Venezuela is set to receive 760,000 tonnes of food aid from neighbouring allies to address its national food crisis.

Food Minister Félix Osorio detailed that the fresh supplies will be used to re-stock national food reserves which are dwindling.

Although a date has yet to be set, the food supplies are expected to arrive within the next few days.

Félix Osorio
(Photo: www.alopresidente.gob.ve)

The last few years have seen shortages amongst many staples including: coffee, sugar, oil, butter, flour, and, most recently, toilet roll. The situation has worsened dramatically over the last few weeks.

In a communiqué on state television, Osorio described the situation as an “economic war” and reiterated that the government is “doing everything in its power” to address the situation.

According to the government, a slump in private sector output is to blame. The government has gone as far as to suggest that the reason for the above is to foment social discontent and thus undermine the state organ.

For their part, the private sector blame stringent capital controls implemented by the government that make it difficult if not impossible for companies to access dollars at the official price.

This, they say, makes it near impossible to import the raw materials necessary for production. In the ‘unofficial’ market, the US greenback sells for five times the official price.

On a more positive note, a few weeks ago the national Parliament approved credit for 500m Bolivar’s (US$8m) to ensure the market is supplied with basic items such as: toilet roll, toothpaste, soap, nappies, and female hygiene products.

A full recount of electronic results from Venezuela’s presidential election in April has confirmed that President Nicolas Maduro won with the majority of votes.

The Venezuelan National Electoral Commission (CNE) carried out an audit on millions of votes and confirmed there was no discrepancy with the initial results that showed Maduro’s victory as president by approximately 200,000 votes.

Nicolás Maduro (photo courtesy of Venezuelan government)

Tibisay Lucena, president of Venezuela’s electoral council, announced the results of the audit yesterday, which was carried out after opposition candidate Henrique Capriles contested the election outcome on 14th April.

However, after initially demanding the audit, Capriles pulled out of the process shortly after, expressing his disregard for the system due to CNE “missing its deadline”.

Capriles has always claimed that the election results were “fake”, and accused Lucena of working with Maduro to fix the results.

However, Lucena said that Venezuela’s electoral system is armoured against fraud and error. “This audit shows the results of the election are the faithful reflection of the wishes of our citizens.”

Capriles announced at the end of April, that he will take the case to the country’s Supreme Court. “Our next step will be challenging the polls, we will revert the election result. The opposition is demanding the enforcement of laws. Maduro and his allies stole the elections. The votes that CNE announced were not the votes meant for Maduro.”

Maduro was sworn in on 19th April for a six-year term, after he was hand-picked by former President Hugo Chávez as his successor. Chávez lost his battle against cancer on 5th March.

Today, President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro announced via Twitter that his government would be implementing an anti-corruption operation. He thanked the public for their complaints and said: “Today, in the early hours, we began an anti-corruption plan at The Institute for the Defence of People’s Access to Goods and Services (Indepabis) against extortionist groups, we are fully against corruption.”

The specific details behind the anti-corruption measures remain unclear, but named Eduardo Samán as President of Indepabis after announcing that: “corruption is a disease of the negative values of capitalism”.

The fight against corruption and impunity has been a key aspect of Maduro’s government since his election victory.

The announcement comes as reports emerged that Maduro has halted plans to restrict the sale of basic food items in Venezuela’s Zulia state, which would have limited the amount of milk, rice, and sugar consumers were able to buy, amongst other products. The plans were announced by local authorities in the state due to shortages on such items, with the government saying it was a plan aimed at avoiding smuggling goods into the country.

Maduro appeared on television this Saturday and labelled the plan “insane”, and pointed to the importance of producing more goods, with critics calling the restriction plan a form of rationing.

Latin America is one of the most dangerous regions in the world, and according to some international reports, in fact tops the list. Just a few weeks ago, Gallup, a US-based research company, released a worldwide survey on safety perception that showed that Venezuelans are the people least likely to feel safe.

Eleven countries in the ‘top 30′ of Gallup’s ranking – which includes 134 countries – are Latin American, a worrying number that shows the notorious reputation this region has.

Venezuela’s crime problems are among the worst in Latin America, as could be seen in the last presidential election, when both candidates made this issue a key focus of the campaign. Though the Venezuelan government no longer releases official crime statistics, it is well known that the country continues to struggle with high rates of murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking. In 2012, 40% of Venezuelans told Gallup there were illicit drug trafficking or sales in their area, and 10% said they had had a relative or close friend murdered in the past 12 months. Low ratings on Gallup’s physical security question are nothing new in Venezuela. Indeed, since 2008, less than one third of Venezuelans have said they feel safe walking in their neighbourhood alone at night.

