Tag Archives: Bogota

May
13
2011
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In Case You Missed It… Articles Roundup Week of 5/13/11

In this week’s News Roundup…Hugo Chávez blazes the campaign trail amidst accusations of collaboration between his administration and Colombia’s main rebel terrorist group, FARC. Meanwhile, blackouts and electricity rationing continue to plague Venezuela’s industries and citizens.

 

Hugo Chávez on campaign trail – again, Financial Times
There may be another year and a half to go, but that hasn’t stopped Hugo Chávez from already starting his campaign for re-election. It is, after all, what he does best – he has won over a dozen elections since coming to power. Ironically, though, the fact that Chávez has spent so much of the past 12 years campaigning – and not enough time solving Venezuela’s problems – may explain why he feels he needs to spend so long this time persuading his people to re-elect him, given that the country’s doggedly persistent problems remain all too evident.

 

Factbox: Key facts about Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, Reuters
Colombian leftist guerrillas may have tried to assassinate rivals of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez and trained his supporters in urban warfare, an analysis of thousands of seized rebel documents shows. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, is at its weakest in decades after the deaths of top commanders and a string of desertions prompted by government bounties and improved military intelligence and training. But the rebels remain a potent force in some areas, helped in part by their involvement in the lucrative drug trade and alliances with other armed groups.

Venezuela Asked Colombian Rebels to Kill Opposition Figures, Analysis Shows, The New York Times
Colombia’s main rebel group has an intricate history of collaboration with Venezuelan officials, who have asked it to provide urban guerrilla training to pro-government cells here and to assassinate political opponents of Hugo Chavez, according to a new analysis of the group’s internal communications.

 

Venezuela begins electricity rationing after blackouts, BBC
Venezuela is rationing electricity after blackouts affected nearly half the country earlier this week. A senior energy ministry said power would be cut off for three hours a day in 19 of the country’s 23 states. The authorities hope the move will help make the distribution system more stable. They say the blackouts were caused by failures in transmission lines. Critics blame the government for not investing enough in new electricity projects. Last year, Venezuela had to cope with rolling blackouts for months.

 
Apr
8
2011
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In Case You Missed It… Articles Roundup Week of 4/8/11

In this week’s roundup… the similarities between Venezuela’s Chávez and Libya’s Gaddafi, a high-ranking U.S. military commander raises concerns about the Caracas–Tehran connection, Colombia confirms the extradition of alleged drug lord Walid Makled to Venezuelan authorities, and President Chávez signals that more nationalizations are on the way. To check out all of our musings find us on Twitter @whatsnextvz or on StumbleUpon.

A Caribbean Tripoli?, The Economist

IT IS a long way from Tripoli to Caracas. But although Hugo Chávez, unlike his friend and close ally Muammar Qaddafi, is an elected president, there are some striking similarities between the Libyan and Venezuelan regimes. Mr Chávez’s grassroots “communes” resemble Colonel Qaddafi’s “people’s committees”. And a new decree, published last month, speeds up the creation of a sectarian militia like that which opened fire against unarmed protesters in Libya.

US general voices concern over Iran-Venezuela ties, AFP

The United States is worried about increasingly close ties between Venezuela and Iran, a top US military official told lawmakers Tuesday. “My concern, as I look at it, is the fact that there are flights between Iran and Venezuela on a weekly basis, and visas are not required for entrance into Venezuela or Bolivia or Nicaragua,” said General Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command.

Colombia Confirms Plan to Extradite Makled To Venezuela, The Wall Street Journal

Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos reiterated Wednesday that he plans to extradite to Venezuela and not to the U.S. a suspected drug trafficker who in his heyday was said to smuggle 10 tons of cocaine a month into the U.S.

Álvaro Uribe: Chavezism loses ground in Latin America, El Universal

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said that chavezism is losing ground in Latin America, highlighting that some allies of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez are moving away from Chávez’s government model.

President Chávez: More nationalizations are on the way, El Universal

The Venezuelan government will nationalize more means of production, but will also favor the coexistence of “social ownership” and partnerships with the private sector, said President Hugo Chávez, in an interview published by Uruguayan newspaper La República.

 
Apr
1
2011
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Senate and House Foreign Relations Subcommittees on Western Hemisphere
March 31, 2011 Hearings

“We should immediately focus on replacing the oil from autocrats like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela for that of stable and trustworthy allies like Canada… [The dependence on Venezuelan oil] makes the State Department a hostage when they should be denouncing the Chávez regime for its broad violations of human rights and its support of terrorism.”
Florida Congressman Connie Mack

“My own view and the figures and statistics I have read suggest an explosive growth in the movement, the transit, principally of cocaine and coca-related products through Venezuela on their way to market, a growth of somewhere between 500% and 1,000% over the last seven or eight years. Logic and geography suggest that much of that pushing out through Venezuela heads through Eastern Caribbean and then across the Atlantic to West Africa and to markets in Europe…”

“It is my opinion, which I believe has been expressed by a number of senior U.S. government officials across the last two or three years, that a substantial amount of the senior FARC leadership, three members of its seven-member secretariat, do in fact have near-permanent presence on the Venezuelan side of the border.”
Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield
U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela (2004-2007

“Venezuela, for example, reportedly has maintained an unofficial friendship with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas who have sustained their struggle to overthrow the Colombian government mostly through drug trafficking. In 2010, much of the suspect air activity departing South America to Central America and the Caribbean came from Venezuela’s southwest border with Colombia, as tracked by the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force South. Currently, a Venezuelan businessman is being held in Colombia in connection with 5.5 tons of cocaine that turned up in Campeche, Mexico, in 2006.”
Steven Johnson, Director of the Americas Program,
Center for Strategic and International Studies