The Devil's Excrement

This is another article I read which was published while I was away in El Nacional and is written by Ibsen Martinez who is always irreverent and clever. It was not easy to translate, hope the ideas come across clearly (Note: Gabo is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ nickname, Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Literature prize in 1982).

Gabo and his Schindler’s list by Ibsen Martinez

It amazes me that some people can’t be against George Bush and against Fidel Castro at the same time. “Some people” is really a saying, in reality it happens to be lots of people; perhaps too many.

One of the arguments for not condemning Fidel Castro for his political assassinations –can they really be called anything else?- has Stalinist roots and it consists in reducing any condemnation of the firing squad deaths in La Havana to an inopportune “you are giving weapons to the enemy”.

That is why I am enthusiastic by the press articles written by Carlos Fuentes in Madrid’s El Pais. The main merit is that Fuentes does not place himself in the position of swallowing a live frog-something that happens to a lot of people with the daring opinions of Vargas Llosa- nor forgiving the inexcusable soft opinions in the face of Fidel Castro, like it happens to a lot of people with Garcia Marquez. Fuentes knows how to denounce without shame the imperial Anglo-American barbary in Iraq as well as the tragic autocratic aberration that Cuba is. Don Carlos bats with equal strength right-handed and left-handed.

It is clear that Castro is a master of brinkmanship, a word that Anglo-Saxon political scientists use to designate those that do better when they are at the border of an abyss. Thus, Castro takes advantage of the noise and smoke of the bombing of Baghdad to jail and shoot dead his opponents.

In reality, Castro also shoots at the idea of a referendum, an extremely dangerous idea for him, because it follows from the provisions of the Cuban Constitution itself and because it ha been promoted by unarmed local democrats and not by the loud individuals paid by the Cuban-American foundation, which make careful statements from Miami.

In congruence with that ability of maneuvering at the border of the abyss that he so much admires in Castro, Garcia Marquez, who together with Oliver Stone is one of his main fans, do not take advantage of the occasion of the Havana murders to get off that leftist bus that Teodoro Petkoff accurately calls “pre-conciliation”, something which Saramango and Galeano did in timely fashion.

Garcia Marquez chose to declare himself an enemy of the death penalty, without denying his friendship with a reputed Caribbean twig. And he warned that thanks to that friendship it has been possible for him to wrestle people away from jails as well as shooting squads in Cuba.

In another time, this cynical act of juggling perhaps would have appeared to shine more. But the unfaithful XXIst. Century has already moved along too far-some say it began in Berlin in 1989-and thus a letter to the 82 Nobel prize winner is being prepared in which more than one thousand Cuban political prisoners firmly criticize Garcia Marquez and in very courteous fashion ask him in which moment did he intervene for them, how he knew about their lives, of their guilt and their prison terms and who did he give the list with their names to. They also ask him who among them did he save from the firing squad.

I suspect that those questions will never be answered, because people like Gabo do not conform to answering silly questions if they are not asked, at least, by Susan Sonntag.

Here among us, not one intellectual of the cultural operators of the chavismo and its opinionated periphery dared to sing out of tune presuming to have an independent opinion. They limited themselves to condemning the sure thing: The Iraqi invasion and that’s it.

The truth is that it would be too much to ask that they think like Carlos Fuentes, because condemning George Bush and Fidel Castro is a luxury that can not be afforded by anyone who is in the “cultural” payroll of someone who celebrates even Fidel Castro’s birthday. Those poor souls do not even rate a Saramago.

This reminds me of a patriotic bolero that Daniel Santos used to sing whenever his doctrinarian vain was piqued. Composed on the fly by Santos and the immortal “Davilita” it is entitled “My Creed” and one of its quartets says: “I don’t want to see my country doubled over/under the voracious rule of imperialism/but I also do not agree to give in/ to things because of knowing about communism.

