Venezuela: A Revolt of the Well-Off, Not a 'Terror Campaign'

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Thursday, March 20, 2014 by The Guardian

Venezuela: A Revolt of the Well-Off, Not a 'Terror Campaign'

John Kerry’s rhetoric is divorced from the reality on the ground, where life goes on – even at the barricades
by Mark Weisbrot

Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. I thought that I, too, was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in Caracas this month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.

Major media outlets have already reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement: it’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas, it’s almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira, where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.

Walking from the working-class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there was no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS), no matter what John Kerry tells you. The metro also ran very well, although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations until their eviction this week.

I got my first glimpse of the barricades in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades – which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently been shot dead for doing so). But even here at the barricades, life was pretty much normal, save for some snarled traffic. On the weekend, the Parque del Este was full of families and runners sweating in the 90-degree heat – before Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I was told, were disappointed when the less well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are still crowded at night.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/20-6

[grahamhgreen]

1. kick

[delrem]

2. and kick it again.

"Images forge reality, granting a power to ... even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it."

We're being fed them by the dozens. Cell shaded photos with bloody reds redder than red, exquisitely red against neon lit backgrounds of bruised flesh, illustrating diatribes of hate for "Chavez" and the "Chavista" perpetrators of this evil incarnate: an insanely horrific enemy wrecking an economy which, the posters say, would otherwise be a brilliant addition to the best of the best world economies, offering succor to middle class and the disadvantaged alike, along the lines of Denmark and Norway.

It's fucking well amazing stuff to read, to be witness to.

[mecherosegarden]

3. I am glad that Panama is lending his seat to Corina Machado to talk

at the OEA tomorrow. You may agree with what Maduro is doing, but killing students ? And my country is in ruins! And by the way, seeing Cuban nationals wearing the Venezuelan army uniform is not right either!

Sadly, Venezuelans in Florida ( and around the country) have found a more positive response from the right than from the Democrats. And many of them are American Citizen who will be voting soon.

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