The “Bolivarian Revolution” is facing the biggest challenge in its history, as Latin America’s impoverished people turn on their socialist leaders. With Dilma Rousseff out as Brazil’s president and a recall effort started on Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Cuba stands to lose friendships it has taken decades to cultivate in the region.
The Venezuelan opposition has begun a process to recall socialist President Nicolás Maduro, one that has outraged Venezuelans as the government stalls verifying the signatures to allow the process to go on. Thousands took to the streets Wednesday to demand Maduro address the recall effort properly, triggering widespread police violence.
Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday compared Israel to the Nazi regime, asking whether the Jewish state planned to “wage a final solution” against the Palestinians.
Venezuelan National Assembly Minority Leader Diosdado Cabello, the socialist party’s second-in-command and a longtime force within the national left, has filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal for publishing reports revealing Cabello’s role as a major intercontinental drug trafficker.
Rosmit Mantilla, an LGBT activist and elected lawmaker for Venezuela’s western Táchira state, marked his second year imprisoned in a secret police facility after being arrested for alleged illicit activity against the socialist regime. He has still not been convicted of any crime.
Alimentos Polar, the corporation responsible for making 80 percent of Venezuela’s beer supply, has shut down all its beer plants after months of being denied the dollars necessary to buy malted barley for production. The shutdown threatens to completely deplete Venezuela’s beer supply.
The government of Venezuela will not be paying employees of the National Assembly, including the legislators who work there. The socialist government has refused to appropriate funds for their salaries since the pro-democracy opposition swept legislative elections in December.
The government of North Korea has been increasingly boasting of support from fellow socialists in Venezuela, where this weekend the North Korean ambassador gave a rousing speech calling for “continued struggle against imperialism.”
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro has ordered all government employees to come into work only on Mondays and Tuesdays, enraging parents who want their children to go to school and opposition members who have deemed the decree “immoral.”
A disturbing video of a crowd physically beating each other to get at a select few bags of onions outside a supermarket in Venezuela highlights the struggle the average Venezuelan must endure to keep his or her family fed in the increasingly impoverished socialist nation.
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro has decreed that government workers not come to work on Fridays for the next two months to conserve electricity as the nation battles a drought that has left the nation’s largest dam nearly empty. Maduro also called for women to stop using hair dryers.
Late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez poured over seven million euros into the creation of a political party in Spain run by “natural allies of the Bolivarian revolution,” according to a 2008 document appropriating Venezuelan funds to the leftist professors who would become the leaders of Podemos, now Spain’s largest third party.
The massive legal firm data leak known as the Panama Papers have exposed business dealings that allowed the government of Venezuela under Hugo Chávez to use Cuban money to purchase advanced passport technology from Germany. Venezuela would later be accused of falsifying passports for Hezbollah terrorists.
The chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Rep. Robert Pittenger, is on a week-long trip to South America to investigate first-hand the potential of the region to fund a variety of terrorist groups that could use the money to attack America.
Student protesters in the far-west Venezuelan state of Táchira killed two police officers and injured four others by driving a hijacked bus into a crowd of law enforcement officials attempting to subdue a protest.
Grammy-nominated singer-actress Maria Conchita Alonso had some strong opinions about President Obama’s trip to Cuba this week.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Wednesday he is recalling the nation’s charge d’affaires from Washington in protest of President Obama’s renewal of an executive order imposing sanctions on the socialist government. Officials in the State Department, however, have told media they are unaware of any official order to Maximilien Arvelaiz to return to Caracas.
Years of crippling socialist policies have left Venezuela so bereft of food, average Venezuelans must spent up to six hours waiting in line to received their allotted rations of basic goods like vegetable oil, flour, or milk. Musician Jonathan Acosta has offered to help ease the frustration by visiting supermarkets and performing for those waiting in line.
A coalition of Venezuelan socialists that orchestrated the failed attempt to install Hugo Chávez as the nation’s head of state in 1992 are calling for the nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro, to step down, calling him an “autocratic” failure.
Saudi Arabia has scuttled talk of a deal with other big oil nations to cut production and “warned high-cost operators such as U.S. shale drillers to trim costs or go bust, in a stark message that triggered fresh pressure on crude prices,” as the Financial Times put it.
