“We will not be deprived of the right to protest” : this is one of the instructions visible on the placards of the demonstrators who participated, Tuesday, August 2, in the “empty pans walk” in the streets of Caracas, against the latest government budget cuts.
Led by retirees, but also teachers, nurses and other public sector employees, this is the most recent mobilization against the official instructions of the National Budget Office (Onapre). The latter reduce the meager income available to the workers of the country, plunged into an endless economic crisis. It has been going on since 2015 and got seriously worse in 2017.
Instructions “criminals”, according to Luis Cano, coordinator of the Pensioners Defense Front, quoted by the newspaper The National, who have “wiped out salaries, pensions and retirement benefits”. Most “we will not abandon the street. We, comrades, active, retired and pensioners, will continue to take to the streets to claim what is rightfully ours”.
If the Venezuelan media that covered the march do not give figures regarding the number of demonstrators, the online review Cocuyo effect specifies that this is a major trend, quoting the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflicts (OVCS):
“In the first half of 2022, 3,892 protests took place (in the country), including 1,642 to demand living wages.”
According to Luis Cano, the monthly salaries received in public administration have devalued due to galloping inflation, going from an equivalent of 30 dollars in May to 18 dollars in July. Other media estimate that public salaries should be 80 dollars monthly.
Numerous bonuses for workers and retirees have also disappeared with the stroke of a pen, according to the protesters. They hold the government of Nicolás Maduro, from the Bolivarian revolution and in power since 1999, responsible for the debacle.
Rebellion
In videos filmed by the media Counterpoint, retirees shout in chorus:
“But what revolution if this government represents hunger, misery and corruption?”
However, the Venezuelan economy is going through its “best moment” after a crisis dating back to 2015 and worsened in 2017, marked by hyperinflation, government corruption and US sanctions.
A due rebound, according to the opposing media in exile Run run, to the rise in the price of oil and de facto dollarization – when businesses and citizens turn to the American dollar for their exchanges, such as certain places living from international tourism, or when, as here, the local currency is in great difficulty.
Run run warns that wages may have reached the maximum allowed by this economic situation. They would therefore begin to stagnate, while inflation continues to increase:
“The data indicates that wages, which also include bonuses, have stopped growing while prices, if not rising at the frenetic pace of hyperinflation, continue to rise at a high rate: according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Finance, they recorded an increase of 53.8% in one year.”
In any case, this is what the demonstrators complain of, ringing their pans during marches that continue to grow in the streets of Caracas and other major cities in Venezuela.