TRIGGERnometry - Vladimir Hernandez on Venezuela, Mexico and the War on Drugs

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissing. And this is a

00:00:10.920 show for you if you're bored of watching people on the internet having arguments they know nothing

00:00:15.960 about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant

00:00:21.840 guest this week is a BBC journalist. Vladimir Hernandez, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you.

00:00:26.700 And for anyone who doesn't know you, very quickly, the question we always ask at the beginning is,

00:00:30.400 who are you? What's been your journey through life? How are you? Where you are?

00:00:35.100 So, of course, people, I suppose, will think immediately, I've got this really weird name,

00:00:39.380 Vladimir Hernandez, Russian name, Latin surname, kind of speak English, okay, so

00:00:44.340 trying to figure me out is a bit complicated. So I am probably half Venezuelan, half British,

00:00:51.380 in terms of places where I lived. I was born in France, grew up in Venezuela,

00:00:56.120 My grandparents are Spanish.

00:00:57.300 I don't even know where I'm from.

00:00:59.080 It's very complicated.

00:01:00.160 But I've been a BBC journalist for quite a long time now.

00:01:02.560 I've been covering a lot of foreign news,

00:01:04.960 mostly in Latin America because that's where my background is.

00:01:07.500 I know a bit about that.

00:01:08.780 Learned a lot about that, definitely.

00:01:11.060 But I've been doing a lot of foreign news since then

00:01:13.400 in different capacities, reporting, filming, producing.

00:01:17.980 So, yeah, I suppose that's who I kind of am.

00:01:21.280 And that's the reason we wanted to talk to you,

00:01:23.220 as every viewer of this program will know,

00:01:25.400 because Francis mentions about five times every episode

00:01:28.440 his mother is from Venezuela.

00:01:30.360 And we wanted to talk to you about that

00:01:32.200 because I think in the mainstream public

00:01:34.700 kind of perception of Venezuela,

00:01:36.300 probably the last time we heard about Venezuela

00:01:38.860 until recently would have been, you know,

00:01:41.260 Hugo Chavez, Jeremy Corbyn going,

00:01:43.700 what a great place Venezuela is.

00:01:45.560 And now the situation has got very, very bad.

00:01:48.080 We don't seem to hear those same people

00:01:49.420 talking about it in quite the same way.

00:01:50.840 So one of the things we wanted to ask you to do

00:01:52.920 is just to lay out for our viewers

00:01:54.380 and our listeners what is the situation and how has it happened over the the last decade

00:01:59.340 so you may need to fast forward all of this but i'm gonna start now i'm gonna go on a long rant

00:02:04.460 about no um it's changed quite a bit definitely um i i suppose my own personal journey kind of

00:02:11.160 reflects a bit of how it changed so from probably early 2000s i used to go there around this time

00:02:17.040 of the year february march trying to get rid of winter went there for a month spent time with my

00:02:21.060 family and that was kind of happening every year i was going back on holidays probably since 2010

00:02:25.940 i just now only go for work because as a journalist that's kind of when my work is doing that in sort

00:02:31.800 of conflict zones and venison increasingly became one in in so many levels in the last

00:02:37.820 what are we 2019 last three years at least it's become yeah unrecognizable in so many ways

00:02:44.520 um i think probably it's fair to say that at least three million people have left their country and

00:02:50.360 we're talking about about 10% of the population has left the country and that's just fleeing

00:02:56.360 on levels that have been compared to Syria, have been compared to Yemen, have been compared to a

00:03:01.560 lot of conflict zones and it's just the simple things of life that we just take for granted

00:03:07.160 every day have most of them just gone away in different ways. Like food right? Well there was

00:03:14.280 There was a university study about it. The government is not publishing stats for about

00:03:21.420 three years now or more. So we don't have, in a normal situation, you go to government agencies

00:03:28.660 or entities and then you go to official data, which is being gathered by researchers, methodology,

00:03:33.060 all of that. That's gone away in Venezuela probably five years ago. So universities have

00:03:39.020 tried to sort of paint a picture of what's going on. One of the last ones that I saw,

00:03:43.660 which was from 2018 was just like mind-boggling um it talked about 83 percent of the population

00:03:50.160 was struggling to eat two times uh three times a day it talked about how an average of venezuelans

00:03:55.960 had lost um seven kilos in in in average so it was about more than 90 percent of venezuelan had

00:04:02.480 lost seven kilos in average i've got a lot of my family still live there um they don't want to go

00:04:08.560 we can talk about why they don't want to go later but um honestly i've seen my brothers or my mum

00:04:14.160 or my cousins lose weight and it's not to a you know famished level of ethiopia or those sort of

00:04:21.520 striking pictures but it is it is really shocking when you see people you know you don't report on

00:04:27.280 people you don't know and they become people you leave and then you close the door but when you

00:04:31.280 also see how it's going on people you know it's yeah it's just mind-boggling but anyway it's uh

00:04:36.640 It's a country that's got the highest inflation in the world.

00:04:39.460 We're talking about, I think, I can make up a figure and it's going to be probably true. 0.90

00:04:45.720 The last one I saw was kind of credible, was a million and a half percent per year.

00:04:50.140 And then I've heard some talk about the IMF saying three million percent.

00:04:53.480 So don't quote me, IMF, but it's probably true anyway.

00:04:56.200 I mean, the prices are not, you go to any place where you want to buy something,

00:05:02.320 you won't see the prices on the wall.

00:05:03.920 you won't see a menu with the prices because they're just changing so fast that it's not worth

00:05:07.920 even writing them down. It's like the whole German history lesson where they would wheel in 0.95

00:05:12.740 wheelbarrows of cash, that kind of scenario. Well, and the cash thing is incredibly, again,

00:05:18.820 it's a bizarre world, Venezuela. Cash is worthless. I went there two years ago thinking this is the

00:05:26.260 lowest of the lowest and it went worse. But people were selling cash on bin bags and it's full of

00:05:32.800 cash and they would charge you 100% of what that cash was worth because it was such a high

00:05:38.020 value commodity that you just couldn't get your hands on to it. You can't withdraw, you have limits

00:05:43.680 to what you can get from a cash machine or from a bank but that is probably worth, you know, a bus

00:05:48.620 fare. So it's an incredibly digitalized banking society. A year and a half ago I was there, me and

00:05:57.100 team who were in a really, really remote area of Venezuela near the Amazon. We wanted to eat

00:06:03.100 something and there was this lady who had fish in the river. She was just like literally just fish, 1.00

00:06:06.620 grilled it and we were like we would love to eat that but we just don't have any cash because no

00:06:11.020 one here has cash. And she goes oh don't worry just transfer me on my iPhone I'll just give you

00:06:14.460 my bank account. And I'm like blimey. And everywhere everyone's just going on phones or going on

00:06:19.980 computers or just getting transfers electronically. So that just reflects how everything's kind of

00:06:25.420 been turned upside down. You can't make phone calls from inside the country

00:06:30.160 outside of the country unless it's on WhatsApp or something like that. You just

00:06:33.040 can't use a mobile phone to call abroad because the phone companies, most of them

00:06:37.240 owed so much money that they stopped providing the service. Six, seven years

00:06:43.180 ago you had 30, 40 airlines going into Venezuela. Today you probably have five,

00:06:47.080 six, if. And we have even talked about insecurity and safety. It's a country

00:06:55.180 that where thousands of people killed every year, more than war zone levels,

00:07:00.160 kidnappings are just everywhere. I'm describing a picture of hell, but the

00:07:04.360 most bonkers things about it, if you go there you will see normal life. You just

00:07:08.320 see people coping, you just see people just getting on with it. I'm not quoting

00:07:12.160 anyone, but you just see people just trying to adapt to normal life. It's a

00:07:16.120 really, it's a really, really crazy place. And what is the corruption levels

00:07:22.240 like because this is something that a lot of people in this country and you know people on

00:07:27.420 the far left don't want to admit of the corruption with the chavez regime and the maduro regime

00:07:32.920 and the i think some billions if not trillions been stolen um some people so there are several

00:07:41.560 examples that will tell you how bad it has been in terms of corruption and i don't want to pretend

00:07:46.960 also that this is a new thing in venezuela a lot of countries probably in south america

00:07:51.980 in Latin America have had issues with corruption,

00:07:54.440 and we've seen with Brazil the whole Odebrecht scandal,

00:07:57.280 which is huge, of massive proportions.

