Venezuela and the Chavez Legacy

It all comes down to what will happen with this emergency government. Will a group of the regime be forgiven if they help getting rid of Maduro or will the new government force all the criminals out? Either way, while I understand people being nerveous, Venezuelans aren't in a situation where they can even bother with the lockdown either way. I see the PSUV regime and the virus situation having to be tackled together.

Edited by Malebranche on Apr 9th 2020 at 11:51:25 AM

Well, it was a fun birthday I have(well I still got like 10 minutes of it) the light only went once and for one hour......

this is a pretty damn fun experience.

There was a giant protest in Sucre today, involving over a thousand people that was attacked by the police forces.

That's just to show you that Venezuelans are more scared of starving to death than the virus. No one can properly follow the quarantine and considering the crisis won't be fixed as long as Maduro is in power, we have to get rid of him first.

Also, honestly fuck the police/military supporting this. That's just to show you the level insanity these guys are.

So Silvercorp USA, a Florida-based PMC created in 2018, yesterday announced they would be launching a coup in Venezuela on Twitter with a mighty fighting force of 62 people and tagged in Donald Trump. Signs are that it failed miserably.

What in the hell of shit?

Edited by Iaculus on May 5th 2020 at 2:06:49 PM

Bay of Pigs 2, but with even more stupidity.

Can someone give me the Cliff Notes version of the clusterfuck with Chavez and how it relates to the US and Socialism? I've seen stuff posted by "Rose Twitter" about "US Imperialism" which makes anything they post about as reliable to me as them being the Fox News of the left.

It's also an odd coincidence that John Bolton tweeted 'morning is coming to Venezuela' four days before this all kicked off.

Seriously now?

They are publicly tweeting about this shit? Just how dumb can anybody be?

Certain elements within the US administration (i.e. John Bolton, who has a history of meddling in the Middle East the same way) have their eyes on making use of the social instability in Venezuela that resulted from the mass poverty caused by Maduro's own corruption to further their own interests under the guise of ousting a dictator.

That said, Rose Twitter, proving it hasn't grown up since the Cold War as much as it likes to think it has, frequently uses the above as an excuse to argue in tankie fashion that because Maduro publicly identifies as a socialist and is thus One of Them, everything he does is justified, that he is in fact not a dictator at all or even that he's a completely innocent victim and that all his wrongdoings are the fault of the US even though that is also clearly bullshit. General fears of outsider meddling is valid and one thing, but the Venezuelan crisis is not something that can be resolved internally and the #HandsOffVenezuela movement largely consists of conspiracy theories and apologia for authoritarianism.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 5th 2020 at 1:15:48 PM

Ok that clears it up because a lot of what I read on Maduro painted him very poorly so I was puzzled why they defend him so.

A common rebuttal I see from Venezuelans elsewhere is "if Maduro is really as wonderful as you say he is, then why don't you trade places with me?", which says a lot. It's similar to what my parents had to say about people who whitewash the Cultural Revolution and praise Mao too much.

Fear of potential US imperialism and the idea that certain elements of the opposition are only as influential as they are because they're receiving under-the-counter backing from foreign governments based on the history of Latin America is one thing, and valid (to a point). Tarring all opposition to Maduro as inherently untrustworthy and secretly backed by the CIA/what-have-you or part of a US coup and declaring Maduro to be free of sin, with one particularly nutty claim being that any of Maduro's harmful policies are the result of bourgeois Venezuelan capitalists forcing him at gunpoint, or that any Venezuelan who speaks critically of him must be white or wealthy, is not.

The most disgusting in my eyes are the ones who declare that all Venezuelans who flee the country should be barred asylum because they're all white wealthy elites trying to smuggle their ill-gotten riches away from Maduro's righteous wrath. Because that is promoting human rights abuses in the name of hypocrisy, particularly when many of those kinds of claims can easily be disproven. And especially because as other Latin American tropers in this thread will tell you, Venezuelans who leave the country have plenty to deal with in the form of regular racism as is.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 5th 2020 at 2:46:56 PM

Hell, Guaido has my full support because he's a social democrat, not the US-backed conservative aggressor type; hell, someone they would have couped back in the Cold War for being remotely left-wing.

Times have changed. He's there because he wants to show that you can have left-wing reform in Venezuela without going full AuthSoc caudillo mode like Chavez did, and you can do it in a far more humane fashion. They oppose state capitalism too.

They're sensible types, and like us Hongkongers, a bunch of thugs have used their name to do nasty things that the government naturally paints as representative of the entire opposition.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on May 5th 2020 at 11:48:34 AM

I've seen plenty of claims from leftists, especially anarcho-communists who you'd think would have the most reason to be opposed to authoritarian leftists like Maduro, that Guaido is only as successful as he is because he is supported by Westerners. I have no idea of how true that actually is, though.

Any reasonable criticisms of Guaido that I've seen from leftists have more to do with the fact that he's playing his chips poorly and that he may be more interested in getting power for himself than enacting genuine reform, but they agree that Maduro does indeed need to be removed.

Edited by AlleyOop on May 5th 2020 at 2:53:09 PM

Perhaps they saw him asking the US for support as a major upset, plus Chavez was notably ridiculously charismatic and that tends to leave a big impression on people.

Also, yes, the one main thing that you have to keep in mind is that he might've already fallen into the same trap, or is at risk of tossing it all away to play the game.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on May 5th 2020 at 11:52:00 AM

Considering how incompetent his efforts have been... I'd say they're probably right.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 5th 2020 at 11:50:57 AM

Guaido has also become unpopular among the Right wing opossition that see him as a weak indecisive politician at best or a outright fake opossitor at worse

Foreign policy-wise, Guaido's fine with Cuba and China sticking around. The former, he'll cut their oil supply, but the Cubans have to remove themselves from the military and decision-making positions; a small nation like them should really know better than to play puppets.

Guaido's positive comments on China are pretty worrying to me, although he does appear to be trying to convince them to withdraw economic support for Maduro. The thing is, Beijing likes Maduro very, very much, and likely isn't going to listen to a US-backed opposition figure at all.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on May 5th 2020 at 12:02:29 PM

Guaido is super weak, the entire.opossition is fairly weak as the amount of time has caused Venezuelans, especially Right wing ones, to feel a Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy IRL and also, a lot of the most ardent opossitors already left the country.

They set 2019 to be THE decisive battle and...they lost

Edited by KazuyaProta on May 5th 2020 at 2:03:25 PM

I see, thanks. So that's why Maduro's sitting happily on TikTok.

Yeah, that sounds like a strategy that has little chance of success.

I see why Guaido's doing it, if he can convince Maduro's patrons to abandon him then it would make replacing his rule much easier. But it's not going to become viable unless he can show some serious results, which he really hasn't.

Yeah, the opossition has become depressed.

The head of Silvercorp has personally claimed direct responsibility for the Venezuelan coup-attempt. The two Silvercorp operatives who were arrested in Venezuela were carrying their passports, corporate ID cards, and veteran ID cards. That's a sensible move for self-preservation purposes, since it makes it a bit more difficult for your country to pretend you don't exist and leave you to rot in prison, but not great if you want to avoid an international incident.

There's something depressing about a coup so inept that it makes Maduro seem competent in comparison.

The only thing more depressing is that "Rose Twitter" is gonna use it as some kind of rallying moment/event around the man and the "Triumph of Socialism over American Capitalist Imperialism".

I mean, considering who's doing it and the history in the region it absolutely is a defeat of US capitalist imperialism.

Obviously Maduro isn't much better but that's neither here nor there.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 5th 2020 at 6:51:12 AM