Open Thread on Hugo Chavez

This obit. seems to get it right.

“”Every Hugo Chávez obituary in the Western press
by Sam Kriss

Darth Hugo Destruktor Chávez, the outspoken and inflammatory Venezuelan leader, died yesterday in Caracas when the Invisible Hand of the free market reached down his throat and shook loose his gall bladder. He is survived by his four children and his millions-strong army of terrifying cyborg drones.

To his supporters and those implanted with his mind-controlling Chavismo-chips, Chávez was Emmanuel, the reborn Christ. To his detractors, he was Double Hitler. As ever, the truth is somewhere in the middle – while he was certainly born, he was not Christ; and while there was only one of him, he was most definitely Hitler.

Hugo Chávez exploded onto the world stage in September of 2005, when he took the stand at the United Nations General Assembly to complain at length about the air conditioning. However, he first came to prominence in the hitherto-unknown land of Venezuela in 1992. In that year, he and a band of avaricious raiders attempted to steal the Seer’s Eye, an enormous sapphire kept in the vaults of the Federal Legislative Palace. Thankfully, his plot was foiled, and the stone was destroyed before it could be used as a component in Chávez’s Ionising Doom Cannon, a laser weapon that would have been capable of extinguishing the Sun.

However, that which is dead cannot die, and Chávez escaped the dungeon dimension he was cast into to come to power in 1998. While not going so far as to actually do anything remotely dictatorial, Chávez was a dictator….”

https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/every-hugo-chavez-obiturary-in-the-western-press/

For a more substantive analysis of the broader project of “21st Century Socialism,” I recommend this paper. It stays away from the personality stuff — pro and con — and the frame of seeing everything through relations with the US, and focuses on the key questions of how much Chavez really represented a break with neoliberalism, and how much space opened up for a more transformative popular politics. Satisfying as it is to mock the press coverage in the US (which indeed can be extraordinarily stupid, I think it’s ultimately much more important to analyze the substantive content of the project in Venezuela, which – critical tho Chavez was in initiating it – has been about much more than one individual.

I remember being on a driving trip in Ireland during the 2002 coup with a Venezuelan friend – we were riveted to the radio trying to pick up any news about what was happening. My friend and her family are not natural Chavistas – they are middle class and fairly conservative in many ways, but they supported him on the basis that they alternatives were much worse. The documentary ‘The Revolution will not be Televised’ about that coup is fascinating, even if a little unbalanced.

The problem with Chavez is that it was so hard to see past his charisma and ego. His anti-Americanism was justified in many ways, but the manner in which this extended to supporting the likes of Ahmadinejad and Assad was less endearing, although I suppose its no worse than considering the house of al Saud to be a friend. He was good at the broad brush, but it seems that he wasn’t particularly good at building up the internal structures which Venezuela so badly needed to ensure his reforms had long term benefits. I fear that he has not left a lasting legacy of deep structural reform in governance in Venezuela, something which it desperately needs. Although arguably the problems are so deep rooted that they are unfixable. But it is absolutely unquestionable for anyone who has looked at the recent history of Venezuela that his policies greatly benefited the poor and dispossessed and that he gave great pride to many South Americans.

On a related point, it always baffled me as to why Obama never addressed the hostility of the US establishment to more reformist South American leaders. Most (including the early incarnation of Chavez) were and are not inherently anti-American, by extending pragmatic support and encouragement the US could have reversed the gradual loosening of the bonds between the US and Latin America. But its insistence on seeing things in black and white terms (or dark and blonde terms if you like) has damaged US influence as much as it has caused strife and harm to numerous Latin American countries.

“On a related point, it always baffled me as to why Obama never addressed the hostility of the US establishment to more reformist South American leaders. ”

Every question from the left-of-center about Obama has this same form. Why is he assassinating people with drones, why is he always looking for a bargain to lower Social Security and talking up the deficit, etc. The simple answer is that he’s part of that U.S. establishment; he finds the hostility to left-leaning South American leaders just as useful as every past President has. He doesn’t address it because he doesn’t want to.

I think Chavez was right to move Venezuela in the direction of other socialist oil producing nations, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who also share the wealth among the populace. Socialist Alaska is another good example – and in fact, in terms of domestic policy, Chavez was most like Sarah Palin in his politics – opposing the oil oligarchs, getting a better deal for his people. Like Palin, he made unfortunate foreign allies – she with Bush, Chavez with Ahmadinejad. He was, however, a much harder worker than Palin. He wasn’t a quitter. And he inspired a populist movement in Latin America that has provided an edge to allow the continent to get out from under the terrible Washington consensus.

“so my bafflement is to why the US foreign policy establishment abandoned the pragmatism it is so fond of when it applies elsewhere ..”

I think you need to look deeply at the US FP establishment, particularly those who deal specifically with Latin America/Venezuela .. the think tankers, advisors, regional experts, lobbyists, journalists, those who do the deep thinking on policy .. therein you will find your idiots

But is US policy outside of this example really ‘pragmatic’? Look no further than Iran for a policy that is certainly not pragmatic, but historically contingent, ideological, the result of regional alliances, domestic lobbies, institutional actors/advisors etc..I’d imagine it’s not difficult to draw the same links to US policy towards Venezuela. The Cuban lobby, specific actions at specific times that undermined potential reconciliation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela

Ideological and policy hangovers from the past, ideological disagreements towards a caricatured Chavez all wrapped up in hyperbole, hubris, hysteria and selective moralizing, so on and so forth

Sucks that he didn’t get to live long enough to get the Gaddafi treatment, he certainly deserved it.

The fact that he died believing the CIA induced his cancer is pretty good, but not enough.

‘…I think my question is less about Obama’s motivations and politics, but one based on simple geopolitical pragmatism. The hostility to Chavez and Venezuela seems to me to have been damaging to US interests….’

The qualities which enable a person to come to serious power in the United States — ambition, greed, aggression, ruthlessness, luck — are not necessarily the qualities which enable one to concoct good long-term policies, either for one’s class, or the community which one’s class rules.

Edit

Replace: …in spite of the intimate contacts between officials of the State Department and the US embassy under Otto Reich and Charles Shapiro respectively during the lead up to the coup…

With: …in spite of the intimate contacts between officials of the State Department and the US embassy (under Otto Reich and Charles Shapiro respectively) and the plotters during the lead up to the coup…

Reading the right-wing obits in The Atlantic and Slate, and the leftist one in The Nation leaves me with the following conclusions:
1-the country’s debt is higher, there are now food shortages, and inflation is high; these things are bad.

2-Poverty has fallen dramatically and Chavismo has unleashed a considerably more democratic society (ie. the poor have more of a voice). This is good, and is what really pisses of the oligarchy and its defenders in The Atlantic and Slate the most.

3-Chavez was enabled, and constrained, by the country’s oil rents. Such rents were able to fund social support programs (resulting in the “goods” in #2), but like most rentier states, he needed to use these rents to keep various class factions mollified while Venezuela continues on as an entrepreneurial petro-state with socialistic leanings. The macro-economic “bads” outlined in #1 mostly flow from this contradiction.

On balance: can anyone seriously argue that he wasn’t an improvement over the oligarchy controlled pseudo-democracy that existed before? I have yet to see someone try.

Mao Cheng Ji
If a foreign leader wouldn’t kiss the ring, he/she is an enemy, and has to be put down.

