Chavismo Meets Its Match in Memes
Humor the Last Refuge for Defiant Venezuelans
0 Sidenotes
Maduro claims to have been spoken to by Chávez in the form of a “little bird.” (WeKnowMemes)
EspañolVenezuela is a country that likes to play it chévere — cool, chilled, relaxed. It’s the natural home of the jodedor, the “joker” who makes light of everything. And it’s people are no strangers to making gags, despite the problems facing them — or in fact, precisely about the problems facing them.+
Humor has become a defense mechanism; it demystifies power; it takes the weight out of everyday dramas, by making sure that nothing’s sacred, not even death, as our morbid comic refrains show. Llorando y vistiendo al muerto, “I’m crying over the dead man,” you might say to someone taking their sweet time over something.+
Or, when times are tough but you have to keep going, you’ll come out with el muerto al hoyo y el vivo al bollo: the dead to the grave and the living to the bank, perhaps more poetically translated as “when there’s a will, there’s a relative.”+
During 40 years of democracy, Venezuelans became accustomed to laughing at their governors. You hadn’t truly arrived as president until you had your dedicated impressionist on Radio Rochela — a long-standing comedy show broadcast by RCTV.+
This ignoble tradition carried on until the arrival of Chavismo, and Hugo Chávez closed the channel in 2007. If Chávez didn’t like having fun poked at him, the insecure and uncharismatic Nicolás Maduro liked it still less.+
“Your comment made Maduro think.” (Generador Memes)
Paranoid as he is, seeking plots, conspiracies, and would-be coups in all corners, the post-Chavista government is on the point of waging all-out war on humor. Now Maduro controls all of local TV, almost all radio and press outlets (save two or three shreds of resistance), the struggle against laughter now spreads to social media.+
And with its predilection for announcing exactly what its next lumbering step will be, the government has already announced its imminent strike on memes, via a program called Cafecito Psicológico on state channel VTV.+
Here, the psychiatrist Ángel Riera told viewers that Maduro is up against a “sixth generation meme war,” a tool of “viral neuromarketing,” designed solely to “twist reality and generate depression” among Venezuelans.+
It turns out that the memes against Maduro weren’t riffing off his verbal slip-ups, his public mood swings, or the crisis facing the country, including a miserable economic existence exacerbated by levels of corruption that make the other governments of the region look like kids in diapers. No, these simple images with text are actually an attempt to destabilize the nation.+
“Peace and Union. I’ll solve this with a multiplication of penises.” (Generador de Memes)
Helpfully, the TV expert explained it all. Why is the government paying the most attention to memes alluding to the Venezuelan revolution? Simply because “the big corporations are using them to launch an international smear campaign against the revolution.”+
It’s a feeble effort to cover up for rising censorship. And all in response to memes which poke fun at his claim to have been spoken to by Chávez in the form of a “little bird,” his infamous slip of the tongue in speaking about how Jesus “multiplied the penises,” (penes, rather than pesces, fish) or the laughable image of him reflecting on the shores of the Mediterranean uploaded by his former Communications minister.+
Maduro claims to believe that his administration is a success, and “admired and supported by the entire world,” as he said last weekend on a visit to Russia — Moscow’s lovely in the spring, especially when back home they’re throwing diapers and mangoes at you in the street.+
It’s the same practice of systematically denying the truth shared by all communist regimes, taken to extremes of persecution and megalomania almost similar those of North Korea. Maduro has likely been taking tips from Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, who has establishes his own office to “troll” all those who take him on via Twitter, and has managed to close Crudo Ecuador, a Facebook page that did nothing more than make fun of his government, among other targets, through memes.+
However, Mashi Rafael, unlike Maduro, hasn’t dared to lock up tweeters. Six of Maduro’s implacable 147-character foes have been thrown into political prison: Inés González was imprisoned seven months ago, after her online alter ego @inesitaterrible earned the government’s wrath (and 40,000 followers) for her biting commentary.+
Now Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, instead of representing the judiciary, serves as an attorney to Chavismo, warning that social networks “must be regulated.” The Government’s Ministry of Communication now has a Viceministry of Social Networks that now floods Twitter on a daily basis with hashtags in support of the government, which all ministers are obliged to include in their tweets. You can gauge Chavismo‘s true level of online support when, on Sunday’s and government holidays, the Chavista tweetstorm mysteriously dies away.+
But what these Marxists who have never read Marx, or still less Lenin, can’t achieve is to make good and basic products magically reappear on the shelves again, nor can they stop people from realizing their huge incompetence, for all their media circus. Above all, they can’t stop Maduro from making gaffes, the product of his poor preparation for rule, and the fact that he doesn’t want to be anything other than an heir to Chávez, a man whom what he had in courage and cunning, he lacked in wisdom and foresight.+
And thus he left Venezuela to ruin, the country with the worst inflation in the world, the second highest homicide rate, one of the most corrupt, and with one of the worst standards of living, despite the mountain of petrodollars that Chávez rained over the country.+
There’s no propaganda apparatus that can stand up to these truths. And that’s why these memes, an expression of riotous freedom, are going viral: despite the best efforts of the government to clamp down on them.+
Down with Correa! Ecuadorians Want Off the Socialist Train
Five Days of Street Protests, More to Come
0 Sidenotes
