Blogger Naky Soto at the NYT

I recommend you read one of the best summaries on recent events on Venezuela at the NYT OpEd from Venezuelan blogger Naky Soto.

Economic electoral planning: institutional bachaqueo and printing money

The election date approaches. Whether these will be held is irrelevant, the regime needs to prepare for it no matter what.  From my sources I get the following tidbits as to how the regime is planning to distribute goodies to try to buy votes.

The "bachaqueo" is bringing some political dividends to the regime, at least from those who can actually profit from it. Bachaqueo for those late in the game is a Venezuelan variety of black market (1). Those that can stand in long lines because they are out of a job buy they share and resell part of it at significant markups. It becomes particularity lucrative when: 1) you belong to an information network from cashiers to truck drivers and storage personnel who can warn you that X will arrive at Z before the neighborhood hoi polloi knows about it, thus the bachaqueros are first in line before supplies disappear; 2) you know someone high ranked in the store or the Nazional Guards on duty to avoid riots and they let you get out with more than your share; 3) you belong to a network well organized with bus and motorbike drivers that can carry you fast from one line to another line so in one day you may be able to stand in line at 2 or 3 locations, and rack it in; and of course 4) you belong to a narco-military-mafia organization that do not even own a store and gives you a certain amount at mark up for you to mark it up further. (2)


The beauty of it all is that the Labor Law "reform" of Chavez to get reelected before he croaked is a major incentive for that line of business.  See, you cannot fire someone for multiple absences. If you try to, it is a long and tortuous process that in 95% of the time ends up with an expensive settlement. In fact today's practice is to call into the office to ask point blank the worker how much he wants to resign from his job. Certainly, you can discount from paycheck the missing day and the meal tickets, but what would a worker mind if s/he can make more in that day through bachaqueo? Which thus has become today the main cause of absenteeism, far above any epidemiological consideration.

Some of my clients, those with a significant payroll of say, more than 50, have observed an interesting arithmetic pattern. Say, you have 200 employees, of which 150 are workers whose paycheck is no more than twice the minimum wage.  In recent months you have discovered that absenteeism is at a steady 15%, EVERYDAY.  And never the same folks, of course. That is, e.g., you have in a single week missing, 26, 22, 38, 23 and 29. Everyday you have at least 22 folks missing, that is 15% of your labor force. Why?

Very simple. Workers have organized a network of absentee turns. No worker will be absent more than what the law "forgives". Sometimes you may even find out that, say, X worker is absent systematically every other Wednesday. And you may find out that the peak at 38 (25%) coincided with a food fair or a major arrival of goods at the market store next door. If it does not get worse than that it is because finger printing and stuff limit the number of people that can shop on a given day (never mind that the bachaquero needs to be able to pay for what s/he gets). Also, many business to ensure a minimum labor force for basic processes have established generous attendance bonus (I kid you not), so that workers will miss only when it is worth their while. Thus a fragile equilibrium exists which will break down anytime as scarcity becomes worse.

I trust the reader can figure out on its own how this affect productivity and costs in Venezuela.....

You may think that this is a conspiracy theory. Think again. Go to any ministry and the systematic absenteeism there is worse. Sometimes it is organized outright by the bosses who may even have shipped in some goods, in particular if linked with the military. From there to spread the habit more or less efficiently to private business is not far fetched. And the regime has gone out of its way to spread in time deliveries of scarce goods to create the illusion that things still arrive somewhat to the the shelves, you were just unlucky that day.

In other words the regime thinks it stands to gain something by promoting a bachaqueo network, not enough perhaps to compensate for the voters lost to the long lines, but a gain nevertheless where open and naked scarcity would cost more politically.

The other thing that I want to mention in passing is that from reliable sources I have learned that the regime is bringing in banknotes. Lots of freshly printed notes of 100, more than what is normally needed to replace the physically deteriorated bills. Those bills may actually be delivered in diverse areas of the country to avoid, I suppose, shipping and the like.

My guess is that they will be used to pay for the campaign and for direct cash payments wherever it is needed. Expect a tremendous surge of inflation next year as a consequence.

It also seems that the regime is trying to open, albeit, some partially made public works, such as a couple of metro stations in Caracas. That has happened in the past in Chavez campaigns, but this time after three years of nothing it is hoped for that opening even a single subway station, even if incomplete, may have a big impact. I doubt it, but that is not the point of this post, the point is that the regime is going to apply skinny populism but populism nevertheless. In the past they could raid, say, electronic stores. But all is empty. Thus fake income from bachaqueo, or a direct worthless cash advance, or a huge ceremony to open shit facilities is all that is at hand.

