Venezuela’s Agony: Weak President, Strong Generals, Riots and Cocaine
Marcel Ventura
Barely a year after the death of the charismatic, problematic President Hugo Chávez, his successor, Nicolás Maduro, is flailing and the military is gaining.
In the dark before dawn one night last February, Colonel Googlis Martín Caballero was driving a white Ford Explorer through the Venezuelan countryside not far from the Colombian border. With him were his wife, his daughter and roughly half a ton of cocaine. He probably felt sure nobody would question him, a ranking officer in the country’s National Guard, but, then, that much coke is hard to hide.
At a routine checkpoint, other members of the National Guard detained the colonel. The story of his arrest generated brief headlines in the national papers, making the point, perhaps, that there are limits to what a military man could get away with. But, if so, this was the exception that proves the rule. His capture could have been very bad luck for Col. Caballero. It could have been another officer out to get him, or mere confusion among the soldiers about whose orders to follow. In any case, nobody ever said what happened to the cocaine.
In fact, the Venezuelan military—omnipresent but largely faceless as it makes collective decisions behind closed doors—is becoming the most powerful force in a country where the civilian government of Nicolás Maduro is continuing to lose its grip. Whether the military is corrupt as an institution, or simply has corrupt officers among others who are cleaner, the rise of the generals could present new problems for the United States on issues ranging from cocaine trafficking to oil markets. And what’s certain inside Venezuela is that militarization is helping to destroy the fragile remnants of the country’s democracy.
Venezuela is in dire straits. It closed 2013 with 56 per cent inflation, and this year began with a massive devaluation of its currency. In a country that is one of the world’s great oil producers, subsidized foods which are vital to the poor are disappearing from the shelves, with only four of ten items likely to be available at any given time outside of Caracas. Lines at markets are long and the waits seemingly interminable. Since February, riots have broken out sporadically with 41 deaths so far. Opposition leaders have been thrown in jail. And murder has become, almost, a way of life. Venezuela has the second highest homicide rate in the world, after Honduras, according to the latest United Nations statistics.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/14/venezuela-s-agony-weak-president-strong-generals-riots-and-cocaine.html
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youthful Diosdado, arm-in-arm with a youthful and smiling and uniformed Hugo Chavez)....
The association will easily be made--Diosdado and Hugo were personally more compatible than Maduro and Chavez ever were. Maduro only got the nod because Cuba liked him best (and Cuba was providing that shitty cancer treatment that killed Hugo)--Maduro is so easily manipulated and his flag-fondling antics certainly proved it, while Cabello wanted a little distance from Cuba; maybe fewer barrels of oil given away for free given the dubious value of the "in kind" support they received in return. Diosdado will satisfy even those in the opposition who resent the constant presence of Cuban "assistants" in the halls of power, and Cuban accents seeded amongst the soldiers of the GNB.
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