Alexander Main

Senior Associate for International Policy at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC

“What’s the Matter with Venezuela?”

Wednesday, March 7, 2018, 7 PM
Downtown Presbyterian Church
121 North Fitzhugh Street, Rochester

The program is free and open to the public.
Wheelchair-accessible and looped for those with hearing problems. ​

Are you wondering what’s really going on in Venezuela? If the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other mainstream news outlets are to be believed, the dual economic and political crises currently roiling Venezuela are entirely the fault of a corrupt, socialist dictatorship that only manages to cling to power through violent repression of dissent, control of the media and fraudulent elections. Beltway pundits contend that widespread scarcities of food and medicine, skyrocketing inflation and social turmoil are the inevitable end result of unsustainable and retrograde policies initiated during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).

Dr. Main will challenge the prevailing media narrative on Venezuela by debunking a few of its key assumptions and showing how the current crises in Venezuela have multiple causes, some attributable to the government of Nicolas Maduro, others attributable to the actions of sectors of the Venezuelan opposition, the United States government and other external players. Main argues that finding an enduring solution to Venezuela’s economic and political problems will require significant revisions of policy and behavior on the part of all of the aforementioned actors.