Latin America has never seen a crisis like Venezuela before

[Zorro]

The epic political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is due to pass a new juncture Thursday when President Nicolás Maduro is sworn in for a second six-year term. His first saw an implosion unprecedented in modern Latin American history: Though his country was not at war, its economy shrank by 50 percent. What was once the region’s richest society was swept by epidemics of malnutrition, preventable diseases and violent crime. Three million people fled the country. Yet Mr. Maduro, having orchestrated a fraudulent reelection, presses on with what the regime describes as a socialist revolution, with tutoring from Cuba and predatory loans from Russia and China.

If there is any light in this bleak picture, it is that Venezuela’s neighbors are edging toward more assertive action to stem a crisis that, with the massive flow of refugees, threatens to destabilize several other countries. Last week, 13 governments, including Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Canada, issued a statement declaring Mr. Maduro’s presidency illegitimate and threatening sanctions. Peru imposed travel and banking restrictions on Mr. Maduro and his cabinet, and several countries said they would recognize the opposition-controlled National Assembly as Venezuela’s only legitimate institution.

Unfortunately, that is unlikely to move the regime. Mr. Maduro has already survived challenges that usually topple governments, including months of mass street protests in 2017 and inflation that soared to 1 million percent last year. That’s partly because critical shortages of food, water, medicine and power have kept many Venezuelans preoccupied with day-to-day survival, while the availability of refuge in neighboring countries has provided an escape valve. But Mr. Maduro, like Hugo Chávez before him, has not hesitated to employ crude repression. A report issued Wednesday by Human Rights Watch said it had documented 380 cases of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of government opponents since 2014, including at least 31 cases of torture. That includes dozens of military personnel suspected of coup-plotting.

Like three administrations before it, the Trump White House has struggled over how to respond to the Chavistas. The Treasury Department has steadily expanded sanctions, which now apply to some 70 people and cut off Venezuela’s access to U.S. banks. But though President Trump has sometimes talked of military intervention, he has rightly refrained from that, as well as from lesser measures, such as a boycott of Venezuelan oil. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been urging Latin American governments to act, but not all are cooperating. Mexico, under its new leftist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declined to join the collective condemnation of Mr. Maduro and is sending a diplomat to his inauguration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/latin-america-has-never-seen-a-crisis-like-venezuela-before/2019/01/09/26cc15b4-1381-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html

Where are all the Chavistas who were infesting this group just a few years ago?

[GatoGordo]

1. Last week 1/3/2019: Venezuelan Bolivar Soberano (Sovereign) 781.28 /USD

Today 1/10/2019: BsS 1460.48/USD

Lost almost half its value in a week.

https://dolartoday.com/

[EX500rider]

2. "Where are all the Chavistas who were infesting this group just a few years ago?"

We still have 2 or 3.

[Zorro]

3. I've noticed they avoid threads about Venezuela like the plague these days

[GatoGordo]

4. Thats because its a huge pie in their face.

Oh... the BsS fell 50% in value in half a day. 1890.12 BsS /USD from morning to evening.

https://dolartoday.com/

[Judi Lynn]

17. Progressive people are not the ones "infesting" a progressive message board.

They come here deliberately to speak with other progressive people, not to engage with anyone totally opposed. That is a grotesque waste of time for people of good will.

[GatoGordo]

19. Progressive message board?

I thought this forum was for Democrats of every stripe? Progressive, moderate and even conservative Democrats?

I personally think that some of the most prolific spammers on this forum would feel more comfortable in a forum more attuned to their Marxist/Leninist/Trotskyism ideals, than the Democratic Party?


???

[Judi Lynn]

20. One doesn't hear rightests dragging out Cold War slurs, insults any more, not usually.

It's probably because they have absolutely no meaning whatsoever, and just don't work.

The worst thing you can call someone is "Republican."

[GatoGordo]

24. Well, this is a forum for Democrats, Judi. It's not "Marxist/LeninistUnderground".

I'd like to think that the vast majority of my fellow travelers in the Democratic Party are open minded. A lot of us even have "Republican friends" (THE HORROR!) that we live with, work with and commune with every day.

What I can't abide are "Democrats" who think that anyone who isn't as uber-militant or otherwise filled with class-hatred as they are, are less than virtuous.

Or worse, like Lenin, Trostsky and Che Guevara, aren't worth being allowed to exist.

[EX500rider]

22. Anyone who is remotely progressive does not support the incompetent dictatorship in Venz.

[GatoGordo]

6. That is quite the statistic

I was living for a brief time in Venezuela during the 1980's. I would think that sort of thing would be huge news. Genocide that even Hitler couldn't pull off.

