From the Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Jon Lee Anderson

Fat lot of good bugging the New Yorker would do. Jon Lee Anderson is doing his job. It just wasn’t what his nominal journalist/reporting occupation would lead us to believe.

It’s the same with the the breathless reporting on the heroics of the syrian rebels. Any reporting that affects US geopolitics is going to be more likely to incorporate spin.

So what does a New Yorker “fact checker” do? Weed out inconvenient facts? Legitimate non-facts? What?

Jon Lee Anderson wrote a decent biography of Che Guevara (i.e. a fairly even handed one, in which he points out there’s no evidence that Guevara ever executed an innocent person, and it’s clear he wasn’t taking the Cuban-American professional whiners particularly seriously). So it sort of surprises me he would buy the right-wing line on Venezuela. Maybe it was an honest mistake.

PSFs, activate!

Hi Brett (8)–you’re right that Anderson would’ve been safer to point out that homicides did increase under Chavez. Homicides doubled during his tenure, and this is a legitimate criticism.

More interesting to me is the pervasive sense within the elite press that there are no drawbacks to reporting on official enemies of the U.S. with such exaggerations and slant that one can produce numerous falsehoods in service to that pursuit without facing negative consequences. A doubling of the homicide rate is not enough; Venezuela must be the highest in Latin America.

If a correspondent for The New Yorker were to have written at least three incorrect statements unfairly bolstering Chavez’s record (e.g. “Chavez reduced unemployment to the lowest in Latin America”), is there any doubt s/he would face serious repercussions? Even without factual errors, Anderson is already producing partisan propaganda: in “Slumlord” he points at someone sleeping in a sewer pipe and sees human feces running down a wall, and says the Chavez government has been a failure, despite its massive popular support and accomplishments on a number of socioeconomic fronts, like poverty reduction.

Corey has already discussed this in another post on Honduras, but it’s striking that San Pedro Sula, which suffers from a murder rate of 169 per 100K, has never been profiled by The New Yorker since the coup d’etat. In fact, the magazine hasn’t published a single article on the U.S.-backed regime of Porfirio Lobo since he “took office” (under elections held by a military dictatorship) in 2010. Here, the government with the highest crime rates in the world actually murders its own citizens routinely, but we are supposed to fret over “what Chavez has wrought in Venezuela.”

It’s only decreasing because you’ve left out the past two years’ data, Terence. The homicide rate was 48 and 54 per 100,000 in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Keane, I think you’ll find that most of the New Yorker’s reporting on crime in Mexico and Colombia, neither of which is an enemy of the U.S., is at least as sensationalistic as anything in Anderson’s piece on Venezuela.

So what does a New Yorker “fact checker” do?

I once got contacted by one (via an acquaintance) to verify that a road mentioned in a piece was indeed a road. This was back in the days before ubiquitous online maps.

The Venezuela beat in the English-speaking press seems to be a particularly problematic one. I have my vulgar suspicions about why, but would love to read more about the group of people who file on the topic and how they got that job.

This always amuses me:

“Each country’s corresponding Gini coefficient from the CIA World Factbook”

There’s sometimes the thought that the CIA are bumbling asses who couldn’t organise their way out of a wet paper bag: alternatively that they’re simply the hired goons of the neoliberal world order. Then their statistics are accepted unquestioned. Slightly odd to do both.

And here the CIA numbers are wrong. They don’t actually calculate them themselves, they just present them from elsewhere and don’t do a very good job of checking them.

As far as I can see the Venezuela number is after the influence of whatever redistribution is done through the tax, benefits and spending systems. The US one there is certainly before the impact of much of the tax and benefits redistribution (it comes down to about 0.37 or so after those effects).

It’s not an important point of course. But given the general scepticism about the CIA worth noting that their numbers often suck too.

“As far as I can see the Venezuela number is after the influence of whatever redistribution is done through the tax, benefits and spending systems.”

How do you deduce this?

“Still the most violent city on Earth though.”

I wonder what a typical US commentary would sound like if he tried to confiscate the guns…

The only reason the homicide rate is at 45 per 100000 is because the Chávez administration decided to stop counting as every single year that the numbers where up it was a good point for the opposition to show the failures of the “revolution”.

In fact they decided it was a crime or something to show photos of the Caracas morgues full of bodies, because… well, the revolution is never wrong.

The “equalization” of Venezuela has several interesting characteristics, starting with how in hell it is going to be sustained if oil prices go down or the PDVSA infrastructure ends up like the El Palito refinery that exploded last year, or more simply, production cant be sustained because nobody mantained the needed infrastructure.

Also equality has some interesting measures, like for example now middle-class and poor alike are equal in their quest to find food in the supermarkets and not getting it, or in sharing electricals blackouts, or…

Then you have the widespread corruption of the boliburgoises and the most important bit, the legacy of hate and division as the proper way to rule the country.