00:07:58.680 Anyway, in Venezuela, during the Chavez years,

00:08:03.020 I think one of them, there were two things

00:08:04.800 that probably led to a, it's fair to say,

00:08:06.940 a big rise in corruption.

00:08:09.060 Lack of accountability.

00:08:10.520 The government didn't need to create or publish anything

00:08:14.380 of how they were spending anything.

00:08:16.900 We, the BBC, did a program recently this year,

00:08:21.700 And they had a man who run the oil company for about 10 years.

00:08:24.980 In the program, he was saying, you know, Hugo Chavez came to me and he said, I want to do all these social programs.

00:08:29.360 And, you know, you from a personal level relate to that.

00:08:31.520 I think, yeah, all right, that's a good idea. Let's help some people.

00:08:34.680 And this man who was running the oil company was saying, I said, yeah, I definitely want to help him.

00:08:38.760 So Chavez tells me, can I have one billion dollars so I can get all of that into social programs?

00:08:44.640 And this man says, no, you can have a hundred billion dollars to do that.

00:08:48.400 and none of that was ever published where that money went.

00:08:52.820 I remember I was still in the country at the time

00:08:54.960 and I remember that fund was created to,

00:08:59.300 it was a fund created with oil money

00:09:00.940 where the government would decide how to spend it on social programs.

00:09:05.000 That money wouldn't go to hospitals.

00:09:06.740 That money wouldn't go to help supermarkets.

00:09:08.780 That money went to create a whole parallel structure of spending in the country.

00:09:14.260 The first article of that legislation,

00:09:16.560 I remember I just I've seen I've never forgotten that said President Hugo the president of the

00:09:22.320 country can decide discretionally how does he spend this that's it all right here you go 100

00:09:28.800 billion dollars I don't have to tell anyone what I do with it the second thing that will sort of

00:09:34.280 give you an idea of how corruption went is that money was handed over to people who were a not

00:09:40.680 experiencing what they were doing or b who didn't have to be accountable about it so the the food

00:09:46.660 distribution in the country about six seven years ago was given entirely to the military

00:09:50.320 and they were the ones who started deciding where do i i'm giving money and how do i spend it the

00:09:57.100 military don't have to declare where that money went no one knows how that was run a lot of

00:10:02.180 companies because of price controls because of foreign currency controls were given licenses

00:10:08.260 to get cash to import stuff

00:10:11.460 and then provide it to government agencies.

00:10:15.340 None of that is published.

00:10:16.500 None of that went away.

00:10:17.180 So how has this happened, Vladimir?

00:10:18.840 Because I think one of the things

00:10:20.600 that troubles me with Venezuela

00:10:21.900 is that it's being used

00:10:22.860 as a political football

00:10:24.640 by people on all sides.

00:10:26.360 So people who hate America say,

00:10:28.660 well, it's American involvement,

00:10:30.320 American interference,

00:10:31.280 American sanctions has created this.

00:10:33.280 The people who hate socialism

00:10:35.620 in any form go,

00:10:36.600 well, this is what happens every time

00:10:38.220 there's any form of socialism and what is your assessment of how how Venezuela's come to this

00:10:44.040 point um you know when you hear about these stories about when when politicians get criticized for

00:10:51.220 policies that people would say but that's unsustainable that will never work well that's

00:10:55.820 what happened now 1999 Hugo Chavez got elected by vast majority of Venezuelans there was no one in

00:11:04.040 the country who hadn't voted for him I didn't but there was no one in the country who hadn't voted

00:11:07.380 for him. Everyone there. Throughout the years, all the people at least I run my social circle

00:11:11.420 around a lot of places were like, I feel disappointed it's not going anywhere. I'm not benefiting

00:11:14.860 until today, which is incredibly unpopular. Hugo Chavez, when he arrived, he was trying to cleanse

00:11:20.740 or provide a breath of fresh air to a political system that was incredibly corrupt, that it was

00:11:26.080 also, it didn't look at what the poor needed. It was very, there was a lot of class device. Anyway,

00:11:31.240 so he he came in sort of empowered by by a reason he became with he came in with all these policies

00:11:37.560 and immediately you were like well who's going to pay for that and now we are what is it 20 years

00:11:43.220 later and seeing the result of all those policies in the in these 20 years of Hugo Chavez and

00:11:50.160 Nicolas Maduro Venezuela has gone through one of the biggest oil incomes a country has ever seen

00:11:55.980 We're talking about trillions of dollars. The amount of money is just insane.

00:12:01.300 In the peak of that income from oil, the government was incurring a new debt.

00:12:08.640 That doesn't make sense. You've got money, you've got the cash, you've got the wealth.

00:12:13.680 Why do you need new debt?

00:12:15.460 It was because the policy of let me increase the size of the state,

00:12:19.980 let me create all these new universities, new hospitals, new schools, new programs.

00:12:24.880 when there were already hospital schools and programs that just needed money to be developed.

00:12:30.440 But I'm going to create, so you had, it all became political.

00:12:34.380 The university I studied in, which is Central University of Venezuela,

00:12:37.920 so the biggest universities in the country, underfunded historically.

00:12:41.840 What did the government do? Create a new university right in front of it 0.97

00:12:45.140 because it was more politically in favor of him and they appointed their own authorities.

00:12:51.140 But you've got that there.

00:12:52.380 So you created a whole new parallel structure of the state with all this money.

00:12:56.940 And then when the oil price went down, it just became unsustainable.

00:13:01.080 There's also the private sector incredibly went down because of nationalizations,

00:13:05.600 because it just wasn't, you just couldn't get an income anymore.

00:13:08.800 There was no profit to be made.

00:13:11.840 It just all became unsustainable.

00:13:13.820 And today, Hugo Chavez was swimming through this crisis through his charisma,

00:13:18.380 and he was convincing people, and he was, you know, an incredibly charming man,

00:13:21.780 and people would follow him blindly.

00:13:24.240 Nicolás Maduro, probably his best quality,

00:13:26.380 is that he's been a great imitator of Hugo Chávez.

00:13:29.820 Anyone who speaks Spanish, or is, no, not speaks Spanish, 0.97

00:13:32.520 anyone who's from Venezuela,

00:13:34.280 who knew Maduro before Chávez died,

00:13:37.240 will see how today his way of speaking,

00:13:43.420 the way he talks, his tone, his voice, the way he acts,

00:13:47.440 is just trying to imitate Hugo Chávez.

00:13:49.540 That's his best trait.

00:13:50.620 and how much of this can be blamed on the united states because people on the left say you know

00:13:56.640 you know the states this is what they do this is their modus operandi a government it declares

00:14:01.920 or a country declares itself socialist you know insidious forces come in bring it down from the

00:14:06.500 inside is this in any way true or um i don't think i think probably a very limited amount

00:14:14.380 of people would be able to say whether this is true or not i'm definitely not one of them

00:14:18.140 It's because the government's line has been, in the last decade, let's say, our economy is suffering because there's an economic war against us.

00:14:31.480 There's an economic war against socialism because we're providing a socialist proposal and we are representing something the United States doesn't want us to have.

00:14:39.440 We're going to be crushed by imperialism, all of that.

00:14:42.620 What is an economic war?

00:14:43.940 measures and policies or trying to destabilize economy via businessmen, third parties, all of

00:14:50.960 that. That sounds like an incredibly complex plan that I wonder who actually, if that is true,

00:14:56.180 who actually knows whether that's signed, where is that written? Who's saying that that's happening?

