Harry's Place

Mario Silva is a Venezuelan TV broadcaster and a leading supporter of the Bolivarian Republic as led by Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro.
In 2009, on his program on Venezuelan state TV called “La Hojilla” (The Razor Blade), Silva referred to a student rally in opposition to Chavez’s proposal for an amendment to abolish term [...]

“…and that’s where you’ll put the giant portrait of Chairman Mao, er, Comandante Chavez.”

Fans of the People’s Republic and the Bolivarian Republic may consider this excellent news (I’m expecting a celebratory post about it any moment at Socialist Unity); but for more genuine advocates of democracy and human rights, it’s hardly a promising sign.
Noticias 24 [...]

Efraín Ríos Montt, the former Guatemalan dictator who in the 1980s approved the massacre of Indians and refugees during the country’s civil war, has been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Judge Yasmín Barrios sentenced General Ríos Montt, 86, to 80 years in prison. His co-defendant, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who served as the director [...]

I realize that whoever came up with this method of assigning order to a queue waiting to buy corn flour at a Venezuelan supermarket probably had no idea of the historical associations, but still, it makes one shudder.
At Caracas Chronicles, Francisco Toro labels it “Annals of Revolutionary Dignity.”

Of more immediate concern to Venezuelans is [...]

Venezuela’s leader Nicolas Maduro is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Hugo Chavez by referring to the president of the United States in satanic terms.
It was Chavez, after all, who stood at the podium of the UN General Assembly in 2006 and, referring to then-President Bush, said: “The devil came here yesterday. And it [...]

Caracas Chronicles blogger Francisco Toro (aka “Quico”) has long been among the most measured and balanced opponents of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro. And his criticisms of the Venezuelan opposition are frequently as stinging as his denunciations of chavismo.
In fact chavista extraordinaire Calvin Tucker, who sometimes comments here as “Zin,” has cited some [...]

Even before Hugo Chavez’s death was officially announced, his anointed successor Nicolas Maduro showed signs he was not entirely in touch with reality when he told the people of Venezuela:
“We have no doubt, the time will come in history when we can create a scientific commission to show that Comandante Chávez was attacked with this [...]

I haven’t read the book yet, but I do recommend that you take an hour or so to listen to these fascinating, wonderfully-written and -read excerpts from Rory Carroll’s Comandante: Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela on BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Although I’m sure hardcore chavistas will accuse Carroll of writing [...]

Some recent events:
–When officials called for a moment of silence in honor of the late Comandante before a World Cup elimination match between Venezuela and Colombia in the Venezuelan city of Puerto Ordaz, this was the result:

I suppose we will be told that this was entirely the doing of bourgeois fans, and perhaps it [...]

Two new developments:
–Venezuela’s acting President Nicolas Maduro has authorized a formal inquiry into claims that Hugo Chavez’s death was the result of poisoning by foreign enemies.
“We will seek the truth,” Maduro told regional TV network Telesur. “We have the intuition that our commander Chavez was poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the [...]