
© Jorge Silva / ReutersSlim pickings for the common man, Venezuela in crisis.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's declaration of a state of emergency in the country he has led since the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013 marks a seminal moment not only for Venezuela but the entire region.
That the South American subcontinent is in the throes of an assault by conservative and reactionary political forces, after a period during which leftist ideas were predominant,
is now beyond dispute.The objective of this assault is to
roll back the leftist current inspired by Hugo Chavez when he came to office in Venezuela in 1998. Of indigenous heritage himself,
Chavez survived a coup attempt in 2002 that was supported by the US. His sudden death in March 2013 came after a two-year battle with cancer and ever since
questions over whether the cancer that killed him was naturally occurring or was the result of poisoning haven't gone away.
Prior to
Chavez's death, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras was ousted by the Honduran military and sent into exile in 2009. In 2012,
Paraguayan President, Fernando Lugo, was forced out of office when the country's senate initiated impeachment proceedings.
Ecuadorean President, Rafael Correa, has already survived one coup attempt by his country's military in 2010 and the situation within Ecuador remains tense. Meanwhile, since Chavez's death,
Argentina's former president, Cristina Kirchner, has been indicted by the country's federal court on a charge of defrauding the state during her time in office. Finally, and most recently,
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff has been suspended from office pending a trial on the charge of manipulating the budget - proceedings which Rousseff and her supporters have labeled a coup.
What each of the aforementioned leaders have in common is that
they supported Hugo Chavez's vision of a continent free of US political and economic domination, and had and have sought to redistribute wealth and resources to the poor, especially the subcontinent's indigenous peoples who for generations have been marginalized, left to wallow in poverty and regarded as second, even third class citizens.
Comment: US travelers take heed. We are dealing with the government here and you know how that goes: If it was bad it will get worse. Some of this is incompetence; the rest is a way to irk the public into wanting something to change...and that change will be dictated by the PTB for a specific purpose. Time will tell. We shall see.