00:15:03.180 The United States and South America and Latin America in general have pretty terrible history

00:15:08.100 throughout the United States has intervened in Chile and Guatemala and Mexico and Argentina

00:15:16.740 listen anyway it could like evidently directly in the 1970s and the 80s and the 90s in Central

00:15:24.820 America is the US intervening in Venezuela I think politically they're clearly they must have

00:15:32.600 been clearly interested from the very beginning that they didn't really like the way Chavez was

00:15:36.100 talking or the way he was talking about the U.S. in particular, his affiliations with Cuba and all

00:15:40.660 of that. Is the U.S. toppling or been trying to topple the Venezuelan government for 20 years

00:15:45.680 because it's a socialist government? I don't think so. I personally don't think so. I cannot

00:15:50.180 prove you that the United States is not doing that but I can definitely, the main argument is

00:15:56.040 this is all happening because we're a socialist government and because we have one of the biggest

00:16:01.240 or if not the biggest oil reserves in the world. Bolivia has been a socialist government for at

00:16:05.600 these 15 years. It's got the biggest oil and natural gas reserves in the world, has a one-digit

00:16:10.100 inflation rate. It's an economy that kind of is okay. It has an indigenous precedent, and it has 0.98

00:16:16.120 its problems, lots of political problems, but it's there, and it's been fine. Argentina had 12 years

00:16:23.260 of a socialist government. It has one of the biggest grain and farming commodities in the

00:16:28.800 world, has one of the beef producing countries in the world. There was 12 years of socialist

00:16:34.100 government in Argentina which got elected out and that didn't seem to have

00:16:38.960 the US sort of running over itself to try to stop it. Brazil had, I don't know, 12, 0.63

00:16:44.000 16 years of Lula da Silva, then had Dilma and you can probably, the narrative

00:16:48.860 says that Dilma Rousseff got kicked out because the US led a coup against her

00:16:54.200 politically, that's probably more internal Brazilian politics and a mess

00:16:57.740 than anything else. So why is this fascination with Venezuela, we are the

00:17:01.820 victims of it. For me, it's clearly a way, it's a blame game. It's an easy out, isn't it? It's an easy out to not take responsibility for the overspending, the waste, the corruption that you're talking about. And maybe for as well, you know, someone who was born in the Soviet Union, I personally think that those kind of hard, hard socialist system, they create the incentives for those kind of things. Because like you said, there's a lack of accountability. There's a scope for corruption. There's this fake idea that we're all going to be equal in

00:17:31.700 everything else can be fine but actually it does create a small elite of people who are able to

00:17:35.700 to seize the resources and use them for themselves right? I think that the also the main thing for

00:17:40.840 me is that it's that lack of criticism and and and openness to if that doesn't work we need to call

00:17:47.300 it out. You could argue that it's socialism didn't work there. I personally don't think probably that

00:17:54.160 was ever socialist regime at all. There's all this narrative and talk and discourse about we are

00:17:59.120 socialists and we care for the people but on the other hand I'm just getting rich here it was a

00:18:03.400 change of elite in Venezuela where you had traditional parties and then a new one comes in

00:18:07.040 and right we just replaced the elite that was before and now we're the new elite we didn't

00:18:10.700 have anything but you have that rhetoric and that discourse of we're doing this for the people don't

00:18:15.180 worry we've got your back we've got your back you're still in a slum but 20 years later don't 0.96

00:18:18.580 worry we believe in you mate that that just doesn't work that way it's that level of if you're outside

00:18:25.420 of the country and you're thinking this is all to blame it's the US to blame no it can't be if

00:18:30.280 it's an economic war then you've bloody lost it for years you're not doing your job either because

00:18:37.120 you're not winning that economic war or because you're basically just looking the other way it's

00:18:40.780 it there is a lot of whataboutism oh you're talking about me what about those kids in

00:18:44.920 Colombia who are suffering as well well no we're talking about Venezuela right now we're not talking

00:18:48.680 about anything else and with Maduro's government there's been a huge amount of criticism I've got

00:18:54.460 my family is still there i've got friends who are still there and they talk about um secret police

00:18:59.980 uh people disappear journalists being intimidated um could you enlighten us a little bit as to what

00:19:06.640 is happening i think that's so you've got the humanitarian catastrophe going on i just can't

00:19:11.360 call it another way sorry it's a catastrophe going on for a while and obviously it's easier

00:19:17.740 for media organizations to sort of learn kind of lean that way but underneath all of this i think

00:19:23.880 it's fair to say that in five six years of maduro the human rights situation is it's terrible i

00:19:30.280 can't so let's let's call out what i think maduro has been doing or what has evidently been um sort

00:19:36.100 of explained and showed what it is you've got people being detained and in in in jails a judge

00:19:43.060 issues a release order and the secret police says well i don't care about that i'll keep you for

00:19:46.720 another year here that's a complete non-guarantee of basic human rights you've got people being

00:19:51.520 tortured you have people being prosecuted for political views most one of the main problems

00:19:57.500 that Venezuela has is why are there no elections because anyone who's a politician of any sort and

00:20:03.340 you can criticize them on whatever you think about their policies on all that but as soon as any

00:20:07.060 politician comes to the fore he will be as much many most of them have been banned for running

00:20:12.880 trumped up charges of oh no he's a terrorist he's destabilizing the regime only yesterday

00:20:17.860 I saw there was a judge who released someone on corruption charges the sentence it was probably a

00:20:24.660 bit wrong but there was more about her political affiliations against the government everyone has

00:20:28.700 the right for a political view she was yesterday sentenced to five years in jail because it was 1.00

00:20:34.080 what's the word it was it was bizarre it was like spiritual treason to the country what does that

00:20:40.260 even mean but you get all I think the judiciary in Venezuela and the way it has worked it's

00:20:47.420 incredibly unreliable and has led to a series of human rights violations which

00:20:51.020 are terrible we did an investigation in the last year and we just showed the

00:20:56.000 inside of what the secret police main headquarters is looking like and it's

00:21:00.140 yeah it's horrible I mean we're talking about tortures of all sorts of scales

00:21:03.380 we're talking about people being detained without reason we're talking

00:21:06.080 about people I'm not going to go into porn morbid details but pretty nasty

00:21:11.420 stuff and on the other hand there is an apparatus of people who have been armed

00:21:17.300 armed and supported politically by the government, which are militias, effectively called colectivos,

00:21:22.620 which is effectively the armed wing of the government, which is, they're not affiliated

00:21:26.580 with me, but they all wear government shirts. And any time there's a protest or some dissidents,

00:21:32.740 these guys just come in and just, right, no more protests here. Only this year, there

00:21:39.160 was quite a bit of unrest in the hills and the slums, in Caracas in particular. A lot

00:21:44.700 of people came down to the city and started chanting and voicing their discontent, etc.

00:21:50.460 Some of them I know for a fact. I know in particular one, it's a big one, there's a place

00:21:54.300 called in Caracas Pitare. It's a slum of about a million and a half people. It's a big place.

00:21:58.540 One of the areas there was completely taken over by a special force of the police.

00:22:03.340 Some people are said to have been killed and they just camped there for several days to stop people

00:22:07.580 from going out. I'm always reluctant to talk about what journalists go through because it's

00:22:13.580 It's not about journalism, and a lot of journalists just pick themselves up too much, frankly.

00:22:17.480 But I do think you should talk about it, because I think how journalists are treated is a very good reflection of what is happening in a country.

00:22:24.660 Because, you know, Russia has a terrible problem with journalists, and that tells you everything about freedom of speech.

00:22:30.500 It tells you everything about how the regime maintains itself.

00:22:34.460 It tells you quite a lot.

00:22:35.520 So it's not necessarily about feeling sorry for poor Vladimir, but I think it's reflective of what's happening in society.

