Venezuela: How to Communicate the "Thuth?"
Being so close to the Venezuelan conflict forces you to be continuously watching and reading news that contemplate and capture what is happening after almost to months of protests. The government is constantly repeating that all of the problems in Venezuela are not caused or have an origin in the governmental policies, but they are caused because of external factors. The government, and especially Nicolas Maduro, the president, and Diosdado Cabello, the president of the national assembly, blame all sorts of outsider entities. They have blamed the U.S and their policies, the Colombian Army, the Colombian Government and Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Colombian ex-president. However, one of their major enemies is the press.
After many year of trying to nationalize the entire country, the government has accomplished the domination of most of the things and events that get to be communicated. The government is able to determine what Venezuelans can know, and what should be kept away from the public. Even though most of the national press agencies are dominated by the officialist, the international press is still free to communicate whatever they think is worth of it. At least that was until some weeks ago. Maduro, in one of his public (and pathetic) speeches determined that NTN24, a Colombian news channel, was instigating the violence in the protest, by communicating all of the violations to the human rights that have been committed by the Venezuelan government. This news channel was taken out of the air, and their broadcast was cancelled. According to the Miami's Herald article "In Venezuela it's the President who Changes the Channels": "The government accused NTN24 of being alarmist and opening its microphones to the 'coup plotting' opposition" (Wyss 2014). This illustrates how the government is trying to blind the entire country by hiding what is really happening. Maduro knows what he is doing, he is not paranoiac, he is sick for power and control.
But this not only happened with NN24, CNN was also censored by the government. The reasons? Exactly the same. The government can't allow Venezuelans to get to know that their protests are causing a real effect. The main purpose of this dirty tactic is to debilitate the opposition's forces and demoralize their effort. However, and as History has shown us, when people fight for what is fair for everyone, at the end they will obtain their reward.
I just hope that the international community notice what is happening, and act in order to avoid more deaths of innocent people. We, the ones who are outside Venezuela, are not blinded. The least we can do is to communicate what is really happening in there. That's is why I encourage you, whoever is reading this, to post once in a while, if not everyday, something that helps to explain what is happening in Venezuela. We can't help the Venezuelan government to blind the rest of the world.
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| Photo taken from the Article: "Venezuela Revokes CNN Pres Credentials." |
Wyss, Jim. "In Venezuela it's the President who Changes the Channels." Miami Herald. Miami Herald Media Co, Feb 21, 2014. Web. http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/21/3952191/in-venezuela-its-the-president.html. March 5, 2014.
Hey Juanda, your post was really interesting, I can relate to what you said in the beginning of your paragraph. The conflict in Venezuela has every Colombian stuck to their phones and computers because its so close to us that it could eventually come to affect us. I really like the picture you added in your post because it illustrates the essence of the conflict in just one simple, but powerful picture. Keep posting more articles like this, I am eager to read them.
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