Venezuelan Analsis
March 5, 2015
The rich and reactionary in Venezuela and their
allies in Washington celebrated when Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez died two
years ago on March 5, 2013. US President Barack Obama did not even make the
customary and common courtesy of sending his condolences for the passing of a
head of state.
Instead the US empire stepped up its demonization
campaign against Chávez’s legacy in order to bury his Bolivarian Revolution. In
contrast to his treatment of Chávez, Obama was effusive in his praise of King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who died in January 2015 and was the leader of a
country which Amnesty International rightly labels one of the most tyrannical
and repressive regimes in the world.[1]
¡YO SOY
CHÁVEZ!
So why did poor and progressive people in
Venezuela, throughout Latin America, and indeed all over the world mourn
Chávez’s passing and proclaim ¡Yo soy Chávez! (I am Chávez)?
Lisa Sullivan, a School of the America Watch
activist who has lived in the barrios of Venezuela where she brought up her
three children, had this to say at the time of Chávez’s passing: “Let there be
no doubt: the Venezuelan people have come of age. Chávez is gone, but what
resonates on every street and every plaza today: Yo soy Chávez. I am
Chávez. I am the leader, the dreamer, the visionary, the teacher, the
defender of justice, the weaver of another world that is possible.”
More than anything, the phrase Yo soy
Chávez is a declaration of empowerment…this in a nutshell is the great
legacy of Hugo Chávez and the one that the empire is bent on destroying.
In contrast, when Ronald Reagan died – arguably one of the most influential US
presidents in the 20thcentury, no one said “I am Ronnie.”
CHÁVEZ’S
GRAND SYNTHESIS
Hugo Chávez was born to humble origins. He was
brought up in a mud hut by his grandmother, because his parents were too poor
to care for all of their children.
Chávez was of mixed ethnic origin: European,
Indigenous, and African blood runs through his lineage. Chávez was known to
comment that he loved his broad lips and curly hair – referring to his African
heritage, in a nation where the elite worshiped European standards of beauty.
Venezuela has the most Miss Universes to its credit, and cosmetic plastic
surgery may well be considered the national pastime for certain sectors of the
populace.
Much changed in the 14 years of Hugo Chávez’s
stewardship in Venezuela. One of the most profound and influential aspects of
the Chávez legacy is his original synthesis of three grand strands of political
discourse: popular Christian ethics, Simón Bolívar’s heritage of regional
integration, and socialist political-economic thought.[2]
Chávez had a voracious appetite for reading, a
towering intellect, and insomnia; three characteristics that made him a particularly
fast learner.
POPULAR
CHRISTIANITY
Popular Christianity, an early and enduring
influence for Hugo Chávez, informed his deep commitment to justice and the
equality as well as his generosity and forgiveness of adversaries. Let it be
noted that rather than executing the perpetrators of the US-backed coup in 2002
or even jailing them, Chávez gave them amnesty, demonstrating a belief in
redemption and forgiveness.
Central to popular Christian thought is the
“preferential option for the poor,” which Chávez saw as creating a state that
serves the interest of poor and working people rather than the rich. Inheriting
a state bureaucracy from the old order, Chávez set to work creating a parallel
order of institutions to serve the poor.
Drawing from Christian imagery, he called these new
parallel state institutions for the poor “missions.” About 1.5 million
Venezuelans learned to read and write thanks to the Mission Robinson
I literacy campaign. Free access to health care was ensured for all
Venezuelans with Mission Barrio Adentro; the number of doctors
increased, infant mortality rate fell, and average life expectancy increased.
Chávez led the rewriting the Venezuelan
constitution to reflect the interests of the poor. A new electoral system was
instituted, which Jimmy Carter deemed the “best in the world.”
ED Noor: This system is so good that it has frustrated the enemies of Venezuela at every turn when they have been unhappy with the final outcomes because there is absolutely no fault to be found, no evidence of tampering or irregular behaviours simply because it is foolproof.
.
ED Noor: This system is so good that it has frustrated the enemies of Venezuela at every turn when they have been unhappy with the final outcomes because there is absolutely no fault to be found, no evidence of tampering or irregular behaviours simply because it is foolproof.
.
SIMÓN
BOLÍVAR: VENEZUELAN NATIONAL IDENTITY
The second great wellspring of Chávista thought was
the man who led the liberation of the Spanish colonies in South America, Simón
Bolívar.
Pre-Chávez, Venezuela was arguably the most
Americanized country in South America. The elite especially privileged US
culture over Venezuelan culture. Venezuelans played baseball, not soccer. A
mere decade and a half ago, most analysts would have ranked Venezuela the least
likely candidate nation to stand up on its own two feet to challenge the empire
to be recognized as sovereign and equal.
One of the few avenues for advancement for a poor
boy like Chávez was to join the military. In the military, Chávez intensively studied
the history of his country, eventually taught at the military college, and
developed a new synthesis of revolutionary nationalism. Chávez literally
rewrote the history of Venezuela and popularized it.
An analogous scenario for the US would involve Howard
Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States. Imagine
if that view of history became the dominant one and as a bonus Zinn would have
become the president of the US. That is the magnitude of the sea change of
popular understanding of Venezuelan history that took place under Chávez.
In a mere 14 years home grown culture blossomed. A
renewed sense of national identity and pride had become nearly universal, even
among the Miami jet-setting opposition elements.
Today the young musical wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel
is not only the director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar in
Venezuela, but also of the Philharmonic Orchestra in Los Angeles. Culture is
still being imported, but the shipping lanes are going both ways now.
