The Devil's Excrement

After truly disconnecting from the world for three weeks I am back and I can not say ready to blog on Venezuela yet, my mind is still somewhere else. My vacation was a blast, has a fantastic time including the coincidence of a lifetime in finding that the first week of my vacation was shared with my thesis advisor, one of my favorite people in the world. This made the vacation three times better.

Thanks to Jorge for his work and contributions as well as the other contributors to this pages during my absence. A blog is a very personal thing and is hard to fill for others and is a responsibility I dumped on Jorge without mercy. Thanks again! The software acted up in my absence and is still doing it; I have no clue as to what the problem is. This excellent post on race differences in Venezuela by Jorge, for example, shows up in the Venezuela section, but fails to appear in the home page for reasons that completely mystify me.

As to events in my absence it seems to be more of the same. The Government refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for its errors. From 1958 to 1998 when Chavez assumed power, Presidents were in charge for five years and then their administrations became the “Gobierno Anterior” (Previous Government) which was blamed for everything. Well, Chavez has been in power for seven, thus, he has become the “Gobierno Anterior”, but his Government continues to blame things on previous Governments, such as the horrendous murder of the three engineering students by hooded policemen raiding a barrio. Besides murdering the students the cops tried to hide evidence, remove the corpses and in general cover up what they had done. But it is all the fault of the previous Government because this was “usual practice” by previous Governments. In fact, the murder rate in barrios is up three fold since Chavez took over and the death of acquaintances is so common that just days before the murder of the three students a fellow local blogger reported the death of a coworker killed simply so that they could steal his briefcase.

And in the meantime, a new Penal code was approved, Sumate continues to be persecuted in this country which some still claim is a democracy and reporters are held by pro-Chavez’ hoodlums in a clear intimidation attempt. And none of these things used to happen during any of the previous Governments which were not very good, but certainly were more democratic than this one. If not, look at all of the tricks being pulled by the Electoral Board.

So my friends I am back, but except for being a bit more relaxed, things have changed little over here and I have little hope that they will in the near future. But I will continue recording the acts of this outlaw Government. It is the least I can do. 

This entry was posted on July 10, 2005 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Venezuela.