Venezuelan Case Research Articles

Emergency extrusion and explantation: consequences of intrusion in Venezuelan plastic surgery. Venezuelan case report

It should be noted that intrusion is understood as the exercise of the activities of professionals by people not authorized to do it, despite having a degree in a speciality that includes the basic surgical skills to perform a procedure. In post-augmentation mammoplasty patients, a seroma warrants timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment; a delay can cause extrusion of the implant. Objective: Report the case of an emergency surgical extrusion and explantation resulting from an augmentation mammoplasty performed by a professional not certified in Plastic Surgery. Clinical case: 19 years old female with a history of augmentation mammoplasty by a General Surgeon 6 months previously, who developed a seroma in the right breast 2 weeks prior to admission and, since it was not treated, went to the emergency room with extrusion of round textured right breast implant and phlogosis. Bilateral emergency surgical explantation and antibiotic coverage were performed. Communication: Explantation may be indicated in multiple scenarios including complications such as extrusion. The risk of extrusion includes several factors, including infection, seromas, hematomas, or incorrect surgical technique when placing the implant. In the present case, intraoperative findings revealed after bilateral explantation that the implants were located in a subglandular plane and the left one was beginning to generate skin retraction. After extrusion of an implant, it is a priority to cure the infection and maintain the size of the breast until it is safe to place a new implant.

State capacity and the unplanned decline of Venezuela’s petro-state: reflections for sustainable transitions and the Green New Deal

Venezuela has historically been one of the world’s largest oil producers and has the largest crude reserves. However, the country has experienced a dramatic political and economic crisis over the past decade that has decimated its oil industry. Venezuela’s production shrunk sharply in the past six years, oil exports have declined and the country is now a marginal producer in global markets. This crisis has taken place amid a process of autocratic political consolidation and the establishment of a predatory political economy. This article focuses on this crisis and interrogates to what extent it can pave the way to a sustainable move away from oil dependence in dialogue with recent debates on sustainable transition processes. Building on the intersections of Global Political Economy and environmental politics, we highlight the importance of interconnecting links across state, society and international actors in viable sustainability transitions, such as proposals for Green New Deal(s) in different national contexts. Our analysis of the Venezuelan case subsequently highlights the absence of these capacities. We argue that contemporary Venezuela underscores the risks and costs of post-oil energy transitions in rentier states. Contemporary Venezuela is thus a cautionary tale for resource-dependent economies that may also undergo post-oil transitions in the future due to shifting global conditions but likewise lack the necessary state capacity to respond and adapt.

About sanitary dermatology. The Venezuelan case

About sanitary dermatology. The Venezuelan case

The Illiberal Experience in Venezuela: The Transition from Representative Democracy to Authoritarianism

At the end of the 20th century, Venezuela transitioned from being a representative liberal democracy to becoming a form of electoral authoritarian state through a hybrid regime based on illiberal democracy. The crisis of the representative democracy paved the way for a coalition formed by groups close to the radical left and the military establishment headed by Hugo Chávez Frías, who took the electoral route, after having first tried and failed to lead a coup, to reach the presidency with popular support due to widespread social unrest, to take power in 1999. This transition was carried out, at the local level, progressively by the actions of an illiberal and revolutionary regime, as a deliberate reaction against representative liberal democracy. The paper examines the illiberal experience in Venezuela between 1999 and 2007 and its background. While it is true that illiberalism does not always create the conditions that lead to the inevitable transition to an authoritarian regime, the Venezuelan case is an example of its use in the continual dismantling of the rule of law, an increasingly common phenomenon in various countries with a democratic tradition.

Mapping the itineraries of semiotic artefacts in the linguistic landscape of protest: The case of shields in Venezuela

AbstractThis study explores the emergence and developments through time of a semiotic artefact, the shield, used by demonstrators in violent anti-government protests in contemporary Venezuela. Drawing on the concept of discourse itineraries (Scollon 2008), the material and semiotic transformations this artefact underwent are mapped through various protest cycles, whilst considering the semiotic enrichment of century-long traditions of shields that inform the various functions they play within current day itineraries. The study concludes by discussing the advantages of using the concept of discourse itineraries for understanding moments in the life cycle of semiotic artefacts in the linguistic landscape and outlines future opportunities to expand the analysis of shields beyond the Venezuelan case. (Linguistic landscape of protest, discourse itineraries, semiotic artefact, shields, Venezuela)*

Some effects of convulsive political scenarios on food systems. The Venezuelan case

