The Truce Beneath the Rubble: The Day the World Switched Off Geopolitics for Venezuela

Diviana Márquez.— While the thick dust from the magnitude 7.5 and 7.2 earthquakes still clouds the sky and weighs heavily on the hearts of millions of Venezuelans, the sound of aircraft engines tells a different story on the runways. In the early hours of Friday morning, the sky carried no storms, only the reflection of […]

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Editorial | Unity without impunity

Juan Barreto, Bureau Chief Venezuela & LATAM. — Tragedy once again reminds us that nature has no ideology, but residential areas and construction materials certainly do. Today, thousands of our fellow citizens have lost their homes in working-class neighborhoods and middle-class communities alike. Fragile homes in areas that already faced serious risks now lie torn […]

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Venezuela’s debt: Technical challenge or paralysis?

Alejandro J. Sucre — Venezuela faces one of the most complex sovereign debt restructuring processes in its history. The scale of the challenge is undeniable: years without international audits, debt instruments scattered across multiple jurisdictions, opaque bilateral debt with China and Russia, and arbitration awards issued by the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes […]

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The Caracas Stock Exchange: A market in a coma; an economy on alert

The Caracas Stock Exchange stagnates in bolivars and bleeds in dollars while the country looks the other way. Julio A. López.— If the stock market is the thermometer of a nation’s economic health, Venezuela has a high fever, and nobody is taking its temperature. The Caracas Stock Exchange (BVC) is experiencing critical stagnation that raises […]

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Who is the light for? The biopolitics of darkness and the cost of memory

Héctor Sánchez, Sociologist — The National Government has just approved a series of agreements with companies such as General Electric to “reactivate” the national power system. The amounts remain unclear—as does everything in this country, where figures blur between propaganda and opacity—but people speak of several billion dollars. An astronomical sum that, in any country […]

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Much ado about nothing: Truths and lies behind the supposed Iran-U.S. peace agreement

Óscar Reyes Matute — An axiom my political theory professors always drilled into me is that if you find yourself analyzing a conflict in full swing, you must never trust the statements of heads of state, diplomats, or the warring parties. On the cold chessboard of power, you have to look at what they do, […]

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Editorial | Venezuela’s Economic Recovery Begins with a Signature

It’s Time for Oil Contracts. Listen to the Editorial audio here: https://clyp.it/1mybbqxi Julio A. López, Editor-in-Chief.— For years, Venezuela discussed sanctions, licenses, restrictions, international litigation, and political disputes. However, for major international oil companies, a much simpler and more practical question exists: What will the rules of the game be? The recent hiring of the […]

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The Fichtean Curve: Narrative cardiac arrest on screen

Óscar Reyes Matute In philosophy, Johann Gottlieb Fichte described the dialectical movement of consciousness: the “I” (thesis) collides with the external world, or “Not-I” (antithesis), and through overcoming that resistance, achieves self-awareness (synthesis). Fichte, a pillar of German Idealism, never drew a graph. Yet, modern storytelling took his principle of tension and constant collision and […]

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Breaking news United States – Iran agreement

Óscar Reyes Matute— A senior U.S. official leaked to The NY Times (under anonymity and via telephone) the full text of the agreement to cease hostilities, open the Strait of Hormuz, and initiate nuclear talks. Journalists from the newspaper annotated this Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, introducing underlying analyses. Memorandum clauses and expert analysis Paragraph 1: […]

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