The U.S. probably helped the ’02 coup plotters, as A. Kelleher indicates, but beyond that it didn’t do much to “put down” Chavez. The U.S. intelligence/security establishment’s main attention was focused elsewhere, obviously.

From the outside we can’t really judge until the transition of power. Did he set up a cult of personality with democratic trappings, or did he pair his authoritarian structures with deeper democratic change? If a year from now we have a stable and democratic government in Venezuela, probably the latter. If we have a repressive mess, probably the former. His affection for the dictator class makes me suspicious, but I live thousands of miles away and am not plugged in to the Venezuelan community.

Hector, stop confusing the issue with facts.

What would count as “hearing from Venezuelans” for you? Because evidently, and just for example, his winning election after election doesn’t seem to mean very much to you.

No, it doesn’t. I don’t discount it completely, but it seems that the elections were as clean as can reasonably be expected under the circumstances, so it’s a point in Chavez’s favor, and part of the reason I lean, as I have said, to the “meh” position.

All you really need to do is look at the mobs of people filling the streets and weeping as his coffin went on its procession yesterday. If that doesn’t count as ‘hearing from Venezuelans’, I don’t know what wood.

Sure it counts, but it hadn’t happened until he died, obviously. And certainly the question of how to think about and deal with Chavez mattered more when he was alive and running things.

Speaking of which, it ought to have been clear enough that I thought he should be dealt with like just another foreign leader, ignoring the insults, doing business where we can, and otherwise leaving him alone unless he actually threatens something we have a right or obligation to prevent.

.

The number of innocent civilian adults and children a ruler is fundamentally responsible for killing is a very important metrics for evaluating his or her time in power. In that regard Chavez ranks as less bad than any US president that anyone reading this has lived under. That fact matters independently of any other complaint that may be lodged against Chavez.

Out of curiosity, how is that a ‘lunacy of neo-liberals’? It seem’s the opposite, and a reasonable enough aspiration..

I don’t discount it completely, but it seems that the elections were as clean as can reasonably be expected under the circumstances.

By most reasonable accounts the elections were very clean. Far better than US elections (not that this is the comparison one really wants to use) and comparable to the better Western Europe democracies.

Thanks John! I’ve been offline and only just got back on; will now read comments and try to add something vaguely useful or interesting…

On the pragmatism of the US policies…

The main relevant issue at the time was the ongoing Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiation. Venezuela was already involved by the time Chavez took office and he was pretty open about his desire to wreck the process.

Prior to the coup, the US tried to do two things with a view to isolating Venezuela in the talks: A) mention Venezuela as often as possible (that being popular in the US) and B) associate it with Cuba (about which very dubious claims were made) as tightly as it could.

The botched putsch ruined this approach and a tone of uncharacteristic calmness entered into official Bush administration statements about Venezuela until after the 2004 election.

But immediately after the election, literally within days, the hard line against Venezuela was resumed — something Bush would surely have done earlier had it not been for the coup fiasco. Once again, the policy was to isolate Chavez to enable the FTAA deal to be concluded.

This time around, however, Brazil was getting disillusioned by the aggressive US approach to the talks. It started to resist US pressure more forcefully and to move closer to the Venezuelan position. It was at this point that the US strategy diverged from reality. Rather than engaging with Brazil on matters of substance, it decided to try to isolate both Brazil and Venezuela in the negotiations and even threatened to conclude a deal without either country.

This strategy had no basis in common sense — it was rooted in an understanding of the world a decade or more out of date. The days when the US could just brush off Brazil in an economic negotiation were long gone and the policy was a disaster: the FTAA negotiations failed, Brazil turned it’s attention without regret back to Mercosur, and Chavez celebrated.

This was a major policy disaster by any standards, and Otto Reich’s Machiavellians had contributed by shooting G.W. Bush right in the foot… all of which is of little interest to readers here, I’m sure.

But the point is this: Bush’s FTAA policy, like his Venezuela policy, was self-defeating in its own terms. Effective or even competent Democratic opposition would have scored a lot of points, yet having basically endorsed both Bush’s policies and his tactical approach, and having failed to hold him properly accountable over the 2002 coup, the party made no political capital from the episode whatsoever.

How could it have done so, when it never challenged Republican Party values in any way during the period? Of course Republican Party values were popular at the time. Although they practically guaranteed disaster in the longer run, the craven opposition was unwilling to endure even a modicum of short-run unpopularity to contest them.

If you accept for the sake of popularity that bipartisanship is the highest political virtue then you encourage vanguardism in your adversaries. My suggestion for the next Democratic Party candidate is to forget “hope and change” and instead to try something like “these other maniacs will bring ruin down on all our heads”.

[[
Two points about 2002 I forgot earlier:

* NED funding for the groups responsible for the coup was actually increased subsequently.

* Tellingly, the State Dept version of events during the crisis matched the coup plotters’ plans but not the actuality of what had transpired. E.g. it repeatedly referred to Chavez’ “resignation” when he had done no such thing. When the US Embassy requested to see the resignation letter it had been expecting, the coup plotters instead sent on an unsigned copy — no signed one existed.

]]

it seems that the elections were as clean as can reasonably be expected under the circumstances.

Under the circumstances indeed! Circumstances which did not include widespread efforts at voter suppression, highly interested parties in charge of wildly inconsistent voting procedures, or a chief executive serving at the pleasure of the high court. In addition to the Grandin article JQ links to, see here. Make Google your friend and you can find lots more!

How did he avoid the resource curse? Venezuela is more, not less dependent on oil now than when he took power. Oil production is down considerably since then, and it played a key role in spawning massive corruption in his regime. That Venezuela stayed current on its debt doesn’t change that.

In the context of Venezuelan history, Chavez’s corruption is miniscule. Real corruption was what the oligarchs pre-Chavez were into. See, for example, the reign of Carlos Andreas Perez – if you want to catch a glimpse of peculation by the predatory ruling class. Of course, the ruling class, when it steals things, then regards those things as theirs by right, and the subsequent re-expropriation becomes, in this view, theft and satanism.

It seems to me that to be an accepted ‘progressive’ in the US you have to always apologize for defending popular governments in Latin America. As a progressive South American I see these times in the continent as nothing short of miraculous. Economic growth, reduction of poverty levels, reduction of inequality and, something I’ve never dreamed it would be true, a compact political partnership between south american countries. Hugo Chavez, Lula and Kirchner created UNASUR, a formidable block that, among other accomplishments, buried the only political program that the US seemed to have for the region in the last 20 years: the free-trade agreement, ALCA. Since that foundational moment, in 2005, South America has grown into a bigger and independent player in the world. Argentina, Brazil, the main players, don’t look at the US for leadership anymore. I think that single development will be one of Chavez’s biggest legacies.

Hey there Terence, happy to see ya!

Chavez may have wasted money, but at least he wasted it on people

Wasting money on people is the principal legitimate purpose of government.

There are worse legacies.

shah8

in the media from ignorant journalists to polished professors, we keep hearing the mantra of Assad will be gone in one Friedman unit.
Oh really? I haven’t been hearing this.

We keep hearing laudatory things about rebels even as they invade Iraq and take UN hostages.
I heard that 24 Syrian soldiers, and I thought (perhaps incorrectly) they were regime soldiers not rebels, had been killed in Iraq after, in effect, deserting there. Even if they were rebels, that hardly constitutes an “invasion.”