Crises in countries outside of war may give rise to complex emergencies in which man -made situations and political issues, among others, lead to humanitarian calamities with high levels of food insecurity and displaced populations. Venezuela is chosen as an example of a country under such circumstances. The number of Venezuelans refugees and migrants worldwide has reached 7.1 million people out of a population of 28.5 million, the vast majority hosted by Latin America and the Caribbean. In Venezuela, all sectors of the economy and actors of the food system have been disrupted by an administration ruling for 23 years during which, declines in oil production, fuel availability and flawed macroeconomic decisions caused relevant drops in food production and deterioration of real income and living conditions generating malnutrition, food insecurity, and forcing survival strategies not only by the population but also by the food industry which has been subjected to strong pressures having to appeal to resilience and reinvention, abandoning innovation. In the midst of this context a humanitarian space was opened. In this article an attempt is made to describe the effects on the food industry, the academic and scientific sector, the international agencies and NGOs, national humanitarian organizations, as well as the government itself, to feed Venezuelans.

What do we know about sustainable construction? The importance to learn from the global knowledge. The Venezuelan case

Construction stakeholders plan to guarantee the success of projects. Still, the results frequently are different in quality, time, or costs. The disruptions are frequent, and the stakeholders must be ready to react promptly to changes while keeping competitiveness and sustainability. This goal requires proper construction education. Based on diverse civil engineering and architecture programs, the article evaluates if current construction education includes past knowledge, notions of sustainability, and global matters to allow its participants to identify challenges and risks, giving them the tools to act appropriately. The results show different construction education perspectives. Some are very advanced, and others are not. The Venezuelan case is a reference to link theory and practice in the construction sector. Incorporating critical analysis and comparisons with data and cases from diverse successes, disruptions, or errors is presented as education innovation to support this industry's competitiveness and sustainability.

Venezuela: Construction problems and sustainable construction. Collecting data to put the puzzle together. Part 1

The Venezuelan construction sector faces complex problems from multidisciplinary causes. The severe consequences keep the country far from the sustainable development goals established by the UN by 2030. With the certainty that education is fundamental to finding long-lasting global solutions and the aim to address Venezuela into the sustainable path progressively, the article adds new data about the main problems that confront the construction sector and the fundaments of sustainable construction education performed in Venezuela. With the participation of some construction stakeholders and public data, the authors try to progressively assemble the puzzle of the Venezuelan case in an attempt to help to develop a consciousness about the importance of improving education, with an emphasis on construction, incorporating sustainability concepts from the basic processes to be able to identify opportunities, risks and to be resilient, evolve and succeed in the current changing and unpredictable world.

Criminal Governance in Times of Post-Chávez Revolution and Questioned Legitimacy: A Look at the Different Territorial Orders and Armed Actors in Caracas

This article compares the configuration of two armed territorial orders and forms of local governance in neo-patrimonial authoritarian contexts in Caracas that suffer from what has been called a “complex humanitarian crisis”. Based on the analysis of ethnographic data, this text dialogues with the concepts of collaborative governance and criminal governance to understand how social control functions locally in an authoritarian context where a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis has restricted the resources and scope of government. The Venezuelan case is especially revealing of processes of mutation in the relations between armed actors and a fragmented state that involve social control functions in their territories in a context of contested legitimacy.

Gobernanzas criminales en tiempos de revolución post-Chávez y legitimidad cuestionada: Una mirada a los distintos órdenes territoriales y actores armados en Caracas

This paper compares the configuration of two armed territorial orders and the forms of local governance in neo-patrimonial authoritarian contexts in Caracas that suffer from what has been called a “complex humanitarian crisis”. We dialogue with the concepts of collaborative governance and criminal governance to understand how social control functions locally in an authoritarian context where a political, economic, and humanitarian crisis has restricted the resources and scope of government. The Venezuelan case reveals with special interest the processes of mutation in the relations between armed actors and a fragmented State for social control functions in their territories in a context of contested legitimacy.