Got a link? I Googled it and got nothing.

[GatoGordo]

10. I'm seeing a paper clipping from what? The National Enquirer?

[Judi Lynn]

16. You know that was a crude attack, and a "misstatement". Do not bully new members. n/t

[GatoGordo]

21. The "proof" he offered was a newspaper clipping, with zero context. NOR a source.

I offered him similar "proof" that Bat-Boy exists.

[Judi Lynn]

12. So much truth about Brazil has been completely missing from US "news" reports, going back forever.

As with every other Latin American country, the US has been up to its snout in internal affairs in that country, too, pushing, shoving, bumping off leftists, propping up malicious sadists, just like the ones we have running the US government right now.

Just found some interesting information on the dictatorship years in Brazil:

United States involvement
See also: Operation Condor and Latin America–United States relations

The US Ambassador Lincoln Gordon later admitted that the embassy had given money to anti-Goulart candidates in the 1962 municipal elections, and had encouraged the plotters; many extra United States military and intelligence personnel were operating in four United States Navy oil tankers and the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, in an operation code-named Operation Brother Sam. These ships had positioned off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in case Brazilian troops required military assistance during the 1964 coup. A document from Gordon in 1963 to US president John F. Kennedy also describes the ways João Goulart should be put down, and his fears of a communist intervention supported by the Soviets or by Cuba.[10][11]

Washington immediately recognized the new government in 1964, and hailed the coup d'état as one of the "democratic forces" that had allegedly staved off the hand of international communism. American mass media outlets like Henry Luce's TIME also gave positive remarks about the dissolution of political parties and salary controls at the beginning of Castello Branco mandate.[12]

Brazil actively participated in the CIA-backed state terror campaign against left-wing dissidents known as Operation Condor.
[13]

Torture



Monument to the victims of torture in Recife

As early as 1964, the military government was already using the various forms of torture it devised systematically to not only gain information it used to crush opposition groups, but to intimidate and silence any further potential opponents. This radically increased after 1968.

While other dictatorships killed more people, Brazil saw the widespread use of torture, as it also had during the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas; Vargas's enforcer Filinto Müller has been named the "patron of torturers" in Brazil.[23] Advisors from the United States and United Kingdom trained Brazilian forces in interrogation and torture.[24] To extinguish its left-wing opponents, the dictatorship used arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without trials, kidnapping, and most of all, torture, which included rape and castration. The book Torture in Brazil provides accounts of only a fraction of the atrocities committed by the government.[25]

The military government murdered hundreds of others, although this was done mostly in secret and the cause of death often falsely reported as accidental. The government occasionally dismembered and hid the bodies.[26]

French General Paul Aussaresses, a veteran of the Algerian War, came to Brazil in 1973. General Aussaresses used "counter-revolutionary warfare" methods during the Battle of Algiers, including the systemic use of torture, executions and death flights. He later trained U.S. officers and taught military courses for Brazil's military intelligence. He later acknowledged maintaining close links with the military.[27]

So far nobody has been punished for these human rights violations, because of the 1979 Amnesty Law written by the members of the government who stayed in place during the transition to democracy. The law grants amnesty and impunity to any government official or citizen accused of political crimes during the dictatorship. Because of a certain "cultural amnesia" in Brazil, the victims have never garnered much sympathy, respect, or acknowledgement of their suffering.

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dictatorship_in_Brazil

Clearly, all this happened. It's so easy to find information about it now, but the vast majority of US citizens have absolutely no idea whatsoever about any of it, and will die ignorant, as well.

So glad you shared the information you posted. I want to find out far more about it, and it's easy to see that it has received the same treatment by US corporate "news" media as has the dictatorship, and its ongoing impact on life in Brazil to this day.

Thank you, cosac78. Welcome to D.U.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Of course the information is available to anyone who doesn't have a reason to deny it, cosac78.

I feel honored that you attempted to get the information into discussion here before you were assassinated. Thank you for trying to shed some truth in zones infested by #####################. It only encourages people to take a quick run to take a look to see why someone was trying to drown it out.

