The Story of Venezuela’s Protests May Be Different From What You Are Told

Originally published by Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, Mark Weisbrot easily takes down the Western narrative of the Guarimba Insurrection that has been pushed down for the past two months. While he disagrees with Venezuelan Government seeking an arrest warrant for far-rightist Leopoldo López and the automatic removal of María Corina Machado from the National Assembly for accepting a role as a alternative representative to Panama at the OAS, it's clear that what the far-right movement in Venezuela wants is the removal of President Maduro by force via ungovernablity.

In reacting to the protests in Venezuela, the biggest Western media outlets have drafted a charmingly simple narrative of the situation there. According to this story, peaceful protesters have risen up against a government because of shortages, high inflation, and crime. They have taken to the streets and been met with brutal repression from a government that also controls the media.

It doesn’t take much digging to take down this narrative. First, while there have been some peaceful opposition marches, the daily protests are anything but peaceful. In fact, about half of the daily death toll from Venezuela that we see in the media – now at 41 -- are actually civilians and security forces apparently killed by protesters. A much smaller fraction are protesters alleged to have been killed by security forces. As for the media, state TV in Venezuela has only about 10 percent of the TV audience; the New York Times recently had to run a correction for falsely reporting that opposition voices are not regularly heard on Venezuelan TV. They are on TV, even calling for the overthrow of the government – which has been the announced goal of the protest leaders from the beginning. These are not like the protests last year in Brazil, or the student protests from 2011-13 in Chile, which were organized around specific demands.

Of course the increased shortages and rising inflation over the past year have had a political impact on Venezuela, but it is striking that the people who are most hurt by shortages are decidedly not joining the protests. Instead, the protests are joined and led by the upper classes, who are least affected.

In fact, the protests really got going largely as a result of a split within the Venezuelan opposition. Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chávez and then Maduro in the last two presidential elections, was considered too conciliatory by the more extreme right, led by Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado. They decided that the time was ripe to topple the government through street protests. Both were involved in the 2002 military coup against then President Chávez; María Corina Machado even signed the decree of the coup government that abolished the elected National Assembly (AN), the Constitution, and the Supreme Court.


Source: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/the-story-of-venezuelas-protests-may-be-different-from-what-you-are-tol

Now in regards to the narrative in Venezuela, it really shows that despite overwhelming evidence of the truth behind the facts they completely ignore what happened. Because if they did, they will shatter their fantasy world of humble students fighting against an oppressive government. This includes ignoring the socio-economic class of the protesters, which are upper class and upper-middle class. But why they're pushing this myth over and over again?

Because the news media in America, and in some sense in the Western world are another form of entertainment. In addition, most Americans in general do not care about what is going on in Eastern Europe,Africa or South America, South East Asia unless it's politics, violence, war, disaster, or disorder. The reliance of narratives reveals that the Western Media is too cheap to really find the truth behind what is going behind the scenes. It's merely a form of entertainment these days, especially in television news.

In addition, regarding the share of Venezuelan media viewership why VTV has a 10% share? Why the private media is dominant? It has to be something about the telenovelas isn't it? Because even Chavistas were reluctant to have RCTV to be shutdown without a renewal because of the telenovelas.