00:22:41.120 So do tell us.

00:22:41.780 So people I've worked with, I don't know, I know someone who flew a drone over a protest

00:22:46.240 because he wanted to get some really nice shots of a good protest.

00:22:50.000 Later in the day, secret police came to his house, took him away.

00:22:52.980 He was eight months in prison without charge, without a judge saying anything, without a sentence.

00:22:58.940 And as he was picked up, he was released eight months later.

00:23:02.400 There's no rule of law.

00:23:04.320 I know people who have been, foreign nationals, have been in Venezuela.

00:23:07.880 They've been covering the crisis and they get reported.

00:23:09.980 I know people who have been barred from entering the country.

00:23:12.380 I know journalists who have been picked up randomly

00:23:15.040 and then they just get put away for some time and then released.

00:23:20.480 It's not an easy place to work.

00:23:22.320 And the purpose of all of this is to prevent people

00:23:25.380 from speaking out against what the regime is doing?

00:23:28.760 I think the purpose of this is just to try,

00:23:31.660 and I'm going to quote a security guard,

00:23:33.400 one of these security police officers who we spoke to recently,

00:23:37.500 and he was just saying,

00:23:38.400 the purpose of this is just to maintain fear on what you're doing to keep you fearful of anything

00:23:43.400 you're doing that it may have consequences to try to preempt any further digging you would like to do

00:23:49.520 a lot of the narrative that you will hear outside of venezuela is the media invents

00:23:57.260 all these lies there isn't media in venezuela there used to be 15 years ago probably four

00:24:06.500 big private television channels. None of those, they are still there, but all of

00:24:10.760 them were bought by third-party government affiliated supporters. There

00:24:14.900 are no independent television channels. It's exactly like Russia. When you have 0.99

00:24:18.980 protests, you don't see them on any television screen. Really? So people

00:24:24.020 inside the country don't know that the protests are happening through the

00:24:26.820 media? No, there's none of that. There are probably, I'll tell you about the

00:24:31.760 capital at least, there are one or two radio stations who may broadcast about

00:24:36.200 it but in a very limited way and sometimes it often happens as soon as

00:24:41.160 there's a protest and people up in the radios are broadcasting about it then

00:24:44.420 the government calls in a speech to the nation and then everyone has to

00:24:47.600 transmit that by law so that the airwaves are completely blocked and you

00:24:51.140 have to listen to what Maduro has to say there is a big presence of the state TV

00:24:54.680 everywhere and they broadcast a view of the world. You know what used to happen in the Soviet Union 0.80

00:25:01.100 whenever there was some kind of crisis or a big demonstration they would play

00:25:05.120 Swan Lake

00:25:05.860 on TV

00:25:07.100 so if Swan Lake

00:25:09.040 was playing

00:25:09.420 you knew something

00:25:10.000 was going on

00:25:10.800 right

00:25:11.160 where do people

00:25:12.920 get their

00:25:13.340 sorry Francis

00:25:13.940 where do people

00:25:14.480 get their

00:25:14.980 information

00:25:15.520 it's social media

00:25:16.360 that's horrible

00:25:17.980 because social media

00:25:18.760 is like a horrible place

00:25:19.660 you know

00:25:20.400 you can get whatever

00:25:21.200 there and there's

00:25:21.720 on WhatsApp

00:25:22.280 you can get a lot

00:25:23.500 of things which are not true

00:25:24.220 you can get a lot

00:25:24.680 of things which are

00:25:25.260 but that's the only place

00:25:26.460 where people are actually

00:25:27.240 following what's going on

00:25:28.340 I don't want to cleanse

00:25:29.500 the reputation of

00:25:30.460 private media in Venezuela

00:25:31.220 historically at all

00:25:32.300 there have been moments

00:25:33.380 where yeah

00:25:33.860 they haven't frankly

00:25:34.720 haven't covered themselves in glory. But at this point, I just find it astonishing to think about

00:25:41.380 the media created all of this when there isn't media in Venezuela. And there's this image of

00:25:46.520 Chavez of being a socialist hero, as it were. One of my relatives is very high up in the Chavez

00:25:53.260 government. And Chavez asked him to transfer some money from the Bank of Venezuela to his private

00:25:59.900 funds my and my relative refused to do that he got fired on national tv yeah and then uh was put

00:26:06.920 under house arrest until he changed his mind that's amazing um there's so many yeah exactly

00:26:13.160 that's so that that's the other thing and and you can probably probably people who are looking at

00:26:17.140 what trump's doing right now that's a good way of understanding what chavez used to be yeah um

00:26:22.100 chavez wouldn't be as prominent on twitter but he would be you see trump right now calling out

00:26:26.820 journalists in rallies when he doesn't like them saying oh CNN that's journalists over there yeah

00:26:30.540 enemy of the people that's what Chavez used to do just that probably in the United States you

00:26:34.600 get roughed up a bit or some journalists have been beaten up in Venezuela that led to consequences

00:26:39.260 people got really nastily attacked and there were some consequences to that or you had the

00:26:43.860 security services changing sort of chasing them and doing all sorts of things I I think probably

00:26:50.520 Chavez's sort of track record on that it's it's cleaner despite having cases like that and I know

00:26:56.440 a lot of people you know this we're talking about a precedent here charismatic leader all you want

00:27:00.960 but he will walk down squares have its live broadcast on state tv and say right who owns

00:27:06.500 that shop over there uh x or y okay well let's nationalize that let's nationalize that and that

00:27:11.860 and that and that's it and that's that's in a way how he run the country which is probably again

00:27:16.880 unsustainable that's where we are now and what do you make of the western politicians and the way

00:27:21.600 the conversation is conducted i brought up kind of jeremy corbyn talking about positively about

00:27:25.960 the case in venezuela we don't hear so much of that anymore do we no i think a lot of times when

00:27:32.320 the u.s gets involved you see a lot of people in venezuela saying please stop don't talk anymore

00:27:36.680 you just there's a lot of noise you're creating a narrative you're just reinforcing a stereotype

00:27:40.160 stereotype that it's the u.s's fault there's the u.s involved there's all of that um i think

00:27:45.820 there's been a big shift right now in narrative because a lot of governments have there's a lot

00:27:51.080 of governments especially in south america who were not friends of hugo chavez or the venezuelan

00:27:55.720 government at all and you have people from the very far right like Brazil in 0.58

00:27:59.980 Bolsonaro and you have other people in Chile or in other

00:28:03.900 countries but there are a lot of people calling it out but those who are of the

00:28:09.620 Jeremy Corbyn molding as in historical left leader left-leaning leaders etc

00:28:15.400 like for instance the president of Mexico very popular guy got elected

00:28:18.960 long-standing left politician left-wing politician he's not calling out what's

00:28:23.980 going on in Venezuela at all he's standing on the fences he's saying it's for Venezuelans to decide

00:28:27.580 I think from an outsider perspective and I'll tell you more about what the diaspora

00:28:34.720 is talking about there's a lot of frustration about that because I think there's a responsibility

00:28:39.920 for people to call it out it doesn't work and when people tell you especially you see narratives

00:28:45.200 in the US or here in the UK about that it's not a dictatorship well I just refer you back to but

00:28:51.220 There's people being killed illegally.

00:28:52.820 There's people being tortured.

00:28:54.260 People being illegally arrested.

00:28:56.140 That sounds like bears the mark of a dictatorship, frankly.

00:29:00.340 I, for years, was very reluctant to call it a dictatorship.

00:29:03.160 It seemed more a totalitarian government.

00:29:05.500 But as soon as you start crossing those lines of human rights,

00:29:07.880 basic rights, where you're not, you're

00:29:09.940 controlling the system to not allow people to feed themselves,

00:29:13.900 you're torturing people, you're arresting people,

00:29:16.480 sorry, you've just crossed a big line there.

00:29:19.480 And Juan Guaido, who is, it's very complicated.