In addition of jailing opposition leaders; but that is another story.

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1) bachaco is the large tropical ant that eats everything on its wake and that laboriously carries huge loads on its back.

2) all courtesy, of course, from crazy price control schemes and currency arbitration (official 6.3, black market 700 to 1 USD; do the math).

Venezuela News on Instagram

I have never liked Facebook and have only a private page for some relatives and friends, more by obligation than anything else. The attempt I did for a parallel Facebook page for the blog just consumed much of my time for something that did not seem worth it. Maybe if someone would collaborate in keeping it up, someone willing to add entries? At any rate after forgetting about it for months I did the logical thing and erased it.


Twitter took me sometime to warm up to. But I did though I never took full advantage of it, e.g., finding it ridiculous to follow everyone that followed just to bulk up numbers (trying to avoid doing the hypocrisy, like I do in Facebook, of masking people). Or failing to understand why I should put narcissistically on Twitter where I eat or feel. Do people actually care much about that? I am sorry, I cannot do it, not even for my friends. I call them and talk when I am interested in their lives.  Please, forgive me for not following most of you, it is not personal, it is simply a lack of time.

But finally a week ago I yielded to check on what was Instagram all about. And this one may well be the one I was looking for!  The more so that crisis pictures are going to abound and finding time for blogging is more and more difficult. Instagram could be a snappy way to report short stuff that I cannot write on blog but is still interesting to report on.

So, please welcome @duquenal_at_vnv , this blog Instagram support.  Do not expect it to be running fast and smooth. I need to get a hand on it but I have a feeling that pictures of protests and empty shelves and long lines will be easy to come up with.  Which will not stop me from putting nice pictures of Venezuela which I have even less time to figure on this blog.

Hope to see some of you there!

Regime gains? Opposition gains? Lopez gains?

The guilty verdict on Leopoldo Lopez was expected though one would have thought that the maximum penalty would not have been decided. At any rate, guilty or free, the decision yesterday by the regime to tell judge Barreiros to condemn Lopez is not going to change much on the events to come. What it does convincingly is marking the moment where the regime stops gingerly crossing over the line between dictatorship and the totalitarian state. Gingerly no more.

Anything but freeing Lopez would not have improved the international regime standing now at junk bond level. Any condemnation, no matter how short the sentence, was equally unacceptable because a guilty verdict on thought crime is unacceptable in civilized world. Any guilty verdict is the clear statement of the regime that politicians will be dealt with through "crime" sentences to ban them from office. Who needs a gulag when a mere sentence disposes of your opponents for a few years in jail and for a life time once out?

So, why is the regime risking such an international condemnation, even though it does not seem to care about that a bit, as witnesses the Colombian border crisis?


Any gain perceived by the regime is strictly internal, safe the historical apologists from Red Ken to the ineffable Eva Golinger. I suppose that now they will be able to state without batting an eye that Lopez is guilty. And it will work to a point. All outside in Venezuela have a sense that justice in Venezuela is not great. But few can grasp how perverted the system is. Thus when a propagandist at Russia Today like Eva Golinger states that Lopez is guilty and has been condemned to 14 years of jail even if you have a doubt about the Venezuelan judicial system you will think that surely Lopez must have done something even if the sentence is overly harsh. A meager compensation when you consider that the Eva Golingers of the world are now quite discredited outside of the few dark caves where they seek refuge.

The "benefits" must be strictly internal, thus. Which may they be?

As an electoral ploy it can only mobilize better the hard core of chavismo. Yesterday a colectivo did attack a peaceful protest resulting with one death through cardiac failure. But the renewed radicalization of the nut wing of chavismo has the advantage at improving the options of the "bring in the vote" machine.  Plain coercion as before has not worked in 2013, now chavismo needs actual threats and ferrying of timorate electors. At best this may help chavismo limit the hemorrhage of votes but it will not help them gain new electors. Attitudes like yesterday castigating civil protests or chanting the hopes that Lopez gets 400 year sentence do not make you new friends.

As a demobilizing tool for the opposition it has a limited use. At best it will scare some opposition leaders that do not want to go to jail, but the bulk knows quite well that they must keep the fight because the slammer is their destiny sooner or later. I think personally that condemning Lopez is in fact an incentive for the opposition voter to be more active. But the Cuban inspired regime applies old recipes in a new world of Twitter.

