Cheers ..to Chile....

Cheers to Chile...

Chilean President Gabriel Boric is in New Delhi today with a large business delegation. His focus is trade and investment.

Some Indians might think that Chile is a small market of 20 million people and it is too far from India.

But Chile is more important for India's exports than some of our neighbouring countries. 

In 2023-24 (April-March) India exported 1.2 billion dollars of goods to Chile. This is more than India’s exports to neighbouring countries such as Cambodia - 185 million dollars, Kazakhstan - 237 m or Myanmar - 670 m.

Main exports are vehicles, pharmaceuticals, equipments and machinery, textiles and chemicals.

The largest EPC contract won by an Indian company in Latin America is not in Brazil or Mexico but in the little Chile. Kalpataru Projects International from Mumbai has secured a 431 million dollar EPC project for building a power transmission line in Chile. This is the single largest project contract of any Indian company in Latin America.

Chile has a unique programme called as "Start-up Chile" inviting foreign start ups to establish centres in Santiago. The Chileans give  40,000 dollars besides other incentives and benefits. Dozens of Indian start-up entrepreneurs have taken advantage of this, Every year there are some Indian start ups setting up their innovation centres in Santiago.  

Falabella, the Chilean retail chain store has a Technology Development centre in Bengaluru employing 250 Indian IT staff. They also have an office in India to procure textiles and other goods for their stores in Latin America.

Chile is the largest Latin American supplier of fresh fruits to India. These are: apples, cherries, pears, grapes, blueberries, plums, mandarins, kiwifruits as well as walnuts.

India and Chile have signed a PTA (Preferential Trade Agreement) under which Chile offers duty concessions on 1798 Indian producs with Margin of Preference (MoP) ranging from 30%-100%. India gives concessions to 1031 Chilean products with MoP ranging from 10%-100%. In any case, Chile has one of the lowest average customs duties (6%) in Latin America.
How important is India for Chile?

India is the 6th largest export market for Chile. This means they export more to India than to Germany, France, UK or Spain. 

In 2024, Chile exported to India 2.55 billion dollars of goods. Major exports: Copper concentrate-1.6 billion dollars, Copper-361 million, Chemicals-221 m, fruits- 150 m and wood pulp 97 m.

Chile is not just about business ….Chile entertains Indians and elevates their spirit.

The Chilean actress Jennifer Mayani has acted in nine Bollywood movies since 2005. The movies are: Good Boy-Bad Boy, Heyy Babyy, Om Shanti Om, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Bhram, Desi Boyz, Victory, Apartment and Golmaal 3

Chile elevates Indian spirit with its famous wines. Chilean wines are available in wine shops across India. The popular Chilean varietals are Carmenere, Merlot, Cabernet Savignon, Pinot Noire, Chardonnay and Savignon Blanc. 

Cheers to Chile...

Chilean actress in Bollywood

The Chilean actress Jennifer Mayani, is part of Chilean President Gabriel Boric's delegation, visiting India next week. 

Mayani has been acting in Bollywood movies since 2005 starting with the Hindi film Dus. She has acted in a total of 10 films including  Good Boy-Bad Boy, Heyy Babyy, Om Shanti Om, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Bhram, Desi Boyz, Victory, Apartment and Golmaal 3.

Mayani has done modelling in Indian commercial ads and walked the ramps in fashion shows.

She is of Sindhi origin born in Punta Arenas, the southern most town in Chile. There is a small Indian community of a few Sindhi families settled in Punta Arenas. There are a few hundred Sindhis in other Chilean cities such as Santiago and Iquique.

Latin American actors in Indian films

Mayani is the latest Latin American actor to enter Indian films.

Mexican actress Barbara Mori acted as heroine in the Bollywood film ̈Kites ̈ released in 2010 

The following six Brazilian actresses have acted in Bollywood films: 

Bruna Abdullah - started off with an item number in Cash, followed by a small role and a special number in I Hate Luv Storys (2010) and Desi Boyz (2011) respectively. In 2012 she appeared in a Tamil film, Billa II. 

Izabelle Leite- Initially labelled the 'mystery woman' that cricketer Virat Kohli was spotted shopping with in Singapore, the Brazilian model has made her Hindi film debut with Raj Purohit's Sixteen. 

Giselli Monteiro- She surprised the audience by playing a typical Punjabi girl in Imtiaz Ali's Love Aaj Kal, starring Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone. Then, in 2011, she appeared in Always Kabhi Kabhi, which was produced by Shah Rukh Khan. 

Gabriela Bertante- came to India in 2010 and took part in a fashion week in Mumbai. she was roped in as a VJ on a popular youth channel. In 2012, she appeared in back-to-back Tamil and Telugu films, Billa II, Devudu Chesina Manushulu and Cameraman Gangatho Rambabu. 

Nathalia Pinheiro- Also known as Nathalia Kaur, she was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She won a calendar's model hunt contest in 2012 and appeared in it that year. Later, she made her film debut in the Kannada film, Dev Son Of Mudde Gowda, followed by an item number in Ram Gopal Varma's Amitabh Bachchan-Sanjay Dutt starrer Department (2012). 

Mariah Gomes- She made her B-town debut with a hit item song, Neeyat Kharab Hai in the Amitabh Bachchan-Ben Kingsley starrer Teen Patti (2010). Then, in 2011, the Brazilian model landed a full-fledged role opposite Prateik in Rohan Sippy's Dum Maro Dum. 

Vallery Maravi, a Peruvian actress has acted in a Kannadiga film "Neenilada Male" which was released in 2018. 

Reynaldo Arenas, a Peruvian actor, coproduced a film in collaboration with Bollywood producers and also acted in the film. 

Indian actor in Latin America

Prabhakar Sharan from Motihari in Bihar, settled in Costa Rica, has acted as hero in a Costa Rican film, Enredados, La Confusion ( Entangled, the confusion).

Indian film producer in Honduras

Mathew Kodath of Kerala, settled in Honduras, produced a Spanish film “Amor y Frijoles” ( Love and Beans- 2009) and another film “Quien Paga La Cuenta” (Who Pays The Bill?-2013) His production company Guacamaya Films also makes television content, including serials and soaps, for two of the biggest television channels in Honduras. 

