South American Politics thread - Page 57

On June 20 2020 06:04 JimmiC wrote:
If Maduro continues to hold power you might be right. They have lots of gold and iron ore to go with all the oil that is much cheaper to get at than fracing or oilsands. If they were properly maintained they would still be doing fairly well even at these low prices, the low production is the biggest issues. They also have tons of great land for growing crops. However right now it is mainly used to grow narcotics and they have their version of blood gold that the gangs control and treat the workers and environment atrociously.

Maduro is making all his money from that gold and more the drugs so it basically a narco state riddled with corruption to steal what little money is actually still created in the economy. And as long as Maduro holds power and the US and Europe have prohibition this will likely continue. Even the CLAP (food given to the poor) is a grift. Not only do only people who vote Maduro get it, but there is a huge discrpenentcy between what Mexici charges them and what their books say . And somehow while the vast majority of people starve Maduro, his genrals and their families and friends live like kings.

Venezuela should easily be the wealthiest country in South America and have living standards comparable to the western democracies of NA and Europe. But they are sobfar away from that with little hope of making up the differences. And the US sanctions are not helping, but it was going way downhill with millions of refugees before that.

They should probably stop them just because it really has not shook his power at all and with the economy basically at 0 he can still make enough money off of Ellicit activities to keep his and the other power brokers lifestyles grandiose.

On June 20 2020 10:46 IgnE wrote:


It doesn't matter if Maduro steps down. The only reason he still has power is because there's no viable leader who can wrest control from him. And there's no reason another country would bother going in and cleaning up the mess. Oil is cheap now and it's not coming back for the foreseeable future.

On July 03 2020 21:33 JimmiC wrote:
Sorry inge I thought I responded to this earlier. It is much cheaper to get oil out of Venezuela, it sort of looks expensive because of the high taxes but given that the government seized the biggest oil company it more of an accounting trick (about 1/3 of the cost per barrel is "taxes". But even at the cost of 26 dollars a barrel there is a lot of money to be made there. The biggest issue is they didn't properly maintain their current rigs because of mass corruption and very few foreign companies (China and Russia have) are willing to make much of a foreign investment because they can't trust that it will maintained but more than that the worry is that Maduro will blame them for any problems and take that company. Which would have been OK for the Venezuelan people if the government corruption didn't take away all the profit and they didn't want to maintain anything because that was less that they could steal. The big thing is low oil prices don't break the big oil companies, what it does is stop all captial investment so there is no longer and of the construction economy around new Oil.

http://graphics.wsj.com/oil-barrel-breakdown/


In even worse news the health crisis is getting worse in Venezuela, some of their frozen assets have been unfrozen and to be used by the health care workers, hopefully most of it actually makes it to the people!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/02/new-deal-could-ease-venezuelas-humanitarian-crisis-international-community-must-get-behind-it/#comments-wrapper

On July 03 2020 23:08 IgnE wrote:


Yes I agree that upfront capital investment and/or maintenance of existing systems is the most important factor. Still bad news for Venezuela.

Exit polls suggest Evo Morales’s leftwing party has pulled off a stunning political comeback in Bolivia’s presidential election, although an official result has yet to emerge.

Two private surveys projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), secured more than 50% of the vote in the ballot on Sunday, with his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, receiving about 30%.

On October 20 2020 01:30 Jockmcplop wrote:
Looks like Bolivia is returning to socialism after a brief stint with a right wing government.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/19/bolivia-election-exit-polls-suggest-thumping-win-evo-morales-party-luis-arce

On October 20 2020 01:35 JimmiC wrote:

That is pretty awesome. I was worried that when Morales tried to make it about himself instead of the movement his party was lost but they were able to win legitimately and much larger. It appears the Bolivians wanted MAS they just didn't want a 4th term of Morales and slipping into a dictatorship. Big win for democracy.

On October 20 2020 01:53 Jockmcplop wrote:

Yeah its a good showing all round. Less right wing governments in the world is good even if I doubt it'll have one iota of an effect in the US or Europe.

On October 20 2020 01:30 Jockmcplop wrote:
Looks like Bolivia is returning to socialism after a brief stint with a right wing government.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/19/bolivia-election-exit-polls-suggest-thumping-win-evo-morales-party-luis-arce

On October 20 2020 04:14 Nebuchad wrote:


That is pretty fucking awesome.

On October 20 2020 05:28 GreenHorizons wrote:


Indeed. Massive effort from MaS overcoming a lot of forces pitted against them.
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As for Cuba, what the US does to Cuba is clearly a crime against humanity (imo). Last UN vote was 187 supporting the annual condemnation of US sanctions, Brazil, Israel and the US were the only nations in the world to vote against the condemnation.