Rampant corruption in Venezuela’s national oil company weighs down the economy
FLORANTONIA SINGER
Caracas - MAR 23, 2023
Showing posts with label Nicolás Maduro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicolás Maduro. Show all posts
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Rampant corruption in Venezuela’s national oil company weighs down the economy
Monday, May 5, 2025
Henrique Capriles / ‘Abstention in Venezuela only makes things easier for Maduro’
Henrique Capriles: ‘Abstention in Venezuela only makes things easier for Maduro’
In an interview with EL PAÍS, the opposition politician defends his decision to run in the parliamentary and regional elections and reflects on the strategy to confront Chavismo
Friday, January 24, 2025
Venezuela grapples with economic collapse
Venezuela grapples with economic collapse
The modest recovery of recent years fails to mask Venezuela’s crisis: a shattered productive structure, poverty levels nearly three times the regional average, and profound inequality
ALONSO MOLEIRO
Caracas - JAN 17, 2025 - 23:30 COT
The inauguration of Nicolás Maduro last Friday ushers in a new chapter for Venezuela, marked by deep socioeconomic wounds. The ongoing financial crisis — arguably the population’s greatest source of discontent — persists despite a modest reactivation of consumption. Crisis and political conflict remain intertwined, and after a decade of catastrophic governance and escalating tensions between the ruling party and the opposition, the Maduro government now faces an especially turbulent period.
Monday, January 13, 2025
Maduro’s six-month scramble to hold onto power
Nicolás Maduro celebrates after electoral authorities declared him the winner of the Venezuelan election, on July 29, 2024.FERNANDO VERGARA (AP)
A Maduro's six-month scramble to hold onto power
A reconstruction of the last six months of turmoil in Venezuela following the July elections, highlighting the opposition’s accusations of fraud, the exile of González Urrutia, the presentation of the paper tallies, the repression and persecution of Chavismo, and the growing tension leading up to the inauguration on January 10
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
The solitude of Nicolás Maduro
The solitude of Nicolás Maduro
Venezuela’s president traveled to Kazan in search of legitimacy, but returns without joining the bloc of countries aligned against the West and amid a diplomatic war with Brazil that further complicates his role in the international community
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Venezuela opposition leader Edmundo González reportedly leaves country for Spain
| Edmundo González Urrutia |
Venezuela opposition leader Edmundo González reportedly leaves country for Spain
Venezuelan vice-president Delcy Rodriguez and Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares release statements saying the opponent of Nicolas Maduro had left
Edmundo González abandona Venezuela y pone rumbo a España después de recibir asilo político
Guardian staff and agencies
Sun 8 Sep 2024 05.00 BS
Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has left the South American country after seeking asylum in Spain, according to the Spanish foreign minister.
“Edmundo González, at his own request, flew to Spain on a Spanish air force plane,” José Manuel Albares said in a statement online, adding that the “government of Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans”.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Maduro intent on third term as 1,600 perceived opponents languish in cells
Maduro intent on third term as 1,600 perceived opponents languish in cells
Nearly a month after the Venezuelan president’s roundup many expect him to ride out the threats to his 11-year rule
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Clavel Rangel
Mon 26 Aug 2024 05.00
Nicolás Maduro has baptised his political crackdown Operación Tun Tun (Operation Knock Knock) after the spine-chilling visits his security forces pay their targets. But when members of Venezuela’s secret police came for Aixa Daniela Boada López, they announced their arrival with a thump not a tap.
