Caracas Chronicles

Like most online publications, we have a love-hate relationship with comments. We want to bring them back, but we’re committed to detoxifying them first.

A Venezuelan in the research team of the most recent Nobel Prize in Medicine winner brought to mind the story of Baruj Benacerraf, the only Venezuelan who has received the price. Saying Benacerraf’s was a triumph for Venezuelan science is inaccurate, but it did help cement the somewhat successful process to make science a serious discipline in the country.

Chavismo has proven to be efficient in only one thing: taking over Venezuelan media, shaping the news to their convenience, turning the citizens against journalists and restricting or, well, anhilating freedom of information.

The Chilean Left created a petition to stop the Trump administration from intervening in Venezuela. We don’t think an online petition has that kind of power and Chile seems to forget who helped them out of their last dictatorship.

The Merida firefighters from the donkey mockery aren’t the only ones on trial. Firemen in Apure and Lara were also brought to justice for showing what their working conditions are like.

Primero Justicia councilman Fernando Albán was buried yesterday. Citizens know what happened, even if the government disguises it with smoke and mirrors. Just what really happened on that tenth floor?

Venezuelan land and waters are haunted by spirits, monsters and ghosts. Each one has preferences about what kind of victims it attacks and each can be placated or vanquished with a specific method. The Oriental belief system is rich, alive and well.

You might have read this in February, as the petro was supposed to be launched in February. Maduro even hit a symbolical “on” switch pressing enter last week. And still… cue crickets.

Workers in the public sector, are now showing their dissatisfaction with the government and how Maduro’s economic measures mean that there’s no fair salary escalation. They’re all equally poor.

After his tragic death while under SEBIN custody, stories of Fernando Albán’s life and what he did for his coworkers in the Cabildo and even for people who disagreed politically with him, from someone who knew him.

Since they control most of the media and Venezuelans don’t have access to the news or different points of view, the regime can fabricate and spread a convenient narrative. This is how poorly informed citizens answered questions about the economic measures.

As the crisis deepens and the possibility of an election to approve a new Constitution hovers over our heads, the old debate of voting or not in an election without fair conditions resurfaces stronger than ever before. What has changed?

Crossing the border to Colombia, then to Ecuador or Peru is a long, painful journey even if all they carry is a backpack. Venezuelan migrants find some help in Colombian cities, but tiredness, cold and hunger are constant companions.

Opposition councilman Fernando Albán died today. Two contradicting versions from the government and the fact that Venezuelans know that SEBIN officials torture political prisoners make us doubt that he killed himself, as they said happened.

People all over Bolívar State have got gold fever. They travel to the mines and make ends meet by selling everything they can think of to miners. The problem is that, in addition to gold fever, they could get malaria or measles. As profitable as the business might be, is it worth the risk?

La Nona is a play that symbolically talks about the Argentine dictatorship, about its ambition and its desire to destroy everything. Is chavismo La Nona?

This article doesn’t seek to analyze the possibility of a U.S. intervention nor the geopolitics affecting that scenario. It tries to get a grasp of the effects that the Operación Cóndor is having on the politicians that want a change of government in Venezuela, but still refuse to support an intervention.

This is how we fight back! We’re putting our crypto where our knowledge is. In this case, it’s in omipedia, the encyclopedia of all things crypto.

After the government set the prices of beef, as part of Maduro’s economic measures, this protein disappeared in the Zulia region. Farmers are trying but can’t keep up, they have to sacrifice their revenue and deal with threats of expropriation.

Last year, as a direct response to protests, the ANC was decreed into existence by Maduro, violating Chávez’s precious 1999 Constitution. They’re supposed to be writing a new one but there’s just too much secrecy around it.

Gustavo Coronel knows how to take on challenges. In his book Memoria ciudadana, he writes about what life before Chávez was like for men like him and how he knew what the chavista debacle was going to be like, from the start.

As the crackdown on what’s left of independent media in Venezuela continues, a new study establishes how the government also shifts the public conversation to its advantage.

Maracaibo mayor Omar Prieto raided Las Pulgas market in Maracaibo last week. What will this do for people? What will it solve? Nothing. The government apparatus works like a smooth machine in at least one way: people blame, hate and root against the wrong culprit all the time.

The price of what had been the cheapest gas on Earth was supposed to increase recently. A long-overdue measure that Maduro assures will improve the economy, but will only deepen the fierce control the State has over the average Venezuelan life.