Indian film shooting in Latin America

Indian producers have started going to Latin America for location shootings. A telugu film Sarrainodu starring Allu Arjun was shot in the famous Uyuni Salt field area of Bolivia in 2016. 

Rajnikant shot a dancing sequence in Machu Pichu, Peru for his film Robot. This was the first ever and last ever film shooting in the sacred premises of Machu Pichu. The Peruvians have banned film shootings after Rajnikant’s dance.

 Endemol India shot a TV serial ́Jor Ka Jhatka ́ in Buenos Aires in December 2010 – January 2011 with 28 Indian actors who stayed here for 40 days. This show was hosted by Shahrukh Khan in Imagine channel in February 2011. 

Some parts of Indian reality show--Khatron ke khiladi--was shot in Argentina starring Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor. 

Film collaborations

An Argentine director Pablo Cesar made a feature film ̈Unicorn-the garden of fruits ̈ in 1996 as a coproduction with India and made a few more later. His new film ̈Thinking of Him ̈ based on the romantic story of meeting of Tagore with Victoria O ́campo in Buenos Aires was premiered on 28 November 2017 in the Goa Film Festival.

The Argentine musician, Gustavo Santaolalla composed music for the Amir Khan film ̈Dhobi Ghat ̈ directed by Kiran Rao. This was released in January 2011.

Yash Raj Films had collaborated with Colombia’s 64-A Films to remake their Bollywood films in Spanish for Colombian audience. 

Team Toon Studio of Barranquilla in Colombia has made a cartoon film for an Indian producer in 2017. 

Alfonso Cuaron, the Mexican film director and Oscar winner, supports and mentors an Indian film maker Chaitanya Tamnahne in the making of the film "The disciple". This movie, about North Indian classical music, became the first Indian movie to play in Venice competition in 20 years last week, where it won Best Screenplay award. 

Television

Indian TV channels have shown Latin American soap operas such as Ugly Betty and Second Chance. 

Omm Moo (yoga for kids 4-9 years) a famous Colombian TV serial (2013 production) was telecast in Tamil by Sun TV in Tamilnadu. The 26 episode (7 minutes each) series mixes 3D and 2D animation with live-action and shows cows solving their problems using the exercise method of yoga. 

Zindagi channel of India telecast in 2017 a Brazilian soap opera" Total Dreamer" ( totalmente demais) which ran into 175 episodes. This is a Globo TV production telecast in Brazil in 2015-16 

Zee TV has a Spanish channel ZeeMundo with Bollywood movies for Latin American viewers. 

Globo TV of Brazil produced and telecast a soap opera ̈Camino das Indias – Passage to India ̈ in 2009. It was partly shot in India and there were Indian characters and Indian costumes. It got the highest ratings during the eight months of its telecast and stimulated Brazilian interest in India. It has been dubbed in Spanish and telecast in other Latin American countries. 

Bollywood films popular in Latin America

Bollywood films are popular in Latin America. In Peru, there are even fan clubs such as "Shah Rukh Khan Fan Club Perú" and "Club Internacional SRK Universe Perú," which are recognized by SRK and have a strong online presence on Facebook and Instagram. The Indian embassies use Indian films as part of 'soft power public diplomacy’, through organisation of Indian film festivals across the region.

India's exports to Latin America were 20.2 billion dollars in 2024

India’s exports to Latin America in 2024 (January-December) increased marginally to 20.2 billion US dollars from 19.7 billion in 2023.

Top destinations:

Brazil         6.54 billion

Mexico      5.72 bn

Colombia 1.38 bn

Chile         1.14

Argentina 1.0

Peru           947 million

Guatemala 616 m

Main exports:

Vehicles 4.66 bn

Chemicals 3 bn

Equipments and machinery 3 bn

Pharmaceuticals 1.75 bn

Exports of Motorcycles have increased to 1.4 billion dollars in 2024 from 928 m in 2023. India is the second largest supplier of motorcycles to Latin America after China.

Imports 

Imports from Latin America increased to 26 bn in 2024 from 24.5 bn in 2023

Major sources of import:

Brazil  5.25 billion dollars

Peru  4.73 bn

Argentina 3.45 bn

Colombia 3.1 bn

Mexico 2.92 bn

Venezuela 2.07 bn

Dom Republic  731 million

Bolivia 410 m

Peru has emerged as the second major Latin American supplier  in 2024 overtaking Mexico which has become fifth after Argentina and Colombia.  Main reason is reduction in imports of Mexican crude oil in 2024. 

On the other hand, Venezuela had supplied 2 billion dollars of crude oil in 2024 after the stoppage of supply in the previous 3 years due to US sanctions. Now that the Trump administration has retightened the sanctions, Venezuela  would not  be able to keep up the exports in 2025.

Main imports:

Gold  7.11 bn

crude oil 7.1 bn

veg oils 3.47 bn

copper 2.4 bn

raw sugar 1.78 bn

For the first time in Indo-Latin American trade history, gold has overtaken crude oil as the # 1 item of imports in 2024. 

Peru has almost doubled its gold supplies to 4.4 bn in 2024 from 2.4 bn in 2023. Bolivia which had supplied 2.79 bn of gold in 2022 has supplied only 404 million in 2024.

The import of raw sugar is from Brazil and it is refined and reexported to other countries 

India's importance to Latin America

In 2024, India was the 5th largest destination for Latin America's exports after US, China, Canada and Spain. This means India is more important than Germany, UK, France or Japan.

India was the 7th largest supplier of goods to Latin America 

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Source: International Trade Centre ( joint agency of WTO and UNCTAD) Geneva

From Sabha to Kuppam: TM Krishna pushes the boundary of Carnatic music

  
          From Sabha to Kuppam: TM Krishna pushes the boundary of Carnatic music 
 
 Sabhas are the concert halls where the connoisseurs of Carnatic music in Chennai city go to listen. Kuppams are where poor people struggle to make a living and have no access to classical music. TM Krishna, the talented and revolutionary Carnatic music singer is pushing  the boundaries of Carnatic music from the Sabhas to the Kuppams. He has taken the classical music to a fisherman’s village Urur Olcott Kuppam on the margins of Chennai city. His initiative has now become institutionalized as  “The Urur Olcott Kuppam Vizha”,  a multi-genre festival. Every year, as part of the run-up to the vizha, T.M. Krishna sings at the Eliot’s beach in front of people most of whom have never seen the inside of the Sabhas. 
 
