ADSactly World - Losing Freedom: Venezuela, During the Storm
Introduction
In this segment we are going to cover what happened after people started to see each others as enemies based on their political views, a division that was engineered from the government itself with the goal of increasing their control over the entire country. The famous strategy of “Divide and conquer” is exactly what they did.
The reason why people fell into this type of manipulation was mainly because Chavez had a message that connected with everything the people felt. His looks was that of an ordinary Venezuelan. Instead of talking about gross domestic products and financial calculations, he spoke to the people in a language they understood. He told them about his daily reality and common problems.
Their message was that the problems of Venezuela, was the direct result of the corruption coming from the old political parties, that for the last few decades had been stealing the money to the point of leaving the nation close to bankruptcy, in short, they said it was necessary to defeat those old parties because they were supposedly an alliance between dishonest banks, and their friends in the government.
All this criticism resonated deeply in the hearts of a lot of people who were suffering economic difficulties and who had lost confidence in the leaders from the traditional parties. The people around him sang and danced. They saw in him a savior. I had never seen such a high level of political fanaticism. For a specific example of this, take a look at the video below:
Because of his image, he managed to gain incredible support throughout the years, and he used that support to increase his control over everything.
During the storm
Freedom is something very fragile. Conquering it is a very difficult process that takes a considerable amount of time, but losing it is very easy.
In that sense it is like glass. Creating the glass is difficult, unlike breaking it, which is very easy. We can break a glass by just hitting it with enough force. The glass breaks naturally and the parts fly off in all directions. But people have never seen a broken item composing itself and getting back to its original unbroken state. That does not happen because nature does not go from disorder to order.
There is even a concept about this natural tendency called entropy and it is about “The measure of the level of disorder in a closed but changing system, a system in which energy can only be transferred in one direction from an ordered state to a disordered state”. | Source
In the case of Venezuela, once there was no political freedom, things started to get quite tense, the hate between the people stopped being a class issue and became a team issue. Those who were in the government team, dressed all in red and always present in their rallies were considered "The people”. Those in the opposition team, practically stopped being Venezuelans in the eyes of the government, and were considered in every sense as inferior citizens with their rights reduced, punished by the regime at all levels and more than one time insulted by the president himself. The economic class did not matter. You could be the person with the less money of all but if you didn’t supported the government, you were screwed. In the same way you could live like a King, and as long as you supported them you were automatically considered a member of "the people".
The social division was so strong that even the families were divided. The hatred was from both sides. The opposition hated the government supporters (and still do) and those supporters hated the opposition, this was with such intensity that they became like two parallel and impermeable societies. From the government, prizes and punishments were given based on the political views of the individual, this began in the working life. Public officials who were government supporters advanced within the hierarchy of their institutions. Opposition officials were fired or kept forever in the same position, to keep them away from power and influence, and to marginalize them inside public institutions.
You have to keep in mind that these things were done by a government that until then called itself “democratic”. Imagine what someone can feel who sees the government acting like this when it is supposed to represent every citizen equally. Meanwhile in the rest of the world, Chavez was seen as a respectable leader, champion of social justice, who had won legally and remained in power by popular votes. Hollywood figures such as Sean Penn, Oliver Stone and Naomi Campbell took photos with Chavez and declared him the great “savior” of Latin America.
A lot of Venezuelans kidnapped by a government like this, couldn’t believe their eyes when watching Hollywood people interacting with Chavez in what seemed like a friendship. There were a lot of people all around the world praising the work of his government, but of course, they did this from the security of living in another country that is stable and free, none of them moved to Venezuela. As it is always the case with these issues, actions speak louder than words.
At the same time, all the reasons why people voted for Chavez, all his promises, were of course not fulfilled. The circumstances that brought him to power not only had not been corrected but had worsened.
The corruption from the 90s and before, were nothing compared to what was happening now, the government started to have absurd and unjustified excesses. Chavez and his followers had become the new “elite”.