Monday, July 29, 2024
Inside and outside Venezuela, pressure intensifies for a verifiable vote count
Hundreds of people protested in the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, on July 29.ISRAEL FUGUEMANN (CUARTOSCURO
ELECTIONS IN VENEZUELA
Inside and outside Venezuela, pressure intensifies for a verifiable vote count
At least two people are dead and over 46 arrested as the Chavista government moves to repress the street demonstrations spreading throughout the country
Juan Diego Quesada
Caracas, 30 July 2024
Public anger over suspicions that the government committed fraud in Sunday’s presidential election has spread across Venezuela. Statues of Hugo Chávez, the founder of the left-wing populist movement known as Chavismo, were knocked down with sledgehammers in three cities. Protesters decapitated one of the statues and dragged the bronze head through the streets on a chain tied to a motorcycle, evoking what the Greek mythological hero Achilles did with the corpse of the Trojan prince Hector in Troy. People applauded as they passed.
‘Hard to believe’ / Venezuela election result met with suspicion abroad
Nicolás Maduro
‘Hard to believe’: Venezuela election result met with suspicion abroad
| Nicolás Maduro |
Nicolás Maduro faces calls to publish transparent breakdown of vote but allies hail his apparent victory
Mon 29 Jul 2024 12.37 BST
Nicolás Maduro’s apparent re-election as Venezuela’s president has been met with scepticism, suspicion and calls for a transparent and detailed breakdown of the vote in Sunday’s controversial poll.
Maduro declared winner by government-controlled authority
Venezuela election: Maduro declared winner by government-controlled authority
Result with 80% of votes counted goes against opinion polls that suggested incumbent was facing defeat
Patricia Torres in Caracas and Sam Jones in Madrid
Monday 29 July 3024
Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority – a result that appeared to dash opposition hopes of ending his authoritarian, socialist rule after 25 years, and which was immediately challenged by rivals and several governments in the region and beyond.
Friday, February 21, 2020
Life's a struggle as Venezuela inflation heads for one million per cent
| Some Venezuelans find a way to use devalued money that is now just paper. Photograph: Juancho Torres |
Life's a struggle as Venezuela inflation heads for one million per cent
The IMF has drastically upped its inflation prediction, with people unable to afford food and medicine – even as Nicolás Maduro tightens his grip on power
in Ciudad Guayana
Wed 25 Jul 2018
Wed 25 Jul 2018
T
wo years ago, shoppers in Venezuela would pay fruit sellers like José Pacheco with boxfuls of 100 bolívar notes – then the currency’s highest denomination. Now, thanks to rampant hyperinflation, even those are useless.
“It’s crazy to accept notes of 100, 500, or 1,000 bolivares,” said Pacheco, a wiry 61-year-old, whose humble stall clings to the fringe of one of the major markets in Ciudad Guayana, a city in Venezuela’s southern Bolívar state.
'It's a pain you will never overcome' / Crisis in Venezuela as babies die of malnutrition
'It's a pain you will never overcome': crisis in Venezuela as babies die of malnutrition
As Venezuela enters its seventh year of a crushing depression, doctors are seeing a rise in infant mortality rates due to deprivation
by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in El Callao
Wed 12 February 2020
Her coffin was little larger than a shoe box. Her life had lasted three short months.
“She was a calm little thing,” the girl’s grandmother, Yamilet Zerpa, remembered as mourners filed into her sitting room to say their last goodbyes.
On a table before them lay a small white casket lined with sky blue cloth. Inside was Yaretzi López Pinto: born 14 October 2019, declared dead on Thursday 16 January this year.
Morticians had folded Yaretzi’s delicate hands over her chest and placed a pink flower on her fingers. Minnie Mouse smiled up from her dress beside the word: “Sweetheart”.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
'All we have are walls' / Crisis leaves Venezuela’s schools crumbling
| Child in hospital Barquisimeto, Venezuela |
'All we have are walls': crisis leaves Venezuela’s schools crumbling
Schools across the country in dire straits as teachers abandon the profession or skip the country amid one of the worst economic downturns in modern history
by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in El Palmar
Saturday 15 February 2020
There are 723 pupils at the José Eduardo Sánchez Afanador school but no electricity, no computers, no tables and no chairs.
The windows lack glass, the toilets have lost their sinks and its metal classroom doors have been plundered by thieves, allowing pigeons to colonize several of the filthy spaces.
