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Article Artículo

Latin America and the Caribbean

Venezuela

World

Venezuela: Who Are They and How Did They Die? [Updated]

[3/12: This post is no longer being updated. For a updated list, please click here.]

The morning of February 22, Venezuela Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz stated that so far eight deaths and 137 injuries had occurred during the protests that have taken place over the last ten days. Díaz added that “the investigations [into the killings] are advanced.” Many press and NGOs have simply reported that “demonstrators” were killed.  For example the International Crisis Group states in its February 21 report: “confrontation in Venezuela has turned violent in the past few days with the killing of six demonstrators.” However, a closer look at the individuals identified as having been killed reveals that the political allegiances of the victims and their causes of death are varied.  

Since Díaz’s announcement more deaths related to the protests have been reported in the media. Here, first, are details regarding seven of the deaths that Díaz referred to in her statements:

-          Bassil Alejandro Da Costa, an opposition demonstrator was shot, reportedly in the head, and killed  in Caracas during the opposition protest that took place on February 12. The Attorney General announced Friday that an investigation into the killing is close to finished and will be made public in the coming days. An analysis of amateur video and images by the Venezuelan newspaper Últimas Noticias alleges that uniformed and plainclothes members of the Venezuelan intelligence service (SEBIN) were responsible.  The video images show what appear to be SEBIN agents in uniform as well as individuals in plain-clothes firing handguns toward the demonstration after demonstrators had charged at them while throwing rocks.  President Maduro later stated that SEBIN agents weren’t authorized to be present at the protest and replaced the  head of SEBIN.  At least one of the SEBIN officers seen discharging his weapon has reportedly been arrested and, according to Venezuelan media, authorities are engaged in a manhunt to apprehend the other individuals observed firing their handguns. [Update 2/25: According to Attorney General Díaz, three SEBIN officers have been arrested in relation to the killing of Da Costa and Montoya, see below for more.] [Update 3/4: On February 26, the Attorney General announced additional arrests in relation to the deaths of Da Costa and Montoya. In total, at least 8 individuals have been arrested.]

-          Juan Montoya, a pro-government community activist, was reportedly shot in both the head and chest and died. Montoya’s body was found a short distance from the body of Da Costa. It remains unclear how he was killed but Maduro stated that the same gun killed both Montoya and Da Costa.

Jake Johnston / February 24, 2014

Article Artículo

Robert Samuelson's Arithmetic Challenged Economics

Yes, it's Monday and Robert Samuelson is badly confused about economics again. Today he complains about the White House's "fairy-tale economics."

Robert Samuelson is upset because the Obama administration has been arguing that it is possible to raise the minimum wage without any job loss. He apparently feels that he can now dismiss this claim as fairy-tale economics because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a study that put its best guess of the job loss from the administration's proposal at 500,000.

It's worth noting that in its report CBO did not dismiss the possibility of zero job loss as fairy-tale economics. CBO noted the economic research on the topic and commented that the plausible range of impact would include near zero. CBO did not do original research; rather it chose to pick a number for its estimate that was a midpoint of the findings of recent research. (See my colleague John Schmitt's post for a longer discussion.) So the dismissal of a zero estimate of job loss as fairy-tale economics is Samuelson's invention, not a conclusion based on CBO's analysis.

It is also worth doing a little arithmetic to assess the 500,000 figure. As Samuelson points out, CBO projects that the minimum wage hike would affect 16 million people directly and another 8 million through spillover effects. This means that the lost jobs will be roughly equal to 3 percent of the workers directly affected and 2 percent of the total number of workers who see wage hikes.

For the most part, the reduction in employment of 500,000 will not correspond to workers being laid off. More likely it means that workers will not be replaced when they leave and that firms will be slower to hire when they see an increase in demand.

This is important to keep in mind, because we are not talking about 500,000 workers being permanently unemployed. Minimum wage jobs tend to be high turnover jobs. As a practical matter, a loss of 500,000 jobs means that workers will spend more time looking for jobs when they first enter the labor force or change jobs. This means that they can expect to spend roughly 2-3 percent less time working, but when they do work they will get close to 19 percent more per hour. Note this is not "fairy-tale economics," this is Robert Samuelson's economics if he bothered to think through what he was saying.

Dean Baker / February 24, 2014

Article Artículo

Affordable Care Act

Health and Social Programs

Workers

Take this Job and…

There’s been a lot of hand wringing in Washington policy circles about the Affordable Care Act. One of the main complaints from the DC elite crowd is that the ACA will slow growth and devastate the economy.

But here at CEPR we deal in facts. And we see the fact that some workers are recognizing their new freedom as a result of being able to buy affordable insurance on the individual market as a good thing. This was one of the points of the Affordable Care Act. People who were once stuck in jobs they hated because they needed the health insurance can now find affordable health care. Older workers in physically demanding jobs can cut back on their hours. People can quit their unsatisfying jobs to realize their dream of starting a small business .

