COVID-19

The Caribbean’s Pandemic Pyramids and Ponzis

By |

Even as Caribbean authorities wrestle with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, legislators have been scrambling to formulate appropriate responses to an accompanying growth in unlawful pyramid and Ponzi schemes marketed as financial solutions to the impact of restrictive pandemic measures.

Click here to read more

Finance

About Caribbean Ponzis and Pyramids

By |

There has been strong criticism in some circles over the use by pyramids and Ponzi schemes of monikers attached to longstanding traditional, informal savings associations that operate legally. 

Names such as “Sou Sou”, “Box Hand” and “Partners” are now widely employed in the marketing of unlawful Ponzi and pyramid operations. A sou-sou (also “susu”) is a type of informal savings club involving a small group of people within communities, families and workplaces who make contributions to a common fund with rotating disbursements of the pool of funds to members of the group. The concept is said to originate in West Africa and is in evidence throughout the Caribbean. In countries such as Antigua and Barbuda and Guyana, it is also known as “Box Hand”. “Partner” (also “Paadna”) plans are based on the same system and is popular in Jamaica.

Click here to read more

Culture

Venezuela: Life Is Chaos

By |

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remains entrenched in Caracas despite more than 6 years of U.S. sanctions. Mr. Maduro sells off the nation’s vast oil and gold resources to reward loyalists, exploits the splintered opposition, and benefits from economic and diplomatic support from Russia, China, Iran, and other countries.

Meantime, Venezuela’s 30 million people are suffering through the worst economic crisis in a century. An estimated 5 million have fled the country. Those who remain face shortages of food, fuel, clean water and a viable healthcare system in the era of coronavirus. Incomes have been obliterated by mismanagement, corruption and hyperinflation.

Click here to read more

Culture

Voices of Venezuela

In one on one interviews they talk about their lives and the challenges they and their families face

By |

Venezuelans today are torn at every level. Between two current Presidents, two current Parliaments, two socialist rulers over 20 years, first with the popular Hugo Chavez and today the unpopular Nicolas Maduro. 

Two decades of noose-tightening by the U.S. to topple the socialist reign sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world have succeeded in isolating Venezuela from even its staunchest supporters and eroded its main source of revenue, oil. The country that was once flush with cash is now broke and importing gasoline. Venezuelans have been dependent on imports for decades, now they can’t afford even the bare minimum daily needs such as food, medicine and clothing when available.  Hyperinflation has rendered the currency worthless. 

Today, two very different generations live side by side. 

Older Venezuelans benefited from the country’s oil bonanza in the seventies through the nineties.   They also witnessed their country’s transition from liberalism to hardcore socialism.

Click here to read more

​Venezuela

Journalism is an Escape in a Devastated Venezuela

A Venezuelan journalist speaks frankly about her own personal struggle in a country whose economy has collapsed and health care system is unable to provide relief

By |

I have cancer. I have stage IV lung cancer and have never smoked in my life. I was diagnosed a year ago after a few months where I couldn’t breathe well. Despite this great difficulty, I did not stop attending my job as head of World Information and Economy at El Nacional web.

Click here to read more

Economy

Postcard from the Provinces

By |

Another day inspires another adventurous chapter in our very own Odyssey.  

Daily life here in Acarigua has become one of navigating multiple crises.  We search for bottled gas, struggle to buy truckloads of water and regularly spend hours or even days in lines to fill our cars with gasoline.  When we get home, we can expect to confront electricity rationing.  My family is fortunate to be on the same electric lines that feed the local hospital so our cuts are minimal.  But others face as many as 4 hours a day or more of power rationing.  All of this is happening as Venezuelans weather the Coronavirus pandemic that demands individuals and families stay confined. As shoppers line up outside a grocery store to buy food, most are wearing masks. But social distancing isn’t adhered to as much as it should be. Acarigua was the most vibrant city of Portuguesa state a few decades ago.  Located in the central western countryside of Venezuela, about 4 hours overland from Caracas, it has long been known for its agriculture and livestock. These days, I stroll the sidewalk along Avenida Libertador and see the change in my city of more than 200,000 people.  It is hot and humid in the summer months, but we are used to that.  Everywhere I turn I can see how things have been altered by our politics, economics and, of course, the pandemic.

Click here to read more

Photo Essay

Visions of Venezuela

By |

Photojournalist Gaby Oraa captures the emotion and everyday life of Venezuela in a way we many of us have not seen before.  

She revisits her meeting with an elderly gentleman, Enrique: “ I started photographing Enrique and a month later he died of cancer. The family is so poor they obviously never had the resources to get any medical exams, they never even knew he had cancer. He did mention to me last time I saw him, that he felt abandoned. He left his wife and three daughters. Really sad story of an abandoned healthcare system.”

In explaining to CIJN why she chose these images as her submission, this was her response:

I want you to know my approach in the essay, as something I felt while I was photographing people’s everyday life.

Click here to read more

COVID in the Caribbean

In Guyana’s Indigenous Villages, Coronavirus Has Become The Silent Killer

Charity On The Pomeroon, Guyana

By |

The lonesome death of Virgil Ferreira occurred on September 29, 2020, not long after the 64-year-old diabetic began experiencing shortness of breath, a persistent cough and loss of taste and smell, all symptoms of the COVID-19 virus. After Ferreira fell ill, he was taken to the health center in Baramita, a village in the dense Guyanese jungle. Within days, Ferreira’s condition worsened. Health authorities transferred him to the nearest regional hospital in Port Kaituma, where he died two weeks later. 

 Ferreira left behind a wife and several school-aged children as well as 9 elder children from previous unions. Virgil Ferreira was a well known champion of indigenous peoples rights , a career he dedicated most of his life to.

Click here to read more

Venezuela: Where Life is Chaos

By |

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro remains entrenched in Caracas despite more than 6 years of U.S. sanctions. Mr. Maduro sells off the nation’s vast oil and gold resources to reward loyalists, exploits the splintered opposition, and benefits from economic and diplomatic support from Russia, China, Iran, and other countries.

Meantime, Venezuela’s 30 million people are suffering through the worst economic crisis in a century. An estimated 5 million have fled the country. Those who remain face shortages of food, fuel, clean water and a viable healthcare system in the era of coronavirus. Incomes have been obliterated by mismanagement, corruption and hyperinflation.

Click here to read more