The Media Myth of 'Once Prosperous' and Democratic Venezuela Before Chavez

[Judi Lynn]

AUGUST 26, 2021

JOE EMERSBERGER AND JUSTIN PODUR

The following piece is adapted from the authors’ new book, Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media and 20 Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela, published by Monthly Review Press.

In his State of the Union address on February 6, 2019, Donald Trump said:

We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom—and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.

Trump’s ridiculous comment was not considered controversial, because the Western media, including the anti-Trump outlets like the New York Times, have spent many years conveying a lie: that Venezuela had been very prosperous and democratic until Hugo Chávez, and then his successor Nicolás Maduro, came along and ruined everything. If readers believe that, then they may indeed wonder, “Why shouldn’t the US government help Venezuelans return to that prosperous state?”

But this attitude is the result of common deceptions about Venezuela’s economic history, and it ignores how the rise of Chávez actually brought democratic reform, not regression, to Venezuela. The story the Western media tell should instead make people wonder how Chavismo could have become the dominant political force if everything had once been wonderful in Venezuela.

More:
https://fair.org/home/the-media-myth-of-once-prosperous-and-democratic-venezuela-before-chavez/

[I_UndergroundPanther]

1. Capitalists

Destroy any government or society or culture that dares to exist outside the bullshit system of capitalism.

Because if there was a country that ever had a thriving society without capitalism ,all the citizens of capitalistic countries would demand,why can't we have that system over here?

And the rich people cannot justify thier wealth hoarding or greed if people step out of the oppression and lies that capitalism is. They'd say fuck capitalism and those who become rich under capitalism will
See it as a threat to thier hoard and hegemony.

[multigraincracker]

2. Just like the USA of today.

The top 2% were sailing in big yachts, while 90% are swimming.

[abqtommy]

3. Again the media shows itself to be part of the problem instead of being part

of the solution. And of course the media is controlled by the monied interests.

[Colgate 64]

4. I just adore hearing people who have never even

been to Venezuela, much less under standing the country and its cultures are so ready to make sweeping pronouncements about issues and events they don't begin to understand. We are truly a nation of arm-chair quarterbacks, especially with things we don't know anything ablout.

[dpibel]

5. Apparently you are not such a person.

So help us out with your under standing!

Who is right and who is wrong in the OP?

[Colgate 64]

6. No, I'm not. I lived and worked in Latin America

for more than 25 years including Venezuela. The entire premise that Chavez didn't wreck the economy doesn't even qualify as a decent lie. Venezuela was the envy of South America pre-Chavez. It had a booming economy, a strong middle class and was making strides in improving the lot of those economically marginalized. All this went out the window with Chavez. He and his cronies pilfered untold millions and millions of dollars from state funds and spent part of it establishing vote-getting programs that were not sustainable but only intended to buy a portion of the population's loyalty. Anyone looking at Venezuela after Chavez and his idiot-henchman Maduro's tenure would not recognize the country. The economy is in total shambles, public services are crumbling and millions of Venezuelans are leaving for any place that will have them. It didn't have to be like this but it is because the populace fell prey to a scheming golpista.

[dpibel]

7. So odd

That narrative doesn't seem at all to jibe with these charts:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/VEN/venezuela/gnp-gross-national-product

[Colgate 64]

8. There's a saying: Liars figure and figures lie

The rosy data shown on the charts certainly explains why millions of Venezuelans are risking life and limb to leave the country and go anywhere that they can get to, usually by walking. Colombia has more than 2,000,000 most of whom are engaged in begging and/or prostitution. Brazil's number is probably significantly higher. Hardly the signs of a bouyant economy.

[dpibel]

9. Really?

This has nothing to do, I suppose, with the collapse of the market for Venezuelan crude?

I mean, you're positing that the World Bank is putting out "rosy data" and figures that lie?

That's your position?

[Colgate 64]

14. The collapse of Venezuelan crude was only one factor. The other

was that the entire petroleum sector was under the control of Chavez and his acolytes. They bled it dry, neglecting necessary repairs and defunding it. You can't sell what you can't get out of the ground and that's their problem. In addition Venezuelan crude is so heavy that there is little market for it. It's extremely difficult and costly to refine so only the Chinese are permanent buyers. Don't forget that the World Bank relies on figures provided by the Chavez and Maduro governments. Any of those figures are highly suspect.
Venezuela is a hardly functioning country. The health system is it total shambles with even the leading hospitals in Caracas without running water, electricity. drugs or medical supplies. Patients are required to buy their own supplies and bring them with them. The electric sector has also suffered a total lack of maintenance and upkeep which is why there are constant blackouts. Public safety is nonexistent since the gangs include the police as well as the Chavez-created local militias (armed and highly dangerous). The Venezuelan currency is so devalued as to be worth less than monopoly money. People are literally starving, except for the party members who receive a special card allowing them to buy additional food.

