Dan compares his experience in Venezuela to those recounted in Mike Gonzalez's "A Second Letter from Caracas," highlighting what current opposition protestors’ motives seem to be, as well as the chavista response to them.
In this interview, Venezuelan journalist and writer, Luis Britto Garcia, observes a growing division within the Venezuelan opposition, and he analyses the work of Gene Sharp, a US political scientist, and his theory of “soft coups”.
By Jose Roberto Duque - Misión Verdad, Apr 12th 2014
Venezuelan author and journalist Jose Roberto Duque reflects on Thursday’s live broadcast “peace talk” between the Venezuelan government and the opposition in Miraflores presidential palace.
By Donald Kingsbury - Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Apr 10th 2014
After over a month of violence explicitly aimed at ousting the Maduro government, major media outlets and governments in the North Atlantic are blind to the bad faith of the opposition.
If we didn't know it before, the upsurge in global protest in the past couple of years has driven home the lesson that mass demonstrations can have entirely different social and political meanings.
The “ZunZuneo” project, which the Associated Press reports was “aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government,” was overseen by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). AP describes OTI as “a division that was created after the fall of the Soviet Union to promote U.S. interests in quickly changing political environments — without the usual red tape.” Its efforts to undermine the Cuban government are not unusual, however, considering the organization’s track record in other countries in the region.
By Seumas Milne & Jonathon Watts- The Guardian, Apr 8th 2014
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Venezuela's president claims the Obama administration is fomenting unrest with the aim of provoking a Ukraine-style 'slow-motion' coup.
“Lights out! Whoever doesn’t turn out their lights will have their apartment stoned!” The cry rang out at 9pm, and residents of a set of apartment blocks near the center of Mérida, a provincial capital in the Venezuelan Andes, shuttered down for the night.
Over the past six weeks the so called salida ya [exit now] strategy launched by the Venezuelan opposition has developed, in part, into a low intensity war against the democratically elected government of President Nicolas Maduro.
By Zoë Clara Dutka - Venezuelanalysis.com, Apr 4th 2014
Over the weekend, a panel of psychologists convened to discuss the societal tension that has built up since violent protest broke out in Venezuela, in February. They determined that dialogue-friendly spaces and a feeling of general safety have been compromised dramatically. The fatal shooting of a woman waiting on line to buy food Saturday highlighted fiercely clashing responses through social media as each political sector interpreted the tragedy as proof of their own worst fears.
