Eyewitness in Venezuela: a 14-year Perspective

[Judi Lynn]

MAY 17, 2019
by PETER LACKOWSKI

I was in Venezuela from April 26 to May 5, 2019. It was the fifth time I have been there in a span of 14 years, so I was able to put things I saw on this trip in that context.

My first visit was in 2005. I saw people begging, sleeping in doorways, street venders filling not just sidewalks, even whole streets in some areas.

But I also saw bundles of books being distributed house to house, following a campaign to teach everyone to read. I visited clinics in poor neighborhoods staffed by Cuban medical personnel. I saw independent radio stations run by people in their communities, broadcasting local news, and providing a platform for commentary on current events. Stores had basic foods at affordable, subsidized prices. “Missions,” funded directly by oil revenues so as to bypass government ministries, were addressing social problems that bureaucracies from the pre-Chávez government failed to resolve.

In 2005, people eagerly told me stories of recent years. On April 11, 2002, a coup led by generals and business leaders had kidnapped President Chávez for two days. Massive demonstrations restored him to power. Soon after that, the owners of big businesses and the top management of the nationally owned oil company staged a “lock-out,” closing their own factories and stores and intimidating smaller businesses to join them. They shut down oil production. Their tactics didn’t work; people improvised and eventually the “lock-out” collapsed. All this did great damage to the economy in 2003 and 2004 and was one of the causes of poverty in 2005.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/17/eyewitness-in-venezuela-a-14-year-perspective/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Lots of similarity with US citizens' beliefs about Cuba. There's

what we're told and then there's what one sees.

[Judi Lynn]

2. As long as Trump keeps the ban in place for ordinary U.S. citizens, they will never know

how wrong the information has been all these years.

Once they get the chance to sit down and talk with normal Cuban citizens, to look around, to go all over the island, just like Canadians, Europeans, Latin Americans, Australians, Japanese people do, as many U.S. Americans have, already, entering Cuba from Mexico, or Central America, etc., they will finally realize theyve been had, and it was all for politics.

Until that time, they can keep the crappaganda flowing.