Doctor Maduro’s miraculous goths

“Ten drops under the tongue every four hours, and the miracle is done!“. This is what the president of Venezuela on January 21, ensuring that the formula is capable of “neutralize“To 100% coronavirus and announcing that, very soon, it would be sent to World Health Organization for your certification. If the panorama of the pandemic, in Venezuela and in the world it wasn’t that tragic, maybe this anecdote could be funny. But nearly three million dead on the planet conspire against humor.

Two weeks ago, the Venezuelan government and the opposition reached an agreement Covax, an international program created to guarantee equitable access to vaccinations— buy and distribute COVID-19 vaccines in Venezuela. The pact appeared to be the end of a process that began in June 2020 and the start of a larger political negotiation, which once again opened up the possibility of a dialogue solution to the deep crisis the country is going through. . All of this, however, was undone in two seconds.. At the last minute, an official gesture shows once again that Chavismo has no interest in negotiating, that he is ready to use illness and even death to obtain a benefit.

Official rejection of the use of the vaccine AstraZeneca he interrupted the process by preventing the arrival of vaccines, just when – according to the government itself – the country is in the worst phase of the entire pandemic. Although in general there has always been little and unreliable information about the virus – official figures indicate a total of 160,497 positive cases and 1,602 deaths – there are currently indications of overcrowding in hospital emergencies. in Caracas, the situation is out of control. The medical union continues to report casualties, in March an increase of 48 health worker deaths was recorded. In social networks, messages with requests for clinical help or notifications of death are repeated more and more frequently.

Why exactly now, in the worst circumstances, is Chavismo rejecting vaccines? Because its logic is different, because its priority is not the victims, because its actions are not intended to attend the emergency but rather to benefit from it according to its objectives., its plan of accumulation and permanence in power.

After blaming the opposition, the government made a new proposal: use other vaccines, some of the Cuban formulas – Abdala or Soberana 02 – and the Russian Sputnik V.. The former, however, are still in the experimental phase and, in the best case, it will be possible to use it in a few months. The second is part of another old promise from the sovereign: November 15, 2020, Mature announced the purchase of ten million vaccines from RussiaHe stressed that they will be applied in the first quarter of this year and also said that Venezuela will manufacture them on its territory. So far, however, there is no clear information on this. Alone Mature and his wife appeared on television receiving their doses of vaccines.

As reality seems to start to boil over, the official discourse retains its inconsistent, sometimes even delusional tone. Journalist Singer Florantonia made a brief recording of the “inventions“of Mature during the pandemic: according to him, the COVID has been since “a weapon of war“Towards a”Colombian virus“And its possible remedies can range from”homeopathy“Up to one”molecule“Created in Venezuela, passing, of course, by the fabulous”miraculous gothic“. It is so absurd that it almost seems a tribute – involuntary and permanent – to Cantinflas. Yes, tomorrow Nicolas maduro He will ensure, with a stethoscope on his shoulder, that he has a new vaccine made from seeds of Guava fermented in leopard seal urine, no one on the planet would be surprised. Not in vain, for the promotion of false or misleading information, Facebook you have just locked your account.

But this discursive chaos is only an appearance. It disguises a different, deeper and more cruel order. As stated by the political scientist Paola Bautista, Chavismo did not address the problem of COVID in “humanitarian key but power key“. Now he is trying to take advantage of the tragedy. Beyond the situation of citizens, without a clear vaccination plan and with a weakened health system since before the pandemic, Maduro only wants to gain ground, to free himself from international pressure, to cancel organized and independent civil society, to advance in his totalitarian project..

Chavismo leaves in a strange limbo the possibility of vaccines reaching Venezuela But, in the meantime, it continues to act with specific efficiency in its control model: it suffices to recall that nearly 3,000 people were executed by the police or the military in 2020. This week, for posting a column on a social network, the writers were arrested Milagros Mata Gil and Juan Manuel Munoz.

Repression, censorship and poverty are thedrops“True that the doctor Mature this applies to Venezuelans.

(C) The New York Times.

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