Venezuelan opposition deputy José Manuel Olivares claims the country has under-reported cases of the Zika virus and the country lacks necessary medical supplies to properly combat the outbreak sweeping the region.
Residents of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, had no access to drinking water this past weekend, allegedly due to a “maintenance” project aimed at keeping water levels high through the annual drought season. The capital’s woes have shed a spotlight on what is becoming a nationwide crisis fueling widespread unrest in the nation’s more remote states.
A former Colombian drug lord who has been freed after serving an 18-year sentence in the U.S. prison system has accused Diosdado Cabello, a senior official in Venezuela’s socialist government, of leading a drug cartel that has sold cocaine to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
A number of factions within Venezuela’s socialist left are seeking a way to remove President Nicolás Maduro, in a last-ditch effort to “save the Revolution” begun by late dictator Hugo Chávez.
Cuban doctor Yoahn Batista succeeded on his second try to escape the oppression of the Castro communist regime, fleeing a mission in Brazil and arriving in the United States this week. Among the first words spoke upon landing in Miami, Batista tells the world, “They are using us as slaves. That is the reality.”
Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro has replaced his vice president of economy after only a month in office. Luis Salas was considered an “alarming” nomination last month for past statements in which he asserted that “inflation does not exist.”
It looks as if a cease-fire might be on tap for the Oil Wars, as Russia has reached a tentative agreement with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Venezuela to freeze oil production at current levels, to shore up falling prices.
The government of Venezuela has confirmed three deaths directly related to the Zika pandemic sweeping Latin America, while medical experts throughout the country report an alarming rise in the number of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disease Zika is suspected of triggering in certain patients.
Venezuela’s opposition legislature has declared a “nutritional emergency,” proclaiming that the country simply does not have enough food to feed its population. The move comes after years of socialist rationing and shortages that forced millions to wait on lines lasting as long as six hours for a pint of milk, a bag of flour, or carton of cooking oil.
China has confirmed its first case of Zika, a 34-year-old man who traveled to Venezuela. Authorities are particularly concerned that the man stopped in Hong Kong before reaching his final destination, home to a mosquito species potentially capable of carrying the virus.
North Korea sent a patrol boat into sovereign South Korean waters just days after violating international sanctions by shooting a long-range rocket into space, allegedly to install a new satellite into orbit. South Korea’s navy forced the patrol boat to retreat, firing multiple warning shots in its direction.
The government of Colombia has confirmed 3,100 cases of pregnant women with the Zika virus, but no cases of the birth defect microcephaly.
The government of Venezuela has received its first shipment of oil imported from the United States – 500,000 barrels from West Texas Intermediate (WTI), purchased through Venezuela’s U.S.-based affiliate, Citgo Oil.
Media outlets in Venezuela are reporting that at least eleven patients nationwide have died of Guillain-Barré syndrome, though the government’s Health Ministry has yet to report any of the cases, and most appear linked to the Zika virus pandemic ravaging Latin America.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus has shed light on serious shortcomings in the public health systems of the affected countries, most of which are located in Latin America.
At a historic summit in Uruguay, the health ministers of fourteen Latin American nations, alongside representatives from the regional wing of the World Health Organization, agreed on a number of measures to contain the Zika virus pandemic consuming the continent, including a “fast access” Zika information network at airports and border crossings.
A number of former Venezuela cabinet members under Hugo Chávez are calling for an investigation into hundreds of billions of dollars that are unaccounted for in national oil revenue, accusing members of President Nicolás Maduro’s government of embezzling the funds.
Venezuela may be the weakest link in the fight against Zika in the Americas, Colombian Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria warned this week, with experts asserting that the socialist nation may be hiding hundreds of thousands of cases of contamination of the pervasive virus.
Members of Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah “are moving freely” within the United States and Latin America, courtesy of Venezuelan passports issued by a Cuban company hired by Caracas, reports the UK-based Asharq Al-Awsat.
The Venezuelan navy violated the sovereignty of neighboring Colombia on Saturday night, as armed navy sailors crossed the border by the Colombian town of Arauquita, storming a night club and terrorizing beachgoers.
