Socialism in Venezuela is Literally Killing its Citizens

In the news lately, readers may have seen horrific images of strife in Venezuela — hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets clashing with riot police, and heavily armored officers firing fireworks, tear gas and marbles into crowds. Demonstrators have burned police officers with Molotov cocktails.

These riots are the product of years’ worth of Socialist government policies that have caused widespread poverty and starvation through measures of austerity, despite the fact that Venezuela as a country is home to the largest known oil reserves in the world — greater than those held by Saudi Arabia.

As a nation, Venezuela has slowly slid downhill as the populist rule of former strongman Hugo Chávez gave way to the government of his appointed successor Nicolás Maduro, who was elected in 2013 with just 50.6 percent of the country’s vote. While Chávez initially was popular for the Socialist decrees he instituted that helped thousands of the nation’s poorest citizens, his reforms increasingly took on a more hardcore nature, and the weakness of the country’s economy exposed the reality that these measures not only were not improving people’s lives, but were harming Venezuela as a state.

During his tenure, Chávez built a hardy cult of personality that saw his supporters labeled as Chávistas and his policies referred to as Chávism. Chávez sought to build Communist-style communal councils, state-sponsored communes and planned communal cities where property would be socially owned.

Just after Chávez took office in 1999, his popularity soared to 85 percent among the nation’s citizens. But by the time of his death in 2013, it had fallen to 62 percent, with fewer and fewer people remaining convinced that his policies of nationalization of private enterprises and social welfare programs were effective. With Maduro, the numbers fell even further, from 44 percent when Maduro was serving as Chávez’s vice president to 22 percent for the new leader in 2014. As of 2017, with daily riots in the streets, his popularity is likely in the extremely low single digits.

Chávez was able to construct an elaborate public image that promoted himself as a fiercely anti-American patriot who was subject to CIA assassination plots and coup attempts (a 2002 coup did succeed in removing Chávez from office, but only for two days).

Conspiracy theories were promulgated by state media and were loosely believed by the nation’s vulnerable voters. After 2010, some people claimed that the U.S. government gave Chávez stomach cancer in revenge for Chávez’s public labeling of U.S. President George W. Bush as a “donkey” and calling attention to photos of Bush at the 2008 Beijing Olympics that showed the former president making obscene gestures and too drunk to walk.

But by the time Maduro took office, these plots and political subterfuges took on the character of soap opera storylines, with no proof or evidence whatsoever to back them up. In the meantime, Maduro’s wife’s nephews were arrested by the U.S. DEA for drug trafficking, and funds of theirs have been traced to Maduro’s 2013 election campaign and 2015 parliamentary elections. It’s been shown that Maduro’s wife sits on the board of a Panamanian company owned by at least one of these men.

The real issue in Venezuela — like many Central and South American nations — is the extreme class stratification of the country’s society. Despite the fact that between 1958 and 1998, Venezuela produced more than $300 billion in oil wealth — the equivalent of 20 post-World War II Marshall Plans — a very small elite holds 95 percent of the country’s riches.

In the 1990s, the standard of living for most residents of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, were just above those for Port-au-Prince, Haiti. And in places like North Korea, this elite is highly connected to and protected by the government. It’s this elite that has exclusively benefitted from the country’s oil sales. It should be noted that the electronic voting machines suspected as being susceptible to hacking in the 2016 U.S. election were made by a company run by a cadre of these elite Venezuelans.

Epidemic levels of corruption have left common citizens of this South American country unemployed and created rates of currency inflation that are notoriously like those of 1920s Germany. By some estimates, the rate of Venezuelan inflation approached 750 percent in 2015. By 2016, shortages of consumer goods and even basic necessities like food began to be reported. The government tried instituting price controls to combat the inflation, but by numerous accounts, these only made matters worse. According to Fox News, in the last year, the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds due to starvation, and some citizens have taken to eating street animals to survive.

Meanwhile, Maduro has been seen dancing on television dozens of times since his people began rioting in the streets. The government has been disconnected from voters for some time, and in March, the Maduro-controlled Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) took away legislative powers of the country’s National Assembly in what was labeled by international observers as a “self-coup.”

A few days later, the TSJ relented and returned these powers to the Assembly, but publicly, whatever faith voters may have had left in their nation’s leader was shattered. Citizens began turning out in the streets for what has been called “the Mother of all Protests.”

The New York Times reported that despite the fact that up until 2016, Venezuela had been an ostensible democracy, “many now describe [it] as not just an authoritarian regime, but an outright dictatorship.” In April, 29 people were killed in demonstrations in the country, and Maduro called for a new constitution to replace the one instituted by Chávez in 1999.

This would allow elections in 2018 to be skipped and would essentially eliminate all democratic institutions in the nation. More than 68 percent of Venezuelans oppose Maduro’s proposals, and 72 percent consider the present government a de-facto dictatorship. Human rights organizations have joined with universities and the Catholic Church in condemning Maduro’s administration and calling for new elections to be held.

In response to the opposition and the constant demonstrations, Maduro has formed 920 military battalions to counter rioters. Protesters have been taken to military, rather than civilian, courts and have told non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that the Venezuelan government is forcing political prisoners to eat pasta laced with human feces.

Large numbers of nations and international bodies around the world have denounced Maduro’s moves, and in the U.S., Senator Marco Rubio tweeted that Venezuela is “officially a dictatorship.”

After one government official made fun of some protesters having to crawl through sewage, demonstrators began hurling a new weapon they call a “puputov” — a glass bottle filled with human excrement. National highways have been closed by protests and many businesses have been looted. Harrowing videos have been uploaded to social media showing protesters being injured and/or killed by police.

It’s this situation that’s drawn the attention of the U.S. government and forced President Trump to respond. “People don’t have enough to eat. People have no food. There’s great violence. And we will do whatever is necessary, and we’ll work together to do whatever is necessary to help with fixing that, and I’m talking on a humanitarian level. A stable and peaceful Venezuela is in the best interest of the entire hemisphere. America stands with all of the people in our great hemisphere yearning to be free,” said Trump at a press conference with the president of Columbia, Juan Santos.

Like Trump, Santos is concerned about the situation in Venezuela because his country shares a long border with the Socialist country that refugees are flowing over.

Shortly after the news conference, the Treasury Department froze the U.S. assets of eight members of Venezuela’s TSJ. This is after sanctioning Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami two months ago for his ties to drug smugglers.

Further action may be necessary if Venezuelan leader Maduro attempts to consolidate his power any further at the expense of — or via violence to — his country’s citizens. As it stands, this embattled South American nation is probably one of the last places in the world an American reader would want to be.


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