I have been a daily listener\/reader of DN for five years now and am greatly appreciative of your work. I have however taken issue in the past with the way reports of the political situation in Venezuela are put together. Never was this more true than yesterday.<\/p>\n
For the first in-depth coverage <\/a>of the events since the February 12 protest – a protest that left three people dead, your only guest was a foreign intellectual who isn\u2019t even on the ground. If Venezuelans from all over the political spectrum find it hard to make out what is currently happening in the country, can we really expect someone to do so from Philadelphia? Ciccariello-Maher may be able to provide his perspective on the historical context of today\u2019s protests but to have him as the sole voice in charge of shedding a light on recent events seems complacent.<\/p>\n To clarify, I am a Venezuelan citizen writing from Caracas. I am far from being a supporter of Venezuela\u2019s mainstream opposition movement and, although I do not entirely disagree with Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s analysis, I feel the need to point out some major flaws in his account.<\/p>\n To begin, Ciccariello-Maher\u00a0started by identifying Leopoldo L\u00f3pez as a member of Venezuela\u2019s \u201cfar-right\u201d, a great rethorical device to get DN\u2019s liberal audience on his side from the get go. Why not begin by explaining to us all what the far-right represents in the Venezuelan context? He may find it more difficult than it is apparent.\u00a0Moreover, L\u00f3pez cannot be elected not because he represents \u201cthe upper crust of Venezuelan elites\u201d but because he was legally prohibited<\/a> from running for any office subject to popular vote until 2015. Subsequently, in 2011, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a decision <\/a>declaring that L\u00f3pez\u2019 political rights had been violated and urged the government to reinstate them. No such action was taken.<\/p>\n Secondly, Ciccariello-Maher\u00a0claims that the two factors that have triggered student protests \u2013 preposterously high crime rates and scarcity of goods, particularly basic food items \u2013 are only partially attributable to government failure. Regarding crime, he mentions \u201cthe infiltration of mafias\u201d as an external cause that has exacerbated the issue. Does he really mean we should not hold the body in charge of enforcing public security accountable for the alleged infiltration of mafias?<\/p>\n Additionally, Ciccariello-Maher\u00a0mentions currency speculation as a contributing factor to the poor state of the Venezuelan economy. Since 2003, there is in Venezuela a restriction on the free trade of currencies. Instead, a government organization (CADIVI) handles all matters related to currency exchange. Therefore, if there has been any speculation on this front, one can confidently say that it has either been allowed or overlooked by the government itself.<\/p>\n \u00abBoth crime and scarcity are in decline\u00bb, further claims Ciccariello-Maher. Ask anyone in Caracas, regardless of class or political inclination, and I doubt that you will find one person who will attest to crime rates going down. In what pertains to scarcity, the index calculated by the Venezuelan Central Bank reached its highest point<\/a> in history in December 2013, 28 percent; since then, it went down to 26.2 this past January. The annual inflation rate for 2013<\/a> was, according to numbers issued by the same entity, of 56 percent.<\/p>\n