CEPR / February 21, 2014

Article Artículo

Latin America and the Caribbean

What the Wikileaks Cables Say about Leopoldo López

Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López has been thrust onto the international stage during the past week of protests in Venezuela and his arrest on February 21. López is mentioned at least 77 times in diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks. Many of the cables focus on internal disputes within the opposition, with Lopez often in conflict with others both within his party and others in the opposition. Given this history, perhaps it isn’t surprising that the current protests that he has been leading, calling for “la salida” – the exit – of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro have also caused internal divisions within the opposition. David Smilde, a Senior Fellow with the Washington Office on Latin America wrote last week:

While Capriles shook hands with Maduro in January, signifying not only a more conciliatory stance but tacitly recognizing Maduro’s legitimacy, Leopoldo López and Maria Corina Machado have both taken a harder line and are working outside of the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD).

…..

Without a doubt, in immediate political terms the biggest beneficiary of yesterday’s [Feb.12] violence was López.

This week, Smilde added in a quote to USA Today, "Before this happened, Lopez was playing second fiddle to Capriles… I think his goal is to try and leapfrog over Capriles. The student protests have put him in the spotlight."

The Wikileaks Cables show an interesting history of Lopez’s rise to leadership and also show some of the divisions within the opposition. Below, one party leader is quoted as saying that “for the opposition parties, Lopez draws ire second only to Chavez, joking that ‘the only difference between the two is that Lopez is a lot better looking.’” And also, “During a party event December 6, Primero Justicia (PJ) Secretary-General Tomas Guanipa called on Lopez to respect the unity table and its agreements and consensus. Guanipa urged Lopez to ‘not continue dividing us, we should not go through life like crashing cars, fighting with the whole world.’”

The U.S. government has been funding the Venezuelan opposition for at least 12 years, including, as the State Department has acknowledged, some of the people and organizations involved in the 2002 military coup. Their goal has always been to get rid of the Chávez government and replace it with something more to their liking. However, their funding is probably not their most important contribution in Venezuela, since the Venezuelan opposition has most of the wealth and income of the country. A more important role is the outside pressure for unity, which, as these cables and the history of the past 15 years show, has been a serious problem for the Venezuelan opposition. The cables also show that this is a serious concern for the U.S. government.

Below are relevant cables, in chronological order:

CEPR / February 21, 2014

Article Artículo

Government

Inequality

CBO and the Minimum Wage, PT. 2
In a post Wednesday , I reviewed a long list of ways in which Tuesday’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report embraced arguments made by supporters of the minimum wage. In this post, I want to make some observations on CBO’s analysis of the employment

John Schmitt / February 20, 2014

Article Artículo

Economic Growth

Government

Inequality

CBO and the Minimum Wage
You wouldn't know it from the headlines, but on almost every issue in dispute, yesterday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the minimum wage sided with supporters of increasing the federal wage floor. The only major exception --which has so far

John Schmitt / February 19, 2014

Article Artículo

Latin America and the Caribbean

Venezuela

World

Violent Protests in Venezuela Fit a Pattern

Venezuela’s latest round of violent protests appears to fit a pattern, and represents the tug-and-pull nature of the country’s divided opposition. Several times over the past 15 years since the late, former president Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, the political opposition has launched violent protests aimed at forcing the current president out of office. Most notably, such protests were a part of the April 2002 coup that temporarily deposed Chávez, and then accompanied the 2002/2003 oil strike. In February of 2004, a particularly radical sector of the opposition unleashed the “Guarimba”: violent riots by small groups who paralyzed much of the east of Caracas for several days with the declared goal of creating a state of chaos.  As CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot has explained, then – as now – the strategy is clear: a sector of the opposition seeks to overturn the results of democratic elections. An important difference this time of course is that Venezuela has its first post-Chávez president, and a key part of the opposition’s strategy overall has been to depict Nicolás Maduro as a pale imitation of his predecessor and a president ill-equipped to deal with the country’s problems (many of which are exaggerated in the Venezuelan private media, which is still largely opposition-owned, as well as the international media).

Following Maduro’s electoral victory in April last year (with much of the opposition crying “fraud” despite there being no reasonable doubts about the validity of the results), the opposition looked to the December municipal elections as a referendum on Maduro’s government, vowing to defeat governing party PSUV and allied candidates. The outcome, which left the pro-Maduro parties with a 10 point margin of victory, was a stunning defeat for the opposition, and this time they did not even bother claiming the elections were rigged. According to the opposition’s own pre-election analysis, support for Maduro had apparently grown over the months preceding the election. As we have pointed out, this may be due in part to the large reduction in poverty in 2012 and other economic and social gains that preceded the more recent economic problems.

Defeated at the polls, the anti-democratic faction of the opposition prepared for a new attempt at destabilizing the elected government, and promoted relatively small, but often violent student protests in early February.  They then called for a massive protest on February 12, Venezuela’s Youth Day in the center of Caracas.  The demonstrations have been accompanied by a social media campaign that has spread misinformation in an attempt to depict the Maduro administration as a violent dictatorship instead of a popular elected government. Images of police violence from other countries and past protests – some several years old – have been presented on social media as having occurred in recent days in Venezuela. A YouTube video that has been watched by almost 2 million viewers presents a one-sided portrayal of the situation and falsely states that the Venezuelan government controls all radio and television in the country, among other distortions. Similar disinformation occurred in April 2002 and in other past incidents in Venezuela, most notably when manipulated video footage was used to provide political justification for the coup d’etat.

CEPR / February 19, 2014