Whilst Venezuela is a conspicuos example of a country with alarmingly high crime rates, it is not alone in Latin America. Hard data shows that high homicide rates are a constant in the region, especially in countries with serious and on-going drug trafficking and gang problems such as Mexico and Honduras.

San Pedro Sula, Honduras; the most dangerous city in the world (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The Most Dangerous Cities in the World

‘Seguridad, Justicia y Paz’ (Security, Justice and Peace), also referred to as the Citizens’ Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice, is a civil society organisation from Mexico that emerged in July 2002. Its members describe it as “a non-partisan network, secular and independent.” At the end of 2012, they published a study which ranked the 50 most dangerous cities in the world, based on homicide rates.

While homicides are far from being the only crime there is, they are widely used to measure crime rates because, unlike other types of offenses such as theft or rape, are generally reported to the authoritites. Homicide rate is considered an imperfect index for measuring insecurity and violence.

The report shows that three out of the ten most violent cities in the world are Mexican, while 47 of the 50 most violent cities are located in the Americas, with 40 being in Latin America. The first city on the list that is not in the continent is Cape Town in South Africa, ranked 27th.

Not much has changed on the top of the ranking since the previous year. With a rate of 169 intentional homicides per 100,000 inhabitants (ten more than in 2011), the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula was declared the most violent city in the world for a second year in a row. The city of Acapulco, Mexico, came in second with a rate of 143 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, with a rate of 119.

The report states that “a worsening of public safety and an increase in violence” has occurred in the last few years in countries like Honduras, Venezuela, and Mexico.

Indeed, despite a Mexican city (Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua) having been displaced from the top position by San Pedro Sula, the country still has three cities in the top ten, and the violence unleashed in the last few years as consequence of the ‘war on drugs’ is notorious.

Honduran factory worker murdered in San Pedro Sula in 2010 (photo by Globovisión)

The behaviour of various government authorities in Mexico does not inspire confidence in official figures, since there are large amounts of conflicting data. For example, back in 2010 the governor of Chihuahua stated that there were around 4,000 homicides in his state, while the Attorney General offered two other numbers: 5,836 and 7,209. The final figure published by the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI) in December 2011 was 6,421 intentional homicides. With such conflicting information, it is difficult to know for sure what is the real number.

The UN officially published that there were 20,585 homicides in the entire country of Mexico for 2010. In November 2011, INEGI’s researchers noted that this number was inaccurate and should be in fact 38% higher. In their opinion, the mistake was induced by Mexican authorities, who were trying to make the country appear safer than it is.

A similar accusation was levelled at Honduran authorities by Seguridad, Justicia y Paz, who stated in their report the difficulties they found to obtain official information. “We would not be surprised if this lack of information by official sources had the purpose to try and hide the reality of the large cities in the country which is, today, the most violent in the world,” they said.

There is general consensus among sociologists and criminologists regarding the causes of crime in our region. Peruvian political analyst Carlos Basombrío explains: “These factors include rapid, large-scale urbanisation that is incapable of sustaining basic services; extreme inequalities between rich and poor; a culture of violence carved from many years of internal wars; poverty, exclusion, and lack of opportunity for young people; police abuse, corruption, and inefficacy; and the unimpeded availability of guns, drugs, and alcohol, including an overwhelming presence in many cities of small-scale drug trafficking.”

Killing the Watchdogs

Not even the individuals who spread the word to the world are safe. ‘Watchdogs’, who investigate and report from the most dangerous zones of our planet, are willing to risk their own lives just ‘to get the story’. This seems to be especially true in Latin America: according to a recent report by UNESCO, Honduras has the world’s highest number of journalists assassinated per capita.

Since the 2009 coup, Honduras has been one of the Western hemisphere’s most dangerous countries for journalists, with 26 journalists killed in the last four years, according to US-based Freedom House. Their report, published earlier this year, states that: “Harassment against broadcasting outlets has included assaults, threats, blocked transmissions, and power outages.”

Freedom House considers Honduras “to have a culture of impunity, where people who attack journalists are not actively brought to justice.” Many Honduran journalists fear the violence that has been (and is still being) carried out is approved by the government, the 2012 Freedom of the Press report on Honduras stated.