That US aid to them would bring about a new Syria, when by any viable standard, this is going by the Nicaraguan Contra model, where the end point is to terrorize the Syrian public until they “vote” for a Western friendly government.
The Contra model would be to sponsor proxy groups which attack from outside the country. Is anyone proposing that?

Ok, thread derail over, back to Chavez.

“Some dead people never die”, tweeted Rosario Murillo, President Ortega’s spokesperson and wife. For those not in the know, Carlos Fonseca, founder of the FSLN, is also a member of that select group of dead.

The last count is 55 heads of state will attend Chavez’ funeral, including all of Latin America with the exception of Paraguay.

Paraguay’s an interesting case, given the recent ousting/impeachment of Fernando Lugo, who will be in Caracas, which had a whiff of old-school regional politics at work.

It’s arguable that Chavez’s role as chief gadfly over the past decade has made it easier for centre-right pols in South America to disentangle themselves from the US, as much as it has made centre-left leaders sleep a little bit more soundly.

But he was “controversial” and “polarizing”!

I found it very informative, actually. I just thought the whole effort to label Chavez as authoritarian to have had the effect of twisting everything pretzel-shaped. I’ve heard/read some intermittent commentary about how the social atmosphere in Venezuela is repressive, so I’m prepared to think of Chavez as authoritarian. Thing is, authoritarian regimes are pretty fucking touchy. They arrest people on the drop of the hat for innocuous behavior. They kill or disappear other people on a regular basis, relatively openly. I even have the easy comparison to the US South before the ’70s. Which was a set of rather authoritarian, but popular (among those allowed to vote) regimes. Does anything like what happened to Emmit Till happen to political or ethnic minorities in Venezuela? I’ve certainly found that to be the case, but mostly in areas dominated by societies opposed to the regime, such as the recent assassination of a Native American leader trying to drive out ranchers on his tribe’s land. The worst Chavez ever got was jailing a judge who allowed a person of interest to flee to the US. That I’ve ever found out about. This is nothing compared to Albert Fujimori’s internal wars, against the Shining Path or others dissidents. Or how Putin handled Pussy Riot or had Litvineko killed in London. There aren’t labor camps or resettled peoples (other than on expropriated idle land). Thus, I’ve found it difficult to believe that Chavez’ regime is particularly authoritarian, even compared to Lula’s Brazil, given what localities in various parts of Brazil are like. Outright less authoritarian than Chile which does carry out internal repression of native populations. Nationalizing corporate assets is simply not what I think to be authoritarian. Neither is changing election rules to your advantage. Pretty much all open political societies have done these things…as a normal course/flow of events. Soooo…

I did like how he incorporated a lot of comments by people who thought Chavez did well by them, and what they did and what they hoped to do.

A progressive evisceration of other democratic institutions was key to the consolidation of Chávez’s regime. Intimidation through such mechanisms as firing public-sector employees who had signed a recall petition made it costly for undecided voters to defect to the opposition.

As far as I can make out, there are allegations that a database of signers was indeed circulated, and the presumption is that this was used to discriminate against those on the list. Some statistics have been The other allegation which may be well-founded is that of using public funds for electoral campaigning in relation, specifically to the recall vote in 2002(?).

The paper http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~emiguel/pdfs/miguel_maisanta.pdf appears on a number of US academic sites. It reports the existence of such a database; it then uses statistical methods to infer that the list was used for political retaliation. One obvious possibility is confounding – that signers, being political opponents, are more likely to have been in conflict with the policies of their government employeesm, thus more likely to have been sacked or to have resigned from such employment. They are also more likely to have undergone a worsening of their economic condition – the expectation of which being, presumably, a major reason for their opposition in the first place. This is one study and I haven’t found any others along similar lines. I also haven’t tried to analyse it in any detail.

Still, these seem to be the issues in relation to which the opposition’s similar behaviour (the ‘authoritarian’ Chavez faced a substantial number of opposition-controlled state and local governments, which are accused with equal credibility of political retaliation) doesn’t undermine the accusations against Chavez. There is still the question of to what extent fire should be fought with fire. Apart from the coup attempt and strikes and various other funny business the opposition is known to have engaged in, the issue of funding is a case in point. When the opposition consists of the very rich and has the support of the very rich US, what is one to do to redress the balance of financial clout?

Still, all this stuff is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and doesn;t compare particularly disfavourably with the kind of political corruption we know of in the US, for an obvious example, as well as other Western Democracies (not to mention Third World countries).

Or as Mainwaring prefers to put it:

Chávez’s political genius has been his capacity to cultivate deep and fairly broad popular support while simultaneously eviscerating democratic checks and balances, but not in such egregious ways that it would invite international sanction.

It is quite a nifty trick to perform a non-egregious evisceration, isn’t it.

I’d like to do Chavez as a Blakean tragic opera: Hugo as the dragon slaying Orc Fingal, Bush as Odin, an incarnation of the Ancient of Days.

But what would matter most is tying the two together as part of the same cycle: every Orc becomes Urizen. In fact, the two are the same animal in different phases of its progression from the hope and creative vitality of spring to the cold, sterile ferocity of winter.

Anyway, for the final scene, with mourners stretching for miles to see Chavez’s corpse, the chorus would sing some Wordsworth (I know, I really need a Blake text, but this works so well–and nobody would notice, would they?):

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,
The beauty wore of promise–that which sets
(As at some moments might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of Paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.

The curtain falls as rose petals (mixed with snow flakes?) descend upon the scene.

Farewell, Hugo.

I take the check of an independent judiciary (though not one with life-time tenure) as important for democracy (and rule of law)

In theory I do. In practice it’s another political theory that depends upon ‘good’ honorable men doing the right thing. A bit like monarchy. Not sure what the solution is, but the US fetishization of the supreme court seems misplaced.

Most of Latin America adopted Constitutions based on the American one (which nowhere outside of LA spawned imitators) and the experience has been, perhaps unsurprisingly given the context of developing countries, at best it seems to be useful for diffuse (necessarily corrupt) oligarchies (pre-Chavez Venezuela?) rather than democracy.

Which is SO unlike the way it functions in the US, amirite?

It doesnt. But also, it does not prove that identity. What would prove it would be to look at the situation itself and decide.

On my defense, for example, Chávez and his cronies are on record saying that if the elections dont go their way the “revolution” will be defended by the army.

Or you can look at the Judge Afiuni case and check for yourself the idea of rule of law that Chávez and chavistas have.

Or for example you can actually check the murder rate in Venezuela. With statistics that are available and not taken out of the ass of some “rightwing” site.

I could go and say that all the defenses of Chávez looks very similar to the defenses of Stalin, for example. Only that would be true in the superficial only – the need of an hero – because he was no Stalin.

He was just your average latin american populist, only more so.

Re: I still want to believe that development and helping the poor can be achieved in a sustaniable way, without eroding democracy, without multiplying the crime rate to levels similar to a war zone and do nothing about it, without intense militarization, without letting the necessary infraestructure rot or blown itself away for lack of maintenance, without widespread shortages of foods in the markets, without giving support to tyrants and dictators like Al Assad, without inmense levels of corruption, and most important, without a legacy of hate and division.

Nobody cares, Latro. People like you haven’t been voting for Chavez and the PSUV for a very long time, and the history of the last decade shows that they don’t need you, they can win elections without you. You can just go one hand-wringing about ‘militarization’ and ‘hate’ and ‘division’ for as long as you want, and voting for oligarch candidates. And the Socialist Party can just keep on ignoring people like you, as irrelevant little whiners.