00:29:24.120 I mean, Venezuelan politics is incredibly complicated.

00:29:27.040 And even if you're an expert in it, it still doesn't seem to make sense.

00:29:31.040 What is the situation with him?

00:29:33.640 Is he president-elect?

00:29:35.240 Is he...

00:29:36.400 Right.

00:29:37.320 I've got an answer.

00:29:38.220 I've got an answer.

00:29:38.720 Cool.

00:29:41.260 I think a mistake would be calling him a self-proclaimed president of a country.

00:29:46.040 I think that's what creeped in a lot at the beginning.

00:29:49.480 This is not a chap who stood up on the street and said, I'm the president.

00:29:52.840 Follow me.

00:29:56.240 Bear with me.

00:29:58.820 Maduro got re-elected, in his words, two years ago.

00:30:02.880 It was an election which had a huge high abstention rate.

00:30:07.440 The company that ran the software for the electronic vote fled the country and said there was a lot of millions of votes had been tampered with and they couldn't account for the reliability of that election.

00:30:19.480 Despite that, he swore himself in as the president.

00:30:23.700 So that was an election with serious doubts about electronic vote

00:30:28.120 and no international observers.

00:30:30.560 You will hear, oh, but there were international observers.

00:30:33.800 No, there were no official international observers.

00:30:36.760 There were people invited by the government as international observers.

00:30:40.260 A big difference there.

00:30:41.900 One of those, I know the case very closely,

00:30:45.400 Palestinian man comes into Venezuela.

00:30:47.940 he on the side he had some contracts with the venezuelan government for imports and exports

00:30:52.360 which is all fine that's let's not talk about his business that's all that's his business and the

00:30:56.180 government but he was not an international observer he came into that country partially

00:31:02.080 brought in by a government democratic credentials of nicolas maduro went downhill after that so he

00:31:09.200 comes so he came in this year to swear himself in as a new president of the country new term

00:31:15.580 but you were not elected or that doesn't seem legit.

00:31:20.160 The constitution, the legal framework says

00:31:22.540 if there is a vacuum of power,

00:31:24.560 it's the head of the National Assembly who should assume it.

00:31:27.760 By the time Nicolás Maduro,

00:31:30.140 terms expired on January this year.

00:31:33.040 Vacuum of power begins.

00:31:34.640 Juan Guaidó comes and says,

00:31:36.140 I'm the head of the National Assembly.

00:31:37.800 I should be temporarily ruling the country

00:31:39.440 until we can call for elections.

00:31:41.080 And that's his main argument.

00:31:43.740 Sorry.

00:31:44.180 I was just going to say, we've talked about Venezuela, obviously a very serious subject.

00:31:49.300 Let's lighten it up and move on to Mexico.

00:31:52.700 All right, let's talk about chopped up heads then. 0.96

00:31:57.300 We do. I mean, normally we try to keep it very lighthearted,

00:32:00.480 but some of the stuff that we're talking about is very, very, very serious.

00:32:04.160 And the reason I wanted to ask about Mexico is we've had a couple of guests on recently

00:32:08.060 to talk about drugs and the drug war and the consequences of that.

00:32:11.900 And I think one of the sides of it that often gets ignored when we talk about drug decriminalization or, no, we must make sure that people don't take drugs, is we forget the downstream consequences of it.

00:32:27.560 And I think nowhere is that more evident than what's happening in Mexico, right?

00:32:31.780 Because you've done some work in the country.

00:32:33.820 When you mean downstream, you mean like what's coming from the U.S. back into Mexico?

00:32:36.760 No, I mean, in the production chain, like what our demand for drugs in the West creates in the third world, essentially, in Latin America and the places where it's produced, where it's trafficked, etc.

00:32:47.760 So I suppose one of the main sort of issues about the whole drug trafficking world is where all of that is going to.

00:32:57.620 So you've got all these people in Bolivia and Peru producing tons and tons of cocaine, let's say, every year.

00:33:04.220 But that is only going to a market that is asking for it.

00:33:06.760 who's chicken and egg but still both of them probably at fault I think one of the things

00:33:12.700 that you'll find in Mexico spoken about a lot is that there isn't the same scrutiny over

00:33:16.940 there is a big scrutiny over drug trafficking cartels glorifying all these people who are like

00:33:23.460 yeah all these charismatic leaders that you see them on Netflix afterwards but no one's talking

00:33:28.000 about this huge flow of guns from the US back into Mexico I know for the story going around which

00:33:34.300 is fascinating about Mexico really only has one place that sells guns legally in the country and

00:33:39.160 we're talking about a country of 50 60 million people most of the guns that drug traffickers

00:33:43.480 then use or criminal gangs use are coming from the US and there is this huge trade in between

00:33:49.200 I send you drugs you send me back guns because of course in the US we all know that buying guns

00:33:54.100 is quite simple and and then you have that sort of third sort of strand of yeah should we legalize

00:34:00.700 all of this and get rid of it. I think that's too much of an ask in a country

00:34:05.800 in a country and in a region really that is incredibly conservative about drug

00:34:09.340 use in general. But I don't mean in Mexico. I don't think I actually don't

00:34:13.840 know that legalizing drugs in Mexico would make a big difference. I'm talking

00:34:16.960 about the US, the UK, Western Europe, where that a lot of that demand is

00:34:22.240 coming from. And do you think that the situation we see now in Mexico is a

00:34:28.500 consequence of the drug war or the war on drugs rather? I disagree with both war

00:34:34.800 and drugs or drugs at war because it's just it's a it's a very and again it's

00:34:39.420 not it's just a personal view it's not it's a very simplified way of that this

00:34:43.440 is not just these bad guys who are trafficking drugs it's a very deep

00:34:49.020 structural problem in that in society there where you have demand on one side

00:34:53.380 that no one's looking at you've got the government structures in all of the

00:34:58.140 countries that are producing not only in latin america and afghanistan and all sorts of thailand

00:35:01.900 and malaysia which are convenient to this which have agreements with this and frankly without

00:35:09.600 trying to sound too conspiracy theory about it if you look at all the story about the dea in mexico

00:35:14.020 in the last 20 years there's a lot of things that looks more for a film than for a reality but a lot

00:35:18.400 of it is reality what do you mean because we might not be familiar with that um stuff about

00:35:22.780 But if you look at the Central American conflict where the U.S. was funding paramilitary groups,

00:35:29.960 this is all out in the open, I'm not making this up, the U.S. government was funding

00:35:33.340 paramilitary groups, tried to destabilise Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, all of

00:35:37.000 the militias, left-wing militias there.

00:35:39.760 The money used to buy those weapons came from the duck cartels. 0.82

00:35:42.280 So there's all these reports and books being written about, frankly, the DEA was just working

00:35:47.780 with the duck cartels to give money to these people so they can maintain their political 0.60

00:35:51.340 views intact, and it was all Cold War, et cetera, et cetera, is the DEA, let me re-say

00:35:58.140 that in a more clearer way, there are a lot of books being written about how the DEA is

00:36:02.640 as responsible for creating all the drug cartels that we know of today.

00:36:06.260 Well, those Zetas, that's where they come from, right? 1.00

00:36:08.500 They were trained by the Americans in order to fight the drug war, supposedly.

00:36:13.140 They all came back, they all defected, they all became this new cartel, right?

00:36:16.560 Yes, the beginning of the setters, which I'm not clear anymore how big it still is,

00:36:21.840 but it used to be, some years ago, one of the biggest and most sort of bloody and criminal organizations in Mexico. 0.51

00:36:27.580 You had a lot of people who were trained as special forces, not just military, special forces.

00:36:31.660 Some of them were trained in West Point, in one of the most elite academies for the military in the US.

00:36:37.040 And they were just, when they went back to work in Mexico in the army,

00:36:39.480 they were just getting shitloads of money, more, sorry, they were getting much more money.

00:36:42.280 No, don't worry about it.

