Challenges for Chávez’s new government

The Spanish Daily El País has a devastating appraisal of current realities in Venezuela, starting with the revelation that Venezuela is now the most dangerous country in Latin America. With the basis for fear well-established through a discussion of out-of-hour murder of police officers and management of organized crime by leaders locked in jail, the article turns its attention to more insidious problems, namely emigration. It points to the successes of the Cuban medical missions and contrasts it with the number of Venezuelan-trained doctors leaving for Europe and Panama. The article is not the sort of thing Chávez wants to see on the day he has won reelection, but it does provide him with a pretty good road map of the challenges he needs to address if the positive changes he has wrought are to persist and not crumble to dust.