As for Assad, we’re starting to get a glimpse of what Syria is going to look like without Assad, and it isn’t pretty at all.

That was of course a rhetorical question. Your answer makes one wonder why somebody who “did the same”, except spread a lot more money to poor people, gets so much more from you than the merely parenthetical ire directed at his predecessors. And I’m afraid that tends to bring one back to #71.

I could go and say that all the defenses of Chávez looks very similar to the defenses of Stalin, for example. Only that would be true in the superficial only – the need of an hero – because he was no Stalin.

Because he didn’t kill millions of people and run a police state? Well its nice you tacitly acknowledge that after you’ve made the grotesque comparison.

If anyone can with a straight face make a comparison between Chavez and Stalin- at any level- then they’ve sufficiently proven (to my standard) that they’re either intellectually or morally unfit to participate in politics, and so I’m not exactly going to care much if they complain they’re being excluded from the political arena.

Thanks Tim et al for the interesting responses to the Mainwaring piece

One common complaint about the Chavez era is that crime is very high, which appears clearly true. I was wondering though, what are the crime *trends* in Venezuela?

Crime might have increased under Chavez at such a rate that it is reasonable to label it a failing of his regime.
or
Crime could be very high but trending down from previous levels which were higher still.
or it could have increased but at a slower rate than it was increasing pre-Chavez.

I’d be very interested in any answers to that one.

Well credit where due, Latro has almost managed to give some actual detail here. The (single) case of that judge is hard to assess since there is observable and pronounced bias against Chavez in so many quarters, and this has the distinct feel of a cause celebre which may or may not be trumped up.

The judge in question is accused of being bribed to release a banker accused of massive fraud; a banker who did indeed immediately jump bail. I’m not sure how we can hope to adjudicate this issue. There are then various claims about mistreatment in prison which I’m inclined to put down to the usual middle-class exceptionalism that always comes up when a politician, judge etc finds themself on the wrong end of the penal system for a change and suddenly confronted with a dose of reality, comes over all indignant. But again, how are we to decide? Not on the basis of Latro’s mud-slinging. Then too, there are allegations that both the banker and the judge were held longer than the law permitted. Even this, which ought to be fairly clear-cut, isn’t something I’ve been able to check, none of those alleging it on the web having given sufficient detail. Still, the general principle that received opinion in the US etc is certainly not going to understate Chavez’s villainy, and indeed is likely to overstate it, suggests that such corruption is not widespread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/15/chavez-venezuela-judge-cedeno is of interest. As it presents the facts, the judge’s conduct appears a trifle irregular, and the basis of her decision somewhat shaky. It does state that the supreme court head, Luisa Estela Morales, said Venezuela had moved from “a rigid separation of powers” toward a system characterised by “intense co-ordination” between government branches. That’s not something I approve of, cet. par. – at the same time, depending on what exactly was meant, it is hardly unique. As with many of these issues, the main difference between the Venezuelan and the ‘Western’ model may be that the former is more honest and open about its practices.

I’m also interested in the stuff about the crime rate. I’ve heard this a lot, and I’d be interested in what is thought to have caused it (if indeed it is not a consequence of improved reporting or otherwise unreal), and how that in turn is Chavez’s fault, rather than, for example, down to landlords massacring uppity peasants.

Likewise neglect of infrastructure, cronyism and graft, etc. – these allegations are bandied about and might be true but I’d like to see some attempt to be specific, and to provide some kind of substantiation.

These are issues I find genuinely hard to judge, and it seems to me the least Latro could do would be to give some detail, preferably with sources, rather than throwing around sketchy allegations that give the impression of being copied from a list of talking-points, and going on about about hero-worship, and the “Stalin (not Stalin)” stuff. In the meantime, I think there’s considerable merit in the principle that absence of evidence despite (presumable) thorough search is indeed evidence of absence.

To address the issue of criticisms coming from the opposite direction, there certainly may be a problem with Chavez’s personality-based leadership – it remains to be seen how things will go without him. This possible criticism does though assume that the same changes could have been wrought without his personal leadership being so prominent.

He does seem to have done quite a bit to cement change, for example in such institutions as the Supreme Court, but so far as I can tell, much of the economy remains in the hands of oligopolists, including the press. Much of the work done so far has been expended on reversing the neoliberal ‘reforms’ instituted in the decade Mainwaring so notably circumlocutes.

I’m also not sure that HC managed to rein in such corrupt groups as the Caracas Met Police, which openly joined the coup plotters in 2004. Whether they have anything to do with the reputedly increased crime rate, I don’t know.

The Economist – safe to say very hostile to Chavez – says Critics say the reasons are plain to see, but are not being tackled. They – i.e. the things these ‘critics’ say – include poorly-paid and often corrupt police (responsible, even by official admission, for one in five crimes); a corrupt, inefficient and politicised judiciary; possibly the most violent and overcrowded prison system in Latin America; and overworked prosecutors, who are often enlisted to persecute the political opposition instead of putting criminals behind bars. Add to that a burgeoning drugs trade, the presence of up to 15m illegal weapons and an official discourse that justifies violence in pursuit of class warfare, and there seems little doubt that Venezuela’s crime wave will not abate anytime soon.

( http://www.economist.com/node/21009630 )

Note that the police are blamed for much crime, as are corrupt judges (presumably taking bribes, that kind of thing). Again, I still fail to get a good sense of how these supposed (N.B.) phenomena relate to Chavez’s policies, apart from the idea that prosecutors are too busy with all those unidentified political cases to deal with ordinary crime, and the rather tenuous-sounding official discourse that justifies violence in pursuit of class warfare.

Re: I have made no comparision between Chávez and Stalin – I’ve made a comparision between the international left willingness to not look at Stalin bad side and believe all the lies and the same case with Chávez.

Whatever, sounds pretty much like a comparison to me.

Re: And is incredibly nice to hear how you guys are so fond of deciding who has the right or not to participate in politics. Is all so priceless.

I have about zero interest in your feelings, or whatever you find ‘priceless’. Except for Matthew Yglesias on one of his stupider days, we generally agree that children shouldn’t be extended political rights, and you’ve given me no reason to think you’re any more intellectually or morally advanced than a third-grader.

I’m not particularly interested in your criticisms any more than I am about the disaffected Cuban exiles in Miami.

Well, this devolved a bit! Tim Wilkinson @84 basically covers it, but I had one question for Latro, who says (69):

I still want to believe that development and helping the poor can be achieved in a sustaniable way, without eroding democracy….

Right, yes. Count me in! HSC has no patience for all the meetings (to pervert Wilde a bit) but I do. (At least in theory.) The question then is though, how exactly did Chavez erode democracy? Latro doesn’t really seem to address this question at all, beyond paraphrasing some bit of hyperbole. So: evidence forthcoming?

(Note: To answer this question, you’d have to (1) show that Venezuela was more democratic before Chavez, which is implied by “eroding”, and (2) use some vaguely plausible conception of democracy whereby it includes responsiveness to the needs, interests, and desires of large majorities of the population—not just this of course, but this would have to be a necessary condition, I think.)

The Afiuni case is purely hypothetical?

The multiples instances in which Chávez, upon having one of his pawns losing some local election, proceeded to make the life of the new major hell by cutting funding to them is hypothetical? Like when Antonio Ledesma won the “alcadía” in Caracas, and Chávez proceeded to create a position above him, strip his office of all power and budget? That was an hypothetical?

