On the south shore of the Caribbean Sea a totalitarian communist state is new being consolidated. On August 19th, Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro introduced a State of Emergency in five municipalities on the border to Colombia, and closed the border. He also started expelling Colombians from all over the country. Six paragraphs of the constitution were suspended. Apart from the usual four (the inviolability of the home, the right to private communications, the right to freely move about and to leave and enter the country, and the right to peacefully assemble) two more were suspended: The prohibition against using firearms and chemical weapons against peaceful protesters, and the right to do business.
On the night of September 7th, this was extended to three municipalities in the northern end of Zulia state. The following day the regime (using a combination of twitter bots, hired staff and supporters who are being systematically brainwashed in workshops) launched the hashtag #CierreTotalDeLaFrontera (total closure of the border). The next day (today) they launched #NuevaFronteraDePaz (new border of peace), suggesting that peace will be achieved by closing the border.
They conveniently forgot that the violence of the past largely was caused by the regime allowing several Colombian terrorist groups to have their bases on Venezuelan soil (FARC in Zulia state, ELN in Apure state). Furthermore, the smuggling that they want to stop, was carried out with the permission of the armed forces, who charge a fee for each load. In other cases it was the military themselves who did the smuggling over the border, closing it down for a few hours to have the zone for themselves.
While this is going on at the border, the regime is also cracking down on the private vendors who have been buying at government stores at regulated prices, and resold it at free market prices. These so-called bachaqueros have been sharply attacked by the dictatorship, accusing them of causing the shortage of regulated products, an accusation that the average Venezuelan does not buy into.
It seems that all except the communists themselves consider the shortage to be caused by the following government policies: The regime confiscating and closing farms so that the domestic production decreased to a trickle; the regime confiscating food production companies and running them in a very inefficient way; the inflation and the unsustainable exchange rate and lack of hard currency, which has meant that farmers and producers are unable to import necessary spare parts and raw materials, thus further decreasing production; and the regulated prices which means that the producers are unable to charge enough to cover the cost of production, thus further decreasing output. All the actions the regime is taking to “solve” this problem are related to distribution (prohibiting transporting food, prohibiting the stockpiling of food, rationing sales, price control), while none is aimed at increasing production of food, or enabling the importation of more food by improving the trade balance.
Venezuela is a narco-oil-state that has been heavily armed by Russia and China, and is backed up by the security services of Cuba and Iran. The leadership has become outlandishly rich by systematically skimming the oil revenues, and by engaging in drug trafficking using the military and other state resources. Just one example, one of Hugo Chávez’s daughters allegedly has a fortune of $4 billion dollars, with a B.
The development of Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro resembles quite a bit the development of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. After a few years under the 1920’s when Stalin allowed “bachaqueros”, they were cracked down on in the early 1930’s. Just like in Venezuela today, people were prohibited from storing food, from transporting food, from traveling, and from doing private enterprise. In the Soviet Union this policy led to the Holodomor with around 10 million dead. In Venezuela the food shortage has been present for years but is gradually deteriorating. The new policies, which allegedly are introduced to solve the problem, instead run the risk of creating a holodomor in Venezuela, if nothing is done to stop this madness.