people that had been looked over, discriminated against, and marginalized. Even though both men had a good majority support of their country there were still people that disapproved their presidency and advocated for them to step down. In Evo Morales case opposition was concentrated in the wealthy eastern lowland province of Santa Cruz, Bolivia's financial powerhouse. Regional leaders there drove a crusade for more noteworthy self-sufficiency, contending that Mr. Morales' socialist approaches were harming the economy. Some of the indigenous pioneers, earthy people and activists who helped put Evo Morales in government have censured him, contending that his strategies appear to support the rich, light-skinned
Through the years, Chavez government opposition movements and student force have became stronger and gained support from many national and international non-government organizations interested in the Venezuela crisis, therefore, even if it seems impossible, opposition movements, including student force and common-civil people should keep fighting for having freedom of speech and press.
Since 1821, corruption has always existed in Venezuela. In the 18th and 19th centuries the amount of government corruption wasn’t a straight line and it all depended on who was in office. Now with Chávez, the corruption is off the charts and reaching levels never seen before. The a big piece of the corruption stems from the oil revenues. In the eight years of Chávez’s presidency, the government has received between $175 and $225 billion from just oil and new debt alone. Chávez was almost solely on an anti corruption campaign and not it has just now became the norm and takes over all aspects of life in Venezuela. People almost have no privacy
During the 1950’s it was said that a young communist named Fidel Castro threated the revolutionary contagion in the hemi-sphere, he did not want any help while studying the way of Latin America. Which immediately set a spark that would dis-tant himself between the United States (Ford 1). But it seemed that Castro was looking more at Latin America’s revolutions since the Bogotaza riots of 1948-54. His example of the way of the Latin Americans began to leave remains strong. It was said that Fidel Castro went to a meeting in the Revolutionary time to cause trouble in 1959 (Skelly 1). After taking over Cuba, Castro immediately moved himself and other people who were on his side to communize the island’s nation and to turn Cuba in-to a base to
The last time the constitution was rewritten in Venezuela, there was a vote to decide whether the process was even going to start. Due to how unpopular the government is we do not this time I do not think the people of venusela is foing to be asked, Maduro could be heading toward dictatorship. One thing that’s already happening is the opposition is threatening to form a parallel government. That’s an extremely dangerous move. If the other side decides to arm itself, you could have fighting especially if there are two groups that consider themselves to be the government.
In my opinion, if my president wasn’t even a citizen of my country, that person should be ashamed. The president is a public figure for a country and shouldn’t deceive people just to have power. The president is the main portrayer in what the world looks to see what a country is like. Though Venezuela has political issues, Venezuela should take care of their people and give them food and supply to help.This article ties in with the absolutism unit because just like many rulers, they were obsessed with power and don’t think about their people.
Hugo Chavez was a powerful and positive force in addressing social issues, however, his singular focus on social issues at the expense of other matters of the country left the Venezuelan economy in tatters. In 1998, 50.4% of the Venezuelan population was living below the poverty line, where as in 2006 the numbers dropped to 36.3% (Chavez leaves). Although he aggressively confronted the issue of poverty in Venezuela, many other problems were worsened. Some Chavez critics say he used the state oil company like a piggy bank for projects: funding homes, and healthcare while neglecting oil infrastructure and production. Without growth in the oil ind...
The situation in Venezuela is really reaching levels that no one has ever imagined that such a country could have, people are starving because of the lack of food or because of the lack of money and the inability of buying it. People die because of diseases that could be curable or treatable but the lack of medicine doesn’t provide all people what they need to be cured. The police haven’t made some big efforts in trying to stop the criminals, violence and injustice in the city.
The economic crisis and corruption within the government has cause this discomfort, but how much damage has this government caused discomfort done. In Pop Culture Latin America! Chapter three the author talks about how many movements that have been caused in the twentieth century were caused by two things, Dictatorship from 1960 to 1970, and neoliberal economic policies in the 1980's so Could today's riots be caused by the same things.This discomfort is caused by one thing, that before the Latin American countries spread their resources too widely and this has caused the crisis with the economy which has most likely cases some if not all of the discomfort with the government. Many of Venezuela's discomfort is from their president Nicolas Maduro who has shared much of the country's oil resources with other countries.This has caused many parts of the country to spiral down resulting in many citizens either having a lack of food or money. So most discomfort has to do with the economy, but how does this fit in with many of the riots? Many of Latin America's economic problems have led to the riots that either violently hurt or kill many people, but the reason that these riots happen is the same reason there is an economic crisis, the government. Many of the rioters have a disagreement with the government whether it be about a long-awaited issue or
Meaning that tactics would have to differ from one area to the other. In the jungle there would be more freedom of maneuver and less concern towards collateral damage compared to the urban centers that have a densely populated areas. Being a modernized country Venezuela has many structures that would have to be taken account for in any operation. It does have the typical high payoff targets such as communication towers (to include radio and internet), power plants, dams, and bridges. Also, all their petroleum mining and refining sites would need to be safeguarded. 70 percent of the country’s GDP is based on exporting oil (Aaron, 2018). Most of the capabilities of Venezuela are state run such as water, sewage, trash, lower education, military, and police (Venezuela, 2018). In the private sector there are some electric companies, universities, medical, and some telecommunications (Venezuela, 2018). In Venezuela there are organizations such as military, police, and other government agencies. The largest organization is the copious amount of street and cartel affiliated gangs. Venezuela has the highest murder rate of any country in Latin America (Aaron, 2018). On top of that there are pro-government para military groups that harass those that would oppose the government (Aaron, 2018). The people of Venezuela are a Spanish speaking with about two thirds of the population having mixed ancestry (Venezuela, 2018). About 96 percent of the population is Roman Catholic (Funk & Wagnalls, 2017). The gap between the middle and upper-class vs the lower class is a huge divide. This is due large economic expansion due to the discovery of rich oil reserves, followed by a steep and continual economic depression (Aaron, 2018). Those that have gotten rich off oil have been able to keep their riches while most of the population is left in poverty and usual resort to crime. Still there is a strong sense of
Being born in Caracas and brought up between Venezuela and the United States, I quickly realized how corruption can hinder a country's economic and social development. At the age of eight I moved to Hallandale, Florida with my mother and twin sister. I was young and too naive to comprehend the gravity of the situation my home country was beginning to go thru. I began to understand the severity of the situation once I moved back to Caracas at the age of sixteen. Being able to live and experience the numerous differences between the two countries first-hand interested me. It intrigued me how it’s a norm for the average Venezuelan to accept violent crime and food insecurity, among other issues as natural everyday life occurrence. I constantly question why this has occurred in the past and keeps occurring to this day
Under the administration of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela is experiencing a humanitarian crisis. The executive branch has gained too much power which has led to the gradual destruction of human rights. Since 2014, there has been an increasing shortage of food, supplies, and medicine throughout the country with little response from the government. The Venezuelan government is able to intimidate, censor and punish anyone who criticizes them. The government lacks separation of powers, and judicial independence, and the Venezuelan Supreme Court justifies the government’s abuse of power. The judicial process ignores the basic due process rights of the political prisoners. Maduro claims that the issues in Venezuela were caused by the economic war and drop in oil prices, but until recently, the Venezuelan government altogether denied that there is a crisis. There is undeniably a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, and more needs to be done to help the country and its citizens recover.