María Corina Machado insists on selling four victories that don’t match with Venezuela’s political reality
A plane disappears, a chavista general reappears, and a fog of silence, gossip and propaganda emerges in between #NowWhatVenezuela
I met Chávez up close as a U.S. Army Attaché in Caracas—he even asked me to set up a meeting with President Bush before the events of 2002. Here’s how I got to know a rising strongman and the web of conspirators that couldn’t oust him
Just days after several Venezuelan economists warned about rising inflation, two economic researchers went missing on Wednesday, June 11. We quoted one of them in last week’s posts and El Feed: Daniel Cadenas (X handle: @macro_dc).
That’s the title of this Monday statement from the Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF), which we quoted last week for reporting that inflation in May reached 26%, with the 2025 figure hitting 105.5%. Hostility toward the kind of work OVF is definitely growing, and economist Daniel Cadenas and business manager Gerardo Cacique are now missing.
Rodrigo Cabezas, a former chavista official, was also arrested on Thursday, June 12. Cabezas is an economist and staff at Universidad del Zulia—and, notably, a former Finance Minister under Chávez who has openly criticized chavismo’s economic policies since 2018.
In a statement published on June 14, the OVF condemned the criminalization of professionals involved in collecting and sharing economic data. The organization clarified that none of the individuals “recently arrested” are formally part of the NGO, but rather collaborated with it in the past.
As surreal as it sounds, today’s statement includes a basic explanation of the Laspeyres Index, the formula used to calculate the national Consumer Price Index. Something that obviously should have official approval since it covers the prices of 13 groups of goods and services outlined by the Venezuelan Central Bank.
In today’s shocking plot-twist, the SEBIN’s infamous dungeon has been taken over by its political prisoners. The image isn’t quite clear yet, but we present you what we know.
In Houston, ICE agents arrested 31-year-old Gregory Sanabria on Thursday, June 12, as he voluntarily attended a routine appointment as an asylum-seeker in the US.
Yes, the same Gregory Sanabria arrested by the Maduro regime during the 2014 protests, back when he was a 20-year-old IT student in Táchira.
And yes, the same Gregory who was tortured in El Helicoide. We still remember that harrowing episode in May 2018 (see post above), when guards stormed his cell and beat him so severely that his face was disfigured, an assault that sparked a revolt among fellow political prisoners and a number of demands for better treatment.
According to Runrunes, Sanabria fled to the United States in 2022, applied for asylum in Texas, and was granted authorization to work in the construction sector. Republican Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart is urging the Trump administration (specifically addressing Kristi Noem) to review Gregory’s case and prevent his deportation to Venezuela.
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In a year of global turbulence, our then-young democracy responded to conflict and fear by allowing an unprecedented (and peaceful) political transition
Cuba teeters on another “special period” and Venezuela braces for a new economic downturn. But with sanctions tightening and isolationism on the rise, old allies may no longer offer the lifelines Havana and Caracas have relied on
An unprecedented leak reveals how Siscom operates—a system through which Venezuela’s Ministry of Communication sends direct messaging lines to thousands of loyalists and bureaucrats
The regional and parliamentary election that the Maduro regime organized to turn the page on 28J had the opposite effect: laying out the landscape that emerged from the 2024 presidential election fraud
The “agreed” revival of price controls is here, and a campaign to attack dollar-tracking and currency exchange platforms is underway #NowWhatVenezuela
