These are extreme signs of a country in chaos, without law, without government, in anomie (social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values). But there are many others. Every day private land is invaded, urban buildings occupied by organized groups, companies taken over by workers with the backing of members of the armed force or government officers. This is taking place in broad daylight, under the very noses of the institutions which should protect the citizen, but are watching in silence. No reader can truly measure the magnitude of the crime being committed in Venezuela today unless s/he were here. Since many are not, here I am telling them.
When I was a kid, I watched old western movies in which, sometimes, the "sheriff" of a town was a criminal in disguise ... just maneuvering to "take over" the town. I have the perception that a similar situation applies to Venezuela today. There is a group in government, disguised as democrats, trying to take over the country in the name of a revolution based on dead ideologies. They have many of the country's institutions under their control and exercise a rule of terror to "persuade" those who dissent from their views.
Today even the most basic civic rights are threatened with extinction. I have mentioned before how some 500 hours of compulsory TV and radio hookups have been imposed on us by a megalomaniac President, so that he can tell us about his daughter's turtle, about his new grandson or about his childhood in Barinas ... or, he can extol the virtues of Fidel Castro, or the need to eliminate the rich. The matters of real national interest ... the economic and social problems which are overwhelming us are never dealt with. These hookups are a tool of social exclusion, as the man uses them to breed hate among the members of our society.
No institution in Venezuela stands up and challenges this parade of inanities. As impunity becomes total, the President becomes more and more violent and starts threatening all dissenters with armed responses. Like a train jumping tracks the violent President has become an object of destruction.
The only obstacle between this runaway object of destruction and the intended target: Venezuelan society, is a referendum. Only a civilized vote by the Venezuelan population stands in the way to total destruction.***
Besides the United Nations in New York, the left-wing Venezuelan leader had been planning to visit the Organization of American States in Washington and the oil industry city of Houston in a Sept 25-29 trip.
"He's not going to either Washington or the U.N ... he prefers to concentrate on affairs at home," one government source, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
The sources offered no further explanation for the trip cancellation by the populist president, who has traveled widely and enjoys lecturing foreign audiences about his "Bolivarian Revolution" in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. ***