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.
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.
After a month of Maduro’s new economic measures, what’s life like on the formerly crowded streets of Caracas? Lots of closed shops, and not a lot of hope.
Maracaibo now looks like a city devastated by war. But that’s not what happened. It’s what chavismo has done to the second most important city in Venezuela: crime, chaos, collapse of public services, hunger, poverty and desperation.
A group of Venezuelan citizens, including several former government officials, have been charged of laundering two billion dollars from PDVSA contracts in Andorra.
Out of dollars, the government tries to entice Venezuelans to bring their own.
Farmers mining bitcoin, pranes using digital traces to kidnap people, hackers in shantytowns at the service of the secret police, chieftains paying for bots, biopolitical control and a presidential assassination attempt using drones. My country is a bad sci-fi movie.
Long lines are back. They never left entirely, but they did become a rare sight. After Maduro’s paquetazo, panicked citizens are buying everything they can. Food, medicine, gas and cash are scarce, but fear and anguish are not.
There’s a reason why the ILO established in its 26th Convention that governments must consult with the private sector before proposing an increase in the minimum wage.
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