The Devil's Excrement

For XXIst. Century Socialism, the worse things are, the
better. And it has only been ten years…

It is no only Latin America that will change its name,
according to one of the celestial inspiration of the leader of the
intercontinental revolution. It is, no more nor less, the same trick applied
during the last ten years in that titanic fight that occupies so much time of
the justice seeking military and neoliberal socialists.

For the revolution, as it is well known, it is much easier
to rebaptize than to build from scratch. The endless rant, the sack of insults,
the show, the pose, the colics and the eternal wars against the empire
certainly do not allow the invincible team to settle down and start up the
mission, promised so many times, of converting Venezuelan into a world
superpower.

It is very difficult for a leader of this pleasure seeking
communism to carry out the tidying up of Argentina’s finances, the reduction of
poverty in Haiti, the total literacy of Bolivia, the reduction of infant mortality
in Ecuador, the construction of thousands of housing units in Paraguay, the
improvement of the quality of life in Nicaragua, providing access to cheap fuel
to the poor in the US, and all of that without stopping that God giving task of
attacking with the success which with they do it, the mountain of problems that
drown local socialists.

Parque del Este is now Francisco De Miranda, Ince is now
called Inces, the old ministries of Gomez and Perez Jimenez are now the Popular
Power for whatever. The barrios squashed by garbage are now communal councils. The
small buses and vans are popular transportation units, companies are socialist
production units, and the outpatient units are called Barrio Adentro. The
corrupt are national heroes defamed by the right wing. The old bodegas or local
stores are Pdval or Mercal. The devalued Bolivar, isolated from the world, is
called the strong Bolivar. The military are the soldiers of communism or death.
The high schools built by Betancourt or Leoni are now Bolivarian. The companies
created by Carlos Andres Perez are now socialist enterprises. The buy and sell deals
done by the Government are called nationalizations. The sportsmen went from athletes
in high-level competitions to being moving billboards of  revolutionary improvisation. In Barinas,
nobody likes Bolivars or dollars they die for the oriental Turimiquires or the
Yaracuy Lionzas. The haciendas are now socialist endogenous developments and
they don’t produce mosquitoes, even if they are full of Cuban technicians. The
vans are now large vans, reporters are traitors to the motherland, and
opposition members are lackeys of the Empire. The banks, just imagine, are socialist
banks. The Colombian guerrillas went from allies to old-fashioned terrorists.
The poor are poorer, but organized in cells and communes for the poor.

And, of course, socialist mediocrity is treated as excellence.
The more the failures, the better the awards.