Ethics and Democracy in Access to Food. The Venezuelan Case

The humanitarian emergency that Venezuela is experiencing, one of whose edges is the food insecurity of more than 80% of the population, coincides with the serious institutional deterioration of the country and with the rupture of the constitutional order under the so-called “socialism of the 21st century” (2005 to the present), as reflected in various reports, including that of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Access to food as a fundamental human right is better valued and guaranteed in democracies, where free media and independent public powers function as counterweights to the central executive power and act as effective instruments for correcting the wrong policies in food and nutritional matters, and officials responsible for direct and indirect damages to the general population or to vulnerable groups, are sanctioned. This topic has been studied by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. In functional democracies, the ethical dimension of the right to food is also better guaranteed, since this right is realized not only by ensuring sufficient, balanced and healthy food, to meet the nutritional needs of the population, but that food is supplied in a culturally acceptable manner and seeking ways, mechanisms and procedures that are not contrary to the dignity of human beings. As a human right, the State has the greatest responsibility in guaranteeing the right to food, but not to fulfill a mere welfare duty or as a benefactor, but to guarantee that no one suffers from hunger or severe malnutrition, providing safe, nutritious and sufficient food, to those who cannot do it themselves, prevent all forms of discrimination in access to food or resources that are used to produce them, such as land, and take measures to ensure that families and their members can feed themselves in a dignified manner. As the Venezuelan regime closed the door to freedoms, malnutrition, hunger and non-fulfillment of the right to food also grew, according to FAO reports and Sen's assumptions under these scenarios seem to hold in the country.

Exporting the Chavista Model: The Venezuelan Case for Autocracy Promotion in the Region

President Hugo Chávez strove to change the socio‐political and economic system of his country, Venezuela. His revolutionary mission implied a strong regional projection and was intended to disseminate his transformative project in the wider region. This article focuses on the outward‐directed efforts of Chávez to shape his regional environment and examines the active and intended promotion of the Chavista model. The analysis shows that Chávez's mission was guided by four objectives: gaining ideological protagonism, facilitating the installation of like‐minded leaders, bolstering their persistence in power, and exporting his ‘alternative’ model of rule.

Unravelling democratic erosion: who drives the slow death of democracy, and how?

ABSTRACT Empirical evidence points to democratic erosion as dominant pattern in Post-Cold War cases. The debate about democratic erosion so far remains fragmented due to the proliferation of labels, and the lack of conceptualization and a shared definition. This paper presents a concept of democratic erosion as a route of “slow death” of democracy developing three definatory features: agency, opportunity and sequencing. Regarding the drivers of this change, the argument presented here is actor-centered, conceiving democratic erosion as a process shaped by the intentionality and systematic actions of an erosion agent. In view of the mechanism, the article introduces sequencing as specific logic of action that is able to explain the incremental dismantling. This logic of action is derived inductively from the Venezuelan case and illustrates the pattern of active and intentional change of rules realized in sequenced hollowing out of democratic structures, processes, norms, and principles. Five developed sequences serve as framework for the analysis of democratic erosion.

Seguridad alimentaria, Covid-19 y crisis: una aplicación del modelo de regresión logística binomial para su estudio

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span>La pandemia por Covid-19 ha generado impactos de serias consecuencias, y si bien en el caso venezolano resultan agravantes, es especialmente importante en el ámbito de la seguridad alimentaria. La investigación descriptiva cuantitativa tuvo por objetivo estudiar la percepción e identificación de indicadores sobre el estado de seguridad alimentaria venezolana, aportando conocimiento para definir o reorientar las políticas públicas dirigidas a las personas más vulnerables. Se aplicaron 507 encuestas a personas residentes en el municipio Fernández Feo, estado Táchira, próximo a la frontera con Colombia. El modelo de análisis empleado fue el de Regresión Logística Binaria, con SPSS</span><span>®</span><span>, identificándose nueve hallazgos, explicativos y predictivos, que determinaron la presencia o </span>ausencia de determinadas características en los programas sociales de alimentación del Estado venezolano, así como grupos con mayor o menos posibilidades de acceso a tales programas. Se concluyó —dejando nuevas perspectivas para investigaciones más específicas— cómo una emergencia sanitaria por pandemia incide exponencialmente en la demanda de grupos poblacionales de escasos recursos económicos, de ayudas sociales, de carácter público o privado, para satisfacer, en lo posible, sus necesidades vitales de alimentación.</p></div></div></div>

Dismantling of Institutionalization and State Policies as Guarantors of Food Security in Venezuela: Food Safety Implications

Historically, Venezuela was recognized as a country with solid government food safety policies, science-based legislation, clear national food security goals, strict standards for domestic food production and imports, and a system of institutions committed to ensuring safety and quality along each step of the food chain. Major institutions that aimed to insure people's welfare, nutrition and food availability, and safety were created between 1936 and 1949. Remarkable progress was achieved in terms of control of tropical maladies and fight against hunger and malnutrition. The National Institute of Hygiene set the standards for food safety and the continuous surveillance of available foods. The National Codex Alimentarius Committee was officially created in 2001. Nowadays, the situation has dramatically deteriorated as indicated by a severe decline of national food production and a strong dependence on food imports, whose prices make them inaccessible to the majority of Venezuelans. In response to the humanitarian crisis, the government created a food program, the so-called Local Supply and Production Committee (CLAP), to distribute basic foods at reduced prices but with clear intentions of social and political control of the population. Currently, CLAP products come from government imports at a preferential exchange rate. Under the umbrella of an economic emergency decree, many food safety regulations and surveillance protocols have been relaxed or eliminated, often resulting in the acquisition of low-quality items that do not meet Venezuelan food preferences or quality standards. The objective of this work is to describe, through the Venezuelan case, how the food security infrastructure of a country can be dismantled. We address (1) the development of institutions dedicated to promoting food security and nutrition and the recent dismantling of the sector; (2) the creation, characteristics, and weakness of the CLAP program; and (3) the current food insecurity crisis and the attempts to provide humanitarian help to the Venezuelan population.

