The Guardian had a depressingly grim article on Venezuela yesterday. Citing the country’s oppressive scarcity problem, the article points out that coffin production has fallen somewhere around 20-30% due to a lack of raw materials. The article quotes an executive from one of the largest coffin factories in Venezuela, Juan Carlos Fernandes, who said:
I figure that within two or three months, if things continue on this path, it’s going to get so bad that there won’t be coffins to bury people.
Ataudes Venezuela, a coffin manufacturer, “said that glue, varnish, paint and fabric for the interiors, was scarce”.
On the topic of scarcity, the Consejo Nacional del Comercio y Los Servicios (National Council of Commerce and Services) (CONSECOMERCIO) asserted today that merchandise inventories have been falling ‘in a sustained manner” for the past several months, and that this was due to the economic policies implemented by the government.
More on Inflation
Yesterday’s inflation numbers give Venezuela the highest inflation level in all of Latin America. The inflation rate from September 2013 to May 2014 sits at 60.9%, which is higher than the combined inflation rates of 13 other countries in Latin America, according to the first secretary of the Primero Justicia party Heberto Delgado. Inflation has increased 23% in the first five months of the year, the highest rate of increase since 1996.
El Aissami Dehumanizes Opposition
Tarek El Aissami, the governor of Aragua, appeared on Diosdado Cabello’s T.V. show – Con El Mazo Dando – last night. Speaking on Gaby Arellano, a political organizer for the Voluntad Popular opposition party, El Aissami said:
There’s an important organizer in the Voluntad Popular party – a party we denounce as a neofascist party even if they don’t like it, even if they are irritated by it. All of the Voluntad Popular party militants are fascists, you are fascists, you are not democrats, you don’t even qualify as human beings because those who murder other human beings – I don’t know how to qualify [those people] – but they’re far from being human beings. You’re a bunch of fascists and justice will get you, we don’t care who you are. We are resolute, in the name of this great Latin American giant, in the name of his [Chavez’s] legacy, his memory, to take this country to its plain and definite independence.
In Venezuela 