The reader who visits the website of the National Institute of Statistics of Venezuela (I have verified it again on Tuesday, May 5) will find a useless page: since 2011 in our country there is no census. When you try to know the information of that last study, an illegible box appears, in which a dozen data follow each other automatically, without being able to access any other relevant information. There are no trend charts, analyses, tables, or any other resource that contributes any knowledge. The information is offered as filler: words and numbers with which they occupy the space.
On that page of constitutive ugliness there is, for example, an offer of Economic, Social, Environmental and Demographic Electronic Bulletins that, in the best of cases, reach until 2013 and 2014: they have not been updated for a decade. A blue background box states that, based on the 2011 census, the estimated population as of June 30 will be 33,728,624 (thirty-three million seven hundred twenty-eight thousand six hundred twenty-four) Venezuelans. There is no information to explain that, from 2011 until now, more than 7 million Venezuelans live outside the territory and that this number grows every day. The National Institute of Statistics of Venezuela remains oblivious to this overwhelming reality. It does not explain how many of the total live abroad or how many live in the territory.
This means that the official body in charge of "exercising the technical stewardship of statistical activity of a public nature in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, coordinating the National Statistical System and producing official statistics, aimed at national planning and the exercise of popular power in public management", does not refer a word about the demographic debacle in progress. It means, in essence, that the data on the page is not even partial, since its omissions are of extreme gravity. The INE website speaks of a deleted country, of a country that no longer exists. A sort of fictional country that ended after the 2011 census. But let's continue.
The page of the National Institute of Statistics of Venezuela shows that since 2011 there has been no census in the country.
Try the reader, as an exercise, to enter the website of Petróleos de Venezuela (I did it on May 9 and 10). Does not open. It is out of order. There is no explanation. It just doesn't show up. Anyone who proposes, for example, to know what the Venezuelan state-owned oil company says about current oil production will find no answer. It's a secret. Another piece of the country disappeared.
It can be thought that an alternative to look for information on Venezuelan oil production – the most important data of our precarious economy – could be found on the website of the Ministry of Popular Power of Oil. Do the search - I did it on May 10 - and the result will be the same as if the page did not exist: not a single data. There is no talk of production.
If the reader – another exercise – tries to find data on the current trends of crime in Venezuela, say, referring to the year 2022, and comes up with the appropriate thing, namely that the information should be on the website of the People's Power Ministry for Interior Relations, Justice and Peace, and visits the page, he will find this reality: There is also no information. Zero. What there is is propaganda, filler material, presentation of non-existent programs.
On the website of the Ministry of Popular Power for Health I make some attempts, to see what information I get: I click on the tab that says National Surgical Plan and it does not open. It doesn't exist. Then I click on the tab that says Library. Result: nothing. There is no document. Click on the tab with the name of Works and Agreements: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Public Consultation tab: "At the moment there is no information". Data on diseases in Venezuela? The hospital situation? Information about the realities of health in Venezuela, state by state, or municipality by municipality? Nothing. There is no mention of the country. Of the country that for the regime does not exist. And the historic Epidemiological Bulletin published for decades by the Ministry of Health? I didn't find it. Surely swallowed by the desire to hide the collapse of health and the Health System.
On the website of the Ministry of Popular Power for Education is not much I can comment: it does not open. It doesn't work.
I continue my tour and enter the website of the Ministry of Popular Power of Economy, Finance and Foreign Trade. Some findings: the Fiscal Statistics, presented quarterly, go up to 2009. Everything else is propaganda and irrelevant information of this kind: praise for the 62 years of the Cuban dictatorship or the 153 years of the birth of the criminal Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Lots of filler.
From the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands I will only add: it does not have a website. Not even to lie.
Of the obtuse design that predominates in the majority; systematic opacity of information; of the contents where the outdated predominates, combined with abundant lies; Of the contempt that all this radiates towards the citizens, many pages could be written. Because, it is important to point out, it is a policy aimed at blurring, hiding and making incomprehensible the realities of the destroyed country, of the country broken on all four sides, of the ruinous country that is the tangible result of the Chavez and Maduro regime.
The information available today on the realities of Venezuela is the product of the activity of non-governmental organizations, universities, trade unions of various kinds, religious groups, non-profit associations and international organizations. Venezuela has become a state without official statistics.
Ours is a country in which it is not possible to plan anything rigorously and with any probability of success, because there is not even a way to establish starting points, bases to measure the effectiveness of what is done. Power is not interested in knowing or knowing the extreme gravity of what its incompetence and predatory will has carried out.
There are no statistics because the corrupting and destructive eagerness is, at bottom, the enemy of information, of transparency, of data. The country stripped of numbers is the product of a strategy. Promoting a nation without official data, a widespread statute of opacity, censorship and disinformation, are necessary requirements to maintain the power of a regime dedicated to stealing and violating human rights. It is not only a way of exercising censorship, but also of deepening the social and political fragility of Venezuelan society.
The author is director of El Nacional de Caracas and lives in exile in Madrid