Mexico is not far behind on the ranking. According to a report by the Mexican Centre of Social Communication from 2010, it is the third most dangerous country to exercise the profession.

Is Argentina Becoming Less Dangerous?

Despite the region’s overall danger, it is somewhat of a relief to know that Argentina is getting safer. At least according to official criminal rates.

The Buenos Aires Province’s Ministry of Security stated that overall reported crime in the Province has dropped 5.67%. In the first quarter of 2010, there were 171,342 reported crimes, and in the first quarter of 2011, there were 161,620. The types of crimes included are generally violent ones, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and theft.

Supreme Court judge Eugenio Zaffaroni (photo by departamentjusticia on Flickr)

“Argentina has gone through some serious situations of social and institutional violence, but currently does not have an alarming crime record, comparing it to the region,” says Supreme Court judge Eugenio Zaffaroni.

According to the latest available data, from 2009, Argentina recorded a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants – considerably less than the average continental rate of 15.6, as published in the ‘Global Study on Homicide 2011′, prepared by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The same report states that the homicide rate in the Americas “more than doubles the world average (6.9), while with the rate of 17.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, Africa is the continent with the highest rate.”

Nilda Garré, then minister of security, spoke about criminality in Argentina confidently: “According to the UN data, Argentina is well bellow other Latin American countries with regards to homicides.”

For a complete understanding of the UN’s research, it is important to point out that the 2009 study did not include murders in Buenos Aires Province. In 2008, 45% of all the country’s homicides happened in this province, so the results could lose some of its representation.

Even so, Buenos Aires did not make it to the top 50 most dangerous cities. In fact, the homicide rate for the Argentine capital, according to a study by the Supreme Court’s Research Institute, is well below the last city on the list – Barranquilla, Colombia. While in Buenos Aires the rate is 6.57 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, in Barranquilla it is 29.41.

“If we compare the security situation of Argentina in 2009 with Venezuela, Brazil, and Mexico, the murder rate is much lower. However, when we compare it with other countries in the region, the differences are not so clear. Peru, Chile, and Uruguay do not have very different rates from those observed in Argentina,” explains Lucía Freira, analyst at the Crimes Research Laboratory of the Torcuato Di Tella University.

Despite the hard data, Argentina was still listed between the countries where residents are the least likely to feel safe walking alone at night. It hit 16th place, with Venezuelans and South Africans taking the top spots.

Two thirds of the world’s adult population (67%) feels safe walking alone at night in the area where they live. A figure that rose sharply since the global financial crisis began in 2008. “That is good news for global recovery, because public perceptions of physical security and social order are prerequisites for healthy economic activity. Widespread fears of bodily harm discourage people from venturing out to buy and sell in marketplace, for example, or taking jobs that require them to stay out after dark,” stated Steve Crabtree of Gallup.

Dealing with Criminality in Latin America

Crime and street violence, while prevalent in most parts of the world, are still considered an extreme and intractable problem in Latin America. And there is no visible sign of criminal rates lowering.

Political analyst Carlos Basombrío.

Numerous human rights violations occur as a consequence of efforts to combat crime, including police brutality, restrictive laws that curtail civil liberties, and the militarisation of the public order. Basombrío states: “Because the police in Latin America suffers from lack of training, scarce resources, and, in some instances, complicity with criminals, they frequently abuse and sometimes kill suspects. They almost always enjoy impunity from these acts because many segments of the public welcome such behaviour as means of promoting a safer environment.”

One of the most striking things about security issues in Latin America is the level of interconnectivity that can be found at every level.

“There is no doubt that keeping pace with the sophisticated and transnational nature of criminal organisations will require a sophisticated and transnational strategy – more time consuming, and complex for all actors involved in combating them,” said Maninder Gill, sector manager of the Social Development Department of the Latin America and Caribbean Region with the World Bank.

Addressing the problem of crime, as it affects people’s everyday life, is an enormous challenge for human rights advocates across Latin America, and even more so to defend their right to a secure environment. As Basombrío argues: “The issue of crime presents human rights advocates with challenges that must be resolved, if we are to build legitimacy for human rights principles.”

And that process – if it is ever fully completed – will be extremely long. For those living in or visiting the continent, the best advice is to exercise a greater degree of caution. For when it comes to avoiding crime, you can never be too careful.

How safe do porteños feel in the streets of their city? Click here to find out.

Lead image by Rodrigo Gómez Sanz on Flickr.

