Day first of dictatorship: the local fate

Well, folks, I never thought in my already long life that I would live in a country that has been officially declared a dictatorship.


And those are not my words, there those of many newspapers, countries and foreign dignitaries. As far as the civilized world is concerned Venezuela is now a dictatorship. Only creeps like Bolivia pretend it to be otherwise. But then again Bolivia is about to annul the referendum that Morales lost, so what would one expect...


What to do?  This is a personal blog and I am too old and tired to be as active as I used to be and I have too many family problems. This was reflected in the lack of steady activity in the last two years. But I made the effort to keep it alive even as readership dropped as expected. Blogs require a regular stream of texts to retain readership. Let's note in addition that what was the speech of a few voices in the world when this blog started in 2003 is now vox populi.  There is no point to come back to drive of these years.

However one of the things that helped me find some energy to keep posting at least a couple of times a month since 2013 was the knowledge that one day we would be in an officially declared dictatorship. This blog needed to be kept alive for that day. The day has come. Time to write again until I am jailed or forced to leave the country or killed or something. But now I am certain of one thing: as there are much less native media voices from Venezuela, and almost nothing in English, I am bound to become a target. That day also will come now.

Watch over me.

--------------------------------------------------------
PS: nothing much to report today. The regime has been rather silent, probably in shock at the intensity of coverage and reactions overseas. I suspect that truly they thought it would not be that bad, only the usual suspects. But now even ambassadors are beginning to be withdrawn and the OAS is calling for a new assembly of unpredictable consequences....

And I did put up a new page on the marquee, in bold. It is a work in progress so suggestions are more than welcome to create as precise a possible a description of what a XXI century dictatorship looks like.