Caracas Chronicles

• The speaker of Maduro’s Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, acted as the Communications minister once more to talk about the alleged conspiracy that Operation Gedeón was going to be. 
  • He repeated the claims of paramilitary camps, the alleged complicity of President Iván Duque and the alleged orders by Donald Trump, and he called the operation the “largest aggression against Venezuela in the last century and a half,” despite there being no objective variables to back his statement. 

• It’s been a year since the Cepella massacre, the Venezuelan prison in Portuguesa, which left 49 dead inmates and 75 injured. Family members of the victims haven’t had justice or reparations by the State, for a tragedy that began with inmates protesting because they were hungry. 
  • The Prisons Ministry said that prisoners were trying to escape, but the Venezuelan Observatory of Prisons registered victims and family members’ testimonies saying that it was because of a protest. 

• There were 74 violations of freedom of expression during the first four months of the year. 
  • Espacio Público said the figure represents a 54% drop compared to the same period last year. 
  • In this report presented on World Press Freedom Day, Marisabel Rodríguez said that most of the violations are tied to censorship, intimidation and restrictions on journalistic coverage. 
  • There were 390 cases and 965 violations in 2021. It’s been the third year with the highest number of cases Espacio Público has registered since 2002. 

• Oil exports kept steady at 700,000 BPD for the third month in a row. Three-fourths of the shipments were sent to China, Malaysia, and the UAE, according to PDVSA documents. 
  • Reuters says that exports have stabilized in the last couple of months. After the Merey oil ran out in April, PDVSA is preparing to re-start two of its four enhancers, which are capable of turning over 600,000 barrels of extra-heavy oil from the Orinoco to exportable products. 
  • The lack of lighter oils has caused shortages of gas and diesel fuel. PDVSA is still sending 50,000 barrels of oil and gas to Cuba. 

• A new shipment of 50,000 doses of Sputnik V has arrived, adding to the 380,000 that had been delivered, out of the 10 million doses that Maduro said they’d bought from Russia in December. Venezuela has only received 930,000 doses, including Sputnik V and Sinopharm. 
• Maduro’s Health minister said that Venezuela had “1,48,000 doses, which would be enough to vaccinate a little over 800,000 people.” 
• About COVAX, Alvarado said that the regime has used diplomacy to release frozen funds abroad. He said that “pretty much everything” has been paid for in order to vaccinate “over five million people” and that they’ll receive the first shipment in July. 
• Maduro’s Culture minister, Ernesto Villegas, excused his previous story about the murder of Juan Pablo Pernalete in 2017 with a text saying that he publicly spoke of a hypothesis that he didn’t come up with, but had been published in newspaper Últimas Noticias. 
• The mothers of Hospital de Niños JM de los Ríos patients protested the institution’s critical conditions and against the deaths of six children since March. 
• A flood destroyed a Venezuelan and Haitian refugee camp in Manaos, Brazil. Many lost their documents and belongings. No local media has provided an exact figure of missing or injured people. 
• Fedecámaras president Ricardo Cussano said that the recent wage increase is “one more announcement” and that what we really need is social dialogue to “re-design monetary and fiscal policies”. 
• On Monday, eight criminals ambushed a GNB command in Santa Rita, Zulia. They stole two rifles and a gun, damaged some vehicles, kidnapped and murdered Sgt. Dega Rodríguez and injured another officer. 
• Punto de Corte reported three deaths and 12 injured from a CICPC operation in the El Botalón mine in the Piar municipality in Bolívar. 
• Tomás Guanipa, ambassador of the caretaker government to Colombia, said he met with Pablo Casado, leader of Spain’s Partido Popular. Guanipa said he thanked him for his unwavering support of the Venezuelan democratic cause. 
• Juan Guaidó talked to the Netherland’s Foreign Minister Stef Blok. “We agreed on the importance of achieving an agreement to solve the political and humanitarian crises in Venezuela, where the international community has a fundamental role,” he said. 

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Venezuelan doctor Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, devoted to human rights and up until now the adjunct regional director of Amnesty International, was announced as the new president of WOLA. She’s the first Latina in this role.