Krishna has also revolutionized the compositions of the classical music for his new audience. While the Sabha music is mostly the compositions of the Trinity Composers ( Thyagaraja, Shyama Shastri and Muthuswami Dikshidar, the 18^th century trio) and religious songs, Krishna has taken on new compositions with contemporary social issues, some of which are not to the liking of the Sabha crowd. During the February 2024 Vizha, Krishna performed a number of songs, among which was the first Carnatic song written about the Urur Olcott Kuppam by Perumal Murugan, a revolutionary writer. 

 
This initiative to take classical music from the elite urban audience to underprivileged areas reminds me of a similar outreach revolution in Venezuela, called as “El Sistema”. This was founded in 1975 by the Venezuelan conductor and educator José Antonio Abreu. He took classical music to the poor children in slums with the motto " Music for Social Change". Besides giving access to high culture to the underprivileged he believed that collective work through orchestras would inspire a social transformation in the poor communities. He was convinced that classical music would occupy young people with music study and instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth. This is especially important for children in slums exposed to criminal gangs, drug trafficking and violence. 
 
Abreu started a new youth orchestra and held the first meeting of the orchestra in a parking garage with few teenagers. Within a year, he had built an ensemble, and took it to a festival in Scotland and won critical praise for his work. After the success of the programme in Caracas, he opened more centres all over the country. In 1995, Abreu was appointed Special Ambassador for the Development of a Global Network of Youth and Children Orchestras and Choirs by UNESCO. Sir Simon Rattle, director of the Berlin Philharmonic said in a statement in 2011,  "What Abreu and El Sistema have done is to bring hope, through music, to hundreds of thousands of lives that would otherwise have been lost to drugs and violence." El Sistema has proved to be a programme of social rescue and cultural transformation for thousands of children from poor neighbourhoods in the country". The Inter American Development Bank extended grants and credit for building of regional centres of El Sistema in Venezuela. The Bank has praised the program after studying its impact through an interdisciplinary group. According to the study El Sistema has helped the children improve their capacity to control their attention, behavior and emotions besides showing lesser aggression and improvement in relations with peers.  
 
El Sistema provides free classical music training during after-school hours in the afternoons. It organizes orchestras with children and teenagers (between the ages of 2 and 18) many of whom are from poor families. The system provides musical instruments. Talented and interested adolescent students are trained to become teachers and encouraged to open new centres. The most remarkable feature of the system is its instant immersion. The children begin playing in ensembles from the moment they pick up their instruments. They enjoy the novelty of playing instruments they cannot afford to buy and feel spiritual uplift from the soothing classical music in their  neighborhood filled with the noise of gunshots and screams. The parents and neighbors of the kids in El Sistema, who cannot imagine going to the theaters for classical music performances, are fascinated by the opportunity of exposure to the high culture within their community. They are proud of the performance and achievements of the students of El Sistema. El Sistema has trained over a million students. It operates over 400 centres and 1700 orchestras with more than 5000 music teachers. 

Information on El Sistema

https://elsistema.org.ve/

The students, depending on talent and ambition, advance to statewide orchestras, with the younger ones in children’s orchestras and those in their late teens and 20s in youth orchestras. The best are selected to join the national Bolívar Youth Orchestra. Some alumni of El Sistema have gone on to distinguished careers in famous orchestras around the world.

 
Gustavo Dudamel, the celebrity music director of Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a product of the El Sistema.  He is scheduled to become the Music and Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026. He attributes his success to ‘El Sistema’ and misses no opportunity to express his gratitude to his mentor Abreu, who passed away in 2018.

  
El Sistema has inspired a number of similar projects in two dozen countries including US, UK, Canada, Spain, Bolivia, Philippines and South Korea. There are nearly 200 Sistema-inspired programs in the United States.
 
I hope TM Krishna succeeds in his mission to spread the Carnatic music to more Kuppams. 
 

Uruguay, the small country, has a Big lesson for the democracies of Brazil and USA.

In the presidential elections held in Uruguay on Sunday, Yamandu Orsi from the Centre-left was elected as President. He beat the candidate of the Centre-right ruling party.

 
By the US standards, the Uruguayan election campaign was boring. No polarization, no hate speeches, no fake news, no lies, no attacks against the election system, no threats to challenge electoral outcome, no vulgar language and no abusive behaviour. The debates were decent and the campaigns were civilized. 
 
The authorities conducted the election competently and transparently and delivered the results  quickly. There were no anachronistic procedures or attempts to rig as happened in the USA. 
 
Both the winner and the defeated are moderates and pragmatic. The opposition candidate who won did not threaten to undo what the ruling party had done. The ruling party which lost the election accepted the outcome gracefully and congratulated the winner.
 
Since the restoration of democracy from military dictatorship in 1985, the right and left have been in power alternately. The conservatives ruled for four terms from 1985 to 2005 followed by three terms of the left from 2005 to 2020. The conservatives returned to power in 2020 and they have now been replaced by the leftists.
 
The only difference Orsi would make in foreign policy is that he would show solidarity with the leftist governments in the region unlike his predecessor who aligned himself more with other conservative presidents.  
 
In domestic policies, Orsi would spend more on social welfare but would let the private sector also flourish without constraints. 
 
The President-elect Orsi is a former history teacher who was elected twice as mayor of a town. He says he would not move into the stately presidential house, following in the footsteps of ex-president Jose Mujica who set an example of austerity and simplicity. Mujica was described by BBC as the ” world’s poorest President”. He refused to move to the official residence and continued to stay in his ramshackle farmhouse outside the city. He drove his own 1987 model Volkswagon Beetle, worked on his field growing flowers and vegetables . He lead a simple and unostentatious life. He donated 90% of his salary to charity. 

Mujica was a leftist guerrilla fighter and was put in jail for fourteen years by the military dictatorship. So when he stood for election, there was fear that he would be vengeful. But he forgave the military and showed magnanimity and pragmatism. In one of his campaign speeches, Mujica vowed to distance the left from "the stupid ideologies that come from the 1970s — I refer to things like unconditional love of everything that is state-run, scorn for businessmen and intrinsic hate of the United States. He said, ¨I'll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!" 

