4 Min Read
CIUDAD GUAYANA, Venezuela, Feb 10 (Reuters) - When Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro last week announced a second shipment of oxygen to help neighboring Brazil treat COVID-19 patients, he credited the “Venezuelan working class” at the state-owned Sidor steel plant for the gesture of solidarity.
Maduro has used the dispatches to Brazil’s northern Amazonas state - where hospitals last month ran out of oxygen due to a severe outbreak - to contrast what he calls the benefits of Venezuela’s socialist model with the track record of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, a fierce Maduro critic.
But Maduro left out the reason Sidor had oxygen to spare: steel production, which uses the oxygen as an input, has all but halted at the Puerto Ordaz plant following years of steady output declines since the company was nationalized in 2008 by the late former President Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor.