Reports LATIN AMERICAN FOCUS
Free Fall Venezuela
Today, 96 per cent of Venezuelans live in poverty. While the economic
disaster that has befallen the nation can be blamed on factors such as the pandemic and falling oil prices most of the blame lies firmly on the repressive, incompetent and corrupt regime of
former bus driver Nicolas Maduro and, before him, ex-paratrooper Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Chavez was elected after a failed coup in 1992. Chavez served time in jail and then in 1998 at a time of intense dissatisfaction with Venezuela’s political elite he won the election promising to do away with poverty and Venezuela's old political system. He served as president for 14 years, from 2008 until his death in 2013 having consolidated power, rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution and declared Venezuela to be “a socialist republic.”
Making massive changes to the economic and political norms of Venezuela he nationalised businesses including many foreign-owned assets, including Exxon Mobil and distanced himself from the US government while forging closer ties with Cuba, Iran and Syria. During this time he clung to power, purged political opponents while investors fled.
His so-called “Revolución bolivariana,” deepened with the nationalisation of more key industries including the telecom and electricity industries as well as the Central Bank, along with ever tightening exchange controls and price controls on certain basic goods.
P72 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
As violence has become worse Maduro has
encouraged Venezuelans to eat less, bizarrely blamed rising crime on the young watching Spiderman and has even claimed that Chavez came to visit him in the form of a bird and often sleeps on his mentor’s grave.
Investment in Venezuela plummeted. Initially elected under an anti-corruption promise corruption grew even more rampant under his presidency. Meanwhile, high crime rates soared. In 2013 the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published the homicide report, and Venezuela had the second highest homicide rate in the world
Nicolás Maduro was elected in 2013 and for the vast majority of Venezuelans things have only got worse. Between 2014 and 2020, the Venezuelan economy shrank by as much as four-fifths leaving millions in poverty. More than 5.6 million people have left the country.
As violence has become worse Maduro has encouraged Venezuelans to eat less, bizarrely blamed rising crime on the young watching Spiderman and has even claimed that Chavez came to visit him in the form of a bird and often sleeps on his mentor’s grave. While these comments are so bizarre that they verge on the comical the reality is that Venezuela has become ever closer to what many have described as a failed narco-state.
Yet despite this there are signs that the outlook is not quite as bleak as it was before. Tat is not to say that things aren’t still bad. 70 per cent of the population lives in extreme poverty. Today inflation runs rampant in the he once- prosperous OPEC nation. However, in 2019 Maduro relaxed price controls and allowed for widespread transactions in foreign currency.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154
