Gustavo Diaz, the man Venezula's despot (Nicolas Maduro) loves to hate, can be found at his day job in Hoover, Ala., supervising the hardware section at Home Depot, cleverly disguised a just another hard-working employee. But on his lunch and bathroom breaks he's the most influential force in what remains of that country's free economy. And it is thriving thanks to the regime's attempts to stifle it.
How does Gustavo Diaz do it? Through DolarToday.com, which is one of the few companies in that country that sets the exchange rate used to buy and sell dollars. Happily, even it has competitors in the great capitalist tradition of free and open competition. Which means Venezuelans can rely on DolarToday.com to give them an honest evaluation of the bolivar, the official currency and the only one legally allowable in that misruled country. Shades of the late and unlamented Soviet Union, which also had a command-and-control economy that did neither.
In the less than great Soviet tradition, DolarToday.com has been hacked, hijacked and generally harassed. It's even been sued abroad for its honesty. To quote Vice President Aristostobulo Isturiz, "DolarToday is the Empire's strategy to push down the currency and overthrow Maduro." In short, it is an officially declared enemy of the people and must be crushed. Translation: It is a friend of the people that seeks to uphold its interests and freedom in general.
In Venezuela, Doublespeak continues to thrive because Doublethink does. "It's ironic," adds Gustavo Diaz, "that with DolarToday in Alabama, I do more damage to the government than I did as a military man in Venezuela." He took refuge in the free state of Alabama, USA, where a brother and sister were already living in peace and security after being granted political asylum.
Who'd have known this quiet, unassuming man wielded such power? Instead of being driven around Caracas like a certified caudillo, he now drives a beat-up old Toyota Corolla, his Home Depot schedule attached to the sun visor. He holds down a part-time job as a court translator while his 23-year-old son lives in a house close by with some friends. In whatever spare time he has, he may go out to see a Birmingham Barons game. "It's the best you can get in Alabama," he says.
Like the civilized man he is, Gustavo Diaz is no fan of fast food. Instead his wife make him arenas, the customary Venezuelan breakfast of corn-flour tortillas stuffed with shredded meat and cheese. Such is the strange life of a tycoon in exile.
"To me," he says, "it's still a passionate daily fight against totalitarianism." Only he wages it over a website and by setting black-market prices for an economy starved for information as well as goods. Some $15 million may depend every day on his and his partners' projections of just how worthless the bolivar is, but neither he nor his partners make much money from their website, for access to it is free. Even though its Twitter page had a couple of million followers at last unofficial report.
It's not that Gustavo Diaz believes the propaganda he is fed by his old comrades in Caracas, but Venezuelans themselves depend on his website to know how much they should charge in order to obtain real money, namely dollars. For example, a dermatologist in Caracas uses the site to know how much she should charge patients and friends in order for her to buy the medicine and equipment she needs in her practice. "It's a universally accepted price," she says. "There's never any need for haggling." Thanks to the service provided by Gustavo Diaz.
Life under a post-modern dictatorship, or rather double life, requires a dependable medium of exchange and store of value. No wonder the Venezuelan dictatorship simply closed its border with Colombia last year to prevent any trade in dollars and everything else. But money, like water, will always seek its own level, and so the dollars continue to flow despite all the dams and lies built to contain it.
Meanwhile, Gustavo Diaz continues to pursue his double life. What a world, and what a blessedly simple haven this country continues to represent.
Editorial on 12/01/2016