CARACAS, Venezuela — Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro officially decreed the “start of Christmas” here on Wednesday evening, urging citizens to prepare for the celebrations.
Maduro is presently enjoying an early Christmas season, thanks to generous oil and gas sanctions relief granted by the Biden administration in October.
This year marks the fifth consecutive one in which Maduro has arbitrarily chosen a date for the early start of Christmas in Venezuela, an idea he initially tested during his first year in power, 2013. For 2020, during the height of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, the socialist dictator decreed that Christmas should start on October 15.
In 2022, Maduro had Venezuela start Christmas much earlier than usual, decreeing that local Christmas fairs start in August to serve as a prelude for an early official Christmas season that he launched on October 1, 2022.
In 2023, Maduro has promised that the Christmas holidays will be the “best we have ever had,” due to an alleged improvement in the nation’s economic situation.
During an October broadcast of his weekly television show Con Maduro Más (“With Maduro Plus”), Maduro originally announced that he would start Christmas in November, giving this season the slogan “Merry Christmas for the people of Venezuela.”
The socialist dictator officially started Christmas on Wednesday evening with an event held in the Miraflores presidential palace and airing on regime state media:
#EnVideo📹| Jefe de Estado @NicolasMaduro anuncia el inicio de la Navidad en Venezuela con el encendido de las luces desde el Palacio de Miraflores, en Caracas.
— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) November 1, 2023
"Hoy arranca la Navidad. ¡Que viva el pueblo, que viva la felicidad!"#ArrancóLaRumbaDeLaNavidad pic.twitter.com/tbHKwA1hUy
“Today we come to turn on the Christmas lights and to say that the first of November has arrived in Venezuela and today Christmas kicks off,” Maduro said. “Long live the people, long live the homeland.”
“Long live the joy, the party and the rumba!” he exclaimed. The word “rumba,” a Cuban musical genre, is used in Venezuela as a slang term for partying and for long parties that start in the evening and last all night.
Maduro’s launch of the Christmas holiday was accompanied by a state-sponsored concert held in Caracas earlier that day. Many of the artists and musicians who participated in the concert have a long track record of supporting the socialist regime:
Los invito a disfrutar del talento musical de las y los artistas venezolanos, en el Gran Concierto: "Navidades Venezuela 2023", que se llevará a cabo en el Paseo Los Próceres, para iniciar las navidades con rumba, baile, música y alegría. ¡Están cordialmente invitados! pic.twitter.com/Xii9Bxlvyf
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) November 1, 2023
While Maduro is loudly asserting that 2023 will be the “best Christmas” in Venezuela, the reality is that after nearly a quarter of a century of socialist rule, the country continues to suffer through a severe economic and societal collapse that will prevent many from engaging in the festive Christmas joy that Maduro is declaring.
According to data from the regime-controlled Central Bank of Venezuela, the cost of goods and services rose by 158.3 percent between January and September. Historically, since 2014, the Venezuelan Central Bank has been accused of skewing its official data to hide the country’s real inflation numbers. Inflation, nonetheless, remains a constant rising problem, reaching a measured 8.7 percent in September and 7.4 percent in August.
Although economists consider that Venezuela is no longer in the grave hyperinflation spiral that destroyed the country’s economy between 2017 and 2021, it still boasts one of the worst — or the outright worst, depending on sources cited — inflation rates in the world.
In lieu of more accurate official data, analysts from the Andrés Bello Catholic University are forecasting that Venezuela will end the year with an annual inflation rate of 314 percent, 80 percent higher than in 2022.
Hours before Maduro declared the start of Venezuela’s “Merry Christmas,” the socialist regime completely annulled a self-organized opposition primary election held on October 22 that saw former lawmaker María Corina Machado elected with more than 90 percent of the votes to become Maduro’s rival in an upcoming 2024 “free and fair” presidential election. Machado won despite the Maduro regime imposing a 15-year ban on her holding public office or running for such a position. The ban is scheduled to end in 2030.
Maria Corina Machado in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023 (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
The nation’s official currency, the Venezuelan Bolivar, has been rebooted three times since 2008. Maduro has “slashed” 14 zeroes off its currency scale since then, failing to stop the Bolivar’s collapse in value. While the United States dollar is not the official currency in Venezuela, it has become the de facto reference currency used to determine the prices of virtually all goods and services in the country.
Many Venezuelans use the dollar to help survive inflation and, by May, 53 percent of all cash transactions were made in U.S. dollars. However, by July, consumer goods prices in U.S. dollars had risen by 26 percent. Venezuela also boasts one of the lowest wages in the region for both public and private sector workers.
According to the Venezuelan Finances Observatory (OVF), a non-government organization, as of Thursday, public sector wages — when factoring in “socialist” food bonuses and state-issued money stipends — hover at around $45-60 per month, with the base minimum wage and elderly pensions set at 130 Bolivars per month ($3.7) since March 2022.
In Caracas, average private sector wages are measured at $202 per month, going from as low as $189 for workers and operators to $405 for managerial positions. OVF also measured September’s “food basket,” the food price index for bare essentials a family needs, at $369.
As Venezuela is home to the worst migrant crisis in the region, featuring more than 7.7 million Venezuelan refugees, many families receive remittances from abroad. Due to inflation, remittances are no longer able to cover the same amount of expenses that they used to be able to cover in recent years.
Maduro and his regime, on the other hand, do have much to celebrate for Christmas, as the Biden administration recently granted an extensive oil and gas sanctions relief package that allows the cash-starved regime to once again sell its oil in U.S and international markets.
The sanctions relief was part of an agreement signed in Barbados on October 17, which saw the Maduro regime offer a vague list of promises towards holding a “free and fair” presidential election sometime during the second half of 2024. The Maduro regime already broke the terms of the deal by annulling the opposition primary election, as one of the terms stipulated the “right of political actors to choose their candidate” ahead of the 2024 election.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