Davilita retracted sometime later –it was the time of the cold war-but the bolero stayed with me from the first time I heard it and I offer the news to my readers because condemning Bush and abominating Castro, without attenuation or relativisms are luxuries that the Bolivarian revolution will never be able to take away from me.

I have been trying to catch up reading the news from when I was away. A few articles struck a chord with me. I will translate some as time allows. Here is the first one, by Veneconomia, an advisory group run by Toby Bottome, which publishes a number of very good econimic publications about Venezuela:

The economy in the hands of Hernandez Behrens by Veneconomia

Few data points better describe the Venezuelan tragedy than the fact that main economic debate in the country is the controversy about whether the Government is destroying the private sector intentionally or is doing it without realizing it.

Veneconomia has maintained that the attack against the private sector has all of the appearances of being the result of a premeditated plan. But one has to admit that when one hears the idiotic statements (burradas in Spanish) –there is no other way to qualify them- that Captain Edgar Hernandez Behrens says each time he approaches a microphone, a space opens to the possibility to have doubts about this. The ignorance and improvisation that the Chief of CADIVI (the Exchange Control Office) demonstrates when it comes time to make public statements are so clear that it is hard to believe that the fate of the Venezuelan economy is truly in the hands of a character like him.

A few days ago, Hernandez Behrens said that if the exchange controls were to be ended today, the Bolivar would revalue, trading at Bs. 1,500 per US$ and that it is only the “negative thinking” of the economists which stops them from realizing this. The most obvious question is, if the Government truly believes this folly, then why not then free the exchange control markets? Exchange controls are fundamentally a mechanism to prevent the currency from an uncontrolled devaluation of the currency. If the Bolivar would revalue if it were liberated, then why maintain it “artificially undervalued”? The answer obviously is that the story of the revalorization of the Bolivar is not beloved even by Hernandez Behrens’ lawyer.

On the other hand, Hernandez Behrens told local paper El Nacional, that the regional payment system of ALADI, which is part of the Andean Pact can be used to violate the exchange controls, demonstrating in that way that he ignores that a treaty subscribed by the Republic has constitutional range, while CADIVI is supported over the weakest legal framework imaginable –a simple presidential decree-besides its dubious legality.

And if this were not enough, the Captain demonstrates his lack of professionalism, almost like taken from a cartoon, when he said that the first $8,000 were handed out to “Cargill, I believe”. I believe? Could it be that Hernandez Behrens does not know who got the first few dollars for imports after four months without them? Well, yes, after all this is the Fifth Republic, where everything is possible.

1) On Sunday the Central Bank reported that despite price controls on foodstuffs, food and beverage prices were up 8% during the month of May, demonstrating for the nth. time in economic history that price controls simply don’t work.

2) On Sunday, Chavez during his Sunday “Alo Presidente” program expressed his outrage at how could prices could go up if they were all controlled and said he would investigate this.

3) On Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that the prices of some price controlled foodstuffs were being increased.

Do these people even talk to each other?

Difficult to summarize three weeks, particularly because I am still jetlagged and perceptions from reading what happened in the last 21 days may be affected by not having lived it. But here  goes, the highlights of my absence and my views on the most important events of the month, in no particular order. Fortunately, nothing terrible happened, in fact, the country continues to be in a holding pattern of continuous deterioration and decay. Some may call it the Africanization of Venezuela:

-The opposition planned a march towards the west of Caracas, they got the permits, they organuzed it. The pro-Chavez forces vowed to block it, the result: 2 dead and 18 injured. As usual the Government blamed the opposition for the “provocation”, forgetting who is in charge of security. I have some pictures of the preparations against the opposition which I will post later. How many more have to die?

-By a process that I fail to understand in detail, the Government finally agreed to sign an agreement with the opposition which it had balked at earlier in the month. From what I have been able to determine it was a combination of international pressure and some changes to the earlier agreement. I still believe the Chavez administration will block any attempt to hold a referendum.