Early on Chávez appropriated the symbols of
Venezuelan national pride, calling his movement the Bolivarian Revolution. When
Pedro Carmona was sworn in as the president in the short-lived US-backed coup
in 2002, the coup perpetrators removed the portrait of Simón Bolívar from behind
the presidential seat.
Now even the opposition cannot ignore the
Bolivarian heritage. The same man who supported the coup attempt in 2002,
opposition candidate Enrique Capriles, called his presidential election
campaign organization Command Bolívar in 2013. That Capriles changed his colors
is a testament to how thoroughly the symbols of the ChávistaBolivarian
Revolution had captured the popular consciousness that even the opposition had
to appropriate them to stay in the game.
The hypocrisy of the US-backed opposition taking on
the colors of Bolívar is unmasked by Simón Bolívar’s own prescient words made
back in 1829: “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague
Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”
The Chávistas have no illusions about what their
opposition represented, as a Chávista flyer from the 2013 election campaign
shows Uncle Sam wearing a Capriles mask. Chávista militants continually raise
the examples of Chile in 1973 and more recently of Libya and Syria where the US
used destabilization efforts to try to foment regime change. As recently as
February 12, following a new round of US sanctions, Venezuelan President Maduro
revealed an active plan to overthrow this government.
BOLÍVAR:
REGIONAL INTEGRATION
In the tradition of Bolívar, Chávez was
instrumental in promoting regional integration. The Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of Our America (ALBA) was founded in 2004 between Cuba and Venezuela
and now comprises 11 member countries. ALBA is based on fair trade, mutual
respect, and reciprocity.
PetroCaribe, created in 2005, affords 17 countries
in Latin America and the Caribbean with a secure energy supply. Chávez was
instrumental in 2008 in forming UNASUR, an intergovernmental union of the South
American nations, modeled after the European
Union. Chávez was at the heart of the creation in 2011 of the
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) bringing together for
the first time all 33 nations of the Western Hemisphere, emancipated from the
tutelage of the United States and Canada, which have been excluded from the
body.
These counter hegemonic projects provide an
alternative to subordination to the US empire, which explains why Venezuela is
being targeted by the US with sanctions and other measures to achieve regime
change.
21ST CENTURY
SOCIALISM
For Hugo Chávez, Christian and socialist values
neatly dovetailed. The Christian special option for the poor became the
socialist centrality of class struggle.
Whereas Hugo Chávez absorbed popular Christian
values as a child and discovered Bolívar as a young man, his synthesis of the
socialist tradition did not come until after he assumed the Venezuelan
presidency in 1999. It was not until 2005 that Chávez announced that the goal
of the Bolivarian Revolution was the establishment of 21st century
socialism.
The Bolivarian movement came to embrace socialism
for pragmatic reasons. Through the practical experience of governance, it
became increasingly clear to Chávez and those around him that capitalism with
its ethic of production for profit could not achieve their social justice
objectives.
Out of the socialist tradition, Chávez has championed
community councils and other instruments of participatory democracy,
cooperatives providing employment and education in communitarian values to
their members, and worker managed industries.
The accomplishments of the Bolivarian Revolution to
date are many: land distributed to the landless, poverty rate halved and
extreme poverty reduced by two-thirds, child malnutrition reduced, access to
safe drinking water increased, etc. Social expenditures have been increased and
pensions for the elderly went from less than 400,000 recipients to over to two
million, while hundreds of thousands of new homes were built for those in
slums.
PROBLEMS OF
BUILDING 21ST CENTURY SOCIALISM
Venezuela went from being among one of the most
economically unequal nations in the Latin America to being among the most equal
through the exercise of state power for the populace. All these gains are
currently at stake.
Chávez’s successor is Nicolás Maduro. Now as the
democratically elected president of Venezuela, Maduro’s responsibility is to
lead the defense of the Bolivarian Revolution against the assaults of the
opposition bent at La Salida (literally, The Exit,
but in plain English its regime change) to achieve by
destabilization and violence what they could not achieve at the ballot box. On
February 11, three opposition leaders called for The Transition to
replace President Maduro, which notably did not say by democratic means.
The opposition is abetted by millions of “democracy
enhancement” dollars from the US government along with economic and diplomatic
sanctions against Maduro’s democratic government.
The problems of building 21st century
socialism on a capitalist foundation include crime, inefficiency/shortages, and
inflation/devaluation. These are the problems inherited from the existing
capitalist order and exacerbated by the sabotage of the opposition. This is the
time bomb that has been handed to Maduro.
As Álvaro García Linera vice president of Bolivia
commented, the task of building socialism in a society that is still capitalist
to like trying to overhaul the engine of your car while it is still running.
Justice demands that the Venezuelans be allowed to resolve their problems
without the interference of the US government.
truth isn't on holiday...even in Venezuela
ReplyDeleteAbraham did not have a Talmud & Hate Jesus and was from
Ur of the Chaldees...
for the record, Jesus admonished to know the Truth
and said his "messengers" will round up the workers of iniquity
and put them in the ovens of truth...
MUCHO GRACIAS to Noor
HUGO LIVES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_G._Berg
sincerely
Davy
Thank you Noor. Missed this one. The Revolution is eternal now, until WE win it. ALL of us. May God make it so. XOXO
ReplyDeleteMissed sending you another great one about Chavez:
ReplyDeleteCOMMENT ON HUGO CHAVEZ
https://quatloosx.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/comment-on-hugo-chavez/
We need one like Chavez here now! Where is he?
Omgosh... three years already?!....
DeleteWe could use another Qaddafi too.....