Venezuela, as some of you might know, has huge oil reserves, it is actually the country with the biggest oil reserves in the world. Chavez, with his goal of accumulating even more control, dismissed the entire staff of PDVSA (the oil company) and put some of his supporters as the new staff. Chavez and his “fans” had their hands inside one of the largest “gold” vault in the world.
This event was quite covered worldwide and is know as the oil lockout.
It is easy to think that if the situation was so alarming the best thing was to simply go and live in another country. Many did and are still doing it in increasing numbers each year, but leaving is not easy. Leaving Venezuela is not as simple as it may be to leave any other democratic country.
In Venezuela, there is a little understood law, it is a currency exchange control that forbids the people to freely exchange the local currency with any other currency from another country. In order to do this type of exchanges for traveling, people need to go to a bank and fill out some forms and if approved, the individual is allowed to exchange a little share of the available dollars to cover the expenses of his trips at the official price. But you can imagine the amounts of dollars people can exchange like this, is very limited.
This is a very complicated system and they change it every few years. But basically, what this does, just like any other prohibition (think about the alcohol prohibition in America in the 20s), is that it creates a black market. In Venezuela, there is an unregulated and “illegal” market (although everyone is a participant, if we stick to the law, it is illegal) in which the exchange rates for external currencies are extremely higher than the official rate. Which is why, you might have heard of Venezuelans earning less than 10$ per month, that amount is calculated using the black market rate which is the one that set the prices of most products and services.
Imagine that all your money is paper that no one outside of your country can accept it, and that the government also forbids you to exchange it for another currency. Add to that the forever increasing inflation and you have a perfect recipe for a complete social collapse.
This is why today, we see situations like an insane amount of Venezuelans migrating by foot to Colombia or Brazil in what is considered as the biggest exodus in the history of the country.
Conclusion
Now that we have covered the "before" and the "after" (that is still going on) of Venezuela, in the next entry I will explain how the country got from one extreme to the other in detail. What exactly happened in Venezuela, how Chavez used the Venezuelan democracy to dismantle the Venezuelan democracy itself. And how it transformed those strategies into a method that can be replicated in any democratic country, by creating sort of a franchise model, that can be exported, and in fact, they have already done it. All of this, being financed by the incredible amount of resources coming from the national oil business.
It is also important to notice that the situation in Venezuela has not been resolved, this story hasn't reach its ending as of yet, and important events will be happening in the coming weeks and months.
Images sources
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Authored by: @dedicatedguy
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This sounds familiar to me. That’s exactly what US felt and was said about Donald Trump. I hope the outcome won’t be the same 😱. If you didn’t mentioned Chavez and Venezuela 🇻🇪 and Venezuela’s final results, I would be certain you wrote about US corruption, careless politicians, careless money printing, debt pulling us down, Bankruptcy! That’s exactly what Trump’s weapon was and most of us believed him. There was this high level of political fanaticism as well. At the end, I doubt this could eventually happen in US, but I just don’t see this “bright future” here either.
These “Hollywood people” are blindfolded for their money and their greed. They are not as smart and respectable anymore as they may think. Unfortunately the political system in Venezuela is completely under control of Chavez”rigged and corrupt system”. Unless someone from the outside steps in, I don’t expect any change. Just like you mentioned, some people will flee the country and some will continue to suffer. People in Venezuela can’t rely on government for a long time already and that’s why they feel second chance in decentralized blockchain technology and crypto. But this decentralized market is spreading all over the world.
It won't be, America has institutions and certain political order despite its many defects.
haha well, even though America has its problems, it cannot be compared with the current destruction in Venezuela.
Agree, an intervention must be done, it is the only way to fix this.
You are spot on with that one!
It's amazing how the Chavez government divided the people.... He divided that brotherhood that existed in my beloved country. Previously the brotherhood that existed in Venezuela was too great.