Ricardo Patiño, Ecuador Minister of Foreign Affairs (Photo: Emilio Sánchez/Presidencia de la República)

The Ecuadorian government has announced its support for Venezuela during its commodity crisis, and will begin supplying food products into the country.

As Venezuela’s food supply runs low, the two countries met yesterday to come up with a beneficial trade agreement.

The minister of foreign affairs of Ecuador, Ricardo Patiño announced that the two countries will work together to strengthen the countries’ productive capacities.

“We came to strengthen our economic-productive relationahip, but also to recognise the legitimacy of a government that has earned its place by the will of the Venezuelan people,” said Patiño.

Patiño also added that the Venezuelan government supported Ecuador when it was experiencing difficult times, especially in regards to oil supply.

A few years ago, during the administration of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Venezuela sent crude oil to Ecuador for refining purposes without any financial gain.

“Venezuela has to know that Ecuador is a strategic partner, but it is also more than a strategic partner, it is a friend. We are a friendly country in good times and bad,” said Patiño.

The two countries have also confirmed that they will unite on various agricultural projects, especially to produce banana and cocoa.

As from this month, Honduras will once again receive oil from Venezuela, this time with the option to finance it with the exchange of agricultural goods.

Specifically, this could include a mixture of the following: meat, chicken, eggs, African palm oil, orange juice concentrate, coffee, beans and maize flower.

Oil Installations in Puerto La Cruz Venezuela (Photo by Jumanji Solar)

Jacobo Regalado, minister of agriculture, announced this Sunday that Honduras will export US$60m worth of agricultural produce per month to Venezuela in exchange for fuel.

Under the agreed terms, Honduras will pay 60% of its debt to Petrocaribe every 2 months, with the outstanding 40% to be paid within 25 years. The terms also include a favourable two-year grace period and annual interest of just 1%.

The fuel, which will be supplied on preferential terms by Venezuela’s Petrocaribe, marks the re-initiation of trade that was suspended in June 2009 following the ousting of former president Manuel Zelaya.

The re-establishment and reincorporation of Honduras in this exchange mechanism, part of a wider regional energy cooperation initiative, comes just a month after Honduras’ president attended the 7th annual Summit of Heads of States and Government of Petrocaribe.

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was in the Nicaraguan capital this past Sunday, seeking a similar exchange of fuel for energy. It is no coincidence that this comes at a time when Venezuela is suffering shortages of basic foodstuffs.

Henrique Capriles, Venezuelan opposition leader (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

The meeting of Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos has deteriorated the relations between the countries.

Capriles is touring Latin America with the aim of garnering support for his contest of the April election results, in which Hugo Chávez’s chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro, was the official victor.

Venezuela believes that the meeting is an attempt to undermine the bilateral relations.

Venezuelan foreign minister, Elías Jaua, expressed his “deep regret” at the visit, stating “President Santos has taken a step towards derailment of the good relationship he had with Venezuela”.

María Ángela Holguín, Colombian foreign minister, stated the in receiving Capriles, the Santos government had decided to “address the issues with the government of Venezuela in a direct way”.

Jorge Eliécer Guevara, Colombian opposition senator, added: ”Colombia is able to act in a sovereign way and the government has the authority to receive any officials it wants!”

After the tumultuous years when Álvaro Uribe and Hugo Chávez were heads of state, the arrival of Juan Manuel Santos marked the beginning of “a sort of honeymoon between Colombia and Venezuela”, which some analysts suspect is now over.

UNASUR delegates at a meeting in 2010. UNASUR member countries are to provide funds for the new regional bank. (Photo courtesy of Globovisión on Flickr.)

On Monday night, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro announced that the much-anticipated Banco del Sur will begin operations next Monday 3rd June.

Banco del Sur is a financial institution conceived of by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The idea behind it was to create a new regional funding entity independent of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. It also aims to promote the development and economic growth of the countries involved, as well as promoting infrastructure stimulus initiatives. The charter was signed on 9th December 2007.

As Maduro put it, “we are only a few days away from a historic moment, 3rd June. Here in Caracas we are going to host the Council of Ministers-Governors of the Banco del Sur and on that day they will make important decisions as to how operations shall begin”.

The bank will supervise the allocation of a US$20m fund with capital provided by the 12 countries which make up the the Union of South America Nations (Unasur) including: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Surinam.

The bank, that will have its headquarters in Caracas, will also have offices in Buenos Aires and La Paz.

Maduro also highlighted the alleged difficulties the “most excellent financial technocrats” have created for the project, as he warned that the “flags of neo-liberalism” were once again being raised on the continent.