 
Although the economy is small, the country has a solid economy with thriving agriculture and tourism. The levels of poverty and inequality are very low while the literacy rate is high.  Uruguay is part of the Mercosur customs union which includes Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. 

The Indian IT giant TCS opened its first Latin America office in Uruguay in 2002. Gabriel Rozman, an Uruguayan, took TCS across Latin America and scaled up the operations. The TCS Chennai office building, the largest in India, was designed by an Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott.  

The small market of Uruguay is big destination for India' exports. Last year India's exports were an impressive 521 million dollars. This is more than India's exports to the neighboring Cambodia (185 million dollars) or Kazhakstan (237 million) whose populations and economies are much bigger.
 
Uruguay is considered as the Switzerland of South America. Many rich Argentines and Brazilians as well as other South Americans spend vacations in Uruguay, have houses there and keep their money in Uruguayan banks.
 
Uruguay is in the vanguard in Latin America in legalizing same-sex marriage, consumption and production of Marijuana and abortion rights. Uruguay passed a law in December 2013 decriminalizing, legalizing and regulating the production, sale and consumption of cannabis
 
Of course, Uruguay is a small country of 3.6 million population sandwiched between the big brothers Brazil and Argentina. But the little Uruguay has a big lesson for Brazil and USA which have suffered the disgraceful culture and dangerous power of violent far-right extremism. Uruguay has demonstrated to these countries and the world that politics can be pursued without extremism, hatred and polarization. 

There will never be an Uruguayan Trump or Bolsonaro. 
 
 

Pedro Páramo – Mexican movie

 
Pedro Paramo, the latest Mexican movie released in Netflix, is based on a famous Magical Realism novel written by Juan Rulfo in 1955. 

 
The  surreal story brings out the Mexican culture which has blended the indigenous roots with that of the invaders and colonisers from Spain. It explores life and death and ghosts and spirits reminding us of the Dia do los Muertos (day of the dead) when dead ancestors are remembered in Mexico. At the same time there is the culture of the Spanish colonists who took over the land of the indigenous people and exploited them.
 
The story starts with Juan Preciado, who promises his mother on her deathbed that he would go to the town of Comala to look for his father Pedro Paramo, whom he had never met. When he reaches the town he finds it ghostly. He encounters friends and the other family members of Paramo who tell him fragments of the life of his father. But some of these characters disappear when he is talking to them. He learns that his father was a landlord who ruled the area with his ruthless methods of land acquisition and murders. His father was also tormented by the death of his boyhood sweet heart Susana who turns mad after the murder of her husband by Paramo.
 
I had read the novel two decades back but found it difficult to understand and appreciate. Having learnt more about Mexican culture over the years, the movie has helped me to understand the novel better.
 
Pedro Paramo is considered as the precursor to the boom of Magical Realism genre novels of Latin America in the second half of the last century. Gabriel Garcia Marquez drew inspiration after reading Juan Rulfo’s work. The legendary Argentine writer Luis Borges has called Pedro Paramo as one of the greatest works of literature.

 
The main actor in the film Manuel Garcia Rulfo is distantly related to the novelist.
 
Music for the film has been composed by Gustavo Santaolalla, the Argentine who had directed the music for the Indian film ‘Dhobi Ghat’
 

The Cemetery of Untold Stories – novel by Julia Alvarez

 The Cemetery of Untold Stories – novel by Julia Alvarez
 
This latest novel by Julia Alvarez from Dominican Republic reads like an autobiographic work. I have read six of her novels which bring out vividly the vibrant culture of her homeland and juxtaposes it with her immigrant life in the US. The tragedies suffered by Dominicans including her own family during the terrible dictatorship of Trujillo are portrayed poignantly in all her novels.
 
In this latest novel,  Alma, the protagonist is a successful Dominican writer in US. Towards the end of her life, she gives up writing and  goes back to her homeland.  She takes all her manuscripts and her heavy heart filled with untold stories, stories, so many stories.  Alma has nowhere to put them except in the ground. So she decides to build a cemetery to bury her manuscripts with the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. The stories of Alma’s father (Papi) and Bienvenida, the first wife of the dictator Trujillo stand out among the untold stories and insist in coming out. Alma recollects them through the course of the novel.
 
Alma buys a piece of land in a slum area next to a garbage dump. She builds a small house, a large graveyard and a high compound wall. The cemetery has several parts for different kinds of stories. Sometimes the characters in the stories come out and roam the cemetery ground making sounds in the night. 

 
Some of  the boxes containing manuscripts “catch fire, crackling and sending up sparks, as if the flames are hungry for stories, even unfinished ones. The stories are released, their characters drifting off to the sea, to the mountains, into the dreams of the old and the unborn, seeping into the soil. A lucky few find their way into books by other writers. Sometimes the fragments are blown back, liberated from their plots”.
 
The puzzled and curious slum dwellers want to know what is happening inside the property.  A sign goes up on the wall at the main gate. El cementerio de los cuentos nunca contados (A cemetery for untold stories). The only way to enter is to speak into a small black box at the front gate. Cuéntame, a woman’s soft voice requests. Tell me a story. The door opens only if the story is good. 
 
The first to gain entry is Filomena, a poor spinster and ex-maid. “She has no living relatives, no former husband or lover who left her for another woman, no kids gone to el Norte for opportunities. It happens with women: they close down before they ever open up. Some flowers never bloom. Or bloom too soon or late in life”.
 
Filomena pours out her story finishing with the incantation“ Colorín colorado, este cuento se ha acabado”. a Spanish phrase used to indicate that a story has reached its end. The first part is just a colorful expression with no specific meaning, the second part means 'this story is over.' This is similar to the Tamil way of saying  “ கதை முடிந்தது கத்திரிக்காய் காச்சத்து. It means, literally, 'the story is over, the eggplant is ripe'. Es verdad, ( this is true) Filomena adds, since it is her real life story. 
 
Alma employs Filomena as caretaker to bury the manuscripts and look after the cemetery. She also makes her to listen to the stories of those who want to enter as well as the sounds of wailing  from the buried characters.  
 