As a tool to create violence and thus get an excuse to suspend elections is far from certain. So far there is no evidence that the opposition will resort to violence. Lopez himself is calling for peace and electoral activism as the best and fastest way to get out of jail, and annul the unjust sentence.

Clearly I see no real advantage for the regime in condemning Lopez to 14 years. The international commendation has been quite vocal today, faster than usual. Peace still reigns in Venezuela and I do not see much spontaneous chavista celebration...

The only advantage that I can see is internal to chavismo. Someone had to make a show of force to prove to one faction that he is the boss. I, for one, have a hard time imagining that Cubans demanded this from Maduro, or at least with a much shorter sentence. Doing so must be the way to announce that we have entered totalitarianism, officially. The other suspect is Diosdado Cabello who, besides his resentment against anything educated smart and fancy, may have wanted to condemn Lopez to blame this on Maduro.

Whatever it is, those who participated in that show trial have put their names first in the list of those who will need to suffer through a Venezuelan Nuremberg when the day shall come. I do not want to be seen as a poseur by using the N word, but the crimes committed by the regime this recent weeks qualify the holders to a trial at The Hague. Period.

There is only one winner yesterday: Leopoldo Lopez. Write it down.

A slow fuse major embarrassment at Foreign Policy

There is an unwritten rule when dealing about information on Venezuela and chavismo: when you try to be objective you always end up with egg on your face. Respected magazine Foreign Policy is feeling the pinch and risks much discredit for its poor managing of a situation coming from a hatchet job text pretending to set the record straight on Leopoldo Lopez.


The offending article was written by Roberto Lovato for Foreign policy: "the making of Leopoldo Lopez". I am not going much into the details of that article nor for the reasons on Foreign Policy reasons to commission such an article from someone that was found to be, after the fact, a collaborator of Telesur. This network is the propaganda vehicle of chavismo. Not that there is anything wrong to pay for a propaganda network, so is FOX in the US. But the point here is that you do not commission an "objective" article from someone working with a network which has for mission to criticize in any possible way, true or false, the Venezuelan opposition to the regime. Might as well trust FoxNews for a fair article on, say, Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders for that matter).

The first mistake of Foreign Policy was to actually dare to have an objective piece on a political prisoner. As if this were possible in Venezuela or elsewhere. A political prisoner by nature is a victim and one cannot be neutral or objective on a victim.

The second mistake, was not to dig a little bit more on Lovato's background, the kind of mistake that the former editor, Moises Naim, would not have done. Moises Naim, a Chavez opponent before this one was elected first, has never been criticized on its seriousness and use of true facts when arguing his criticism of the bolivarian farce.  The surprising demonizing of Lopez was promptly noted for its deep inaccuracies and twisting of "facts", never mind the use of hearsay on Lopez. We can already observe that Foreign Policy has sensed the problem by appending 7 "updates", something which I am willing to bet is unheard of for other pieces, or is at least a rare phenomenon.

But that was not enough. The evidence of the hatchet job piece by Lovato has forced Foreign Policy to publish a rebuttal article from Leopoldo Lopez lawyer: "The other side of Leopolodo Lopez". I am not going to enter on the details of that piece either. The reader can read both and make up his or her mind on that matter. However I cannot fail to observe that Lovato was granted a reply in that article, a luxury that has not been accorded to critics of the Lovato piece.

On this reply by Lovato I will comment. He is not forthcoming on his partisanship and writes disingenuously that "My story is about López’s political history, particularly as it relates to events surrounding Venezuela’s 2002 coup attempt.". Reading that piece you will see that it is about much more than that and aims at casting a shadow on Lopez with more than just 2002. He also has the gall to call my estimated colleague Juan Nagel to his defense as if he were praising the article when this one is quite clear that it is a necessary read to understand how the chavista mind sees Lopez. He even writes "it is not a hack job" which in my book, is far from justifying the use of the word "hailed" by Lovato.

All in all this does not damage Mr. Lovato credit in pro Chavez groups where his article has been widely used for propaganda. It is an unnecessary attack on what is a political prisoner whose history of victimization by the regime has reached as far as vindication from International Human rights courts and organizations. In the end it is a discredit on the editors of Foreign Policy and a new proof that objectivity when dealing with rogue regime is a doomed farce.