00:36:44.260 much more money from from a drug trafficking organization than from the the institutions in

00:36:50.420 the country um but who who's more at fault who's who's is it the setter chopping off someone's head

00:36:58.900 or killing someone or mutilating someone alive or is it the the policies of the big entities

00:37:04.660 who will know that all of that is happening not doing anything about it and there's a historical

00:37:08.740 debt from mexican politicians there's a historical debt from u.s politicians the drug on war 0.78

00:37:14.180 I think it's just got holes everywhere, frankly, on all of this.

00:37:17.280 And what is the situation in Mexico at the moment?

00:37:21.000 So, for instance, I read about Ciudad Juarez,

00:37:23.080 and that just seems to be a war zone.

00:37:25.920 There doesn't seem to be any law there happening whatsoever.

00:37:29.460 If you're a woman, it's a dreadful place to be, 1.00

00:37:32.700 but it seems to be even worse for a woman in terms of kidnapping, 0.99

00:37:36.020 sexual violence.

00:37:37.280 How bad are things in Mexico at the moment,

00:37:39.020 or does it depend whereabouts you live?

00:37:42.160 How bad things are?

00:37:43.500 anything in the in the in the northern parts of Mexico we're talking Ciudad Juarez is on the

00:37:49.640 northwest of it near California and then you go all the way to the other side which is called

00:37:53.680 Tamaulipas which is in between Texas and Mexico anything around the border between Mexico and the

00:37:59.980 US are they're all drug trafficking routes and they I think it's probably fair to say all of

00:38:04.220 that is pretty lawless and not because of the lack of police police are there but there's just huge

00:38:09.140 doubts on the um they all work for the cartels yeah they all work for the cartels i suppose

00:38:14.880 that's the one that's the best way of saying it um so all of that is yeah no one's really in

00:38:20.520 control apart from the cartels who decide what what the hell's going on but that's not just that

00:38:24.520 it's then you've got areas like acapulco on the pacific coast all of that is a big state called

00:38:29.140 guerrero there um that is run by a cartel called the michoacan cartel and then you've got all the

00:38:34.200 the area near Playa del Carmen or Cancun, which is called Veracruz.

00:38:37.980 Again, that's another place which is incredibly filled with a lot of criminal activity.

00:38:44.180 Historically in Mexico, Mexico City has always been this bubble

00:38:47.140 where all the drug leaders live, so nothing happens.

00:38:50.840 And that's probably still the case.

00:38:52.260 I think Mexico in general, in the last year at least,

00:38:54.880 it saw a huge rise in murder rates.

00:38:57.860 And this is not just drug cartel people killing each other.

00:39:01.440 This is the increase in the size of a criminal activity that leads to, for instance,

00:39:06.200 the kidnapping industry in Mexico is huge.

00:39:08.860 And a lot of these people act in coordination either with authorities

00:39:12.320 or with the cartels themselves.

00:39:15.080 And that's when real civilians start suffering.

00:39:19.380 When you get a huge growth in the kidnapping industry,

00:39:22.260 that's just effectively kidnapping the lady who runs a laundromat in Mexico City.

00:39:27.840 I did some stuff some years ago about the kidnapping industry.

00:39:31.440 People were being kidnapped for $100.

00:39:33.560 Like, just, I'm being brutalised

00:39:35.740 and then being called over the phone

00:39:36.860 and just give me $100.

00:39:37.840 It's like, what?

00:39:38.700 You've gone through all of that just to give me...

00:39:40.600 It just doesn't make sense.

00:39:42.100 The kidnapping industry is a huge...

00:39:44.320 It's the humanitarian effect of the drug war, really.

00:39:47.200 So this...

00:39:47.760 Go for it.

00:39:48.100 No, I was going to say,

00:39:50.860 and going back to Trump and the war,

00:39:53.280 is that where you think a lot of popularity comes from?

00:39:56.300 Where he was saying, you know,

00:39:57.460 we're going to build this war, 0.97

00:39:58.460 we're going to isolate Mexico? 0.64

00:40:00.360 or does popularity come from somewhere else?

00:40:05.120 The wall is a symbol, really, isn't it?

00:40:06.820 The wall is a symbol of this way we'll stop it.

00:40:10.700 And then, sorry, I'm just laughing

00:40:13.040 because you can build a wall

00:40:14.700 but the drug is going through tunnels.

00:40:18.000 How do you do that?

00:40:19.200 And in the east of Mexico,

00:40:20.920 so a lot of stuff,

00:40:22.940 I'm just going to widen out a bit.

00:40:24.800 Mexico imports a lot of cheap goods from China

00:40:26.820 and then sends that to the US.

00:40:28.100 That's part of the NAFTA trade deal,

00:40:29.720 an agreement. And there's a huge economy around that. And we're talking about thousands of lorries

00:40:34.160 going every week up from Mexico to the US. Well, guess what's in those lorries as well? There's a

00:40:38.500 lot of drugs in there as well. There's no wall stopping that. Well, just to put the counterpoint

00:40:43.380 on the wall, as I'm tempted to do. I mean, but no, but think about it. Imagine you live in the south

00:40:49.920 of the United States. And across the border from you is this lawless place where people are being

00:40:55.460 kidnapped for ransom of $100, people having their heads chopped off, tortured, guns, all this

00:41:01.180 violence. You'd want to protect yourself and your family from that, wouldn't you? I mean,

00:41:06.700 I imagine why a lot of Americans feel that a wall, while a symbol is necessary or border

00:41:13.040 security is necessary, right? Yes, but a problem as a result of the flows of immigration and drug 0.73

00:41:22.980 trafficking in that region is a lot of immigrants who we see then in migrant 1.00

00:41:26.880 caravans for instance or people going from Central America or all parts of the

00:41:30.420 world go through Mexico to the US. There's a huge sort of people trafficking

00:41:34.860 business around it run by the drug cartels again. A lot of those people are

00:41:39.540 kept in safe houses and called for ransom for their relatives in Central

00:41:44.280 America or wherever they're coming from. A lot of those safe houses are in the US.

00:41:48.480 So there's no wall to stop you from that. The criminal activity is going on there.

00:41:52.900 Well, what history tells you, recent history tells you,

00:41:55.980 is that a lot of the violence doesn't go into the US

00:41:58.380 because, yeah, probably the legal system, the judicial system,

00:42:01.220 just works much better.

00:42:02.140 The law enforcement agency just works much better.

00:42:04.620 But the wall's not going to stop the presence of all of that happening.

00:42:07.660 And, yeah, you're not going to see a turf war

00:42:10.160 between drug cartels on the other side of the wall.

00:42:12.400 But the criminal activity is going to be there around the corner.

00:42:15.300 And what you're saying effectively is that there is no way

00:42:17.840 of stopping the flow of drugs going into the United States.

00:42:20.820 Unless people shut their mouths.

00:42:22.380 I don't consume it anymore, right?

00:42:24.100 Yeah.

00:42:24.720 Well, that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

00:42:26.660 So this is where we come back to the decriminalization of drugs

00:42:33.920 because from some estimates in some of these northern states in Mexico,

00:42:38.680 it's like 70% to 80% of the whole economy of the state is related to drugs.

00:42:45.400 That means like $8 out of every $10 that's spent in there is spent because of drugs, right?

00:42:51.240 Or by the cartel.

00:42:52.380 So these are places that are completely taken over. There is no government. There is no police. There is no structure at all.

00:43:00.000 And the only way that's possible is that our money, essentially, Western money, is going in there into the pockets of these drug cartels.

00:43:09.380 So if you stop that money from going into the hands of illegal criminals and people like that,

00:43:16.760 and you create a situation where drugs are legal

00:43:19.880 and there's no incentive,

00:43:21.280 a lot of people would say that is a way

00:43:23.420 that you tackle the problem on both ends.

00:43:26.100 Here in the West, you decriminalize drug use

00:43:28.580 and therefore you end up with great parties.