Thousands gathered in Guayaquil on Friday, June 12, to protest the socialist government of Rafael Correa. (PanAm Post)
EspañolOn Friday, June 12, thousands of Ecuadorians finished off a week of street protests. New taxes on inheritances and “surplus profit” of real-estate transactions promoted by President Rafael Correa appear to have been the last straw. These measures have generated such social unrest among the public that thousands have taken to the streets for five consecutive days.+
A march called by the opposition via social media took place in Guayaquil at the Plaza Centenario at 5:00 p.m. local time. Ecuadorian authorities announced an amendment to the inheritance tax just before the protest, but it was not enough to calm the public’s anger. Gradually, several groups of people, mostly dressed in black, arrived at the site with banners, flags, and whistles.+
For three hours, the deafening cry of “Correa Out!” was all that could be heard on 9 de Octubre Avenue. A few blocks away, ruling-party supporters held a counter rally of their own.+
The new taxes on inheritances and “surplus profit” of real-estate transactions promoted by Correa have caused a widespread social unrest in Ecuador. (PanAm Post)
I attended the opposition march on Friday to not only demonstrate my own rejection of Correa’s policies but also discover why so many Ecuadorians have come out to protest. Activists held up posters expressing the repudiation of taxes, wasteful government spending, and the “vulture state.”+
“I am against the tyranny and oppression of this government. We chose Correa to govern this country; we do not want a satrap, but the thinking man we thought he was. The country is screwed, because of the economic policies of this wretch,” a protester who declined to give his name told me.+
For the constitutional expert Roberto López, who attended the protest, the citizenry is “finally demonstrating against the abuses of this tyrannical and dictatorial government.”+
At the top of Correa’s list of abuses, he says, is the violation of freedom of speech. “The government believes in the state’s right to communication, rather than in freedom of speech and press.… Taxes on inheritances and surplus profits are confiscatory laws. Those are not taxes; it is stealing from what you have earned, or what you inherited from the work of your ancestors. That is unacceptable in a democratic society,” López says.+
The Resistencia Ecuador representative added that “the purpose of the protest is to show the rejection of an endless chain of violations perpetrated by Correa’s regime.”+
“It is clear that the sum of nine years of abuses, corruption, and impunity have exhausted the patience of constituents, who seeing that there is no division of powers, and therefore no authority to control the president’s abuses, have chosen to exercise their constitutional right of resistance.”+
Several political figures also participated in the demonstration. “I want to say that eliminating one Article from the Law on Inheritances does not solve the abuse of power,” opposition legislator Andrés Páez told the media during the event. “We are going continue the protests and fight, because we want respect for Ecuadorians.”+
“We want those laws repealed; we want [the government] to return the money taken from Social Security; to end the limits on workers’ earnings; to give teachers back their funds; and to imprison Pedro Delgado, President Correa’s cousin,” he added.+
Presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso, one of the principal organizers of the event, gave a speech at the end of the protest in which he said it was time for the Correa administration to “respect the work of the Ecuadorian families. Our work is for our children.”+
I asked several ordinary citizens why they chose to gather at the demonstration and found a common response: “We’re tired of so much abuse.” On the street, hundreds of people, of all ages and social class, vigorously shouted phrases like “Down with the dictator,” and “The people are tired.”+
Although some protesters were upset with politicians for using the rally for their own campaigns, the march still managed to show several positive signs that are worth noting.+
First, it shows that people are tried and disappointed with a government of “clean hands and warm hearts.” The people are no longer willing to accept a new tax every week, or a government that sticks its nose into everything and does whatever the president orders, without respect for the rule of law.+
Second, the taxes on inheritances and surplus profits were not the sole causes of the protests, but rather just two of several reasons that have led Ecuadorian citizens to tell President Correa that enough is enough.+
For almost three hours, protesters filled 9 de Octubre Avenue with chants of “Correa Out!.” (PanAm Post)
Third, PAIS Alliance supporters are no longer “more, many more” than the opposition. The number of people who stand against this government is increasing, and as organizers have already announced, the protests will continue.+
Fourth, we have reached a crucial point of political and economic breakdown in Ecuador, and the opposition, while still very fragmented, should take full advantage.+
Given that the constitutional amendment to allow indefinite reelection is likely to be adopted, the only one who benefits from a fragmented opposition that lacks leadership heading into 2017’s elections is Correa.+
While the president’s popularity has waned, he remains a strong leader and will likely win the next election, unless someone can manage to take him into a runoff.+
Thousands of Ecuadorians have already woken up from that flex-green dream called the “Citizens’ Revolution,” and for them, there is no turning back. As he looks ahead to 2017, it’s time for President Correa to switch up the traditional rhetoric of 21st-century socialists that there is a “conspiracy of destabilization” at work against him.+
In the meantime, Ecuadorian citizens can only continue to exercise their right to civil resistance, and peacefully demonstrate against the abuses of Correa’s government. Freedom does not defend itself. Hopefully, this lesson has taught that we should not wait until that “last straw” to raise our voices against a clearly authoritarian state.
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