Go take a flight to Caracas (if you dare) and spend 2 or 3 days there. If you're not killed while being robbed you might come back with a different perspective.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Posted before, bears repeating:Does It Matter That the Venezuelan Opposition Is Funded by the US?

Many of the anti-government opposition groups taking to the streets in Venezuela have been backed by the US for years and are supported by wealthy Venezuelans. Is that reason to be concerned?

RD
By Ray Downs

In the summer of 2007, the vehemently pro–Hugo Chávez journalist and lawyer Eva Golinger got on Venezuelan state TV and, with the help of a flow chart hand-drawn on flimsy poster board, called out several fellow journalists who had allegedly accepted US funding to help bring down the country's famously left-wing, anti-American president.

“These journalists are destabalizing agents,” Golinger said, and explained that that they had participated in programs paid for by the US that were designed to promote a pro-American agenda, the goal of which was to create anti-socialist sentiment in Venezuela.

The accusation didn't cause the kind of uproar Golinger was hoping for. The journalists were briefly investigated by a government committee, but that prompted an immediate public outcry—in fact, many Chavistas rejected such McCarthy-like tactics, claiming they made them look bad.

The incident did cause the US Embassy in Caracas some concern, however. In a cable released by Wikileaks titled “IV Participants and USAID Partners Outed, Again” that describes Golinger's TV appearance and the aftermath, an embassy official wrote that people were becoming wary of getting involved with any enterprise funded by the US. “It is particularly hard to persuade Chávez supporters to participate in a program they perceived as potentially career-ending,” the official wrote. In other words, though Golinger embarrassed herself with her shit-stirring, the US was really trying to bring down Chávez by funneling money to his opponents.

Since then, the US has continued its longstanding practice of funding programs that it often claims are aimed at promoting fair elections and human rights, but also strengthen Venezuelan opposition groups—and this money may be influencing the ongoing protests that have helped put the country in a political crisis.

In the summer of 2007, the vehemently pro–Hugo Chávez journalist and lawyer Eva Golinger got on Venezuelan state TV and, with the help of a flow chart hand-drawn on flimsy poster board, called out several fellow journalists who had allegedly accepted US funding to help bring down the country's famously left-wing, anti-American president.

These programs have several names and objectives. Some have clearly benevolent goals; one is targeted at discouraging violence against women, for instance. But other US efforts in Venezuela are unabashedly political, such as a 2004 USAID program that, according to a Wikileaks cable, would spend $450,000 to “provide training to political parties on the design, planning, and execution of electoral campaigns.” The program would also create “campaign training schools” that would recruit campaign managers and emphasize “the development of viable campaign strategies and effectively communicating party platforms to voters.”

Interestingly, it's illegal for a US political party or candidate to accept funding from any “foreign national,” which includes individuals, corporations, and governments. Venezuela passed a similar law in 2010, but this is easily circumvented by channeling the money through NGOs.

More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/av44kg/does-the-uss-funding-of-the-venezuelan-opposition-matter

[Judi Lynn]

11. Posted earlier, also bears repeating: Don't Believe Mainstream US Media Coverage of Venezuela

SONALI KOLHATKAR

March 6, 2015 by Truthdig

Diplomatic relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have just taken a big hit, with the government of Nicolas Maduro demanding that the American Embassy in Caracas reduce its staff by 80% and that U.S. visitors apply for visas.

Most symbolically, Venezuela has now barred a number of U.S. officials from visiting, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The backdrop to these political moves is a new crisis within Venezuela that has an old script: right-wing leaders plan a coup, with the U.S. deeply implicated; wealthy protesters take to the streets; and the Western media cover both stories with great sympathy while openly mocking the democratically elected government for attempting to defend itself.

The latest crisis began when authorities acting on Maduro’s orders arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma in mid-February. A well-known right-wing opposition figure, Ledezma will face trial for conspiracy against the government in what is now being called the “blue coup.” Among the pieces of evidence the government says it has collected are phone calls made by the mayor to a U.S. phone number, as well as a cache of weapons, including Molotov cocktails, grenade-like explosives and gas masks, found in the office headquarters of the opposition political party.

Ledezma is being held in the same facility as another right-wing politician, Leopoldo Lopez, who was arrested last year for overseeing a plan called La Salida, or “the exit,” to overturn the government. Lopez has had dealings with U.S. government figures including Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. According to Wikileaks, the two apparently “discussed possible media strategies with Lopez, and methods for getting his positive message to audiences in the U.S.” Just before Ledezma’s arrest, he, Lopez and other right-wing opposition leaders, including Maria Corina Machado, had signed a document calling for a “National Transition”—a move the government says was a precursor to a U.S.-backed coup.

The U.S. has long been involved in attempts to destabilize Venezuela’s socialist government. Its role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez is well-documented. Over the years, many organizations, including ones in which right-wing opposition figures are involved, have received funding from the likes of USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), both U.S.-based agencies notorious for fomenting unrest in countries hostile to U.S. interests. For example, Machado headed an organization named Sumate that has received funding from the NED.

