I'm sure some of you have seen it on the TV or the newspaper about the chaos that's happening in Venezuela. Well I happen to have a friend from Venezuela and I owe my friend this story. My friend tells me what actually happen in Venezuela, according to this person's point of view. So as I have promise my friend, I will tell you the story of what is happening in Venezuela.
According to my friend the situation in Venezuela is really bad just like we've seen in the news but it's actually worse than that. My friend says that the government took all the media from the people.
"We have no media, all of them taken by the government. Which they use to distort the facts. Right now the president is talking about how we set on fire various Mercals (basically supermarkets from the government), which is most probably false." - My friend.
My friend also says,
"They've been saying we're burning things so many time already you can't imagine. A few days ago we 'burned' a commissary, which is perfectly OK today."
I might think what my friend means by "which is perfectly OK today" is who. Thus what my friend is trying to say might be that the commissary who's said to be burned is actually doing perfectly fine.
My friend continues,
"According to the government, everything (the economy, the insecurity, the protests) is United States fault. Maudro said the US is paying to protest. Once he said Venezuela's violence was Spider Man's fault. FOR REAL. Also it's soap opera's fault."
My friend says that it's horrible how 'this man' is in the government. My friend also says that it's horrible how the media distort everything.
What my friend says about the social media in Venezuela ,
"We basically don't even have newspapers, since there's no paper for it. There's people out there dying, and then there comes the president talking about 'peace', about how everything is US's fault, about how we are supposedly 'promote violence', and basically making fun of us.."
I give my friend my empathy and ask my friend ow could the government do and say that to the people of Venezuela and why do they involve the people and take over all the media.
My friend replies,
"Well, it's pretty tough to say how many people still believe him. Since there's no media, and not everyone has access to social media and international channels as CNN (which the president just kicked out from Venezuela). We believe most people are against this government but the last president elections were pretty much fraudulent."
My friend then says that my friend didn't read my question carefully and misread the word outside thus he continues,
"From outside [the country] everyone has been giving us a lot of support, CNN helped us a lot by broadcasting Maduro's 'speeches' and covering the protests. We've seen lots of messages from Europe, USA, Asia supporting us. Also from other Latin American countries. Everyone knows this government has destroyed us economically, socially, politically... except for the government itself and their followers, it seems."
I am told by this friend of mine that the story itself is very long and complicated. My friend says that it's about 15 years of history.
I ask my friend if they have access to blogs and stuff other than this specific social media that my friend mentioned and my friend says,
"We do have access to blogs, we could say Internet is our only media. As I told you, some people is able to get informed through it, but the low strates of society don't. Since they represent a big portion of our population, it's crucial they know about all that's going on so they can group with us too (some have already). It's planned to go out on street with banners explaining the whole situation: since there's no public media, we're the new media."
So anyway this is the prove of my promise to my dear friend in Venezuela. To tell you the truth I don't know how things are now there. The last thing I know, Venezuela's foreign minister accuses US Secretary John Kerry a murderer.
I hope people read this so you can know about the whole situation in Venezuela from the citizen's point of view.