The announcement was made during the inauguration of a Conference in the capital, Caracas, on Natural Resources and Integrated Development which will run until next Thursday.

Venezuelan oil lines (Photo: Prensa Presidencial)

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are due to meet in Vienna next Friday to discuss a pricing strategy to keep the price of crude oil above US$100 per barrel, the minimum accepted by the Venezuelan government.

Rafael Ramírez, Venezuela’s Oil and Mining Minister and President of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), told press yesterday that a worldwide reduction in oil production was not out of the question.

“If during the discussions fears are expressed that such a level of production could affect prices, we would be open to a cut in production,” he said. OPEC boosted production to 30.21 million barrels a day in April from 29.93 million in March while maintaining a flat forecast for global demand.

Ramírez also pointed out that some countries might be producing more oil than necessary for “geopolitical reasons” which would affect the price of oil and that this would be a matter for OPEC to resolve.

Venezuela is the largest producer of crude oil in South America, with an average of three million barrels per day, although OPEC argues that the supply of crude oil in the country is 2.3 million barrels.

In addition, the South American nation has the largest proven reserves of crude oil, with over 297 billion barrels, according to figures from the Venezuelan authorities as reported in March 2012. Oil production accounts for 90% of the country’s hard currency revenue.

Earlier this month Venezuela announced that that the country was set to increase oil production capacity by 2014.

The views expressed in this article are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Argentina Independent.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (Facebook)

In the month since officially taking office, Nicolás Maduro has had to fend off a media war waged against him from multiple fronts. Now the tension seems to have finally dropped it is time for him to move on and make sure he does not get bogged down in petty disputes with an obstinate opponent.

In the days between the official election results were announced, late on 14th April, and his inauguration five days later, the possibility of a coup against the new leader felt very real indeed. With the anniversary of the 2002 coup falling just three days before the election, no one needed reminding of the threat of history repeating itself.

On election day, confirming the rumours that had come from his camp for days, the defeated candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski refused to recognise the results. His supporters, bearing t-shirts with “fraud” written in bold letters – the same shirts that had been printed and spotted days before the elections – took to the streets.

The violence that ensued was widely reported by most media outlets around the world, and it hardly came as a surprise given the tone of the political discourse that followed the electoral results. The day after the elections was far from a regular Monday in Caracas: squads of political militants on motorcycles, the so-called ‘motorizados’, roamed the streets and few ventured out of their houses alone unless absolutely necessary.

As the day went on, more people responded to Capriles’ call to take the streets with “fury” and started burning tyres and blocking roads. At nightfall the protests spiralled into violence once again. In the neighbourhood of Altamira, while the afternoon turned into night, a fraction of Capriles supporters switched from bearing political posters and banners to rocks and Molotov cocktails.

The official death toll of the two nights following the electoral results is of 11 deaths -all ‘Chavistas’ and Maduro supporters.

Manufacturing Dissent

Although many grey areas remain as to how exactly these people lost their lives, there is no doubt that there was a will from right-wing opponents to the socialist Bolivarian revolution, both national and international, to create a climate of political unrest.

These efforts transcended the delusional efforts of the defeated candidate. Delusional may seem a strong word but it is hard to qualify the accusations flung by Capriles in the days following the elections in any other way. First came the accusations that 283 – where that number came from is still a mystery – of the electoral supervisors from Capriles’ party were “removed at gunpoint” from the voting centres they were assigned to. Despite such a damning accusation, Capriles’ campaign team were unable to produce any evidence of such a violation of a basic electoral safeguard. Nor did any of these unnamed 283 electoral supervisors deemed it necessary to publicly denounce or even confirm these accusations.

But that was not even the most farcical of Capriles’ accusations. In the same press conference he denounced a rigging of electoral lists in the Liceo Bolivariano Antonio José Saldivia in Trujillo state. There, he claimed, the table had a registered 536 voters, however the total results tallied a total of 712 votes, in what he called a glaring case of results manipulation. One look at the documents made public on the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) website were enough to clear any doubts about the accusations. The Antonio José Saldivia voting centre had two tables, the first of which indeed had 536 registered voters and the other another with 530 voters, making a total 712 votes perfectly possible, albeit below average with a participation of 68,7 % (across the whole country participation was of 79,7%).

None of these unfounded – or plainly false- claims were ever retracted or corrected by Capriles or his team. This is simply because, at that point, little regard was given to what was actually true or not; the essential goal was to deliver a message of urgency and indignation to galvanise supporters on the street and point to a climate of political instability that could undermine and topple Maduro.