Update: Mr. Lovato also seems to have worked for outright Chavez propaganda outlets.

Is the sentence on Leopoldo Lopez relevant?

No, this is no bait title. Whether Leopoldo Lopez is freed or condemned today has become almost irrelevant for the coming history. As I type this a small crowd of opposition leaders (small on purpose, by the way) is barred from the court building where the final sentence on Leopoldo Lopez is supposedly to be pronounced at any minute. And whatever the result is, even if I learn it as I type, it does not change much the coming text.


I think the regime will condemn Leopoldo Lopez. They are crazy enough to do that and make Lopez the "great" leader of the opposition. Capriles has been fading steadily and even went into ridiculous having to fight a silly battle on Tweeter to pretend that he did not say what he said on some of the fallout of the Colombian border crisis. Maria Corina Machado seems to have realized that Primero Justicia and AD, and others, prefer to keep chavismo at Miraflores before giving her a chance at anything. Thus she seems to have decided to support Lopez until better days come for her. Henri Falcon is now fatally flawed as he is trying to position himself as a transition figure that would allegedly draw in a chavismo dissidence. And there is no one else, really, that can even pretend at disputing the leadership to Lopez.

Whether the leadership of Lopez is what the country needs is now irrelevant.  The regime not only has made this to happen, but it is speeding up the final outcome by its inability to face to the economic and political crisis of Venezuela. Recent polls are lapidary and even "pro Chavez" pollsters give a double digit advantage for the opposition, big enough that one can hardly see a way for the regime to reduce it. Somewhat it will shrink some as the campaign goes on but 2 years of mismanagement and long lines for a little bit of food and toilet paper cannot be forgotten easily.

The regime has tried all sorts of tricks to distract public opinion and try to create excuses that would allow it to at the very least postpone elections. The latest attempt, by manufacturing a crisis with Colombia is going nowhere. The alleged victory at the OAS  was notable not by its narrowness but by the fast shrinking influence of Venezuela there. Next crisis vote and the regime will lose at the OAS. After a weak to dismal initial reaction of Colombia's president Santos, this one has taken successfully the initiative. The "defeat" at the OAS has allowed it to criticize Brazil for its lack of leadership and to wave away the UNASUR empty shell, an humiliation for it considering that an Colombian ex-president is at its helm. Then he went to the border with lots of international guests to hold a cabinet meeting with the victims of Venezuela's abuse. Then the foreign minster Holguin described with details the duplicity and web of lies weaved by the regime in its failed propaganda.

In contrast not only Maduro has failed to call an equivalent meeting on the Venezuelan side, knowing full well that he would be booed loudly, but the wannabe conquering hero went to China to ask for survival cash for the elections of December. In short, the border crisis seems to have brought him zero benefit on the Venezuelan side.

What is left to do for the regime? This one cannot afford to lose elections because a real government will send a few of its members to jail. So a new crisis has to be created and what better than giving Leopoldo Lopez a maximum sentence. Heck! Why not have him murdered in jail to see if the opposition rise in protest so it can be brutally crushed and elections outright cancelled.

That would be a terrible mistake for the regime, the last straw internationally to force many into recognizing its rogue nature, and speed up the economic downfall: the easiest way to undo the regime, fast, without military intervention. The writing is on the wall. US Secretary of State has posed a few days ago with the wife of Lopez. Thomas Shannon, the political operator that posed with Diosdado Cabello a few weeks ago posed a few days ago with a second fiddle at Lopez party, thus equating him to Cabello in importance, a terrible insult for a narcissistic rogue like Cabello, The Spanish Senate has had a nearly unanimous vote to demand that the Spanish government do more for Venezuelan political prisoners. Last but not least, under internal pressure the weakening Roussef government has had to admit (accept?) that there is a need for international supervision for the December vote in Venezuela.

Truly, can the Venezuelan regime be so blind? It is, because it is a rogue regime, because Maduro obeys Cuban orders, because Cuba cannot give up under any pretense whatever alimony it still cashes from Venezuela. Because, very simply, it has run out of ideas and has only violence left in its belt.

In the end it does not matter. If Lopez is not condemned, and freed, the opposition gets a boost. If Lopez is kept in jail, the injustice will be too flagrant and the opposition not only will also get a boost, but it will get another one from overseas. My guess is that the regime will go ahead and condemn Lopez anyway in the belief that it will radicalize its base and bring out the vote. Or the violence.