00:43:32.580 Yeah.

00:43:34.120 But look at an example like...

00:43:36.600 Whenever I try to make a serious point, 0.98

00:43:39.720 it fucking ruins it. 0.99

00:43:42.040 So Portugal had a huge heroin addiction problem 0.99

00:43:45.140 some 10 years ago.

00:43:46.760 And what they did, they just legalized it.

00:43:48.680 And what they did is that people who are addicts to it

00:43:51.460 now go to a clinic, a private or government clinic,

00:43:54.280 I'm not sure of the detail there,

00:43:55.480 but they go and get their fix.

00:43:57.260 That doesn't kill them.

00:43:58.340 There's no health implications of it

00:43:59.620 if it's controlled and managed.

00:44:01.520 You don't get cleaned,

00:44:04.240 but there's not a business of opium on the streets.

00:44:07.460 And that, I've seen some studies, and I've read them,

00:44:10.240 about how that has reduced significantly

00:44:12.640 the amount of criminal activity around drug use.

00:44:15.160 How many people are here in the UK have had their doors barged down because

00:44:19.420 Someone's going crazy needs a fix. He's just looking for quick money anywhere, right? You see a lot of drug addicts in the UK

00:44:24.760 I'm talking more about heroin addicts probably who are just looking for quick money anywhere to try to get a fix

00:44:30.160 Well, Portugal sort of tried to do that where I'll give it to you 0.59

00:44:33.400 But chill we'll give it to you in a managed way. You don't have to go and steal some money for that

00:44:37.280 That's a smaller problem than huge millions of tons of cocaine marijuana and heroin everywhere

00:44:43.240 But then you have another country in South America, which is Uruguay, which legalised cannabis like three years ago.

00:44:48.980 They allow people to grow it for personal consumption.

00:44:52.480 And that effectively led to petty crime on the streets reducing massively because there was no incentive for anyone to be just dealing drugs and protecting my corner.

00:45:01.300 That makes so much sense to me, doesn't it?

00:45:03.000 Yeah, it makes complete sense.

00:45:04.640 I'm going to put the counterpoint to you.

00:45:07.260 That makes total sense, but here's why you're wrong.

00:45:09.440 So we had Peter Hitchens on a couple of weeks ago and Peter when it came to the war on drugs

00:45:15.020 he's very much in favor of you know being incredibly harsh on people who deal drugs

00:45:20.440 really clamping down uh making you know you know making the penalties incredibly severe

00:45:26.640 why does that not work do you think? Because it's not as simple as it's

00:45:32.860 we've had a war on drugs.

00:45:37.200 What was it, Nixon?

00:45:38.380 What are we talking about?

00:45:39.000 I wasn't even alive.

00:45:39.920 What, 60s?

00:45:42.620 I mean, I think it had its run.

00:45:44.780 Clearly it doesn't work.

00:45:45.800 Why doesn't it not work?

00:45:46.820 Because you're trying to clamp down

00:45:48.100 on the security side of things,

00:45:49.460 but then to deal with the problem,

00:45:51.500 let's deal with El Chapo, right?

00:45:52.880 Where he comes from.

00:45:53.780 There's a state called Sinaloa,

00:45:55.140 in the hills,

00:45:56.180 all these farmers.

00:45:57.880 30 years ago,

00:45:58.800 they were just producing,

00:46:00.120 let's imagine basil,

00:46:01.720 strawberries, whatever.

00:46:02.860 One day they thought, okay, look at this. If I do cannabis, I'm going to get a hundred times of what I'm getting for strawberries.

00:46:08.860 What happened to all those farmers? They're now producing cannabis or heroin or opium, right?

00:46:13.760 Okay, I'll kill the chap on all his mates. What do I do with all those farmers then? 0.99

00:46:17.860 Well, you're going to kill them then. 0.99

00:46:19.860 Well, there are no policies. 1.00

00:46:21.860 So shooting down and executing all the drug cartel leaders in the world doesn't change the fact that you have a huge economy

00:46:28.860 that has gone all the way to producing drugs, rather than producing things that are not drugs.

00:46:32.860 So it has to be accompanied by government policy onto,

00:46:36.860 I'm going to give you an incentive to not to produce drugs and to get your kids to school,

00:46:41.860 and to produce something that will actually allow you to have an income.

00:46:44.860 There's a cultural change as well.

00:46:46.860 Why me far more in Sinaloa producing opium and getting my SUV bought tomorrow,

00:46:52.860 was my incentive for me to then, right, let me scale down.

00:46:56.860 this is what I should afford, this is what I need, but I have water, running water,

00:47:01.320 schools work, I've got all the needs I have, and I say, okay, I'll go back to doing strawberries.

00:47:07.460 The violence policy on let's crack down on everyone doesn't work on the table.

00:47:13.060 It actually makes things worse because when you remove the head of a cartel,

00:47:17.060 that's where all these wars come from because you've got ten little people now competing for that top dog spot,

00:47:22.360 open market and they become more brutal and more violent because the struggle for you know there's

00:47:27.120 an opportunity to make a living there in a country where it's very difficult to do that and then the

00:47:31.260 other thing about good good the goody and baddies of the drug war are it's not that clear um right 0.99

00:47:39.720 let's kill all the let's get rid of all the chapos put them all in jail sure what about the 1.00

00:47:44.280 government side of things what about all those people allowed that that war on drug is not going 1.00

00:47:48.620 on them that war on drugs if you're going to do it that way you should need to get rid of a lot

00:47:52.920 of other people as well who are not cartel leaders well so the president yeah well thanks for that

00:48:00.280 yeah absolutely so essentially if if you were in charge you would say legalize it what would

00:48:10.580 you legalize would you legalize cocaine or marijuana look how excited francis is

00:48:15.700 i don't know i i think all of that yeah that sounds in a simplistic way yeah i think i'll

00:48:21.700 go down that route but it needs a lot of work into what do you allow people to have and what

00:48:26.980 sort of structures do you do you let people you know i suppose if you legalize all of that there

00:48:32.240 will be that inevitably that stuff about everyone's going to be a huge binge and then how do you deal

00:48:36.460 with the fallout of that if i was in charge things would be different the evidence doesn't show that

00:48:40.600 whether that's Portugal or some of the United States

00:48:43.960 states that have legalized that I don't think anyone's legalized cocaine

00:48:48.180 though that's a really tricky one it's a different type of drug isn't it

00:48:51.220 because it's much more I think cannabis of course cannabis is much more socially

00:48:55.500 acceptable than all the others but again it will have its its its health

00:49:00.740 indications to deal with but that's probably more manageable cocaine is

00:49:03.680 probably much more rougher one do we need to even be consuming cocaine but

00:49:07.120 If you look at prohibition of alcohol in the 50s or 40s,

00:49:11.240 maybe whiskey was a cocaine at the time

00:49:12.860 and people are not drinking whiskey anyway.

00:49:14.620 They learned how to do it.

00:49:16.780 Maybe we as a society need to just learn how to deal with that.

00:49:20.000 I don't know.

00:49:21.680 I think it needs a lot of health management

00:49:23.220 and sort of awareness, et cetera, et cetera.

00:49:25.100 It may lead to a binge.

00:49:26.160 What do we do with that?

00:49:27.100 All right, it doesn't lead to a binge.

00:49:28.300 Great, but we have a backup option here

00:49:30.520 to help people to cope with that.

00:49:32.360 But I feel we're in dreamland here.

00:49:34.220 It doesn't seem like the world we live in.

00:49:35.900 Why do you think that is?

00:49:36.840 Why do you think that is? Because I don't know, maybe it's me, but to me, all of the stuff we're talking about is common sense.

00:49:43.140 Like anyone who's looked into it knows all this stuff.

00:49:46.080 We know about Portugal. We know about Switzerland. We know about, as I say, you know, North America as well.