Getting 270 opposition candidates “inhabilitated” to run for regional elections is hypothetical?

Using a combo of the armed groups of supporters plus the police to attack oposition rallies or manifestations is hypotethical?

The constant reference to the armed defense of the revolution just before elections is what, a gently reminder to voters to be democratically red or at least silent?

The “Lista Tascón” and “Lista Maisanta”, the use of the signed petitions of a revocation referendum (a measure INTRODUCED into the constitutión by Chávez) to harass the people that signed it, denying them jobs and documents, something PROUDLY announced by high rank members of the government, is hypothetical?

The whole Human Right Watch report over here http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/09/18/decade-under-ch-vez is an hypothetical?

How hypotheticaly blind are any of you willing to be?

In fairness to Latro, isn’t it a good thing to remain sceptical of those in power. You could insert any number of political leaders into ‘__ was a good deal nicer and gentler to your sort than I would have been in his place’ ..yes it’s a fair position, but it can only be pushed so far until fanboyism kicks in

Because they’re idiots?

I’ve felt a little solemn about the passing away of Chávez. The world will be poorer and far less interesting for his departure.

The thing that has got me emotional: talk of embalming the man for eternal display; to which my reaction is “Oh, FFS: no!” Chávez wanted to be buried on the plains of los Llanos, and not have his corpse retained for show and tell. Why can’t they just put the man in the ground like he wished? It seems more respectful.

On the mother jones piece, I think Jeremy Lybarger asked some really good follow ups. I also got to feeling tired of reading about Venezuela through non Venezuelan filters. We need some translators, but then Latin American politics usually have been pretty inaccessible to English readers (separate from what organs of power wants us to know). One thing that really seems to seep through the interview was the aspects of how Latin american regimes cooperated with one another. For instance, Castro providing information, intelligence services, and critiques, and the general feedbacks that Chavez helped enable and profited from among the other major Latin American leaders.

Many of the other parts of the interview struck me very much like I should critique it like Angry Arab critiques clueless reporters in Lebanon. I did have to chuckle at the epitaph. Nobody rules as well as they campaign in the modern televised era. I could leave the “more in sorrow than anger” on the table, but Rory’s book sounds juicy! Does need to be noted that his wife is of good family from Venezuela and Richard Gott rubs him hard here: http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/world-affairs/2013/01/hugo-chavez-man-against-world

Going through all this, and doing some googling, I think the tale of Ruben Gonzalez through the Chavez years could be a useful illustration of the political state of play.

thx for extra links.

shah8 @ 97

We need some translators

A funeral attended by all Latin American presidents (minus Paraguay) and where the highest ranking Occidental, Prince Felipe, was booed, is worth a thousand translated words. I am sure the whole world is getting the message.

Well, I bow out of this debate then. It is clear what kind of democracy is preferred by some of you.

I expected more of Crooked Timber, but it seems being accurate and critical of, say, the Tea Party governor of Wisconsin is one thing, but we in opposition to Chávez deserve all we can get and more because we are all inherently evil.

Thanks specially to Hector, for not running for president of Venezuela or any place I live and depriving me of enjoying his democratic attentions.

There is no point arguing. Latro is right and Hector is right (and, yes, you, my wife, are right too). Liberal democracy is a political system designed to represent interests of the middle class and the rich. Latro is right: if it doesn’t do it, it can’t be a democracy. Indeed, in this respect Chavismo is just like Stalinism. As opposed to, say, Pinochetismo: that was a form of democracy, just in a state of emergency. But Hector is right too: so what?

Chavez para siempre

And the relevance of this bilious but studiedly non-specific little outburst is?

“interested in the majoritarian egalitarian project (socialism) … commitment to democracy”

I got the impression that the idea of democratic socialism has run its course, and was abandoned everywhere, back in the 1980s. The top segment of the demos will not agree to egalitarianism, and it has resources to prevent it.

“The last count is 55 heads of state will attend Chavez’ funeral, including all of Latin America with the exception of Paraguay. ”

A few tactfully ducked the ceremony:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/09/us-venezuela-chavez-rousseff-idUSBRE9280G320130309

“Nonetheless, both Rousseff and Lula departed Venezuela prior to a funeral ceremony on Friday that was attended by dignitaries from more than 30 countries, including some polarizing figures such as Cuban President Raul Castro and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

My post on Chávez, Chavismo, and the Bolivarian Revolution is here: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2013/03/hugo-chavez-and-chavismo-venezuelan.html

Notice in particular the link added at the bottom of the post.

Just to address the outstanding yelps and growls of the running dog: Getting 270 opposition candidates “inhabilitated” to run for regional elections is hypothetical?

I think these were ‘potential candidates’ – I’ve heard of only a handful that were indeed prospective ones. Again the problem is in adjudicating the justice of the charges of corruption which underlay said disqualification. Do we, with Latro, just presume that these were unfounded? Once again I invoke the principle that accounts polished by the anti-Chavistas can be relied on to present the worst possible interpretation, that any relevant allegation not explicitly made should be assumed to have been found untenable, and that detail which ought to be available but is not supplied should be treated as in fact unavailable. These heuristics can of course easily be overridden by actual evidence, if it is ever presented.

Using a combo of the armed groups of supporters plus the police to attack oposition rallies or manifestations is hypotethical? 2 things missing here: 1. specifics; you’d expect a suitable cause celebre to have been selected, yet none is; 2. any notion of the context in which what would routinely be reported in the UK or US as ‘clashes between police and rioters’ occurred.

The constant reference to the armed defense of the revolution just before elections is what, a gently reminder to voters to be democratically red or at least silent? 1. More speak-crime, with the notion that anything would come of it indeed being hypothetical. 2. Translation ‘errors’ a la ‘wipe Israel off the face of the earth’ always go one way, 3. a lack of context: HC’s bombastic style or indeed such a style in general may not sound the same to the locals as it would when quotes (were any provided) are lifted out of context and and read by pampered Northerners 4. Secret ballots

The “Lista Tascón” and “Lista Maisanta”, the use of the signed petitions of a revocation referendum (a measure INTRODUCED into the constitutión by Chávez) to harass the people that signed it, denying them jobs and documents, something PROUDLY announced by high rank members of the government, is hypothetical?

I’ve mentioned the lists above, but these announcements, where are they? Note that signing a petition is not the action of a cowed populace; that that the software was ostensibly, and not implausibly, an electoral tool, for identifying fraud (not an unknown phenomenon) and for use in campaigning; that allegations that it was used as a blacklist has been substantiated AFAICT only by means of some statistical jiggery-pokery. A criotical reading of the most extensive hostile account I’ve found, here, may help to cast a little light on the matter.

Latro’s gotcha about the recall process being introduced by the Chavez regime is baffling. It does illustrate that the earlier Chavez was attempting to introduce greater democratic controls; in turn this at the very least undermines narratives about Chavez being motivated from the start by a thirst for power. One might justifiably wonder whether the possibility of the procedure being used against HC could really have been overlooked when it was introduced and if not, whether the prospect of using post-hoc (and apparently rather secretive, Latro’s claims notwithstanding) punishment would have been regarded as a more prudent course than simply not introducing it. This is of course nowhere near being dispositive.

Thanks btw to JWM way back at #4 for the Orhangazi paper; I and no doubt others would certainly be interested to hear J’s own opinions on the topic.

