A Free Community Gathering Featuring Guest Speakers:

**CARLOS RON**
VICE MINISTER Venezuelan Ministry of External Affairs for North America

**STEVE ELLNER**
PROFESSOR Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela

The government of Canada has imposed sanctions on Venezuela and is joining with five other right-wing Latin America countries to attempt to bring the government of President Nicolas Maduro to the International Criminal Court. The United States has inflicted its own crippling sanctions and is increasingly violent in its rhetoric against the country. The mainstream media constantly repeats that Venezuela is a human-rights abusing dictatorship with a refugee crisis comparable to Syria.

Is this the only side to the story, or is there more at play? Come to listen and discuss “What is Really Happening in Venezuela?” for yourself!

FULL SPEAKER BIOS:
CARLOS RON is Vice minister of foreign relations for North America at the Ministry of Popular Power for Foreign Affairs. He had previously served in the Venezuelan embassy in Washington D.C. in charge of Venezuelan business affairs in the United States since March 2017. He was posted for four years in the political section of the Venezuelan Embassy in Brazil, and he was an adviser in the Office of Foreign Relations of the Presidency of Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez. He graduated from Latin American Studies at Rutgers University and specialized in International Relations in the University of Brasilia.

STEVE ELLNER earned his Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of New Mexico in 1980. Since 1977 he has taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela and for a ten year period taught in the graduate school of law and political science of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He has been a visiting professor at St. John Fisher College (2001), Georgetown University (2004), Duke University (2005), Universidad de los Andes (Venezuela, 2008), Universidad de Buenos Aires (2010), Australian National University (2013), and Tulane University (2015).