The graveyard attracts drifters, beggars, street orphans and drug traffickers. “Each group has its preferred territory: the smaller boys congregate around the markers for the children’s books, folktales and legends; the older ones gravitate to the burned drafts about lusty revolutionaries never liberated into story form; beggars take the ashy crumbs of whatever is left, lines of poems, rejected essays. There are open stretches with no markers where drug traffickers have sown marijuana seeds”.
 
The haunting of dead characters is no deterrent to lovers from the slum who jump over the wall to have sex over the cool stone beds. “After satisfying their hunger, they tell stories. Boys and several girls protectively disguised as boys recount what happened that day, what was filched, who was kind, where they roamed, exact locations left vague to protect territory, curb competition. Old-timers tell of hurricanes, massacres, dictators, as well as of golden times. The young men boast about their exploits, girls they spied on, bathing behind plastic, see-through shower curtains, throwing buckets of water over their beautiful soapy bodies. The laughter dies down. The younger boys yawn. The night wears on. The groups disperse to their posts, sometimes searching out new locations, as some markers have been known to stir up nightmares. Others incite wonderful dreams. There are stories of transgressors waking up with a tail between their legs or horns on their heads.
 
Julia Alvarez ends the novel saying, “Eventually, storied and unstoried join in mystery. Nothing holds anyone together but imagination”. 
 
 

Adios to Alberto Fujimori, a Latino- Japanese Caudillo

 

 

             Adios to Alberto Fujimori, a Latino- Japanese Caudillo

 

 

Alberto Fujimori, who made history in Latin American politics, as the first Japanese immigrant to become President of Peru in 1990, died on 11 September. He has two world history records. He was the first president who resigned from abroad by sending his resignation through fax to the home country. He was also the first to be convicted and jailed for human rights violations within his own country.

 

Fujimori was an outsider when he entered the presidential elections in 1990. He was not member of any political party nor did he had held any government position. He was a university professor. The poor and indigenous people voted for him frustrated by the periodic political and economic crisis caused by the traditional white political oligarchy. When he joined the race for presidential post, he was a dark horse. He had created a coalition including some leftists under the banner of “Cambio 90” (change). He had a surprise win against the famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who won Nobel prize later. Llosa was from the right with a neo-liberal agenda. Interestingly Fujimori become a neoliberal after becoming President.

 

As President, Fujimori  took off like a Meiji reformer and Samurai warrior by crushing the guerilla insurgency, taming  hyperinflation and transforming the economy. He became popular. But he succumbed to hubris and the Latino Caudillo (strong man) virus. He wanted more power and less constraints. In 1992, he did a self-coup by suspending constitution, shutting down the Congress and dissolving the judiciary. He drafted a new constitution which would allow presidential reelection. But despite the international condemnation, he got reelected in the 1995 elections and his party got majority in the Congress. 

 

In December 1996, the leftist guerillas invaded the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima during a party and held 72 guests as hostage for 126 days. The hostages included the chief of the anti-terrorist police, the future president Alejandro Toledo and the mother and younger brother of Fujimori.  Fujimori bought time by pretending to negotiate but was preparing for rescue. At the end, he sent in commandos killing all the guerillas and rescuing the hostages in a spectacular operation.

 

After this success, Fujimori became more popular but also more autocratic. He stood for a third term in the 2000 election, violating his own constitution which limited presidency to two terms. And he went on to win but his victory was contested by allegations of irregularities and vote-rigging. There were public protests against his election, abuse of power and corruption. The situation got worse in November after the eruption of a huge scandal of corruption and criminal activities of his chief of intelligence. Fujimori's support collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the intelligence agency and call new elections, in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. On 16 November, his government lost a vote of confidence in the Congress. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential resignation via fax. But the Peruvian Congress refused to accept his resignation and removed him from office on the ground that he was "permanently morally disabled". The Japanese government gave asylum to Fujimori, issued a Japanese passport and refused the Peruvian request for extradition. 

 

Fujimori, with his Latino vibrancy, got bored in the staid Japanese society. He declared his intention to return to Peruvian politics. The Peruvian authorities warned him that he would be arrested and prosecuted if he came back.  So he went to Chile in 2005 with the intention to sneak into Peru. But the Chileans detained and extradited him to Peru. The Peruvian court sentenced him to 25 years in jail for crimes of human rights abuse among others. He was released in December 2023, after serving jail term of 18 years. 

 

On 14 July this year, he had announced his candidacy in the Presidential election to be held in 2026, when he would have been 88. On 9 August 2024, the Peruvian government issued a law against prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002. Fujimori was the most important beneficiary of this since there were more pending cases against him. 

 

Fujimori’s daughter Keiko Fujimori has bright chances to become the next president of Peru. She lost the last three elections narrowly. She has founded her own political party which is the strongest in the country. She was close to the father and acted as hostess during his presidency. Fujimori’s son and ex-wife are also in politics but overshadowed by Keiko.

Fujimori was born in in Peru in1938 after his parents migrated from Japan in 1934. They were among the 240,000 Japanese who came to Latin America between 1899 and 1941. Of this 33,000 came to Peru.  They  worked as laborers in farms, mines, industries and building of roads and railways. They endured hardship, racial discrimination and abuses. During the Second World War, the Peruvian government persecuted them with internment, confiscation of assets and restrictions. They even deported about two thousand Japanese to the internment camps in US, which asked for it. But the Fujimori family was lucky and survived in Peru. While his parents were Buddhists, Alberto Fujimori was baptized and raised as catholic. He spoke Japanese besides Spanish. He studied agricultural engineering in a university in Lima and then became a lecturer in  mathematics. He switched to study physics in the University of Strasbourg in France after which he did a masters degree in Mathematics in the US. He married a fellow Japanese-Peruvian Susana Higuchi and had four children. He was Rector of the National Agrarian University of Peru. In 1988-89 he hosted a TV show  in the state television channel on national political and other issues. This experience inspired his interest in politics.

 

The Peruvian political history is colorful with many dramas, experiments, successes and tragedies. Peru was one of the earliest birthplaces of leftist ideology in Latin America. The Peruvian leftist political party APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) founded in 1924  is one of the longest survivor in Latin American political history. Its agenda included creation of a network of anti-imperialist social and political movements in the region. The party’s candidate Alan Garcia won the 1985 elections and was the predecessor to Fujimori. When Garcia was charged with corruption cases, he fled and took asylum in Colombia and later France. He came back and won the 2006 presidential election. In 2019, he committed suicide when police entered his house to arrest him on corruption charges. 

