Let it Rain Oil in Venezuela

Caridad

HAVANA TIMES – When you think you’ve seen it all, Venezuela’s Minister of Petroleum and PDVSA president, Manuel Quevedo, turns up with a mass to pray for oil.

Yes, well, the times when Juan Luis Guerra asked for it to rain coffee in the countryside are long gone. At least Juan Luis was a poet and with this whole business of poetic license, he could probably say whatever he wanted and it would even sound beautiful. I find myself wondering whether Venezuela’s Minister of Petroleum is thinking about starting a new career path as a poet (that is after he ruins or hands off whatever little is left of the PDVSA), imitating poetry and Venezuelan political star, Tarek William Saab.

Manuel Quevedo (a military man like the majority who hold the most important positions in this country), hasn’t found a better solution for getting oil production back on track and called for a priest to hold a moving mass because we all need oil production to increase again.

God, whoever you are, are you listening? Come and take care of this business or, at least, send us a black and heavy drizzle, it doesn’t matter if it’s oil or not, we’ll be happy if it just looks like it because, at the end of the day, this minister wouldn’t know the difference between a barrel of crude oil and a cup of coffee. Amen.

While the military are enrolling in Theology courses, the president is learning new repression techniques from the Turkish president (in exchange for the Turks taking a fair bit of mineral-rich land in the Orinoco Mining Arch); and people who work and depend on their wages are beginning to protest.

It’s no longer about large marches organized by a party that opposes the Government; it seems that opposition parties have been focusing on other businesses for a while now. These are workers who can no longer survive on the 2 USD they receive per month as wages (approximately 5 million Bolivars). It turns out that they aren’t backed by any particular party, therefore there presence in the media is almost zero, as is to be expected.

Nurses have been on strike for several weeks and guess who’s joined them… Mission Barrio Adentro employees (the government’s main community health care program).

Let me suggest something to them… Hold a mass and pray to God so that he comes to take charge of increasing their wages and, maybe, even stock hospitals with some of the supplies they use and don’t cost a lot. This method of masses and praying has worked for military men, their minimum wage is way above 60 million Bolivars, not to mention the fact that they own the highways and, as a result, everything that travels along it. There’s no need to tell you that they don’t produce anything or protect anyone from any danger.

If this doesn’t work for nurses and health professionals, then it will be up to the rest of the Venezuelan people to copy the Minister of Petroleum’s productive method… and let it rain coffee in the countryside.