A Chronicle of the Dark Ages
www.vheadline.com Posted: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 By: Gustavo Coronel
VHeadline.com commentarist Gustavo Coronel writes: Dark ages can come to a society at any time. They came to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and lasted several centuries. It was a time of economic and political disarray, in which life became bleak and miserable. The continent was invaded by barbarians: Huns, Goths and Vandals. Normal social life largely disappeared. Families depended on neighbors more than in a government. Money was replaced by barter.
In Venezuela we are entering our "mini" Dark Ages. Only in 1975, Venezuela still had one of the largest per capita GNP's of all middle to upper income countries in the rankings of the United Nations. The population in poverty was 5%, yes, you read right... The projections of poverty for year 2000 were no bigger than 3%. ("The Economics of Developing Countries", E.W. Nafzinger, 1984). Today the state of poverty includes almost 80% of the Venezuelan population. Some has gone very wrong in the last 20 years, especially in the last 4 years.
Today our credit cards are no longer valid for most transactions. Venezuelan-issued credit cards will not be valid abroad beyond $1,000. Food market shelves are half empty. Basic products such as milk, margarines, ice creams, cheeses, breads, are getting difficult to obtain.
Although exchange controls were announced almost a month ago, in open violation of a ruling by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, the regime still has not put the mechanisms in place. As a result Venezuela has lived almost a month without legal foreign exchange. A black market has appeared in which the dollar sells for about Bs. 2,400, already 50% in excess of the official rate.
In parallel, the regime has established price controls for about 100 products such as rice, flour, cooking oils, milk, chicken, disposable diapers and the like. Producers are claiming that many of these prices are set below production costs and that no one can be obliged to sell below costs. The President has challenged them to close their plants so he can militarize them. Rationing is in the near future, as a consequence of this new conflict.
Gasoline imports are still insufficient to satisfy the local demand, although the arrival of two or three tankers at any given time has the effect of easing temporarily the long lines of cars waiting outside the gasoline stations.
The Venezuelan refineries are not yet in operation, in spite of the efforts made by the mercenary group of technicians brought in by the regime. Most available gasoline is being sent to "friendly" States while the "enemy" States such as Zulia, Carabobo and Anzoategui are not getting much.
Neighbors are closing ranks and sharing what they have. Car pools, bicycling and plain walking are now common. Suddenly we are all poor, some because they have no money, some because they have money but nothing to buy. Bartering is increasingly taking place.
As the economy collapses around us the President has gone into a frantic campaign on national TV. Compulsory "hook ups" are now daily affairs, in which the President will talk about anything, including the attempts made by voodoo witches to "do a job on him." The President firmly believes in witchcraft and has developed a personal religion which is a mixture of Catholicism, voodoo and Marxism. In these daily shows he tries to provoke the opposition into violent action, since he feels that this is what he needs to justify an open dictatorship. Frankly, some of the things he is doing more than justify a violent outburst. He has brought to the National Pantheon, to rest with our heroes, the remains of Cipriano Castro, a mediocre Venezuelan dictator during the period 1899-1908. This is an insult to all Venezuelans as this man ... called "The Lewd Monkey" by his contemporaries ... spent most of his time drinking, dancing and engaged in sexual orgies. When his kidneys gave out he left to Europe to be operated and was never allowed to return by his "compadre" J. V. Gomez.
- Another act of provocation is the current attempt at passing a Law to regulate the freedom of expression. The Law itself is an insult to the intelligence and, if passed, will mean the death of free press in the country, at least while Chavez is in power.
Watching and listening to Chavez nowadays leaves very little doubt in our minds that the man is mentally deranged. All pretenses at being a Statesman are gone, governing is no longer an objective. His words and body language are full of hate and desires for the destruction of his "enemies".
Europe endured an Attila and a Gunseric. We have our Chavez and our Rangel. The former have already long disappeared into the dustbin of history ... in a few more months the rest will follow.
Gustavo Coronel is the founder and president of Agrupacion Pro Calidad de Vida (The Pro-Quality of Life Alliance), a Caracas-based organization devoted to fighting corruption and the promotion of civic education in Latin America, primarily Venezuela. A member of the first board of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), following nationalization of Venezuela's oil industry, Coronel has worked in the oil industry for 28 years in the United States, Holland, Indonesia, Algiers and in Venezuela. He is a Distinguished alumnus of the University of Tulsa (USA) where he was a Trustee from 1987 to 1999. Coronel led the Hydrocarbons Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington DC for 5 years. The author of three books and many articles on Venezuela ("Curbing Corruption in Venezuela." Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3, July, 1996, pp. 157-163), he is a fellow of Harvard University and a member of the Harvard faculty from 1981 to 1983. In 1998, he was presidential election campaign manager for Henrique Salas Romer and now lives in retirement on the Caribbean island of Margarita where he runs a leading Hotel-Resort. You may contact Gustavo Coronel at email ppcvicep@telcel.net.ve