Maybe god is punishing them for sucking orange baboon's dick?

Delcy Rodríguez’s Venezuela is in such dire straits that she can't afford to reject aid from friends or foes

Analysis by Alfredo Meza

Four hours after powerful earthquakes devastated parts of Venezuela’s northern coast and the capital, Caracas, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced that he had offered aid to the Venezuelan government to help deal with the tragedy’s aftermath. Ninety minutes later, acting leader Delcy Rodríguez reposted the message from the Central American president — a man whom the Chavista movement regards as the nemesis of its political project — not only thanking him for the offer but also instructing the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry to coordinate the support.

“Solidarity between our peoples is an invaluable force at times like these,” wrote Nicolás Maduro’s former vice president.

Beyond the solidarity such tragedies inspire and the accompanying political rhetoric, Rodríguez has no room to turn away any government willing to lend a hand during this crisis. The South American nation’s economic situation is critical following disastrous fiscal management and the imposition of US economic sanctions on the Central Bank of Venezuela and the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, which generates 96% of the foreign currency entering the public coffers. Between 2013 and 2021, the country’s economy shrank by three-quarters.

Figures from the Central Bank of Venezuela offer a glimpse into the magnitude of the task facing Rodríguez. In 1998 — the year before Hugo Chávez took office — the country’s total external debt stood at US$28.311 billion. Twenty years later, the last year for which official figures in this category were published, the country owed $108.369 billion.

Currently, estimates by economist Asdrúbal Oliveros, of the Institute for Economic and Social Research at Andrés Bello Catholic University, place the figure at US$161.3 billion.

The bottom line: Given the scale of the tragedy and the size of its foreign debt, Venezuela needs far more than offers to assist those affected and rebuild its infrastructure. The aftermath of the earthquakes compounds an ongoing crisis that has forced millions of Venezuelans to live in a wartime economy over the last decade, despite not being in a formal armed conflict.