Festive Left Friday Blogging: Caracas erupts!

Street-level reaction as Venesat-1 (Simón Bolívar) is launched. Here’s what the people are saying:

Maylin de Bigot: I think this is a scientific and technological advance for our country. It’s an achievement that puts us in the technological vanguard, an achievement for this revolution which brings great benefits and we are moving forward.

Héctor Suárez: This satellite represents a great historical step for us into the space age, above all for communications, medicine and education. For many years we had no expectations of this.

José Herrera: We’re very happy, because this has many benefits for all the citizens, for all Venezuelans and we will enjoy to the fullest the blessings of this technological era.

Lourdes Santander: For me this is something excellent, it’s one of the greatest works we’ve seen in the struggle for technological sovereignty, and it will bring advances into the most remote corners of Venezuela.

Nadia Castillo: This is the best thing for Venezuela and for all Latin Americans. It will also benefit us in every way, and I hope it won’t be the only one, that we’ll see more initiatives that will give us sovereignty.

Susana Galán: The launching of the Simón Bolívar satellite is a historic feat for the country in promoting communications. A large part of the ties we have with the United States are in communications, and this will help us distinguish ourselves at that level of communications.

Translation mine.

Here’s the best English-language account thus far. Yummy information–chow on down!