Nicolás Maduro – Page 3 – The Pull Of The Land

Highest Known Oil Reserves … And People Cannot Buy Gasoline

September 23, 2020September 23, 2020 Richard Barnes

Venezuela is still Number One on the list of countries with the highest known oil reserves. According to WorldAtlas.com (link below), her production has fallen because of the decline in oil prices and because she did not “invest in the renovation of its obsolete oil extraction infrastructure.”

Second on the list is Saudi Arabia, which makes “it a strong ally to the United States, despite many [sic] blatantly problematic aspects of the country. Some of those include human rights violations and many international incidents.”

Readers of this blog know that I love the country of my birth and grieve for what she has been becoming. I have childhood friends there whom I dearly love and hold in the highest esteem, especially the few surviving friends of my own parents. However, I must say that to point out “blatantly problematic aspects” of Saudi Arabia while blithely ignoring the very real “blatantly problematic aspects” of Venezuela is irresponsible and is the type of reporting which has given cover to the catastrophe that has been unfolding there since the 1960’s and which accelerated dramatically since the Chavez regime.

Venezuela continues to be very rich in natural resources: not only is she the richest in oil reserves, but she is also supremely rich in other minerals (see here and also see under “Juan Vicente Gómez here) and yet many of her people are malnourished (I have personal knowledge of this), others have regressed to the use of donkeys because they cannot afford to buy rationed gasoline even at under $0.10 per gallon. Many thousands are now turning to fire for energy in their homes given the ongoing failures of the energy grid, often plunging them into utter darkness. Some reports say that the grid failed over 80,000 times (!) in 2019. Think of the impact on public transportation, hospitals, clinics. On everything needed for modern life.

The situation is so dire that the Venezuela refugee crisis is the largest ever recorded in the Americas.

Let that sink in for a moment. The largest ever recorded in the Americas. We’ve all read and heard about the despotic regimes of Gómez and Pérez Jimenez in Venezuela, Pinochet in Chile, the generals in Argentina, Stroessner in Paraguay, and others in Central America. But none of them — none — caused such magnitudes of peoples to flee their homelands in such massive numbers. None. The only one that comes close, as a proportion of her population, is Castro’s Cuba. The reader can deduce whatever similarities there may be between Cuba and Venezuela that would cause their peoples to leave their homes and head to unknown destinies through even less known, and frightening, seas and jungles.

Latest estimates are that about 6 Million Venezuelans have fled the country. That’s twenty percent of her population. See here.

How is it that a land so rich can be so poor? How is it that a land once hailed as the most stable democracy in South America is now a despotic regime where torture is commonplace (see here)?

As has been seen throughout this blog, the current problems did not begin with Chavez or Maduro.

Venezuela’s initiation into democratic rule took place in 1959, after a half century of unprecedented prosperity, mostly under General Juan Vicente Gómez, who in my childhood, an era of less political correctness, was often referred to as “the father of modern Venezuela.” He was a dictator but was not hailed as Castro was, even though he too was a dictator. The difference? Castro was one of the Socialist Beautiful People; Gómez was not.

Be that as it may, the long years under Gómez (in office from 1908 to 1935) were characterized by unparalleled stability and prosperity. This stability began years before the discovery of the first major oil reserves in Mene Grande (see here). Venezuela had a growing and prosperous middle class by the end of the Pérez Jimenez regime (see here), after which came the election of Rómulo Betancourt, generally acknowledged to be the country’s first democratically elected president.

So, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president was installed 140 years after the country’s declaration of independence. In sum, during the preceding (19th) century, Venezuela, like her neighbors, had been racked by revolutionary governments and bloodletting, and during the first half of the 20th century she had phenomenal growth and stability under authoritarian governments.

(The unfortunate fact is that South America’s wars for independence were not at all like North America’s. Unlike the North American colonists, the South American Criollos were enthralled by French Revolutionary ideas and sought the positions of power to which they believed they were entitled. This partly explains the long years of despotism and carnage, which is similar to post revolutionary France. If interested, see more on the differences between the United States and the Venezuelan Declarations of Independence here.)