Affected tribes
Further information: List of extinct indigenous peoples of Brazil
In the 1940s the state and the Indian Protection Service (IPS) forcibly relocated the Aikanã, Kanôc, Kwazá and Salamái tribes to work on rubber plantations. During the journey many of the indigenous peoples starved to death, those who survived the journey were placed in an IPS settlement called Posto Ricardo Franco. These actions resulted in the near extinction of the Kanôc tribe.[13]

The ethnocide of the Yanomami has been well documented, there are an estimated nine thousand currently living in Brazil in the Upper Orinoco drainage and a further fifteen thousand in Venezuela.[14] The NGO Survival International has reported that throughout the 1980s up to forty thousand gold prospectors entered Yanomami territory bringing diseases the Yanomami had no immunity to, the prospectors shot and destroyed entire villages, and Survival International estimates that up to twenty per cent of the people were dead within seven years.[15]

The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, whose territory has been protected by law since 1991, saw an influx of an estimated 800 people in 2007. The tribal leaders met with the civil authorities and demanded the trespassers be evicted. This tribe, initially contacted in 1981, saw a severe decline in population after disease was introduced by settlers and miners. Their numbers are now estimated at a few hundred.[16]

The process that has been described as the genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil began with the Portuguese colonization of the Americas, when Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall in what is now the country of Brazil in 1500. This started the process that led to the depopulation of the indigenous peoples in Brazil, because of disease and violent treatment by European settlers, and their gradual replacement with colonists from Europe and Africa. This process has been described as a genocide, and continues into the modern era with the ongoing destruction of indigenous peoples of the Amazonian region.[1][2]

Over eighty indigenous tribes were destroyed between 1900 and 1957, and the overall indigenous population declined by over eighty percent, from over one million to around two hundred thousand.[3] The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognises indigenous peoples' right to pursue their traditional ways of life and to the permanent and exclusive possession of their "traditional lands", which are demarcated as Indigenous Territories.[4] In practice, however, Brazil's indigenous people still face a number of external threats and challenges to their continued existence and cultural heritage.[5] The process of demarcation is slow—often involving protracted legal battles—and FUNAI do not have sufficient resources to enforce the legal protection on indigenous land.[6][5][7][8][9]

Since the 1980s there has been a boom in the exploitation of the Amazon Rainforest for mining, logging and cattle ranching, posing a severe threat to the region's indigenous population. Settlers illegally encroaching on indigenous land continue to destroy the environment necessary for indigenous peoples' traditional ways of life, provoke violent confrontations and spread disease.[5] Peoples such as the Akuntsu and Kanoê have been brought to the brink of extinction within the last three decades.[10][11] On 13 November 2012, the national indigenous peoples association from Brazil APIB submitted to the United Nation a human rights document with complaints about new proposed laws in Brazil that would further undermine their rights if approved.[12]

Several non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been formed due to the ongoing persecution of the indigenous peoples in Brazil, and international pressure has been brought to bear on the state after the release of the Figueiredo Report which documented massive human rights violations.

The abuses have been described as genocide, ethnocide and cultural genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_indigenous_peoples_in_Brazil

That's just the first result I got in a run which took only a couple of seconds. People interested in seeing what did happen should be encouraged to look for what it is some people are determined not to have you learn.

~ ~ ~

Well, I looked a moment longer, and spotted this one instantly:

Brazil's 'lost report' into genocide surfaces after 40 years
Figueiredo report reveals alleged crimes against indigenous tribes from 1940s to 1980s and sheds light on current land policy

Jonathan Watts and Jan Rocha

Wed 29 May 2013 07.50 EDT

A "lost" report into genocide, torture, rape and enslavement of indigenous tribes during Brazil's military dictatorship has been rediscovered, raising fresh questions about whether the government has made amends and punished those responsible.

The 7,000-page Figueiredo report has not been seen for more than 40 years, but extracts acquired by the Guardian reveal hundreds of alleged crimes and perpetrators.

Submitted in 1967 by the public prosecutor Jader de Figueiredo Correia, the document details horrific abuse by the Indian Protection Service (widely known as the SPI), which was set up to improve the livelihoods of indigenous communities but often ended up as a mechanism to rob them of land or wipe them out with guns or poison.



The report was believed to have been destroyed by a fire at the agriculture ministry soon after it came out, prompting suspicions of a cover-up by the dictatorship and its allies among the big landowners. However, most of the document was discovered recently in a musty archive and is being examined by the National Truth Commission, which is investigating human rights violations between 1947 and 1988.

Although the document has not been made public since its rediscovery, the Guardian has seen a scanned copy in which Figueiredo describes the enslavement of indigenous people, torture of children and theft of land.

"The Indian Protection Service has degenerated to the point of chasing Indians to extinction," the prosecutor writes in an introduction addressed to the interior minister.