Before Chavism, it was the Adecos against the Copians. But it wasn't a rivalry like it is now.... Now it is a hatred that the opponents have against the Chavistas and vice versa. And sincerely, it is only now that we should all be united as a people and as brothers and sisters that we have always been.
Unfortunately there are too many ignorant people in the country and they still believe in the dictator's words. They don't even open their eyes. They settle for the crumbs the government gives them.
I am Venezuelan, in the last post I left a comment about my personal experience of my experiences here in my country.
It's too sad what you see and experience here. Not being able to go out and buy what you want in a supermarket, not being able to see your family, not being able to separate from your friends because they are leaving the country, not being able to study, not being able to earn enough money for anything, not having medicine.... It's too sad.
My grandmother needs medicine, but here in Venezuela there isn't any. I have searched and asked many people, but there is no longer the medicine my grandmother needs here in the country.
I miss going out with my friends, spending Christmas with my family, enjoying my life.... It's all gone, and only because some people crave power and money.
I feel compelled to leave the country.... I know I will probably never see my family again. But I don't have a choice.
Greetings @adsactly and @dedicatedguy!!
Thanks for your sharing your experience and thoughts with that wonderful comment buddy!
Let's hope this problem get fixed soon.
Reading about this makes me so sad. I wonder if the people who supported Chavez back then still support him now? My fear is that they, even now, still don't blame him because they don't want to admit that they were so horribly, terribly wrong and instead still think he had the right heart but other factors like "the enemy party" dragged him down in secret despite him basically having total control of the government and economy.
Being able to speak to people's hearts is a very deadly skill, on the one hand you make people feel that you understand them (and it helps when you look like them), that way you make yourself look like the leader of the "tribe". Then your tribe looks up to you as a hero and savior, and becomes irrationally devoted to you, and the scariest part is that you don't even have to keep your promises anymore?
Hollywood stars definitely deserve to be denounced for meeting with the architect of one of the world's worst crises. Maybe they also were seduced by his words without bothering to check for accountability. A warning for celebrities to look both ways before meeting...
From what I understand, there's still no end in sight and Chavez's party is still in control, is that right? Probably still making out like bandits on the oil sales even as society implodes around them...
Well Chavez is dead, but there are still some people supporting Maduro and his regime, those people are completely indoctrinated with that ideology.
There is no way not to blame Chavez and his regime for this disaster, they had and still have total control over everything. If everything goes bad, they are the ones responsible. But fanatics will always exists.
That is right. 6 days ago there was a presidential election and Maduro won. Now it is up to the international community to fix this.
What a great post but at the same time, it really made me sad. It's like we never learned from the history and it's like this system is created to control mass population.
After all that is done it seems like people are still not prepared to be responsible for their action and do something that will unite us. It is really sad to read about countries through history that experienced same or similar things.. I hope people of Venezuela will not fall for that "conquer and divide" tactics and realize that they must come as one.
I also hope that the world still can see suffering of your nation as any other and come to help as much as it can, because it can. We just need to realize that we are stronger together.
Good luck Venezuela, you have my heart. Thanks for this great post. The truth can't be hidden.
Much love!!!
Yes, sadly this ideology always ends the same, with a totalitarian government and people suffering like crazy.
Thanks for your kind words! Really appreciate it!
If you do some research, you can come to the logical conclusion that this tactic of "separation" is widely used (and used) by many dictatorial regimes. It is also called the "rat method". It is conditioned by the fact that when people are fired against each other - they do not have power. A disjointed and organized society can not unite to change the political situation within the country. The person (usurper) who is at the head of the country understands this in a polite way. In addition, in almost all cases, we see a low standard of living. A low standard of living is associated with low wages and high unemployment.
People without money think about how to live another day. Those who are in the workplace will do their best to stay there. For many people, losing a job is the loss of a single source of income. To all this it is necessary to add a constant build-up of the power apparatus and the main propaganda. The media impose false patriotism. This they make people think that in all problems someone else is to blame. Most often blame the West and the United States.