-The economy shrank by 29% in the first quarter, yes, -29% shrinkage of GDP in a single quarter. The oil economy shrank by 47%. This is the largest drop that any historian has been able to find in a single quarter in any country. The Government as usual blamed the opposition. The number for the oil economy shows that PDVSA is lying about production levels. This horrific number is due not only to the strike, but also to the fact that from January 23d. to March 31st. not a single dollar was given out by the Central Bank in an economy accustomed to importing between US$ 4 billion to US$ 5 billion per quarter. Official unemployment reached an all time high of 19.8%.

-There is no Electoral Board yet as the Government and the opposition has not agreed on its members. The Chavez administration wants a majority, the opposition thinks if this happens there will not be a referendum or clean elections. The Supreme Court has given both sides until today or they will select the commission. This will likely favor Chavez.

-The current electoral commission ruled that the question used in gathering the petition was legal.

-Chavez continued disposing of former collaborators as he got rid of the tax authorities and has distanced himself from the Mayor of the Libertador District. Both were extremely loyal to him but in the end it did not matter. This is typical Chávez.

-The US Ambassador held a party at the Embassy and invited a local comedian. The comedian imitated the President which led the National Assembly to censor the Ambassador.

-Less than US$ 200 million has been approved by the Exchange Control Office while the Government is now competing with the private sector by importing foodstuffs. Nobody knows whether the Government pays taxes, charges customs duties or makes a profit on these imports. Somehow I think somebody is making a lot of money since quality is reportedly bad and prices are less than 10% cheaper.

-Finally, in what I personally consider a sign of the deterioration, stupidity and ignorance of the Chavez administration as well as a reflection of what they think of knowledge, no Mathematics Olympics will take place in Venezuela this year. The reason: PDVSA who has financed the event for years, says it does not have the funds for it. Imagine a company with more than US$ 20 billion in revenues has no money for such a tiny event! So much for a PDVSA responsive to the people’s needs!

I will be travelling for the next three weeks and have no idea whether I will be able to connect or even have much to say about what is going on here. If anything happens I will try to post comments and my brother may do it also. See you June 1st., hope things are quiet (my last three trips have been anything but quiet)!!

Maruja suggested I translate this very good article which appeared in today’s El Universal, she was right, it should be read:

The Destruction of Social Capital

by Axel Capriles M.

To recover from the damage produced by the Bolivarian revolution will take a few generations. We have not only regressed on all aspects of life. It is not only a matter of paralysis or being behind materially or intellectually. It is, above all, an emotional fissure that has produced the political use of resentment, the continuous attack to the fundamental emotions of society. No previous Government had spent so much time using such bad faith for the destruction of social capital.

All societies need shared values, rules and regulations that allow the interaction among individuals without too many frictions in order to subsist, work together and develop as a social group. It is what Friedrich von Hayek denominated “the extended order of human cooperation”, the set of informal values shared by people that allows them to collaborate together. If anything has been clarified by the studies of economic development is that the formation of social capital is the decisive factor for the progress and well-being of nations. And we understand as social capital “that total provision of cooperative relations based on the norms of honesty, reciprocity” and the mutual trust needed to function in an efficient manner and assume common challenges. That intangible of development can be built in a very short time, but it takes generations to be formed or reconstructed.

The trust (so stranged from hate and resentment), the reciprocity and the norms for cooperation are fundamental for rational economic behavior. They are indispensable to reduce transaction costs, negotiations costs, and the control of contracts and, as a consequence, to achieve more productivity without adding costs. Even though social order and the rules of cooperation can be created hierarchically, most of them appear in spontaneous and decentralized fashion as part of social interactions and are part of the internalized culture of individuals. When people have to continue living together in the same geographical space, when difficulties ask for cooperation and collaboration to achieve a minimum of well being, both collective and individual, the worst crime that a ruler can commit is the destruction of social capital.

