The ruling Chavismo has not spared any type of conspiracies during the 21st century, hatched under the subterfuge of distracting attention from the origin of the debacle and decadence of our country and remaining in power as it has done, even when the Venezuelan population has paid the highest price: the absolute precariousness of their living conditions.
Usually under the current administration known as the decade of infamy, the rumor of “Venezuela is now fixed” is usually spread and in official versions the flights to return to the homeland and the return of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are announced, citing figures extracted from the opinions of the regime’s paid YouTubers.
It is even intended to spread the image of the happiness of a country where 30,000 fans fill the stands of the Monumental Stadium of La Rinconada in a Magallanes-Caracas, or in the massive attendance at concerts of singers who once shouted epithets against the dictatorship. Being a manipulation of reality by representing that attending population only 0.01% of the total, resorting to the demographic trick of allocating the purchasing power of a tiny population group as if it were the total of the national census.
This discourse is based on advertising “bubble” commercial areas such as the case of Las Mercedes in Caracas, where diners squander thousands of dollars daily as a sign of waste and opulence supposedly extended to other states in the country.
Actually, how do we end the year 2023? In terms of inflation, according to figures from the Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF), in October 2023 the monthly inflation rate registered a slight increase to stand at 6.7%, compared to 6% in the previous month. For their part, the accumulated and annualized inflation rates reached 176.7% and 362%, respectively. Scandalous data at a global level by pointing us out as the country with the highest price increase in the world in the last decade.
In terms of employment, the effect of these figures is devastating on the living conditions as widespread poverty multiplies for more than 2/3 of the population. Let us remember that the last time the minimum wage was increased was in March 2022. More than 600 days have passed until November 2023 with a depreciation due to inflation that converted the 30 dollars granted by Maduro on that date into an amount less than 4 dollars .
Faced with this bloody reality, the ILO Governing Council meeting on November 7, 2023 in Geneva indicated “the critical situation suffered by Venezuelan workers in labor, social and economic terms, given the salary situation and the lack of interest in signing collective contracts years ago by the State.” The ILO is alarmed by the national government’s permanent position of evading the recommendations of the Social Forums held in the country as part of the Social Dialogue during the years 2022 and 2023.
This reading of the Venezuelan situation is the context of the diaspora that in Colombia alone is close to 3 million nationals and worldwide exceeds 8 million, figures that record the desperate decision to flee a country turned into rubble, as if going through a Middle East war. Drama that aims to be overshadowed by the Essequibo referendum called by the regime for next December 3.
In summary, the Venezuelan State resorts to this new trick to keep the population in anxiety, tying it to a new adventure whose outcome guarantees its continuity in power and the permanence of a civic-military caste parasitic on our national resources.
