“Lately, food is a better business than drugs,” retired Gen. Cliver Alcala.
-Caracas Chronicles: Back in July we wrote extensively about what seemed as an important move by one of the country’s main power groups. The Military strengthened its link with the Executive, as General Vladimir Padrino López was appointed as a sort of Prime Minister. Later, Padrino López named a bunch of men in olive green to a sort of parallel cabinet to control the whole food distribution chain.
There were two ways of interpreting those events. The hopeful reading was that the Armed Forces had had it with the nonsensical way chavismo was running the country. The darker view was the one Hannah Dreier and Josh Goodman from the AP just uncovered in this soul-grinding piece: Maduro’s plan to maintain power was centered on letting the army steal as much as they wanted.
The institutionalizing of the proverbial “100 bolos pal fresco” in maxi-corrupt chavista terms.
So, were to start?
From the top, I guess. MORE
When a country’s military goes from being an institution created to protect the citizens and the state to a criminal gang their sharp edge goes with it. Almost any decently trained army could go in and destroy them especially if the populace is aware that the main reason their children are starving are the boys with the uniforms and guns. Brazil, Columbia, hell even Guiana could walk into Venezuela and destroy their corrupt armed forces, arrest the politicos that created this human tragedy and restore at least a form of democracy the would allow the people to rebuild because, sure as hell the UN isn’t going to do a damn thing.
Another in a long list of communists/socialist countries where their leaders starve their own people.
The root reason the left wants us disarmed.
So we will suffer without getting all uppity if this happened here.