The pages – all bound, initialled and marked MI-58-455 – include an alphabetical list of the alleged perpetrators and the indictments against them. Most are accused of falsely appropriating land, misusing funds or illegally selling cattle or timber to enrich themselves at the expense of the communities they were supposed to be protecting. But many are implicated in far more heinous crimes.

The number of victims is impossible to calculate. The Truth Commission believes that some tribes, such as those in Maranhão, were completely wiped out. In one case, in Mato Grosso, only two survivors emerged to tell of an attack on a community of 30 Cinta Larga Indians with dynamite dropped from aeroplanes. Figueiredo also details how officials and landowners lethally introduced smallpox into isolated villages and donated sugar mixed with strychnine.

Among those to whom responsibility is attributed is Major Luiz Vinhas Neves, who headed the SPI from 1964 until he was sacked as a result of the report in 1968. He is cited in more than 40 counts, including financial irregularities totalling more than 1bn reals (£300,000) in today's money. Following the report, a parliamentary resolution accused him of complicity in the spread of smallpox among two remote communities in Pataxó.

Torture was common. The most oft-cited technique was "the trunk", which slowly crushed the ankles of the victims. An alternative was allegedly tried out by Álvaro de Carvalho, an official accused of murdering an Indian from Narcizinho whom he hung by the thumbs and whipped.

People were traded like animals. Flavio de Abreau, the chief of an SPI post in Couto Magalhaes, reportedly swapped an Indian woman for a clay stove and then thrashed her father when he complained. He is also accused of starving local communities. Other officers made children beat their parents, brothers whip their siblings and forced women back to work immediately after giving birth.

Figueiredo points out that the authorities operated with impunity to deny Indians what should have been a life of plenty. "There is a fabulous Indian heritage and it is well-managed. They do not require a penny of government assistance to live a rich and healthy life in their vast dominions," he notes.

The report was highly embarrassing for the military regime and a censored press ensured it was rarely mentioned again. The SPI was replaced by another agency, Funai, but tribes continue to struggle against illegal loggers, miners, government dam-builders and ranchers

This is particularly true in Mato Grosso do Sul, which has the highest rate of murders of Indians in Brazil. The estimated 31,000 Guarani-Kaiowá Indians in the area are now confined to tiny areas, completely surrounded by fields of soy or sugar cane.

Survival International's director, Stephen Corry, said nothing has changed when it comes to the impunity regarding the murder of Indians. "Gunmen routinely kill tribespeople in the knowledge that there's little risk of being brought to justice – none of the assassins responsible for shooting Guarani and Makuxi tribal leaders have been jailed for their crimes. It's hard not to suspect that racism and greed are at the root of Brazil's failure to defend its indigenous citizens' lives," he said.

Lawyers, politicians and NGOs warn the influence of the "ruralista" landowners' lobby is once again on the rise. President Dilma Rousseff is dependent on their representatives in congress, who have watered down the forest code, and are said to be planning the reduction of indigenous reserves by transferring responsibility for their demarcation from Funai to the conservative-dominated congress.

Most of Brazil's main newspapers – including Globo, Folha and Estado de Sao Paulo – have largely ignored the rediscovery, even though the Figueiredo report was recently described by the Truth Commission as "one of the most important documents produced by the Brazilian government in the last century".

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/29/brazil-figueiredo-genocide-report

For anyone who hasn't bothered to do the homework needed to learn the truth, please remember this article from the Guardian does state that the Brazilian government instated a policy of censoring, and blocking information which makes the fascists among them look the way they are: criminals. It has been government policy since the time of the dictatorship before the coming one to prohibit the truth's chance to surface regarding their insane brutality against the Brazilian poor citizens, the people of color, and the people of progressive political belief.

Use it as a reminder to inspire your journey to discover that truth which has methodically been buried any time a fascist government seizes control.

cosac78, do NOT ever be discouraged whenever a fascist makes a vicious attempt to block your comments. People remember you, people remember your comments, and anyone sane will continue to look for the truth, with you. Thank you.

[Judi Lynn]

18. You lived there during the build-up to El Caracazo Massacre, deadly, murderous war on the poor?

Figures, doesn't it? Carlos Andrés Pérez got to live out his fantasy before absconding with a fortune taken from the hard-earned tax money paid into the system by Venezuela's poor, who could NOT afford tax lawyers.

[GatoGordo]

23. From YOU, a person who has never been to Latin America?

[GatoGordo]

7. Sovereign bolivar is now worth 4x less than 12 days ago.

3200 BsS to the USD