00:49:52.980 It's obvious. And we could be preventing tens of thousands of people being killed in Mexico and all of this suffering and misery. 0.96

00:50:00.460 and yet it's almost like taboo to discuss it in this country in politics.

00:50:06.460 When you talk to politicians, they won't touch it with a barge pole.

00:50:09.060 I think the non-cynical view would be that people need to get elected

00:50:12.160 and they'll do whatever they need to be elected.

00:50:13.980 That's a non-cynical view.

00:50:14.520 Non-cynical view, okay.

00:50:15.800 I think the cynical view is that probably I think I wouldn't be surprised

00:50:19.120 if the amount of people in bed with the drug trafficking business is so big

00:50:23.660 that it's just they can't scale back from it.

00:50:26.300 Really?

00:50:27.400 Even in what you reckon there's politicians in this country

00:50:30.020 who are influenced by that.

00:50:32.120 No, I'm not saying that.

00:50:33.180 No, you're not saying that here.

00:50:34.700 Theresa May is going...

00:50:35.780 Yeah, exactly.

00:50:36.500 She's in it now.

00:50:38.620 That's the clip we're going to use.

00:50:40.100 Well, it would explain her performance for Brexit,

00:50:41.980 wouldn't it?

00:50:43.620 But in drug-producing countries,

00:50:46.260 where does the drug trafficking line stop

00:50:49.340 and then the politician's line goes in?

00:50:52.880 Look, Pablo Escobar has become this mythical figure

00:50:56.540 and a lot of his bad side

00:50:58.380 has been sort of washed away in Netflix.

00:51:00.020 Pablo Escobar is still being remembered

00:51:05.020 as one of the biggest drug cartel leaders

00:51:07.960 who have ever existed.

00:51:10.340 The drug traffic of business in Colombia

00:51:11.680 is like a hundred times bigger

00:51:13.820 than when Pablo Escobar was there.

00:51:15.100 Did we ever hear about that?

00:51:16.520 Why is that not?

00:51:17.620 That's still there.

00:51:18.460 That's happening.

00:51:19.420 A lot of politicians are still aware of that.

00:51:22.140 The drug and war is,

00:51:22.960 the US had funded military operations there,

00:51:25.380 it funds heligots,

00:51:26.180 there's all sorts of stuff.

00:51:27.420 The business just grew.

00:51:29.220 I think there's a lot of accountability to be had on the government's policy and official side of things.

00:51:35.160 The more you dig, the more stuff you read, like legit stuff.

00:51:38.320 I'm not talking about conspiracy theory here.

00:51:40.620 Yeah, it's not good.

00:51:42.400 And I think that's probably why.

00:51:43.860 Well, I guess in those countries, it's probably impossible to be a politician if you're not in league with these people.

00:51:48.600 Because otherwise they'll kill you or you'll never be a politician in the first place.

00:51:51.960 And how many politicians have died because of that?

00:51:53.660 So, again, in dreamland, yeah, sure, we can definitely think that legalization should be one of those ways.

00:52:00.440 There's a former leader of the Mexican government called Vicente Fox, who is banging that drum pretty loudly right now about trying to legalize stuff.

00:52:08.960 Will he get that through? Who knows?

00:52:11.120 I mean, it would be amazing if in 20 years' time drugs are legalized.

00:52:13.940 I mean, I think you get rid of a lot of the problems that you have.

00:52:16.880 But if anyone has watched The Wire, if you follow the bodies, you're going to find them.

00:52:21.860 If you follow the money, yeah, you're not going to find them.

00:52:25.100 You're not going to like what you find at the end of that tunnel.

00:52:27.200 Yeah, that's very true.

00:52:29.320 But that's why I think it's great to have you on to have this conversation

00:52:32.940 because I don't think when we talk about legalization in this country,

00:52:37.600 we think about the bodies in Mexico.

00:52:40.460 I don't think we think about the fact that these countries have become lawless places

00:52:44.640 where people are being kidnapped for $100 because of the drugs.

00:52:49.300 It's a direct link. It's not an accident.

00:52:51.100 and I think if we put it

00:52:53.380 if we contextualize in that way

00:52:55.120 it becomes a much easier case to make

00:52:57.540 and I think it's an important conversation

00:52:59.660 we're almost out of time Blightman

00:53:01.500 thank you so much for coming on

00:53:02.620 we've got one more question for you

00:53:04.160 the question we always ask is

00:53:06.060 what is the one thing that people need to be talking about

00:53:09.560 but aren't speaking about at the moment

00:53:11.100 talking about at the moment

00:53:12.100 in general

00:53:12.960 could be anything at all

00:53:15.060 I would say that

00:53:19.420 people need to really look at what's going on in Venezuela in terms of a

00:53:22.540 humanitarian catastrophe I think you see bits and pieces of it but I don't think

00:53:26.860 the world has paid enough attention to it and I think it's one of the worst

00:53:29.800 crisis I think I think this is something that's not going to age well for a lot

00:53:34.240 of people when you go and look back five years and say we didn't look at that

00:53:37.660 that was an important thing that no one was paying attention to millions of

00:53:41.500 people have left people are struggling to feed it's a it's a society in

00:53:45.620 collapse and it's got one of the biggest oil reserves in the world I think it's

00:53:48.640 it's something completely underreported everywhere.

00:53:51.360 So just, I said one more question,

00:53:53.500 but out of that, I'd want to end on

00:53:54.900 maybe something that people can do

00:53:56.840 if someone's watching this discussion

00:53:59.000 and going, well, this is terrible.

00:54:01.060 Is there anything I can do?

00:54:02.760 Can I go and lobby my politician to do this?

00:54:05.680 Or can I...

00:54:06.180 Talk to Jeremy Corbyn.

00:54:08.100 Get him to answer a question.

00:54:10.140 I can't talk to Jeremy Corbyn.

00:54:11.620 I'm Jewish.

00:54:12.080 He won't speak to me.

00:54:15.200 We made him laugh.

00:54:16.260 is there anything that we can do as individuals is there is there a particular charity that is

00:54:28.040 doing good work you feel in venezuela people can give money to is a is there is any particular

00:54:33.100 policy that you think needs to be advocated and supported um i think you can do all of that yeah

00:54:39.020 but for me please stop looking at this as if this is a failure of socialism i've not just i think

00:54:44.500 that would help massively and create awareness

00:54:46.520 on an issue that is just being sucked

00:54:48.520 into. If I criticise this

00:54:50.420 and I love Corbyn, then I can't be able to

00:54:52.400 because I'm criticising socialism.

00:54:54.280 This is not about socialism. It's not about capitalism.

00:54:57.060 And that rhetoric is

00:54:58.400 the pressure that is helping politicians not do anything

00:55:00.580 about it. If you're talking about

00:55:02.420 whether this works or doesn't work or I don't

00:55:04.540 criticise any left-wing government in the world,

00:55:06.480 this is not a left or

00:55:08.540 right-wing problem. This is

00:55:10.560 something that's gone wrong and people need to call it out.

00:55:13.300 Thank you very much for coming on TriggerNomity, Vladimir.

00:55:16.240 For anyone who wants to follow you on Twitter

00:55:17.920 to keep up with the great work that you're doing,

00:55:19.780 what's your Twitter handle?

00:55:20.660 Very simple.

00:55:22.940 It's add Vlad underscore Hernandez underscore.

00:55:26.260 Should I say it again?

00:55:27.300 So follow Vladimir.

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00:55:50.800 and yeah

00:55:52.040 we'll see you in a week from now

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00:56:00.440 this is what I have to deal with 0.99

00:56:02.060 every fucking week 0.99

00:56:02.820 this is a new platform 0.99

00:56:04.300 YouTube

00:56:04.620 sounds like Looney Tunes

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00:56:15.680 and we'll see you next week

00:56:16.480 see you in a week

TRIGGERnometry - April 28, 2019

Vladimir Hernandez on Venezuela, Mexico and the War on Drugs

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