Serban V.C. Enache
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Authored by Serban V.C. Enache via Hereticus Economicus:
In this article, Megan Janetsky claims that “Venezuelans have faced increased xenophobic attacks and attitudes,” but doesn’t invoke a single example of such an attack. The fact that countries in Latin America have begun to take measures to stem immigration is not a sign of xenophobia, it’s the inevitable consequence of the reality on the ground. It’s simply impractical for these countries to accommodate higher and higher inflows of people from Venezuela. There’s only so much space, facilities, job offers, and money [foreign funds on which these countries are largely dependent] to go around. Instead of playing the xenophobia card, lecturing countries and governments about how bad they are for not being xenophiles, the author should lay the blame on Washington’s foreign policy, not just on Maduro’s Government. By the way, Megan Janetsky doesn’t mention the trade sanctions, doesn’t mention the West’s hostile policy toward the country at all. This fact alone betrays the article as being nothing more than propaganda, a liberal’s virtue signalling, false humanitarianism, and promotion of the ‘no-borders’ and ‘limitless immigration’ mentality.
Crippling Western sanctions and theft of Venezuelan assets held abroad, on top of efforts to foment civil unrest and treason within the country’s law enforcement and military, are the major factors – but Maduro’s Government certainly has its share of the blame, and it goes back to Chavez’s administration as well.
And, yes, it’s also a failure of Venezuelan type of socialism. Take Cuba, for instance. Cuba has lived under US trade sanctions for more than half a century [plus US-sponsored terrorism]; and despite the odds, living on the hegemon’s doorstep, it managed to retain socio-economic and political stability. Cuba doesn’t have a fraction of Venezuela’s natural wealth; but it does have 1/3 of Venezuela’s population. Since the 1960s, Venezuela’s birth rate, measured per 1000 people, has fallen dramatically as you can see in the graph below.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The trans-national mainstream media lobbies for all these wars, regime changes, and trade sanctions – and then preaches to the masses that they have to take in the refugees, otherwise they’re racists.
What has “saved” Cuba is the fact that it has been governed with a strong hand – which is exactly what Latin people need: a strong hand. On the other hand, if Cuba would be as rich in natural resources, the story would most probably be entirely different. Overall, the US has always stomped on smaller nations – cowardly nation that the US is. Venezuela’s problem is an internal one and it should behoove nations not to interfere.
The Chavistas never got around to capture land values. They stopped at nationalizing the oil and that was that.
Since so many people fled Venezuela, and neighboring countries had to take them in, the country’s internal problem needs to be discussed in a public forum in order to be addressed. Problem is, the West wants regime change and hasn’t stopped using economic warfare again Venezuela. In order to have any semblance of a chance against US invasion, they’d have to invite in Russian and Chinese troops and military capital.
South American countries need strong local leaders who have their countries’ best interests at heart. What they don’t need are the US-educated dictators whose strength comes by way of US-engineered coups and US economic and military support.
A strong hand isn’t enough. You have to have the right economic policies. Mussolini was a strong leader, but his laissez-faire policies were garbage; when that failed to get the country out of the depression, he used deficit spending to drain marshes, build factories, and create jobs, and this got the country out of the depression. The Nazis in five years time transformed a starving Germany into the world’s first military and economic superpower. And they did it through state-led investment and stopping financial and land speculation.
While Chaves who was a military officer, tried to study various subject matters and as a whole clean, Mduro is another matter, who was just a bus driver and then became a head of bus drivers union without doing any serious study, and has been bit corrupt. Another big problem has been the neglect agriculture in spite of the fact that they can grow and produce agricultural products.
I saw news coverage with butcher shops in some parts of Venezuela. The slowest seller was the meat itself, and the fastest seller were bones, because people couldn’t afford meat. When you have both supply side and demand side problems across the country’s regions, you know that chaos reigns.
When you have both supply side and demand side problems across the country, with the Supreme Master of Chaos imposing sanctions to deprive the people of food and medications, stealing its assets, wrecking its economy, coercing other nations to join it, and engineering regime change by all means foul, what else but this deliberately-caused chaos would reign in Venezuela?
They had plenty of time to take actions to prevent such a mess, which occurred before Trump took office and implemented sanctions. Instead, they got complacent by relying entirely on crude exports, priced in their enemy’s currency. Neoliberal economics with a SJW band aid on it is useless.
Cuba let its national agriculture fall by the wayside when the USSR was supplying Cubans with food. Cuba had to work very hard and very quickly to grow its own food, but Cubans overcame the challenges in spite of US efforts to ruin it, and now it has the best urban agriculture in the world. I suspect that Cuban agriculturalists are helping Venezuelans to do the same.