As we have noted before (for example, see here) Betancourt, who had organized the Communist Party in Costa Rica in the 1930’s, but who had since shed his radical outspoken ideology and had migrated to a kinder, gentler democratic socialism, immediately set about to dismantle the structures of economic freedoms and low levels of taxation and regulations that had enabled the country to achieve such heights. In effect, his policies spurred the growth and intrusions of government, including nationalizations of major industries such as oil and iron ore. These reversals of economic liberties continued up to Chavez and Maduro where such policies did not change. They accelerated.

So the owners of industries in Venezuela are now the people. And, of course, when politicians say “the people,” that means The State and all those who, along with them, have the right political connections. And that has been catastrophic for Venezuela.

And so the country with the highest known oil reserves in the world is now a financial nightmare suffering shortages under political oppression, with many of her people in distress and, where able, voting with their feet by leaving.

Pray for the people of Venezuela.

For more on the power outages, see here (Spanish language article).

For the WorldAtlas report on oil reserves, see here.

Back to use of donkeys, mules, and horses.

Colombian police stand before a multitude of Venezuelans seeking asylum.

Juan Vicente Gómez (1857-1935), circa 1920

Marcos Pérez Jimenez (1914-2001), circa 1955

Fidel Castro (left), Rómulo Betancourt (center), in Caracas in 1959. Betancourt’s relationship with Castro ended shortly thereafter when Castro sought to foment guerrilla activity in Venezuela.

Once one of the continent’s most prosperous countries, Venezuela is now plagued by frequent blackouts.

Oil Spill Disaster

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 Richard Barnes

Nicolás Maduro: “Only Socialism can be in balance with nature, it is the only way to the preservation of the environment and the salvation of the human species. Let us save the World!”

There has been a massive oil spill in Venezuela. It happened in early August, 2020.

It has impacted the Morrocoy national park in western Venezuela.

Per the Caracas Chronicles: “There was a new spill in El Palito: the residue pond is full and the experts say that every time it rains, the pond overflows, bringing oil to the sea and accumulating one spill after the other. Up to 40,000 barrels of oil have been spilled into the coasts of Falcón and Carabobo states, causing an ecocide that could be irreversible with how often the spills are happening. There has been no damage control.”

The Environmentalists have said little or nothing.

No word from Leonardo yet. Or Harrison. Or Al. Etc.

One tweet from Greta.

Mass media? Crickets.

Since Venezuela is a Socialist regime, oil spills cannot be reported or made too big a deal about. Goes against the narrative.

Above photos taken August/September, 2020

PDVSA Turns a Blind Eye to Oil Spills in Venezuela

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/venezuelas_valdez_oil_spill_covers_a_national_park_beach_black_and_where_are_the_global_environmentalists.html

Venezuela Coast Could Take 50 Years To Recover

Nationalization and Military Dissent

August 25, 2019August 25, 2019 Richard Barnes

In the late 1970’s, I took an extended leave to visit the country of my birth. During that most memorable trip, I had the joyful pleasure of meeting countless individuals and families, who, in true Venezuelan fashion were not shy in sharing their opinions about the direction the country was taking at the time.

That direction was, in a word, “nationalization” or forced divestment, principally of the iron ore and petroleum industries. This phenomenon was worldwide at the time, especially in Africa and Latin America, and it had devastating consequences.

What I saw — gargantuan enterprises with protean manufacturing plants, power centers, chemical processors, and assorted buildings and dormitories, accompanied by massive hirings of blue and white collar workforces and countless foreign workers, some of whom were housed on cruise ships docked on the Orinoco — did not “pass the sniff test”.

I had a number of vigorous but mostly friendly debates on the merits of government-run versus privately run operations. Already the mining camp where I was born had shown deterioration. One lady expressed sincere surprise at this, “How is it that now that this belongs to us, we haven’t managed to maintain it, let alone improve it?”

“Could it be that when something belongs to ‘us all’ it actually belongs to no one?” was one refrain I found myself repeating throughout the trip.

At my expressed concern about the immense power and wealth being concentrated in the Venezuelan government, something usually seen in Communist or Socialist regimes, the usual reply by those who disagreed with my concerns, was along the lines of, ‘it’s about time that “our” wealth remained here instead of being transferred to the United States.'”