Less belated thanks to PSO for the link, and in particular the further link http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8133 , which gives a sense of the tastiness of the omelette created from such eggs as may actually turn out to have been broken during this period.

Suzanne @ 111

I guess that if Reuters can see a gathering of all Latin American presidents (minus Paraguay) and conclude that Latin America is taking the occasion of Chavez’ death to distance itself from him, they can publish pretty much whatever they wish without any regard for reality. The truth is, the West was caught off guard. The West’s official line, initiated by Obama, was that the death of Chavez meant a new chapter for Venezuela. It was parroted minutes later by Canada’s Harper and then came to an abrupt end. By then, statements by both left and right governments of the region that the best way to honor Chavez’ legacy was by continuing to work on alleviating poverty and inequality and promoting regional unity and sovereignty, had made it clear that no such new chapter was about to begin.

Once again, the US and Canada remained isolated.

I think this pair of articles:

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5423

on Chavez, from O’Donnell’s sourcing list

and

http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/wumingblog/?p=1950

on Beppe Grillo

are quite illuminating when examined side to side as articles about the blood and guts of populism. They’re both long, but worth your time.

AnyGuy – luckily your concerns appear unfounded. The graph you link to shows a volatile series on an upward long-term trajectory, and currently on an upward short term trend from the bottom of a trough.

I don’t know why you are concerned about rice in particular – I’m not aware of anyone having claimed that rice production was up 70% – nor what the baseline year is supposed to be.

I do know what the baseline year is for your claim that oil production is down (nearly) 1/3: 1997, which happens to be the all-time high. In fact oil production has been fairly stable around the 2.3m barrels/day mark since 2003.

As for the story you seem to suggest is typical of the kind of stories you are encountering (as a dedicated observer of Venezuelan agricultural stats?), it seems to be a tale not of runaway inflation but rather of adjusting price controls to the recent devaluation of the Bolivar. It’s hard to see this as a case of price controls squeezing supply at this point – maybe if the request for a substantial increase were denied, supply might be curtailed next year, but I see no reason to suppose that will happen.
—
I see Latro’s back, and still no bite.

“The Latest Howlers From Human Rights Watch on Venezuela” (August 2012): http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7149
and, “Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Chavez: the Motive-Hunting of a Malignant NGO:” http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8084

To the extent (which, by most accounts, i.e., from those sans any dispositional opposition of anything to the left of neoliberalism, appears comparatively small) there are human rights violations, at least the Bolivarian Constitution (1999) is one source from which the people themselves may recognize same and have a domestic legal source for the articulation of their grievances, recalling that this “astounding document” contains provisions for “deeper democracy at one level, and another for the widest recognition of human rights” (Vijay Prashad). The regime has provided an unprecedented degree of “real sovereignty” to the masses, in spite of U.S. hostility, and its commitment to “food sovereignty” (a threat to the neo-imperialist behavior of agribusiness interests seeking complete control over the transnational food commodity chain) is inspiring emulation elsewhere; the idea, of course, did not begin in Venezuela, but it’s the government that took the initiative and made the commitment to make such sovereignty something considerably more than a slogan.

One need not claim Venezuela is a utopia (‘real’ or otherwise) to notice the remarkable accomplishments under Chávez, and to realize those accomplishments established many of the conditions that enable the people themselves to make progress on their own terms, to engage in initiatives “from below,” not wholly dependent on State patronage or tutelage (as Prashad notes, a new generation of leaders has emerged from the working class, the peasantry, and the slumlands), to imagine that it is possible to have a “good life” (el buenvivir), and possess the resources and political will to make that dream some day come true, if not tomorrow, than for tomorrow’s children, or their children…. As Prashad says, “dissatisfaction persists, and so does crime,” but at least “the slumlands are no longer simply the badlands.” Ask the poor themselves why they have such affection for Chávez and stay around to listen for (and learn from) the answers.

The “negatives” you cite are almost entirely “pre-revolutionary” in origin and not attributable to the government’s tenure under Chávez, and it’s simply nonsense to speak of a “Constitution and laws routinely violated by Chávez and company.” Your questions, assumptions and statements betray ignorance about the history of Venezuela and suggest obdurate bad faith: good luck with that.

Latro – A bite would have been a substantiated claim about serious wrongdoing on the part of the Chavist government, rather than mere allusion to supposed facts dropped into your invective. (I certainly don’t consider you a credible witness – rf’s mileage may differ). You could also try to show how Chavez had made things worse than the status quo ante.

A 200 page report from HRW doesn’t count here – I’m fed up with having to construct your best case for you in order to assess its merits. From the bits I’ve looked at, it seems relatively mild stuff.

re: the more authoritative Amnesty, pick your choice of report from, say, http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/canada

To give credit where it’s due (again), Latro’s claims are obviously not all just made up, only – it seems to me – highly selective, exaggerated and subject to a strong bias. The questions he’s (rather rhetorically) asking – are a hyped up version of the issues I’m interested in finding answers to.

Answering same depends heavily on assessing what political opponents are up to – we know about the coup in 2002, of course, which gives some idea – such an event in any country could be expected to give rise to a state of emergency and some pretty harsh measures against those involved, or who are in receipt of funding from the hostile foreign power that backed said coup. Latro et al. resolutely ignore such issues, as does this extract from a HRW report, about political discrimination: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/venezuela0908/2.htm . Firing strikers is of course standard neoliberal fare, but here is condemned as ‘political’ – because the strike was political in the narrow sense, indeed an attempt at sabotage, occurring in the same year as the coup! Are we to take this seriously?

#126 – Funny, I was born in Caracas in 1972, spent there till 1999. And you are telling me I dont know the history of Venezuela. Wonderful. Want me to recite you the whole presidencies of Venezuela during my lifetime? Want me to tell you my POV on the Caracazo, right on the street walking home? Want my tale of what was I doing when Chávez made his coup, and then the second coup?

Mr. Wilkinson – lets assume that for a moment the levels of corruptions are the same as in pre-Chávez era (I dont buy it, but less make that assumption). I though the point of the whole revolution was to get rid of corruption – not to change the destinataries of the corruption. The “priviledged” class getting the benefits of corruption before Chávez where the client networks of the existing ruling parties – and now the priviledged class is the same – only in red colours.
In fact, one of the main sources of corruption was the exchange controls – the infamous RECADI. And now under Chávez one of the main points of corruption is… the exchange controls, CADAVI.

So again I ask you what part of the impressive achievements in enfranchising the poor REQUIRES this. And how it ends up looking so similar to what was before – but with a more authoritarian bent and much worse infrastructure and crime. Is a simple question I think – if the Chávez revolution is the medicine to solve the problem of poverty, are those sides efects inherently to it or can one dream of a BETTER revolution?

You keep saying you have to make the case for me but every time you end up … finding more or less what I’m telling you. And then dismissing it. The “oil strike” was “political” – of course it was political. The strike was an attempt to keep PDVSA independent – something that Chávez could not let be, as nothing could be independent of his power and PDVSA was too much of a juicy target. Now tell me about the firings of people by using the Lista Tascón and/or Programa Maisanta. Is signing a revocatory referendum petition (INCLUDED in the constitution by chavistas) a “political” act that deserve firings?

Again, all of you selling me this wonderful revolution I should not criticize because – can you acknowledge all that and just justify it with a “well, it was more or less the same before”? I was thinking we were talking about an incredible experiment in democracy and such, but somehow all the points I criticize get dismissed as being “the same” as before.