 

In the last eight years, Peru has had 6 presidents, with one of the presidents lasting for just 5 days. Pedro Castillo, a simple rural peasant leftist elected as president in 2021 was impeached and put in jail for trying a Fujimori-style self-coup in 2022. President Martin Vizcarra was impeached in 2020, two years after his election. Alejandro Toledo, who was President from 2001 to 2006, is in jail on corruption charges. Kuczynski, who was President from 2016 to 18 is under house arrest on corruption charges. 

 

But despite the political instability, the economy has remained stable. The inflation has been in single digit in the last 27 years, a record in Latin America. The macroeconomic fundamentals have been relatively strong and healthy.

 

Mario Vargas Llosa, the famous Peruvian writer of Magical Realism novels, won the Nobel Prize. But Fujimori won against him in the 1990 election with his Japanese twist to the Latino Magical Realism.

 

The Japanese in Latin America

                                     The Japanese in Latin America 
 
A Japanese monthly magazine Chou Koron (Public Discussion) wrote in 1917, ‘Brazil is an enormous country, 21 times bigger than Japan and can accommodate hundreds of millions more inhabitants than now. In South America, the Japanese are welcomed, the soil is rich, and many of the customs of the people resemble ours. There is plenty of room for millions of Japanese in this part of the world”. 
 
The Japanese took this report seriously. Today, there are over a million people of Japanese descent in Brazil, which has the largest number of Japanese outside Japan. Peru has the second largest, followed by Mexico and Argentina. There are an estimated 1.5 million Japanese descendants in Latin America. 
 
“The Japanese in Latin America (Asian American experience)”, a book published in March 2024, brings out interesting and comprehensive information on the Japanese immigration into Latin America, their experience in the new continent, their trauma during the Second World War and their impact on Latin America. The author Daniel M. Masterson is a professor of history in US. He has got collaboration from a US-Japanese scholar Sayaka Funada-Classen who has done research and interviews with the people of Japanese descent in Latin America.
 

The Japanese had come to Latin America as contract laborers to work in agriculture, mines, infrastructure projects and industries. They suffered hardship and racial discrimination. During the Second World War, they were persecuted and some of them were deported to internment camps in the US. But the Japanese have survived and integrated into Latin American society. They have blended the Japanese qualities of stoicism, team work and seriousness with the light-hearted Latino and Samba and Salsa loving life. 
 
The Japanese people did not emigrate on their own. They were encouraged to do so by the strategic policy of the Japanese government which sought to populate other parts of the world with their people. The government of Japan had signed a series of commercial treaties with some Latin American nations in the 1880s which facilitated immigration to the region. The Japanese government supported emigration with subsidies for travel costs and credit for colonizing projects. There were over fifty private emigration companies sending out Japanese abroad in the 1900s. They recruited and transported contract immigrants, extended loans to the immigrants and and invested in colonization projects abroad in collaboration with the government. They operated training Centers  with courses in Portuguese and Spanish languages. 
  
Japanese immigrants went first to Mexico and Peru in the late 1890s. In 1897, the Japanese established an immigrant colony in Chiapas, Mexico. This was organized by the former Japanese Minister of Foreign Relations and ardent proponent of immigration, Takeaki Enomoto.  His enterprise purchased 160,550 acres of land for the project. But this experiment failed. In 1899, a group of 790 Japanese male laborers arrived to work in the coastal sugar plantations of Peru. A small group of 126 Japanese arrived in Chile in 1903, while Cuba and Argentina recorded their first few arrivals in 1907. 
 
In 1907, the US restricted Japanese immigration with the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” signed with the Japanese government. Canada followed suit. The US also put pressure on Mexico and Central America to restrict Japanese immigration since some of the immigrants started moving illegally to the US. After these, the Japanese targeted South America more seriously and systematically for emigration. 
 
In 1908, about 800 Japanese immigrants, mostly in family groups, arrived in Brazil to work in the coffee plantations in Sao Paulo State. In the next three decades, Japanese moved in large numbers to Brazil and in smaller groups to twelve Latin American nations. 
 
Two individuals namely Tanaka, an official of the Morioka Company and Augusto Leguía, a prominent sugar planter and future president of Peru were primarily responsible for initiating Japanese immigration to Peru under the contract labor system in 1899. Subsequent negotiations between the Japanese and Peruvian governments led to the issuance of a decree by President Nicolas Pierola that permitted Japanese contract labor under an initial four-year agreement. This decree stipulated that the recruits were to be primarily experienced male agricultural workers between twenty and forty-five years of age who would work ten hours a day in the cane fields or twelve hours in the sugar mill. 
 
Japanese immigration to Brazil differed from that to Spanish America in that it was heavily subsidized and accompanied by significant capital investment by the Japanese. An agreement for Japanese immigration to Brazil was signed in 1907 by Ryo Mizuno, president of the company Toyo Imin Gaisha with the Brazilian President Jorge Tibirica to bring 3,000 Japanese immigrants to Sao Paulo. These immigrants were to be “agriculturalists fit for farming” and were to consist of families of three to ten members each. They were to be paid on a piecework basis at a rate of 450 to 500 reis (25 to 50 US cents) for every fifty kilos of coffee beans picked.  
 
The Japanese established an administrative agency called as the Federation of Immigration Cooperative Societies under a law passed by the Diet in March 1927. They had created 44  societies in Japan’s 47 prefectures by the mid-1930s. The government extended about $800,000 in loans to the federation to acquire 541,112 acres of land in Sao Paulo and Parana states for colonization. They established another company Sociedade Colonizadora do Brasil Limitada (Brazilian Colonization Company) under Brazilian law to administer the Japanese colonies. This company was used to acquire real estate and construct the infrastructure of roads and common facilities. 
 
In 1926, the Japanese Overseas Development Company (KKKK) purchased 500 acres of land in the province of Cauca, near Cali in Colombia to set up a colony. The company paid for the colonists’ passage as well as their initial local expenses in Colombia. Later, they allowed the colonists to buy their own land.
 
According to the Japanese foreign ministry, a total of 243279 Japanese had migrated to Latin America from 1899 to 1941 with the following break-up: Brazil 187681, Peru 33067, Mexico 14566 and Argentina 5398.
 
