Latin America
Related: About this forumCan Venezuela improve its economy, and restore the dreams of the Bolivarian Revolution?v
Venezuela at an Impasse
Can Venezuela improve its economy, and restore the dreams of the Bolivarian Revolution?
Z.C. Dutka
12/03/2015
This piece was originally printed by The Indypendent.
It used to be that the reporting of prominent U.S. newspapers about Venezuelas socialist revolution were about as useful as a solitary photo negative; reduced to light and dark, good and evil, the colors would appear reversed, and the chronology of struggle quietly absent.
But while the undertones of doom have been present for over a decade, this years 159 percent inflation rate, according to the International Monetary Fund, and a 10 percent decline in the nations gross domestic product have raised serious questions about the impact of the economic crisis on ordinary Venezuelans and in turn on the governments ability to maintain popular support.
Its true; the economy is shot. In the past year, oil prices tumbled from $105 per barrel to under $50, cutting the countrys foreign earnings by half. A battered exchange system and booming illegal market has seen the Venezuelan bolívar devalued to the point that the monthly minimum wage was on par with a 36-pack of diapers or a few kilos of dried beans, until President Nicolás Maduro doubled it on October 15.
Car parts are hard to find and vehicles languish in backyards, and between patchy imports and the widespread hoarding and reselling of food by vendors called bachaqueros a reference to leafcutter ants scarcity has made grocery lists a fools errand.
Despite the best efforts of the state media apparatus which is in full campaign mode for the December 6 congressional elections to ignore these realities, its impossible not to witness them on the ground. Across the country, the streets buzz with numbers as friends and strangers compete with stories of outrageous prices: 1,800 bolívars for a kilo of lentils! I paid 600 bolos for the taxi home! The official exchange rate for the bolívar has remained at 6.3 to one U.S. dollar since February 2013, but its black market value has tumbled from 110 to the dollar in October 2014 to the current rate of 820.
More:
https://nacla.org/news/2015/12/03/venezuela-impasse
Marksman_91
(2,035 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)They need to clean house from the top down--when even the always loyal Chavistas are saying this, the shit has gotten pretty dire up in there.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)previous efforts to diversify (like demanding all cars switch to Caracas-built engine blocks) proved farcical under the AD
PRC money is always perilous, because the PRC likes to *collect*