Comparing Venezuela and Egypt. NOT! Musings on youth protest...

Even though this blog likes historical coincidences readers will have noticed that I have stayed clear from the latest Egyptian revolution cum coup. For one thing, my allergy to anything military, reinforced by the utter corruption and amorality of the military in charge of the Venezuelan regime. Nothing good comes from military and for a single de Gaulle or Eisenhower you have scores of creeps like Chavez or Velasco Alvarado. But apparently some are not so coy and reach the pages of the NYT OpEd.


I do not want to criticize Daniel Lansberg, a polished writer in English or Spanish, with interesting ideas. But his entry in the NYT "We had our Tamarrod, and failed", fails. And it is not the good recommendation of Moises Naim that will save it.

Good article comparing Egypt &Venezuela's youth movmts by the great Daniel Lansberg: We Had Our Tamarrod, and Failed http://t.co/gqp90REllD
— Moisés Naím (@MoisesNaim) July 23, 2013

In his article my tocayo compares the successes of the youth movement in Egypt and in Venezuela, assuming that it is prospering in Egypt and failing in Venezuela. I will just quote his misguided wistful ending:

Seen from this position, Tamarrod’s successes to date are inspiring. The movement has already accomplished far more in Egypt than we ever did or, frankly, ever dreamed of in Venezuela: Twice now, Egypt’s youth has played a critical role in stripping power from governments it thought were keeping the future from it.

Our youth revolution fell short; may yours be realized.

I truly do not understand why Lansberg thinks that the youth movement in Egypt is winning and the one in Venezuela is failing. I suppose that in parts it is the wish of so many to compare situations that cannot be comparable in any way, outside of the generalities that Morsi and Chavez acted more like intolerant religious leaders than democrats. And that is far from satisfying, even to start a line of thoughts.

The youth movement in Egypt (or rather Cairo?) is indeed a youth movement in that it spilled over from campus to working districts, a youth that felt it had no future. From the start the youth of Egypt showed a unity of purpose across social groups that was never present in Venezuela. As such in Egypt it was a powerful motor for political change, at a grass root level, and better comparisons could be found in Paris in 1830 or Vienna 1848. In all cases, sooner than later, the old regimes came back in "gattopardian" ways, just as it seems to be coming back in Egypt.

In Venezuela the youth movement was rather, at first, a Caracas intellectual elite campus, as Lansberg himself admits. I write intellectual elite because it was not a social elite even if those do overlap greatly in Venezuela. The campuses that started the anti Chavez movement were those campus from the private or autonomous universities where the best and brightest, those that actually like to think and hold personal thoughts, want to go. The parallel system of higher education that chavismo has tried to established attracts those that are unwilling or not able to join these campuses and satisfy themselves by going to campuses where ideology is rampant, where party cadres are formed and where a degree is earned more by steady attendance and accommodation rather than technical or scholarly work. As such the university youth movement was handicapped from the start, with a a group of students seeking a true future and freedom on one side while those following the national temperament after decades of handouts were only too willing to play by the regime rules to land a dead end job in some obscure public administration, their skills being mostly useless in the real world.

As such I beg to differ from the pessimistic tone and ending of Daniel Lansberg piece. I think that the Venezuelan youth movement has accomplished a lot, besides being the main motor for the defeat of Chavez in 2007. That its leaders are managing slowly but surely to infiltrate the political parties is actually a victory, it is the seeds of political renewal in Venezuela. Those things take time, perhaps annoying those that want a quick fixes to our political and economic woes.

If anything, the "failure" of the Venezuelan student youth movement comes from the failure of a society who since the times of Gomez is used to the notion that a few banknotes are enough to paper over any difficulty.  As such too many prefer to bitch at Chavez's regime from Twitter than actually do something about it. This, of course, as from another window of the same lap top they negotiate subsidized dollars to go on vacation or import what they cannot produce anymore.

I do not mean to belittle Daniel Lansberg for his rather unfair conclusion. I congratulate him greatly for reaching the pages of the New York Times and make aware people of the situation in Venezuela which, no matters how you write about it, is always depressing. What I wish for him next time he has such an opportunity is to think things through a little bit better, a little bit deeper.

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PS: sorry, this post had a part eaten up while I did a minor editing and I had to rewrite a paragraph which maybe different from the previous version but the cache was cached....  This is the fault of chronic internet faults inside Venezuela and blogger simply cuts communication or saves wrongly.