The Japanese entry in the Second World War and their devastating defeat caused a trauma for the Japanese Latin Americans. The Latin American governments interned or removed the Japanese from their homes to more secure areas. They froze the bank accounts of the Japanese, confiscated their radios and phones, banned publications in Japanese, restricted their travel and prohibited gatherings of more than five.  They deported about 2000 Japanese to the United States for internment, as requested by the US government. The vast majority of these deportees were Japanese Peruvians. 
 
After the end of the War, the Japanese resumed emigration in 1952. About 50,000 went to Brazil and a few hundred to Bolivia and Paraguay. Many of these post-World War immigrants were from war-torn Okinawa, which was administratively separate from Japan and under direct U.S. military rule. The U.S. government strongly encouraged this immigration because of the economic difficulties of the Okinawan people and the need to acquire land for the military bases on the island. The US administration provided loans and subsidies to these emigrants.
 
Under an agreement between Japanese and Bolivian governments, the immigrants were to “dedicate themselves to professions in agriculture and animal husbandry and to demonstrate industry, honor, and aptitude for work.” The Bolivian government granted 87,198 acres of land with a share of 110 acres for each Japanese household.
 
The Paraguayan dictator Strossner actively encouraged Japanese immigration in his home region of Encarnacion in the border with Argentina. In 1956, he gave land for two colonies to be settled by Japanese. The Japanese government extended  to the colonists credit for tractors, vehicles and construction equipment.
 
Strossner’s example was followed by the Dominican Republic dictator Trujillo who had invited Japanese immigrants to settle near the border with Haiti in a clear effort to discourage further Haitian immigration in this sensitive area. After Trujillo’s assassination in May 1961, most of the Dominican Republic’s Japanese left. 
 
The first-generation Japanese immigrants worked as laborers in agriculture, rubber plantations, sugar mills, mines, road and railway projects, apart from taking up low level jobs as carpenters, barbers (there were more than sixty Japanese-owned barbershops in Cuba by the mid-1920s), waiters, taxi drivers, dry cleaners (The Japanese operated more than 500 drycleaners out of the total 800 dry cleaners in Buenos Aires city in the early 1950s) and even as domestic helpers. They suffered enormous hardship, racial discrimination and abuse in Latin America. The Peruvians called the Japanese as Chino macacos (Chinese monkeys) equating them with the Chinese who had come earlier as coolies. 
 
The first immigrants to Latin America were overwhelmingly male contract laborers who sought to better themselves financially and then return to Japan. Only a few returned to Japan. Later, during the periodic economic crises in Latin America and after the emergence of Japan as a prosperous country, the Japanese immigration has reversed. Some third generation Japanese have gone back to Japan temporariiy and a few permanently for better jobs and economic stability.
 
But most of the descendants of Japanese immigrants have stayed and become full citizens of Latin America. They have steadily climbed up the social ladder into middle class with education and entrepreneurship. The Japanese Brazilians have even entered politics at the local, regional, and national levels becoming ministers, mayors and members of legislative bodies. Alberto Fujimori became the President of Peru in 1990 and continued for ten years till 2000. His daughter Keiko Fujimori is head of a political party which has got a number of seats in the Congress. She contested in the presidential elections three times but lost narrowly. She has chances of becoming President in the future.
 
 
President Alberto Fujimori had started off in 1990 like a Meiji reformer by ending the guerilla insurgency, taming  hyperinflation and transforming the economy. But in the end, he turned out like a typical Latino Caudillo (strong man) trampling democracy, abolishing the Congress and ruling as an autocrat. He got elected for a third time in 2001 by manipulating the constitution and rigging the elections. But he faced strong public protests. When the criminal and corruption scandals erupted in November 2001, he fled to Japan from where he sent in his resignation by fax, in a bizarre way.  The Japanese government gave asylum to him, issued a Japanese passport and refused the Peruvian request for extradition. But Fujimori did not want to fade into quiet retirement. He came to Chile with the intention of entering Peru but was arrested and extradited to Peru in 2005. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail for human rights abuse crimes. He was released in December 2023. On 14 July this year, he has announced his candidacy in the Presidential election to be held in 2026, when he would be 88 years old. On 9 August 2024, the Peruvian government issued a law against prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002. Fujimori is the most important beneficiary of this. 
 
The Fujimori story is like one of the Magical Realism novels of Maria Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian Nobel prize winner for literature. Fujimori beat Llosa in the 1990 Presidential election. Since then, Llosa has become a permanent enemy and fierce critic of Fujimori. The juicy story of Fujimori is ideal material for a Llosa novel. It is surprising that Llosa has not ventured to write a novel based on the story of Fujimori. May be because Fujimori the Japanese macho, has outdone the typical Latino Caudillos, beyond the Latino imagination of Llosa. 
 
 

Argentine movie “ Goyo”

The film “Goyo” is one of the best Argentine movies I have seen in recent years. 

 
It is a romantic story of Goyo, an autistic young man, who falls in love  with an older married woman Eva who has moved away from her husband. Goyo is autistic but artistic. He paints and has a vast knowledge of art in which he has graduated. While he is good in his work as a museum guide, he is awkward and uncomfortable in dealing with people. He tries to understand people and situations through reading and theoretical analysis. One day, he sees Eva while she was struggling and angry with her broken umbrella in rain. Her image sets his heart on fire. He discovers that Eva works in the same museum as security guard. He tries to court her in his own absurd and comical way. He is encouraged by his brother  who coaches him on how to deal with women. Eva is overwhelmed by the innocent, sincere and talented Goyo and his painting of her portrait. 
 
Moment to stop….…and let you enjoy the rest of the story by watching the movie.

The Director Marcos Carnevale has handled autism with a sensitive and empathetic touch while making us laugh and smile with Goyo’s clumsy behavior and formal talk, which is humorous. He has made the simple and predictable story poignant through the complex Argentine characters.
 
