Good morning beautiful people, Here are my first impressions of the events of September 22. At the same time that Delcy Rodríguez was enjoying an international bureaucratic bath at the UN and meeting with Donald Trump, María Corina Machado was confirming her seventh frustrated attempt to return to Venezuela. As Venezuelan politics over the last few months increasingly resembles a season of The Apprentice: Caracas Edition, it becomes essential for me to assume that almost everything we see on screen is pure special effects. What do I mean? It is more than evident that the Trump administration is advancing with its own plan aimed at controlling and profiting from Venezuelan energy resources. While they go for the loot, because "to the victor belong the spoils," we entertain ourselves with the parade of ritual gestures and private meetings filtered conveniently by the interested party. Pedro J. Ramírez read this morning, in Madrid, Delcy’s greeting to Pedro Sánchez as that of a bride who is bidding farewell to a lesser suitor because she already has the wedding planned with a magnate. The metaphor is shocking, yes, but it perfectly describes the pragmatism of power: the D-D bromance (Donald & Delcy) is sailing smoothly. However, here everyone seems to be playing at deceiving themselves. The opposition, even those sitting down to collaborate, desperately seeks to justify their steps to avoid admitting that they have been relegated to a supporting role. And, in the same way, the top brass of Chavismo 3.0 consoles itself with that old maxim of "bending to not break." In the process, the one they ended up breaking was the whole country. What lies ahead in the coming months is not a miraculous opening, but very possibly the formal dismantling of what remains of PDVSA and the silent substitution of the oil exploitation regime. And that’s without its benefits quickly reaching the population because this is a slow industry and because the redistribution of wealth will be even more complicated by the new business models. It is possible that we are facing the most radical paradigm shift of the last 60 years: the transition from the rentier state owner to a kind of low-cost extractivist factory. While Delcy and María Corina swallow frogs and crocodiles, unfortunately, the majority of Venezuelans are swallowing shit. Hugs! (translated)