Brinkmanship and fatherland: will Maduro charge against students tomorrow?

One thing quite remarkable, in a perverse way, is that since we are told that Maduro has assumed power last December, no major decision has been taken by the regime, outside of a devaluation that came without any de rigueur measures to try to make the best of it. If it is clear that the regime is practicing some form of macroeconomic adjustment while trying to hide it, and thus we know little of its details, less of its scope while on any regards it is not working. The reason behind that secrecy is that the power struggle to replace Chavez is far from resolved so no one among his heirs wants to be seen as responsible from the bad news even though by not taking charge or attempting some form of coherence they are making things worse.

And thus violence seems the last option for the regime.

I suppose that the threats made by Maduro yesterday against the autonomous universities students and faculties march of tomorrow were a foretold conclusion after what was said last week end. It was a long week end because on Monday we commemorated Carabobo, our Yorktown for those who know US history. The ceremonies take place at the battle field shrine and used to be Chavez favorite. Maduro tried to look the big leader with little success; however he announced that corruption would devour the revolution and that some were trying the ridicule the fatherland concept as understood by chavismo.

The meta message was elsewhere. What the regime announced was that it was loosing patience with two groups: those inside chavismo that had other interests than those of the leadership, and the opposition who refuses to recognize Maduro, a fortuitous coincidence that is making Maduro's life quite unbearable.

The corruption salvo was to convince us that Chavez was the first president that managed scrupulously the moneys of the nation and thus any corrupt person is anti chavista. I am not going to insult the intelligence of the readers by reminding them why the chavista regime has been the most corrupt in Venezuela's history. We are not Maduro's audience. What Maduro is doing here is trying to shed away from him a corruption that cannot be hidden anymore, by either putting it on the opposition or making the corrupt faction that opposes him (Cabello et al.) as an opposition by themselves. The veracity of the charges is inconsequential here, as we were reminded again this week with yet another piped hearing for Lara's governor Falcon alleged corruption. No, the corruption charges mean that the regime faction around Maduro is prepared to play dirty to get rid of his opposition, and dirty here means illegality and violence and massive lies.

The fatherland salvo was in large part forced upon Maduro because of the idiotic and yet purposeful words the prior day of Jaua in his revenge seeking quest against Capriles for beating him in December elections. Jaua under pressure by his own chavista audience told them that it did not matter that they were out of toilet paper because now we have fatherland. That is right, besides saying that Capriles could f***k himself with a roll of missing toilet paper he told his audience that the fatherland of the revolution could not be measured against empty shelves. You can watch a video here if you doubt me (in Spanish, sorry). Certainly this P.R. disaster had to be recovered and Maduro who claimed that an opposition fascist and corrupt was ridiculing the notion of fatherland that Chavez left the country with.

In other words last week end we were told clearly that those who continue to oppose Maduro are traitors tot eh fatherland, fascists and corrupt, amen that Maduro and his people are the ones acting like fascist and corrupt by the mere way in which they proffer those accusations. The rest of the week has been a confirmation of this, from a cadena by Maduro to a pathetic scene on Globovision airwaves where a minster of Maduro attacked in an hysterical way governor Falcon insulting him of many things and fascists proffered several times. In any normal country a minister that behaves like Izarra is IMMEDIATELY fired but in Venezuela we wonder up to what point the hysterics were not planed to carry the point that the regime is about to pass on the offensive.

The escalation went as high as Maduro threatening the striking universities tomorrow if they dared march in protest. He went as far as singling out Leopoldo Lopez as the leader behind the university strike, as if he had such power.  Of course an undaunted Lopez not only called all to go Saturday to protest, but went as far as telling Maduro to stop being such a coward.

It seems that the regime is starting to get really nervous. Maduro gets no respect from any quarter and we can genuinely wonder how can he rule for 5 more years when he is covered in such a pile of ridicule. Also, after what happened in Brazil the regime certainly understands that probably Venezuela is tinder that has yet to find its match. Something has to be done and in the current situation, with no dollars, with no will to announce the measures to be taken, with a protest that grows by the way around real grievances, from lack of toilet paper to the asphyxia of autonomous universities the regime must feel cornered enough to feel ready to use violence.

But Maduro has boxed himself. If he represses the protest tomorrow he will become an instant pariah world wide. If he does not repress he risks to have chavismo look for one who will get the job done. I guess we will find out soon if that renewed fascist posturing of the regime means business.