PDVSA took its road show two days ago to Houston where the “new” plan to expand production to five million barrels per day was presented to oil industry investors. Thus, the full circle is completed. Ali Rodriguez and Hugo Chavez are now doing exactly what they criticized the Caldera Government when Luis Guisti was President of PDVSA, and which they sold to the people as part of their “revolution” : They want to almost double production, violate OPEC’s quotas and have the additional production come from foreign investment. Amazing, isn’t it? Four years ago Chavez used to say this was not patriotic and was a sell out of the country!

Despite the fact that it was the Government who originally called for negotiations with the opposition and the fact that no agreement has been signed by the Government, here is the position of the Chavez administration:

“The negotiation table has played out its role and now it is the National Assembly’s turn.”

What can I say? How cynical can you be? The Assembly? You’ve got to be kidding me…..

The interesting part is what the “Group of Friends” said:

“We look forward to the agreement, once signed by the President and the Democratoc Coordinator, being implemented”

We all know who refuses to sign it by now…..so he does not want it to be implemented, its very clear, No?

Now, you will pardon me if I am somewhat dubious about the Chavez revolution and its stupid attempts to make things look different from what they are. Here we are, faced with a murder during an opposition march in which everyone in the Government says it is not a political murder, but a “personal” fight between the assassin and the union worker murdered, which has been described by various Government officials as a “loan shark”, a “union leader disputing his position” or “a fight over missing funds”. So it is not political, but curiously these are now the main characters in this non-political event, all of whom are “coincidentally” joined by an extremely political past:

–The Assassin: Manuel Arias alias “El Pollo” well-known Chávez supporter leader of a Bolivarian circle, who pleaded innocent today, saying he was at the pro-Chavez rally when the murder took place and not at the opposition rally. This despite the fact that he was taped at the anti-Chávez demonstration waiting for it to arrive.

–The Judge: Judge Maikel Moreno, the same one that ordered the detention of the two major opposition leaders in February (both now in exile)and who was appointed to his position because of his support for Chavez and despite the fact that he was once convicted for homicide and was jailed later for another homicide but was never convicted. (Can this happen anywhere else in the world?)

The Prosecutor: Chavista prosecutor Danilo Anderson who despite being an environmental prosecutor has been used by the Attorney General’ office to prosecute the major anti-Chavez cases including the murders of April 11, 2002.  That day in 2002, 19 people were killed and despite this all those accused that were pro-Chávez walk free today, despite being filmed shooting at the people in the march, while some cops who were not part of the initial shooting but belong to the anti-Chavez Metropolitan police sit now in jail.

The Lawyer: Carlos Duran, famous lawyer for infamous Chavez supporter Lina Ron, whose motto is “there is no change without violence” and who has used violence, political influence and once  freed her common-law husband from jail with her influence over the pro-Chavez mayor that had detained him, but still roams the streets of Caracas with impunity despite all of her illegal and violent acts and numerous detention orders. (She violated parole regulations last week, but nothing happened)

These are all supposed to be “non-political” people joined by those strange coincidences probably due to some sort of planetary or cosmological alignment that can only occur in the Chavez revolution. How can I question any of it? I must just be a skeptic, no? Political? Nooooooooo way….I must simply exaggerate.

In his Sunday radio and TV address, President Chavez defined quite well his “new economy” when he said: ” The state does not pretend to monopolize foreign currency, but to compete with the private sector”. Now the rules are simple, the Government controls prices, does not give foreign currency to importers of anything, but it imports, at preferential rates, anything it wants and sells it at whatever price it wants. In fact, Chavez said that the Government is importing 1,300 Tons of chicken from Brazil. Now, the price of chicken is currently controlled at a level that producers lose money when they grow chickens, so it is cheaper to import them, but only if you can do it at the controlled rate and only the Government gets that. Chavez also said that the exchange control office has approved US$ 78 million to importers. It may be true, but the banking system has yet to hand out a single dollar to importers. Exchange controls were imposed over 100 days ago, so in any case $78 million is very little in a country that imported last year more than US$ 16 billion in goods.