What do immigrants make of immigration policies? Insights from interviews with Venezuelans in Chile

AbstractIn this article, we build on qualitative data from 37 in‐depth interviews with Venezuelan immigrants in Chile, collected in 2017 and 2018, to explore how they make sense of sudden immigration policy changes made by the Sebastián Piñera government in mid‐2018. Linked to these perceptions, we explore our interviewees’ attitudes towards other immigrant groups. We contend that, while immigrant participation in policymaking often is a normatively desired form of inclusion, immigrant perceptions of other immigrants and of immigration policy are not uniform. We find that immigrants can have very negative perceptions of other immigrants, favouring restrictive policies. Immigrants influence the contexts of reception for newcomers, and—in the case of Chile—they have voting and political rights that places them in a position of casting some influence over immigration policies. Studying the Venezuelan case is particularly illuminating, as this immigration was considered a desirable or acceptable immigration.

Dreaming on Latin America: Reflections on Russian Diplomacy in the Region

The article contains an outline of evolution of so-called Russian return into Latin America. The author tries to analyze how Russian foreign policy towards the Latin American and Caribbean region over the last three decades pointing some its key features and trying to define existing obstacles for its implementation, and to make some conclusions about possible prospects for Russias position in the region facing new challenges. Based on a literature and media review and a survey of documents and available statistical data, as also on the analysis of official statements, the aim of this article is to contribute towards a more profound understanding of Russias policy in Latin America. The extension of the article doesnt permit to make a thorough research of all the details of Moscows return to the continent; however, the author will refer to Venezuelan case at the contemporary stage as one of the important issues for Russian policy. The crisis in Venezuela proves to be a test for Russia: is it able to maintain an influential actor in Latin America or not. To sum up, this case is important in the context of this article as it shows if Russian diplomacy in Latin America is really new or it is a re-edition of Soviet policy toward the region.

Discipline, Stability, and Sustainability in Venezuelan Public Finance

The objective of the proposal of a system of fiscal rules for Venezuela is twofold: to achieve the stabilization and sustainability of public finances, and to provide foundations for policies aimed at restoring the country’s basic macroeconomic balances and a sustained medium and long-term growth path. Before presenting such system, we offer an overview of the current state of the subject on fiscal rules and – being Venezuela an oil country – focus on their main aspects and restrictions in natural resource economies. To evaluate the proposed system of fiscal rules, we calibrate and simulate a tailored model for the Venezuelan case and perform the estimations in the context of likely short and medium-term macroeconomic scenarios. The results of the exercise allow us to infer its feasibility and convenience if the fiscal rules proposed are implemented after a process of fiscal consolidation and restoration of basic macroeconomic equilibria.

Latin American triple-A journals 2: The Venezuelan case

This article advances a research agenda from analyzing the state of the Venezuelan scientific production, to promote its recovery and boosting it. Bibliometric indicators extracted from Scopus, Sci-Val, Scimago and Web of science are used to diagnose Venezuela’s ranking and its variations during the past years. We include suggestions to develop a completer and more effective diagnostic, and strategies that may aid in reverting the situation.

The International Criminal Court Interconnection Between International Bodies Venezuela 2019

This article focuses on the current International Criminal Court (ICC) Venezuelan case over fundamental human rights violations and alleged international crimes. I will begin by outlining the situation in Venezuela and the history that led to this state of affairs. It will then review the non-judicial and quasi-judicial activities done in the Venezuelan situation by several international bodies and their inter-relation. Next, the article pays attention to the ICC activities on the Venezuelan case, particularly in its latest standards on timely justice, international cooperation, and budgetary efficiency. Following that, I will give an overview of the institutional international framework focusing on how the interconnection between the disparate international corps could be effective in protecting human rights. Subsequently, I will look into some doctrinal approaches to the legal relationship between international courts and national judiciaries, especially the inoperative ones. I will conclude with the complementarity and subsidiarity principles working in international human rights and international criminal law, especially in the Venezuelan case.