The Venezuelan military has invaded and seized a food distribution center in Caracas used by national food and beer corporation Polar, as well as American companies Nestle and Pepsi. 12,000 tons of food, six million liters of soft drinks, and 2,000 jobs are now at risk in a nation suffering major food shortages and a collapsed economy.
Two members of Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard–the state police–have been arrested after being accused of aiding drug trafficking by the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, run by the now-fugitive Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The government of Venezuela, intent on finding a solution to its economic woes that do not involve changing its socialist economic system, has taken up a campaign to annex two-thirds of neighboring Guyana, a jungle territory known as the Essequibo. Guyana is soundly rejecting that Venezuela has any claims to its territory.
A Chavista union demanding higher wages, combined with difficulties in importing necessary ingredients, are threatening to leave Venezuela without beer. The potential scarcity of the extremely popular beverage is just the latest in a string of increasingly difficult to find common goods in the socialist nation.
Venezuelan socialist head of state Nicolás Maduro has recalled his nation’s ambassador to neighboring Guyana after statements by the latter government that Venezuela was excessively intruding into Guyanese maritime territory.
Following news of reconciliation with the Cuban communist regime, Reuters is reporting that the Obama administration has been engaging in secret diplomacy with the dictatorship currently governing Venezuela, hoping to reestablish ties with socialist President Nicolás Maduro and negotiate the freedom of political prisoner Leopoldo López.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, facing a tidal wave of international criticism over human rights violations and hunger strikes by his nation’s most famous prisoners of conscience, canceled a visit to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis. Both dissidents and Vatican sources have told multiple Spanish newspapers that the cancelation, ostensibly due to a “cold,” actually occurred out of fear of being embarrassed on a public stage.
The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly–the Venezuelan government’s second-in-command–has announced he will seek to take legal action in the United States and Spain against media outlets that have published reports alleging that he is being investigated for running a cocaine trafficking organization.
The value of Venezuela’s bolivar currency collapsed this month, as air carriers and U.S. automakers announce they will only do business in U.S. dollars.
The rapid and steady decline of Venezuela’s national currency, the Bolívar, is forcing a growing number of businesses to do trade only in American dollars, freezing out Venezuelan citizens from buying cars, renting apartments, or boarding flights offered by businesses that refuse their currency even when they can muster an equivalent amount of retail prices in Bolívars.
The socialist government of Venezuela has made it increasingly dangerous for political satirists to practice their craft, removing any anti-government humor from airwaves and newspapers and prompting angry mobs to attack stand-up comics.
A Venezuelan woman has been identified as the culprit of an attack on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro this week, in which he was pelted in the head with a mango while driving a truck through a socialist rally. The video of the attack has gone viral, inspiring the hashtag #manguicidio or #mangocide.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in Damascus in 2007 to discuss “drug trafficking, money laundering, the distribution of arms and issuing of passports… to terrorists,” according to a new book citing witnesses and Venezuelan diplomatic cables.
This week, the Venezuelan government announced a series of manufacturing and infrastructure investments from China that could ultimately amount to up to $20 billion in ten years, though China only agreed to an initial $5 billion in “development” funds this Sunday.
The Spanish government has lodged a formal complaint with Venezuela’s ambassador to Madrid after President Nicolás Maduro accused Spanish President Mariano Rajoy of being a “racist” in a national broadcast, adding, “In Spain, they are all racists.”
Threats and arrests were made. Government workers lost their jobs. Free chickens were handed out. An all-encompassing mass media campaign against President Barack Obama took over Venezuelan state airwaves, where President Nicolás Maduro vowed to hand Obama a 10-million-signature petition against his recent sanctions on Venezuela. Yet, when the time came to show President Obama– and the American public– those signatures, Maduro came up empty-handed.
President Barack Obama met with his Venezuelan counterpart, dictator Nicolas Maduro, on Saturday in a closed-door meeting to discuss Washington’s tumultuous relationship with Caracas.
With a cordial evening handshake, President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved Friday toward a groundbreaking meeting on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in what would be a remarkable display of reconciliation between two nations.
The Venezuelan government is forcing citizens to sign a petition calling for President Obama to remove sanctions on the socialist state for its human rights abuses. Those eager to sign are rewarded with anything from a coveted smaller wait time on supermarket lines to whole chickens, but those who refuse may wind up unemployed.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has vowed to collect millions of signatures for a petition against American President Barack Obama, demanding that he repeal executive sanctions against high-ranking armed forces officials in the country over human rights abuses against anti-socialist protesters.
In a surprising assessment that indicates the Venezuelan economy is doing worse than its socialist government has indicated, a Barclay’s report on the nation’s oil exports show that the nation has reduced exports of crude to the Caribbean by at least half, including exports to its greatest political ally, Cuba.
The human rights violations occurring in Venezuela– from thousands of arbitrary arrests to beatings and rapes to the murder of unarmed teenagers– have taken up little of the international spotlight in the past year. They have, however, increasingly caught the attention of human rights groups like Amnesty International, which details and condemns the abuses in a report released this week.
In Nicaragua this week on an official visit, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro urged Latin Americans to send “millions of letters to Obama” denouncing a new round of sanctions on Venezuela over the Maduro regime’s many human rights violations. This, according to official correspondence obtained by Latin media, will include letters teachers are to force schoolchildren to write and send to the U.S. President.
A video surfacing online of Nicolás Maduro Guerra, son of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, dancing in a shower of dollar bills at the wedding of an elite business owner has outraged the nation. Maduro Guerra, who himself is a public official in his father’s repressive socialist government, has become a prime target of the opposition on social media over the embarrassing display.
The Brazilian magazine Veja published a report this Saturday alleging that former high-ranking officials in the government of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez have proof that Venezuela helped Argentina protect Iranian terrorists believed to be responsible for the deadliest terror attack in Argentina’s history.