The whole situation is very familiar to me. Venezuela has much in common with some countries. I found a lot of similarities with what is happening in another country. In any case, there is only one way out of the situation ...
Good material.
As you describe, I am Venezuelan even in my country, and hopeful that soon we will be free and we will come out of this terror, and to a certain extent Chavez even had luck in dying because although they do not believe it when dying the country had the oil even to good price and inflation was high but not at current levels still enjoyed popularity and there was money on the street since everything was covered with oil money and its followers with what little they gave him were happy with that misery ate and not yet There was the hunger that there is now. When dying the oil collapses and the country begins to fall in misfortune and as it says the saying "when sinking the boat the rats are the first ones in jumping". And so it happened they began to detach high government officials and go to the empire as they call the United States to seek asylum in exchange for information clear information from others and thanks to this there are happy enjoying the money stolen in Venezuela and say presidents of other big nations and friends of Chavez because they give them a lot of money and infrastructure in their countries as they are (Paraguay Cuba, Ecuador Bolivia Brazil Argentina) this seeing venezuela and no money they turned their back on Maduro no longer come to venezuela Of course many of them are no longer presidents in their country but they are still emblematic figures in their country but of course they do not remember Venezuela anymore because it is no longer a bank because they helped to break us just as the figures of holliwoodmas never came. Danny Glover received 18 million dollars for a movie about venezuela, neither the movie nor the dollars. As you can see, "Have money and you'll rain friend, fall in disgrace and never remember you", so it happens here as there is no money to give now, mature. unpopular in the world sure that if there was money to give as in the time of Chavez as the saying goes another rooster sing
Yes, he died just before the oil price crash of 2014. But everyone except his fanatics know that Chavez was the main cause of this disaster.
Let's hope this lesson is never forgotten, the saddest part is that other countries had already made a mistake like this one. So it could have been avoided since the beginning.
I'll be the first to admit I don't know the first thing about whats going on in Venezuela besides what trickles through from American news sources, which I feel naturally has its own political agenda behind it so I take it with a bit of salt.
I live in a socialist democracy here in South Africa so i can relate to many of your points you make. Especially the divide and conquor. A democracy is also effectively mob rule, since everyones opinions are equal in the eyes of the constitution which is noble in a way
But if you keep the mob uneducated you can rule the mob and therefore rule the democracy. This is a toxic relationship where the people give unlimited power to the government hoping they will act in their best interested but unfortunately, people are easily corruptible and this free reign clearly has build a systematic rule that looks more like a dictatorship than a democracy
I can't image how people must feel having to choose to stay and suffer in the country they obviously love and want to see propser or leave and try to build a better life somewhere
I look forward to your next posts and want to learn more about wahts goign on in that side of the world
Exactly, this is what every totalitarian tries to do.
Sad stuff...
that's why we need steem, somehow to gain same freedom
Name me an unbroken democracy?
So this Maduro fella was reportedly offering people thongs at the polling stations if they voted for him. A very ugly and obvious way of buying an election win but I can think of a few western elections where that has obviously happened. As well as outright illegal election spending.
Nevermind though, it gives a few diehard capitalist minions an opportunity to bleat about socialism and exercise their need to talk about Jeremy Corbyn, every hour of every day.
In my opinion as a Venezuelan who lives in Venezuela suffering all the problems from the economic to the social everything that you expose in this post is true and I would like to add that in this dictatorship does not come out with elections while all institutions have them kidnapped we are in hands of drug traffickers who will do anything to stay in power and kidnap our society little by little. What we urgently need is a military intervention that is the only thing that could save us
This was not necessarily for buying the election, because they have the system completely rigged. That was just to increase participation so the rejection towards them didn't look so obvious. Either way, after the last election this past Sunday, the international rejection got even bigger.
But there are still important things that need to happen to get this problem fixed.