This was made even more evident considering that, despite presenting accusations through the media for the entire week after the vote, and calling his supporters to march on the CNE’s offices, the Capriles camp never presented any of their claims in an official manner to the only competent electoral authority.

In this ploy of feeding the media material to create a climate of instability, some media outlets went further and fabricated and spread their own disinformation. TV channel RCTV was one of these. RCTV is the station that was proved to have actively taken part in the 2002 coup attempt, and whose licence renewal Chavez’s government blocked in 2007. Since then it has continued to broadcast via satellite.

On 15th April, through its official Twitter account, RCTV published a photo of burning ballot boxes with the description “this is how the government is making votes disappear”. Just hours after the publication of this photo other Twitter users pointed out that the image used had been taken off the CNE’s official website from a gallery illustrating the destruction of old electoral material in 2010. Far from apologising or even retracting their statement, more than a month on, the tweet remains on RCTV’s account. Meanwhile, the daily newspaper El Nuevo País led its 16th April edition with a similar photograph under the headline “Lucenazo” in reference to the head of the CNE, Tibisay Lucena. Again, it was proven within hours that the photo was an archive image of destruction of old electoral material.

RCTV’s false media report

Street Government and Mercosur Tour

In the days following his election, Maduro boldly announced that he would launch a new initiative of ‘street government’, travelling the roads of Venezuela to listen to his citizens and govern from the bottom up. For those saturated by the constant hate rhetoric flung at each other from both sides in the polarising week following the elections, this came as a welcome measure and one that inspired hope that the public debate would shift towards more meaningful issues.

Only it was not to be. Despite announcing some constructive measures on his tour, from the complete reform of the national electricity sector to the continuation and extension of the Barrio Tricolor housing project, what made the headlines was mostly, once again, dramatic accusations.

Only this time they came mainly from the Maduro camp.

First it was Colombia, then Spain, and finally the United States, who were directly attempting to overthrow or even kill Maduro. Almost as if he had adopted the opposition’s tactics, Maduro chose to make these accusations for the headlines rather than displaying a well argued case.

The initial non-recognition of Maduro’s government by both Spain and the United States (the only major power not to have officially recognised Maduro as legitimate president to this day) can be taken as a hint that these countries’ intelligence services believed in the possibility of a coup against him.

However, Maduro’s multiple accusations of dismantling coup attempts were not as easily proven wrong as Capriles’, it seems that he too focused more on the impact they would have in the media rather than providing solid evidence. During his visit to Caracas’ working-class barrios, he announced he had personally ordered the arrest of 35-year-old US citizen Timothy Tracy, accused of trying to overthrow the government while posing as a documentary maker. Although Tracy’s case hasn’t been clarified one way or the other, the “irrefutable evidence” Maduro announced he had has yet to be made public.

Then, in his last stop before leaving the country for his first international tour as president, Maduro made one of his most damning accusations yet, directly accusing former president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe of being behind a plot to assassinate him. There are no doubts that Uribe has both a history of resorting to extreme measures and a declared hatred for the Bolivarian revolution, but once again the “irrefutable proof” was announced, but not produced, by Maduro.

With his first month gone in a flurry of media battles with the opposition and accusations of foreign meddling in Venezuelan affairs, it was a welcome change when Maduro embarked on his Mercosur tour, visiting regional allies Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.

Nicolás Maduro visiting Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Kirchner (photo: Facebook)

By signing a number of key trade cooperation agreements, Maduro showed that he has the will to continue Hugo Chávez’s agenda of developing the region as an independent economic force.

Since his return to Venezuela, Maduro’s rhetoric has been toned down and he has mainly focused on continuing his ‘street government’ initiative in several points of the country. By delivering on the promise of further inclusion and listening to his citizens, both those who voted for him and those who didn’t, Maduro might still be able to regain the ground the Bolivarian revolution has lost since the disappearance of its leader. While his campaign was based on Chávez’s achievements and the fear of a “fascist” taking over, if he wants to strengthen the alternative Bolivarian model, it is now time for him to build a legacy and revolution of his own.

With this objective in mind he can only be helped by the advice he recently received from his Uruguayan counterpart José ‘Pepe’ Mujica: “Those who don’t govern will have all the time they want to shout, and those who do govern have the responsibility of how their people are doing. Those who are in charge of the government should give less importance to controversy and give phenomenal importance to governing and actual work.”