The Chavismo Decadent Swan Song

The Chavismo Decadent Swan Song

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

“We need to reduce extreme consumption to achieve a point of equilibrium between supply and a fair price. I trust in the hardworking majority of this country.”

Nicolás Maduro}

If things were already agitated in Venezuela after nearly a year of constant civil unrest, violent dissident crack down and social deterioration, a recent ruthless attack by government paratroopers against the opposition controlled National Assembly a couple of days ago was the clear sign of the position of the Chavista leaders on democracy, violence is the answer in contrast to the democratic exercise, add to that the attempt at creating a parallel Constituent Assembly in order to displace the already existent one, and the signs of a democracy falling into oblivion are more than obvious, a process that started by populist Hugo Chavez who channeled social anger versus corruption in order to seize power and then slowly start deconstructing democracy on Venezuela, and begin a project known as the Bolivarian Revolution whose main objective has been instituting socialism as a way to achieve a Soviet like state and society, one that has deeply hurt Venezuela´s self-determination and sovereignty, by surrendering it to Fidel Castro´s project of a Socialist Union of Latin American States that included Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, led by his “Castro Boys”, Hugo Chávez, Lula Da Silva, Rafael Correa, The Kirchners, Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales.

A public referendum ran by the opposition showed the obvious, when asked if they agree with the Constituent Assembly, the reaction was definite, civil society disagreement and rejection, people are not satisfied with Chavismo anymore, a society defenseless with food shortages and escalating inflation, facing a near military dictatorship, the recent escalation of street violence and even surreal demonstrations by a supposed military “hero” who used a police helicopter to attemp a staged attack on a government building, along a couple of Isis like videos advocating insurrection have added a strange tone to the situation, some of us already puzzled by the liberation of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, jailed three years ago that might show a sign of the will to negotiate by the Chavista government, or perhaps another maneuver to win time, just like the awful cheating actions in which Treasury bonds issued by PDVSA, Venezuela´s national oil company were sold by mega capitalist Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs, how´s that for “Anti Imperialism”?, and what about the hypocritical Goldman Sachs whose payments are giving oxygen to a moribund dictatorship?

Venezuela is the third principal USA supplier of oil, the reason why Trump´s administration has recently declared its intention to impose economic sanctions on the Chavista government, many “conspiracy theory lovers” may argue that this is just part of the imperialist interventionalist policies and link them to theories of CIA backed protesters causing riots on the streets of Caracas, when in reality what the USA is doing is protecting its own interests in Venezuela, and in fact, Venezuela´s dependency on oil has led the country into a state of defenseless in which 95% of its economy depends on oil, making it easier for the USA, as the second main consumer of Venezuelan oil to press on the Chavista government and to impose certain conditions, as losing a big consumer like the USA might mean havoc to Venezuela already weak economy and putting them directly on the hands and will of the authoritarian China´s government, when you are unsatisfied with a supplier´s product, you stop buying it, and that imposes and amount of pressure on the supplier whose demand, according to the laws of market, start decreasing, considering Venezuela’s non-diversified economy, their dependency on USA to counterbalance China´s consuming power is necessary.

So in the ends it looks like it will be a commercial war the one that will led to the fall of the Chavista regime, you won´t need a civil revolution, revolution´s like the Russian, the Cuban or the “Bolivarian” only led to more concentration of power, you won´t need the CIA undercover operations, or even a military intervention, you only need to stop buying PDVSA oil, to ask Trump´s Saudi friends to pump some more oil to make oil prices go even more down, and like in Soviet times, the Chavista government will fall to its knees and the military will deliver incompetent president Maduro right into the hands of the USA government, it’s only a matter of time for someone as ruthless as Donald Trump to apply strong economic sanctions on Venezuela and the military dictatorship will turn into a more USA amicable one, perhaps even Maduro could become a friend of Trump, that wouldn’t please China so much, as it would obviously expose the hypocrisy of Chavismo, Chavismo will fall not because of imperialism or interventionism, but because of ineptitude, because they weren’t able to look beyond the oil bonanza and they didn’t build a nation strong enough and diversified enough to resist global volatility.