Thats the whole point! Is the same as before only more authoritarian!

Chavez didn’t do nearly as much good with the oil revenues as he could and should have done, but still one whole hell of a lot more than the oligarchs would have done. Is there really a lot more to be said beyond that?

But do you think that argument is justifiable in the context of the US Steve.. “Obama didn’t do nearly as much good .. as he could and should have done, but still one whole hell of a lot more than the Republicans would have done. Is there really a lot more to be said beyond that?”

As a reason for voting for him, I’ve never seen it stop you discussing his flaws though..

As a reason for voting for him, I’ve never seen it stop you discussing his flaws though..

Nor do I have any reluctance to discuss Chavez’s which were serious, but in both cases nothing under discussion is likely to come as a big surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention.

(His or her fingertips, that is – ‘Latro’ sounds male to me, and so does Latro, but I shouldn’t presume.)

If you feel more comfortable this way – here you have my name instead of Latro. Is not going to sound you of anything because again, I’m not in academia or anything like that.

Maybe that is the whole source of the problem – I assume we are all talking about what is known, not that I had to make a detailed bibliography first to discuss this. My bad then – I just call things as I see them, as my relatives tell me, as I ask them how are things going, and when I get nostalgic and check the media.

Sorry, that link would be
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2012/01/120130_venezuela_colectivos_urbanos_23_enero_jp.shtml

I know that you are going to protest that I have not done something right with this, but just in case, here another report about the human rights situation in Venezuela by the Interamerican Comission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States http://www.cidh.oas.org/pdf%20files/VENEZUELA%202009%20ENG.pdf

Re: it really looks like inflation and price controls are starting to squeeze supply

That happened a few times in the Chavez presidency, and when it did, the prices were raised. I’m sure Maduro will do the same if necessary.

Re: Oil production is down a third at a time when oil prices are sky high. Production should be soaring not contracting. Did it really have to be that way? I think oil profits from existing fields could go towards social programs and royalties from new fields could maintain existing oil infrastructure.

Well, for environmental reasons, I’m not sure I want Venezuela (or any country) to be ramping up oil production. And yes, I’ll gladly admit that in spite of his immense gifts, Chavez had some flaws as an administrator. He didn’t invest enough in oil infrastructure, and while he did spend a lot of money on encouraging non-oil industry, I think that could have been done better. Still, you don’t need to be perfect to be a pretty good leader.

I did a series of post with my real name but seems moderation ate them.

Hector: yes you have left patently clear that you classify people into expendables or not according to your whim. I dont know what pride do you derive from openly acknowledging the fact that you would do much worse, or how idiotic do you think I have to be to thanks Chávez for “rolling back” (not) the program he started to discriminate people. I for one would think a selling point of a revolution in democracy would be to be BETTER at not discriminating people than the previous system, and not worse – the previous system worked mainly in the form of client networks, the current one in client networks + blacklisting of those not considered “pure” enough. But again, is a waste of time as you have basically said that you would look forward with glee to whatever punishment they get…

Mr Wilkinson: The point is that “the move of Chávez to reinvigorate OPEC solidarity” is basically a failure and that the idea is not that Venezuela produce less oil to keep the price up – it produces less oil because the infraestructure of production is rotting away after years of mismanagement. The OPEC doesnt even believe the Venezuelan figures of production saying they are inflated.

And the “greenspanisation” point is just the root of the Venezuelan situation – again, something I’ll venture I know a bit more than many of the people here. The mantras that where given to the Venezuelan population by the previous 2 party system were “Oil is a resource of the nation, so we are rich, so everybody deserves their slice of it”. When they could deliver, the system worked – it never was equalitarian, but enough crumbles got down of the table to satisfy people with low expectations – a job here, subside there . When the system started to fail the reaction was also simple. Oil is a resource of the nation, so we are rich, so somebody else got my piece of it. (Mostly accurate – not only corruption but horrible mismanagements of all the projects to “saw the oil” and use the money to kickstart a modern economy). Thats the Chávez platform – he would share the treasure of oil and punish the ones that mismanaged it before, fullfilling the plan betrayed by AD & COPEI. End result – the same, not any different, system that the one envisioned before. And again in charge of people incapable of keeping it working – they had the incredible luck of an oil boom to keep giving them money to plugs the holes in their plans (and get rich out of it, many of them).

To end for the night – this blog entry summarizes more or less the situation

http://prodavinci.com/blogs/sobre-la-imagen-internacional-de-hugo-chavez-por-francisco-toro/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Prodavinci+%28Prodavinci%29

His assesment of the revolution is quite similar to mine, including the bizarre situation of being schooled by people that know nothing at all about Venezuela about the great achievements of Hugo Chávez. If nobody reads Spanish, I will translate the interesting bit:

“The abysmal, schizofrenic distance between a revolutionary discourse and a practice of government that satisfied itself with renovating petropopulism and reconcile it with the XXI century exceeds the comprehension capabilities of an international intelligensia used to a mínimum of coherence between what is said and what is done”

Latro,

Again, I don’t care one bit about the victims of the Tascon discrimination. They probably deserved it.

It’s nice to know, though, that if present indications are any guide, Maduro’s going to be in charge for the next six years or so, and there’s not a damn thing you and your opposition buddies can do about it.

The thing is, it’s a matter of proportion, and of context. Imagine so-called McCarthyism in the US if a Communist coup backed by the USSR had just been driven out of the White House, and if the backers and participants were known still to be in position and willing to try various other strategies such as industrial sabotage on a massive scale. Add that these interests were in control of various state and regional governments, and were themselves engaged in political discrimination.

Now try to imagine its lasting only for a year or so, impacting only on – what? – a hundred people or so?, and without all the forced confessions and denunciations that gave it its insidious totalitarian character.

That’s why I’m not impressed with this remaining talking point that JCF is clinging to, and why Hector’s attitude might in context be entirely justifiable, even though it was expressed impatiently enough that JCF/Latro could paint it as approving of all possible measures, rather than only those which were actually taken.

We in the North are used to false or astronomically exaggerated threats being used as a pretext for ’emergency’ oppressive measures; in Venezuela in the early 2000s there was a real and demonstrable threat to the democratically elected regime, and plenty of precedents in the region for similar democratic regimes being crushed by the same forces and replaced with death squads. In such circumstances one might expect a pretty bloody and chaotic situation (though not necessarily one on a par with US efforts to ‘bring democracy to the Middle East’).

Instead the best Latro, clearly implacably hostile and supposedly knowledgeable, could come up with is this.

RF,

Venezuela has the lowest inequality in Latin America, the highest rate of ‘happiness’, whatever that means, and IIRC the biggest decline in poverty. and a lower unemployment rate than us, a couple years ago. maybe those other leaders weren’t quite as effective.

Sure there was corruption, but I’ve never seen any evidence of the Chavez family living a particularly extravagant lifestyle by the standards of a leaders family. literally every developing country has corruption.

Jesus Couto Fandino,

While I despise Mubarak, are you seriously pointing at the current Government of Egypt as a success of democracy and the freedom agenda?

Re: Oligarch, kulak, who cares.

Do you actually have the temerity to compare a bunch of your buddies losing out on a job or a housing voucher for supporting the wrong party, with ten million Ukrainian peasants *willfully starved to death* on Stalin’s orders?

Because if you do, you’re just making the very point that Chavez made, that you folks are a bunch of crazy wingnuts that cannot be trusted with power.