Children of the crisis / A million children left behind as Venezuela crisis tears families apart
| Nicolás Maduro |
Venezuela: children of the crisis
A million children left behind as Venezuela crisis tears families apart
As the country battles economic collapse, parents have been forced to migrate, leaving their offspring in the care of family, neighbours or sometimes alone
by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in Ciudad Guayana
Thu 20 February 2020
It has been four months since Isabel Carrasco skipped her crumbling country, entrusting her daughters to a neighbour to join modern South America’s largest ever exodus.
Carrasco’s destination was Guyana, although the woman now raising her children isn’t sure which part.
Her mission: to earn enough money to help her children back in Venezuela survive its economic collapse.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Ecuador moves government out of capital as violent protests rage
| A demonstrator prepares to throw an object during a protest against President Lenín Moreno’s austerity measures. Photograph: Carlos García Rawlins/Reuters |
Ecuador moves government out of capital as violent protests rage
Protesters in Quito throw petrol bombs and ransack public buildings in fuel subsidy demonstrations
Dan Collyns in LimaTuesday 8 October 2019
Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, has said he has moved his government from the capital in Quito to the coastal city of Guayaquil amid violent protests over the end of fuel subsidies.
Images from Quito showed protesters hurling petrol bombs and stones, ransacking and vandalising public buildings as well as clashing with the police in running battles late into the night.
“[This] is not a protest of social dissatisfaction faced with a government decision but the looting, vandalism and violence show there is an organised political motive to destabilise the government,” Moreno said in televised address on Monday, flanked by the vice-president, defence minister and military top brass.
Moreno, 66, who has moved away from the leftwing policies of his predecessor and one-time mentor Rafael Correa, has said he will neither tolerate disorder nor overturn the scrapping of fuel subsidies as part of a package of austerity measures.
Moreno accused political opponents of orchestrating an attempted coup and blamed associates of Correa of infiltrating the protests as part of a plot to topple his government, without providing evidence.
In a tweet, Correa said Moreno was “finished” and called for elections.
The president faces a stiff challenge from indigenous groups and others who blocked some roads for a fifth day from Monday morning with stones, tyres and branches. Indigenous-led protests brought down three presidents in the years before Correa’s rule.
Rioters in Quito forced their way into the comptroller general’s office and vandalised the assembly building on Monday. It followed days of violence in which protesters burned military vehicles, destroyed dozens of rose farms, a dairy and an oil production facility. The outnumbered security forces have been unable to prevent much of the destruction.
The vandalism was an “attempt to take over the seat of parliament”, Ecuador’s congress said afterwards.
The petrol and diesel subsidies had cost the country close to US$1.4bn (£1.1bn) annually, according to official sources. They were lifted last Tuesday as part of a US$4.2bn loan deal with the International Monetary Fund reached last year that hinges on belt-tightening reforms.
The move sparked nationwide protests as prices rose overnight by about a quarter for petrol and double for diesel. A state of emergency was imposed on Thursday. Lorry and taxi drivers forced a partial shutdown of Quito’s airport and roadblocks have paralysed trunks roads across the country.
As of Monday, 477 people had been detained. Two dozen police officers have been injured and a man died when he was hit by a car but an ambulance was unable to reach him due to the demonstrations, said the government.
Moreno was shot in 1998 in an attempted robbery and thereafter has used a wheelchair. He was elected in 2017 as the candidate for Correa’s centre-left party but has since moved to the right. Though he enjoys the support of business and the military, Moreno’s popularity has sunk to under 30%, compared with 70% in 2017.
As well as ending fuel subsidies, the government is reducing the state workforce and planning some privatisations.
In a tweet, Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s self-proclaimed interim leader, accused a “group financed by [Nicolás] Maduro’s accomplices” of fuelling unrest, echoing conspiracy accusations against Guiadó’s socialist rival for the Venezuelan presidency made by Moreno.
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