This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 15th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

For the poor in Venezuela, life has gotten worse.

Measures of material well-being have declined.

The media slowly restricted, even nationalized. Now a new report

from the Organization of American States meticulously documents the human rights abuses in Venezuela,

and the country Hugo Chavez claims as his model Cuba.

Ian Vasquez, director of Cato's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, comments.

This report just basically confirms what we already knew, that the violations of people's rights in Venezuela

has been systematic.

And we're talking about all sorts of freedoms, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, political freedom has been severely

curtailed.

What this report does is document it very well and it's not the first report to do so.

Human Rights Watch has also done so last year for which their main people in charge were kicked out of the country

when that report was unveiled.

But it's a report that comes from the organization of American states and that makes it that much more important.

What are some of the examples of human rights abuses in Venezuela?

Of course, one of them involves a free market think tank that operates in Venezuela.

Freedom of speech is under attack and already Chavez has closed down many television

stations, many, many radio stations recently he shut down 34 or so and is threatening to

shut down some 200 more. One of the think tanks down there is CEDISA, and they had been running a campaign, a very effective

campaign in favor of protecting your private property rights. very effective

...