Conversely, the reply by those who somewhat agreed with my concerns was along the lines of, “the Venezuelan military would never allow the government to devolve into outright Socialism or Communism.”

Interestingly, neither camp was concerned about what all this nationalization activity would lead to. In one heated and less friendly exchange, a more recent acquaintance at the time ridiculed my concerns, expressing disdain that I would question the massive wealth now owned by the Venezuelan people. He mocked my assertion that the people actually “owned” nothing. It was all owned by the state.

According to a scholarly analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 2013, “Nationalization brought considerable declines in productivity in the oil industries of the sample countries. Productivity fell by more than 70 percent in the Venezuelan oil industry. Despite enormous efforts put into expansion, it took Venezuelan’s nationalized industry about 20 years to return to its early 1960’s productivity levels.”

Sadly, shortly after the 20 years, another, more serious wave of nationalization was launched with even more catastrophic results. To take just one example, the enormous Venezuelan steelworks, Sidor, the crown of Venezuelan heavy industry, saw its production go from 4 million tons of steel in 2007, the year before its nationalization by the Chavez Socialist government, to 1.5 million in 2014, with triple the number of employees. Between late October, 2013 and August 2014, it had operated for only 90 days. I have no access to more recent figures nor would I trust them if I did.

Well, the wealth is gone for the most part; other than the billions in the private foreign bank accounts of a relative handful of Socialists. As for the massive mineral and petroleum reserves, those await the capital and the expertise to extract it. That explains the intense interest and activity in Venezuela on the part of both China and Russia.

As to the military, in later trips, friends were more subdued as they told me of the heavy Cuban influence in the Venezuelan forces. Why was this not being reported, they wondered.

Fidel Castro ruthlessly applied the tactic of buying or otherwise coopting the military. A tactic he taught Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. Hence, the failure of the Venezuelan military to “never allow the government to devolve into outright Socialism or Communism.”

To read more about the emasculation of the Venezuelan military, refer to the Reuters article linked below, “How Cuba Taught Venezuela to Quash Military Dissent”. The article is appreciated, but why did it not appear a decade ago when it might have made a difference?

https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=CEF2014&paper_id=90
The macroeconomic analysis of the negative impact of nationalization on productivity

https://www.yahoo.com/news/special-report-cuba-taught-venezuela-121454933.html

Envy

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019 Richard Barnes

“He was the greatest Argentine since San Martín. But two things can never be forgiven him. He created class hatred in a country that had never had it, and he ruined agriculture by siphoning off labor into the towns.” — Inside South America, p. 184

“Los débiles invocan la justicia: déseles la justicia: déseles la fuerza, y serán tan injustos como sus opresores.” [The weak invoke justice. Give them justice; give them force, and they will be as unjust as their oppressors.] — Andrés Bello, Estudios de Crítica Histórica

The former quote was spoken by an Argentine when asked for his opinion about Juan Perón. The quote is most perceptive and applies not only to Perón but to a majority of western 20th and 21st century politicians. Like the more successful ones, Perón was — to Peronistas — charismatic, with big teeth and a wide, easy smile. His method was to preach unity while inciting class hatred. In this regard, class includes wealth, race, religion, sex, fill-in-the-blank. The method also requires perpetuating a permanent sense of guilt for events that may have taken place long before the current generation was a twinkle in its parents’ eyes. Guilt weakens a people and also destroys their love for their country. It makes a people more easily manipulated by politicians. The unscrupulous know this. It would behoove the rest of us to know it too.

Have you noticed that this “method”, the inciting of class envy (although it is rarely, if ever, reported as envy), is intensely promoted by Socialist and Communist politicians? Those ideologies cannot survive without an incentive to “get even” or to create discord among a people. That alone ought to warn us to be wary of non-Socialist politicians who labor along the same path.

In the case of Venezuela, as alluded in prior posts, the country’s problems did not begin with Chavez. That gives him too much credit. The issues predated him by generations by men and women who prepared the way for him.

Venezuela was one of the most prosperous South American countries. Refer to the earlier post, Chile vs. Venezuela, for a 2-minute précis on this. She enjoyed great economic freedom, and this, under military dictatorships. I was born under one of those, the Pérez Jimenez regime. I remember in childhood rubbing shoulders with friends from all social and economic strata of society. I do not recall folks fomenting class warfare or envy.

Later in life I came to realize that under the dictatorship, we did not enjoy a free press nor did we have universal suffrage. However, we did enjoy high levels of freedom, including freedom of mobility, freedom of commerce, freedom in society, and, certainly, freedom in our homes. We had nowhere near the restrictions the peoples of Eastern Europe or Mao’s China, both atheistic regimes, were struggling under.

In the first half of the 20th century Venezuela became an economic powerhouse. As the petroleum, and later the iron ore, industries surged, Venezuela ensured it remained in private hands. The dictators understood that the state did not have the expertise to manage such vast, far flung operations; they left them in the hands of the international companies but did charge royalties and obtained other concessions in return. This arrangement ensured increasing prosperity for her people as well as great advances in local technology and culture. This was a period of phenomenal progress in research and discovery. To cite just one example, the diamond knife (or scalpel) was invented in the 1950’s by Venezuelan Humberto Fernández-Morán Villalobos (1924-1999). This “significantly advanced the development of electromagnetic lenses for electron microscopy based on superconductor technology and many other scientific contributions.”

As for state spending, it was mostly focused on the country’s roads, airports, schools, and universities. The Caracas skyline and the country’s expressways became the envy of South America. State-owned companies were few.

Nevertheless, the state began to encroach in the early 50’s, expropriating the telephone and other companies. This was very limited, but the seeds of intervention were sown and when Venezuela became a democracy, the whirlwind began to be reaped. Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president, one who is revered in Venezuela, was first a Communist who then forsook Communism and became a Socialist, although he spurned that label. Folks do not like to recall that he founded the Communist Party in Costa Rica when in exile there and had a hand in founding the Communist Party in Colombia as well.

We should not be surprised that he immediately proposed, and the legislature approved, price and rent controls, something previously unheard of in Venezuela; a solution seeking for a problem. He worked to create a new constitution which was not friendly to private property.

It’s easy to forget all of that because we had so much more economic and other freedoms back then than what is the case today. But it is necessary to remember that the process began generations ago. Hugo Chavez merely took it to the next level. Speaking philosophically, he was epistemologically consistent, unafraid to take his faith to its logical conclusion.

And his successor, Nicolás Maduro (or his regime’s philosophy) will remain in power so long as his “opponents” refuse to honestly declare their own complicity in what has happened to that stricken land. And an ugly manifestation of that power is the murdering of youth who are resisting what is happening to their homes and country.

A new regime will not arise so long as the opposition refuses to denounce its own love affair with Socialism and its accompanying appeal to envy.

During my last visit to Venezuela, in 2005, I conversed with a taxi driver who expressed satisfaction that the Chavez government had expropriated property that belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The taxi driver was a protestant and was pleased with Chavez’ denunciation of that Church. I asked him whether Protestants did not care for the Ten Commandments. “Of course we do!” he replied.

“Well, I am also a Protestant. However, theft is wrong, regardless whether the state steals from atheists, or Protestants, or even Roman Catholics. Don’t you agree?”

He, of course, saw the point. But the fact I had to point it out to him, was ominous. Chavez, with a wide smile and ingratiating style, was superb in fomenting envy and class hatred, even among the religious.

The country of my birth needs to re-discover its Christian roots and look beyond politics to the Creator and Redeemer God, to whom all allegiance belongs. She must, once again, see that salvation is not in the State or, heaven forbid(!), in politicians, who, like little Caesars, revel in usurping what belongs to God.

Meanwhile, we are left with the unhappy fact that Venezuelans struggle every single day. “The collapse of Venezuela has been the worst recorded for any nation in nearly 50 years, outside of war.”

Andrés Bello (see blog post “Simón Bolivar III — Influences”), was prescient when he wrote the above quoted citation, circa 1830, decades before the publication of Das Kapital and eighteen years before that of The Communist Manifesto. He understood the human heart and its wickedness and he knew that the politics of envy would never satisfy but rather foment anger and discontent. No ideology will fix man’s heart, which is the source of all human misery.

My heart yearns for and is pained for the land of my birth.