"Margarita follies": a cheap vaudeville in 5 acts

Prologue

PSUV tent city
Courtesy Elides Rojas tweet

In the fair city of Caracas, Henry Ramos gathers a few friends for a big party. Nicolas Maduro is not invited and he tries to sabotage Henry's party by complaining to the police for loud noise, and trying to hold a party of his own on a red shirt theme. His party is a bust: even people walking by Nico's party with red shirts take them off to go to Henry shindig.

Act 1 Nicolas at Pinkyville

Nicolas is furious at Henry and his friends, In particular those with orange shirts that accepted to don white ones at Henry's party. To get fresher airs he decides to go out of Caracas to visit a homestead where he is told lot's of people love him and would have gone to his party had he be willing to foot the cost. Lo and behold, when he reaches Pinkyville he finds his friends very pissed off at him because he took all of their food for his party in Caracas. Furious, they bring out a protest steel band of pots and pans to accompany their protest song. We will never now for sure but there may have been a exchange of more than just insults. Nico must make a quick exit and go back to Caracas swearing that all of these people have been sent by the folks of Henry's party.

Act 2 The revenge of the bitter

At Miraflores Palace Nico and his gang are sulking. They need to avenge themselves of so many humiliations even though the bard Vox Populi tells them that they asked for it. But she is a relative of Cassandra and everybody hates that bitch even more.

There is also the problem of that chic gathering to start soon next door to Pinkyville, where all the faded B list will gather to toast Nicolas who is paying for the drinks. Short of time, they decide to start taking on the orange shirts of Henry's party accusing them of street noise and killing kittens with farts. For good measure, to warn other people who attended Henry's party they send to the slammer Braulio who we learn apparently commutes back and forth from work with thousand of dollars in his car. It seems he did not know that such things go under mattresses,

Act 3 The neighborhood complains

All these people held against their will, with all sorts of made up excuses, manage a lot of noise. All sorts of neighbors complain, in particular Braulio's father who would like to know at the very least where is Braulio held. Nico's Friday girl Delcy vulgarly tells Chile Wine Export, the company of Braulio relatives to fuck off which not only infuriates further Braulio's Dad but brings out his uncle Almagro and the neighborhood watch HRF.

Some suggest that Delcy's therapist should not be his brother as it compromises the ethics of the trade and creates such unpleasantness and incompetency in such an insecure petty creature.

Act 4 Nico's fraternity bash

Considering all of this real and imaginary saboteurs, depending whom you ask, Nico's gang decide to lock up Margarita Island so nobody from main land could go to Pinkyville. Not even Henry who wanted to tell the guests that Nico stole his money to pay for the lavish party, money that was to be given to charity like taking care of children with cancer.

Enrique also wanted to go to Margarita to visit his God Mother on her birthday. He was trapped at the airport by a gang of red shirts who even grabbed their junk in offering to Enrique. This one filmed it all and this may have been the first case of live fascist porn on Periscope. The passengers going along with him enjoyed the show and backed Enrique refusing to leave the place so much fun they were having. Soon the good people of Pinkyville was rumored to be on their way to the airport and thus the red goons decided to retreat protected from video cameras and steel bands by the Venezuelan security apparatus.

To avoid further surprises Nico's gang decided to be able to sleep tight in their luxury hotel by having a few hundred red shirts come over. Since they were service they were put to sleep outside, in tents with rudimentary hygiene on some dirt undeveloped property. That way they could watch them form their AC suites and call on them as needed.  Any similarity to slavery or indented labour is purely coincidental.

Act 5 What if you give a party and (almost) no one shows up?

So Nicolas launched his party without witnesses to which more than 100 head of gangs were expected. Apparently not even a dozen came and none of the stars, though plenty of underlings came to enjoy all sorts of amenities at Henry's cancer struck children expense.

And yet Delcy did all what she could to entice them to come, waiting for the few of them that came on the tarmac itself, with lots of hugs and offers to carry their bags and free them from customs duty. Unfortunately the luminaries that came where those that had no choice. Rouani came because he had to pass the bills to Nico from past bashes; Raul needed to get his monthly stipend; Rafael because he has nothing better to do and Robert, who is not invited to any other party around the World, would not miss that one.

While the bash took place another formal diner party was held elsewhere. The guests decided that Nico would not be welcome anymore to their parties because he cannot stop acting like a brat and never pays his bills. Jose from Brazil made it a point to underline that Nico had not met any of the obligations he was supposed to meet in order to join that southern club.

Epilogue

Back at Miraflores Nico and the gang realize that they are more lonely than ever, that even paying for people party is not enough to have them show up. Someone suggests to jail all of Henry's friends around Miraflores so that nobody would know about such isolation.

The Macri effect

One week ago Argentina elected a new president, the first certifiably peronist free in decades. As expected there will be changes in Argentina foreign policy. What was less expected is the speed at which president elect Macri started those changes, more than two weeks before being sworn in. To begin with, of the few people allowed on the election night stand, one was Leopoldo Lopez wife, Lilian Tintori. This made it to the opening news of CNNSpanish...

¡Plop! Café CÑN empieza su cobertura de resultado Argentino con abrazo de @liliantintori y @mauriciomacri en tarima pic.twitter.com/t2NkUB7x0e

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) November 23, 2015

So what now?


The first thing to note is that Macri means what he said. He repeated it twice on his morning after first press conference.  Other countries are taking notice and are not amused, like Uruguay. To which Macri replied stating point blank that human right violations were public and notorious in Venezuela and it was up to other countries to chose interest over ethics. In Venezuela they took a few days to acknowledge the hit, hoping, I suppose, that Dilma or somebody would call Macri to ask him to shut up. When nothing more but very gauche declarations like the one from Uruguay came, the regime finally reacted. National Assembly chair Diosdado Cabello called Macri a fascist (it takes one to know one, I suppose).  And president Maduro, not to be left behind, went as far as saying that the Argentinian people were ready to raise against Macri (interesting statement since he just got elected, is not sworn in yet,but then again Maduro was never suspected of being a democrat).

And yet, for of his apparent democratic ethics Macri thinks more about Argentina interests than those of Venezuela. He knows that a battle in Mercosur to evict Venezuela is lost because Brazil and Uruguay are too involved with Venezuela corruption and Venezuela owes them too much money. Macri's target is not only the increasingly abhorrent regime of Venezuela, it is Mercosur itself.

Mercosur is failing since Lula reached power. It has become for Brazil something like its private economic zone and as such things like true economic integration and political developments have been sub-ordained to Brazil's interests. The devastating Argentina crisis 13 years ago, and the very light weight of Uruguay and Paraguay made that possible. In other words, with the fraudulent incorporation of Venezuela Mercosur is going nowhere, and Macri seems to have no patience with that. In fact, Macri is looking towards relations with the Pacific Alliance which would favor Argentina more as its economy is more complementary to the P.A. needs than Brazil's one. If Mercosur fails to tame Venezuela it will be a perfect excuse for Macri to start taking its distances with it.

There is also more than Mercosur in the target, there is also the useless UNASUR, a presidential left self protection club for South America. Note that the the swearing in of Macri is on December 10, just when an eventual election fraud crisis in Venezuela would be at its apex. Apparently Macri has chosen his new foreign minister for her experience even though he did not know here personally. He gave her an agenda where two points were nonnegotiable: his pressure on Venezuela and the end of Argentina's relations with Iran. Clearly UNASUR received a notification that any unjustified support to Venezuela will not be approved by Macri and such a division could well mean also the end of the useless UNASUR.