The Uruguayan Actor Nicolas Furtado touches our heart as Goyo, the adorable young man with the Asperger's Syndrome. The Argentine actress Nancy Duplaa in her role of Eva and the other actors did not have to do any acting in the movie. They have simply talked and behaved in the same natural way as they do in every day life. The Latino 'magic' comes out from the Argentine 'realism'. The Argentines do not need stories or fantasies or imagination. Their reality is more fantastic than magic. Otherwise how can one explain a country which was one of the richest in the first three decades of the last century becoming now a country with fifty percent poverty rate and severe economic crisis. And this is not the first time of crisis..The crisis in 2001 was much more traumatic than the current one. The Argentines  create crisis for themselves periodically but regularly and predictably. Argentina is a rare country which has moved from the First World to the Third World.

Goyo brings out the typical and unique Argentine mindset and cultural traits. Watching the Argentines talk and argue in the movie and in every day life is an entertainment by itself. This was the best part of my five year stay in Buenos Aires. I used to enjoy listening to the colorful conversations of the Argentines in the cafes in Buenos Aires. The city is famous for its legendary cafes and book stores. The Argentines read a lot of books, analyze the contents and discuss them seriously in the cafes for hours together. The Argentine taxi drivers are one of the most well-read and articulate in the world. 

Even when the Argentines use the most abusive and angry words, they do it with creativity, style, sarcasm and humor. They have a rare flair for combining their notorious haughtiness with humorous naughtiness. There are lots of jokes about the Argentines in the rest of Latin America. Even the Argentines themselves (including Pope Francis) make fun of their compatriots and write books. My favorite books are “ Che Boludo” and El Pelotudo Argentino” which have amazing collection of jokes and stories.

The Argentines complicate even the simplest things by too much complex and critical analysis. Once when I explained how India is a complicated country due to people speaking different languages and unable to understand each other, an Argentine commented, " In Argentina we speak only one language but we still don't understand each other". For Argentines, every little thing is like the Aleph (a point in space that contains all other points and reveals everything in the universe from every angle simultaneously) in the famous story of Borges. 

 
The Argentine film makers come out with gems like “Goyo” from time to time despite their limited budget and other resource constraints.  The last Argentine film which impressed me was “Wild Tales”, released in 2014. It narrates the extreme reactions of the Argentines when they are emotional. The Argentine President Javier Milei with his haughty talk and extremist outbursts is like one of the characters in "Wild Tales". He is not exceptional or different. He is simply and naturally behaving as an authentic Argentine...ha..ha..

Besides its delightful entertainment as a drama, the film Goyo has a valuable educational contribution to the society. It makes people to understand and develop empathy for those who are disadvantaged in social skills.
 
Goyo, which has just been released in Netflix, deserves an Oscar award..
 

United States is the obstacle for free and fair elections in Venezuela

United States is the obstacle for restoration of democracy in Venezuela
 
Venezuela is holding elections on 28 July. But the outcome is predictable and inevitable. The ruling Chavista government of Maduro will not lose the elections and even if they lose, they will not allow the opposition to come to power. The ruling establishment cannot afford to let the opposition to come to power for a simple and fundamental reason.

The US has filed criminal charges in US courts against President Maduro and has announced a bounty of 15 million dollars on his head. Here is the US State Department notification:

"Maduro was charged in a March 2020 Southern District of New York federal indictment for narco-terrorism, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices in violation of Title 21 U.S.C. §§ 960a and 963, and 18 U.S.C. § 924. 

The U.S. Department of State is offering a REWARD OF UP TO $15 MILLION for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Nicolás Maduro Moros.If you have information and are located outside of the United States, please contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. If in the United States, please contact the local Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office in your city".

Announcing bounty on the head of the serving president of a country is unusual and illegal. But the US does not care for international law. 

There is a total of 55 million dollars bounty on the heads of 14 Venezuelan government leaders. These include Vice President Cabello (10 million dollars bounty), ministers, military officials, judges and senior government officials. These are serious charges such as drug trafficking, narco-terrorism, money laundering and possession of weapons. The punishment for these would be imprisonment in US jails for long periods or for life.  

The US has been intervening in Venezuela ever since the leftist president Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998. The US had supported a coup against him April 2002. Chavez was arrested and put in jail. But the coup organizers messed up the capture of power by their greed and incompetence. This opened the opportunity for Chavez to come back to power after 48 hours. Since then, the US has imposed brutal economic sanctions on Venezuela ruining its economy and particularly oil production and exports. During the Trump administration, there were a number of open attempts for regime change. 

The US refused to recognize the legitimacy of the reelection of President Maduro in 2018 and instigated a legislative leader Juan Guaido to declare himself as president in January 2019. They recognized Guaido as the President and forced over 50 countries including Latin American countries and members of EU to do the same. The US let  Guaido and his cronies and American lawyers to appropriate the  Venezuelan government funds frozen in American banks. But the Guaido circus collapsed in corruption scandals. Then the US dropped Guaido and re-recognised Maduro government and loosened the sanctions in order to deal with the oil shortage caused by the Ukraine crisis. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world which are more than even those of Saudi Arabia.

If the opposition comes to power after the 28 July elections, the US will ask them for extradition of Maduro and dozens of government leaders to US. The opposition leaders would be too happy to oblige. Many of the current government, military and judicial members will end up in jail in the US. 
This is what has just happened to the ex-President of Honduras Juan Hernandez. He was in power for two terms from 2014 to 2022. As soon as he finished his term, he was extradited to US where he has been convicted to life imprisonment on drug trafficking charges. His brother is also in US jail on the same charges.

In 1989, the US invaded Panama, captured President Manuel Noriega and took him to US where he was put in jail for 17 years on drug trafficking charges. Noriega was a CIA asset and was helping the Americans to destabilize the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the eighties besides doing other dirty work for the Americans.
So why would the Venezuelan leadership commit mass suicide by letting the opposition come to power? The Chavistas might change Maduro for another one of their own. But they cannot afford to give up power to the pro-American opposition.

The people of Venezuela are the victims in the game between the US and the government of Venezuela. Democracy is fractured and the economy is in ruins for over a decade. Inflation is running high. There is shortage of food and essential items since the government does not have enough foreign exchange for imports. Oil exports and production have been severely crippled by the American sanctions. Poverty and insecurity have forced over five million Venezuelans to flee and take refuge in to other Latin American countries and the US. The country is crying out for relief. 

As long as the US holds the sword over the heads of the leftist government leaders of Venezuela, there is no possibility for free and fair elections and change of government.