. . .

Media coverage of Venezuela is so skewed that even the contentious issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to generate fairer coverage these days. Salas attributed the bias to the savvy organizing of right-wing Venezuelan groups, who he says have “learned the lesson very well from Cuban Americans in Miami and South Florida, so they know how to target the media, they know how to create public opinion and they have done that very well.”

But Salas thinks there is another explanation, and that is “the lack of knowledge that existed about Venezuela in the U.S. before Hugo Chavez came to power.” Most of what Americans knew about the country other than that it had abundant oil reserves was the fact that it once won a Miss Universe contest and was home to a few good baseball players. That ignorance has been a perfect blank slate on which the U.S. government, mainstream media and right-wing opposition parties have been able to carve their warped perspectives about Venezuela’s left-wing government.

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/06/dont-believe-mainstream-us-media-coverage-venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

12. The human cost of the US sanctions on Venezuela

Date 01.10.2019
Author Michael Fox

The US has a total embargo on Venezuela. The EU has imposed new sanctions. The goal is to oust President Nicolas Maduro. But the measures are hitting Venezuelans hard and are likely to kill many people.



Carolina Subero lives with her mother, sister and three children, in a tiny two-bedroom cinderblock home in the poor barrio of Caucaguita in eastern Caracas.

Subero sits on her couch, with her youngest daughter Jenjerlys. She's 5 years old, with long dark hair and big brown eyes. But she's also autistic and epileptic, which means she needs medicine regularly — medicine she can't get.

"She has seizures every day," says Subero. "The medicine helps to make them not as bad. When we can't get her medicine, they send her to the hospital."

She says that Jenjerlys used to take four different medicines for her seizures. But now Carolina can only get one of the drugs, and that only some of the time, because it's too expensive.

A box of pills that will last 10 days, costs around $8 (€7.3). That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a fortune in a country rattled by hyperinflation and a devalued Bolivar.

"I've had to trade food for the medicine," says Subero.

Jenjerlys is just one of more than 300,000 people who are estimated to be at risk because of lack of access to medicines or treatment because of sanctions on the country. That includes 16,000 people who need dialysis, 16,000 cancer patients and roughly 80,000 people with HIV, according to a report published in April by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The situation is poised to get worse, with the total US embargo of the country, announced in August, and new EU sanctions levied last week.

"We understand that the Pan American Health Organization has had to change the accounts [used to purchase the medicine] four times, because they keep getting blocked," says Marcel Quintana, the person in charge of the distribution of antiviral meds to the country's HIV patients, something Venezuela has provided free of charge for decades.

More:
https://www.dw.com/en/the-human-cost-of-the-us-sanctions-on-venezuela/a-50647399

[Judi Lynn]

13. US-led sanctions on Venezuela "devastating" to human rights, says UN report

By Stefano Pozzebon and Caitlin Hu, CNN

Updated 7:17 PM ET, Fri February 12, 2021

(CNN)A United Nations Special Rapporteur has issued a scathing report on the international pressure campaign on Venezuela, calling on the United States, United Kingdom and European Union to lift "devastating" economic sanctions.

The comments conclude a 12-day trip in the country by Alina Douhan, Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures. Speaking in Caracas on Friday, she said foreign sanctions "constitute violations of international law" and have exacerbated Venezuela's economic crisis with "ineffective and insufficient" carve-outs for humanitarian issues.
Her preliminary report, released Friday, painted a grim picture of a nation trapped with insufficient food or electricity, water rationing and little or no access to medicines and vaccines.

Venezuela's state-controlled economy began to decline in 2014 with falling oil prices and has been corroded by mismanagement and corruption. By the time the US first imposed broad economic sanctions in 2017, Venezuela already had the highest inflation in the world and was experiencing chronic shortages of basic goods.

However, Douhan's report emphasizes that existing "calamities" were exacerbated by "unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries."
Such sanctions, she said, wield "a devastating effect...on the broad scope of human rights, especially the right to food, right to health, right to life, right to education and right to development."

. . .

The impact of trade sanctions is particularly felt today in the Venezuelan countryside, where agricultural activities have all but stopped since imports of diesel fuel dried up. Venezuela is still capable of refining limited amounts of normal gasoline but cannot refine diesel, used in heavy trucks and agricultural machinery. Many farmers have been forced to leave their fields unattended as their machinery stood still.
Douhan was particularly critical of sanctions directed at Venezuelan oil exports. Because Venezuela depends on oil exports, a US-imposed embargo since early 2019 has effectively strangled the entire economy and hamstrung any policy solutions.
She also called on the US, the UK and Portugal to release frozen Venezuelan foreign assets -- estimated at $6 billion -- so that Maduro's government can purchase supplies needed to confront the Covid-19 pandemic.

More:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/world/us-venezuela-sanctions-alina-douhan-intl/index.html