” while Hugo Chávez itself doesnt seem to have enriched himself much”

That’s interesting..I was under the impression he had enriched himself, I guess that would make me more favourably disposed towards him

There’s a huge difference I think b/c he has to deal with the political realities as they are. He has to build and maintain a support base and political alliance, and that will generally involve paying people off in that support base/alliance, whether financially, with political positions or whatever.. particularly in a political culture (as has been mentioned above) where that has been the norm for the past number of decades and there aren’t the institutions to protect against it.. It’s easier to oppose him enriching himself, but those around him? It’s inevitable I would have thought

I bet you I recall more than you. So far you has not answered me why you support the blacklisting or worse of 2.5 millon people so maybe you should stop talking and learn something about being democratic.

Re: maybe you should stop talking and learn something about being democratic.

Maybe you should stop talking and learn something about being obedient to your moral superiors.

Re: Well, I expect the countries of Latin America to achieve what they deserve – full democracy, end of poverty, full justice and all that.

If you think a place like Venezuela (or Russia, for that matter, or Egypt) will ever achieve ‘full [liberal] democracy’, I have a bridge in the Everglades I’d like to sell you.

Live with it..not life

rf: you have to live AGAINST it. Thats our moral duty. Not live with it, against it. It takes a lot of courage, and I’m not going to lie and say I’m up to the task all the time or dont get into the cost/reward analysis, but our countries are in the situation that they are because of “living with it”. And Irish, Spaniards, Venezuelans and anybody else is as capable as anybody else – democracy and justice are not genetically North European/American.

Re: discussing with you has served my purpose in my point of view now that you clearly stated what your core democratic belief is

You may have missed it, but I never claimed to be particularly enthused with democracy. Democracy is a means, not an end. Sometimes it works to achieve good ends, sometimes it doesn’t. In Venezuela, it clearly didn’t.

rf: he has been worse than what was before in many aspects. In others he has been just a continuation of the same trends as before. And yes, in some, it has been an improvement, albeit one that I dont think is sustainable.

And, quite simple, Chávez could have achieved all those improvements and more without any of his sins. Those are 100% his fault, completly unnecessary, and his more lasting legacy. Nobody forced him to preach hate. Nobody forced him to treat any dissent as treason. Nobody forced him to violate his own constitution and laws at any point he found it more convenient. Nobody forced him to put in power only sycophants who could not manage the country at any level, from electrical infrastructure to economy. Etc…

What he was, in my opinion was 14 years wasted and poisoned, and an opportunity lost. I hope against reason that in the future we will somehow see the only real good achievements of Chávez – the focus on poverty – remain, while all the hate, abuse, authoritarism, cult of personality and corruption get washed away, and all Venezuelans can recognize they may have different views of what is good – and that only unity and not hate will give them a chance to achieve it.

rf.: when I left Venezuela I was working at an University as a system administrator. There where TONS of bright young people that where just coming into a political conscience. They where intelligent, passionate, and capable.

I’m not “for” what was before Chávez – it was “better” but it wasnt good. The level of hate was lower, the crime rate too, but the economy was shit, corruption was awful, and people were reduced to making “spaghetti soup” and keeping the spaghettis for next meal. Or “gold panning” the industrial and human waste of the Guaire river to get metal to sell.

I left the country, and I keep my contacts with my relatives and friends. I hope those bright, young and capable people I knew get to define the future of Venezuela. I dont know if Capriles represents them – I think maybe, but in the end, while I feel very much qualified to criticize Chavéz and his time in power, in the end, I walked away, I dont vote there any more, is the decision of Venezuelans to see. As it has been to elect Chávez all this time – as much as I critizice him, he was elected. That doesnt give him a free rein to do whatever he pleased as he thought, but again, now the future is in the hands of the one that vote there. And tomorrow, and as many elections it takes to find something that works.

I genuinely do sympathise with what you’re saying here, I just think that you’re missing something..which is that the hatred you’re talking about was always there, just not necessarily directed at you or people you were close to..perhaps that’s not true, but I would have my suspicions that it is
I’m also not really buying the argument that Venezuela, before Chavez, was on the cusp of a clear break from the past because of the ‘bright, young and capable people’ you knew. I don’t doubt they exist, just that they were going to get the opportunity to make that change

Hector certainly does a great Beria impression.

I think I owe Mr Wilkinson some details from post 84 – sorry if I’ve been more occupied getting some other details out of the way.

Let see. The Judge Afiuni case has several murky edges, of course, but it has some clear ones in the aspects of the kind of evidence you were requesting:

First, that the law clearly establish a maximum of 2 years of “preventive imprisonment” and not only was Cedeño already 3 years in jail – Afiuni later spent more that those 2 years waiting for her day in court. Again, rule of law is a flexible concept in the Venezuelan revolution – with the best written laws but capable of being interpreted or simply ignored at will.

Now, cases of corruption, cronism, incompetence in management, etc. Well. Out of the top of my head we have:

– the PDVAL case, known by the opposition as Pudreval. In which PDVAL, a company made to get PDVSA to pay for the import of food to be distributed into the “popular” markets chains of the goverment at reduced prices, somehow manages to let rot 130-170 thousands tons of said food. The best summary is in the wikipedia, which I know, is not a reliable source, but is handy http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caso_PDVAL . Sorry, is in Spanish. Explanations go from absolute ineptitude by buying much more food that what the ports and markets could actually move in time before letting it rot, to corruption by buying the food at inflated prices and not realizing that part of the plan – it stinks when the food gets rotten. Reactions for the goverment is 3 arrest, absolutely no word from the Assembly commision supposed to investigate the case, and “shut up, its just some hundred thousand tons of food rotting, we have given more to the poor”. One wonders why it was not possible to give the same to the poor without having those tons decompossing in ports.

– This in English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maletinazo – or a Venezuelan-US entreperneur flying in a jointly Argentina-Venezuela fleeted charter flight with $800000, undeclared. Which is not only kind of suspicious in itself – its much more suspicious because as the wiki says:

“Venezuela has had strict foreign currency controls since 2003. CADIVI is the commission established by the government to regulate currency; it prohibits taking more than US$10,000 in cash out of the country without declaring the money.[4] Venezuelans can only take US$500 or €400 cash out of the country in a single trip and there is a yearly quota of US$2,500 on credit card expenditures; a special government permit is needed to take additional US dollars out of the country.”

The government proceeded to deny any involvement of said individual with Venezuela. The fact that he was traveling in the same charter flight as several important PDVSA managers makes it kind of interesting to know how he managed to board, then.

Evidently anybody with 2 brain cells knows this was a “help” for the friendly campaign of Cristina Kirchner. Why is the business of PDVSA to help some guy carry undeclared (in both sides!) money to Argentina and what relationship does that have with combating poverty…

– Finally for now we have the case of Francisco Illarramendi, in some detail here http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=554894&CategoryId=10717 – who somehow got to invest money of the PDVSA retirement fund in his own Madoff-like thing. Illarramendi used to work for PDVSA and the Ministry of Finances as “consultant”. Somehow this ended up with the PDVSA retirement fund losing some 450 million or so, absolutely no one in Venezuela has been charged… but in the US one of the investors sued Juan Montes, PDVSA retirement fund official, for taking $35 million in bribes to facilitate Illarramendi shuffle.

And we can still be here till the morning come over Spain listing similar stuff.

Is this more to your liking or is there anything else I’ve left in making my case?