Ah, and the pseudomesianic movement that now gives anybody a bad case of “verguenza ajena” as you get Maduro to explain his mystical experiences with the Soul of Chávez As A Bird.

We need, globally, a left alternative to the current neoliberal consensus. Thats is a given, and is urgent. Trying to find it in Chavismo… well, as I just told somebody over the dead of Thatcher, if the options are between thatcherism and chavismo, I choose barbiturates and a quiet exist, thank you.

“I’m interested in how Tim derived these Gini results, as well.”

Wikipedia has a list of countries by their gini. The 0.39 number for Venezuela is listed as being tyhe post tax/post benefit one via the CIA numbers. The World Bank (also post tax etc) is higher than the CIA one. Can’t recall if that is different years.

The US one is indeed listed as 0.45 post tax and post benefit in those same CIA numbers.

However, it was JQ himself, our OP writer, who posted here some time ago a file showing the effects of tax and benefits on US gini. A file which showed that the 0.45 number is pre, not post.

The reason for this is that all of the US stats about poverty and inequality are influenced by the way that much poverty alleviation and redistribution is done via the EITC and various benefits in kind. The figures are not directly comparable across countries as a result.

I agree that the US is more unequal even after redistribution than many other countries (most industrialised if not all, and more than many industrialising) but the 0.45 overstates it.

Congratulations Tim on your semi-successful attempt to de-rail this conversation (to lefties trusting/not trusting the CIA or something).

Now, to return to the matter at hand, by whatever measure, Anderson got significant facts significantly wrong on a number of occasions in a publication that apparently prides itself on fact-checking. Why, one might almost think the facts were incidental to the point of view being presented.

“Why, one might almost think the facts were incidental to the point of view being presented.”

It depends on which facts. The US establishment is hostile to the current government of Venezuela, and will be until that country has a right-wing government (when inequality, exploitation, violence and government repression will be if anything actively funded by the US government). That’s a fact, and it’s the relevant fact for Mr. Anderson.

“You, little twerp, are someone who has sent 25,700 Tweets for a grand total of 169 followers. Get a life.”

I get this a lot on twitter. I think what he means is how can someone with only 169 followers send over 25,000 tweets, and I think that’s reasonably. I tried to clarrify this to all the parties involved at the time, but they didnt care

@ Terence (20) and (22) — Quandl has some nice data on Gini across countries. There’s also a bunch of statistics on Venezuela’s economy, society and demography , with global comparisons in a lot of cases. And a nice overview of data on Venezuela, with more recent observations than the CIA factbook for a lot of indicators. Best of all, these are all time-series datasets so you can see how trends have evolved over time (pre, during and post Chavez).

#34 Would they care for non-Americans writing them?

I’m quite NOT a Chávez supporter but bad criticism that is easily refuted does not help.

Look, Hector, can you kindly stop talking to me? Because the only ill-behaved person in this debates is you. I’m quite tired of your insults, your broad brush (My buddy Reagan? What do you know about who I’m buddy with?), your relish in imagining what discrimination would befall me and my friends, etc.

I dont know if this discussion is moderated or anything but really at this point I think is quite clear you cant hold a civil conversation with anybody that disagrees with you and just like the opportunity to proclaim your grandstanding contempt for thing like basic democratic values or the mere fact that disagreement can exist.

I kindly suggest you to ignore me as I’m trying, hard, to ignore you. Or if not, I kindly request the site owners to tell me clearly if it is your style of “converstation” what the site is about and I should shut up and leave or if I have any recourse to your constant insulting manner and attacks.

Thanks, Tim (40). So let’s take 0.41 for the U.S., and even use the slightly higher CEPAL (UN) statistic, 0.397 for 2011 (http://j.mp/WxC1HC). Venezuela still remains lower than the U.S. after taxes and transfers are accounted for. I didn’t have time to go through such a process for each of the top oil-producing countries, but it’s obvious that Venezuela is either on the extremely low or lower-middle range of that cohort. And keep in mind, this is a very contorted reading of Anderson’s original statement. When it comes to the entire world, however you want to cut it, Venezuela is a middling country in terms of income inequality, and the lowest or second-lowest in Latin America.

Jesús Couto Fandiño,

Great, I’ll ignore you. You may not find it quite so easy to ignore the military, though. I hope they do teach you and your sort a lesson about respect for your moral superiors though, since you don’t seem to have learned your lesson thus far.

“Venezuela still remains lower than the U.S. after taxes and transfers are accounted for.”

It may well be and I have no problem either way if it is. My point was only about the quality of statistics being used. A fairly regular point of mine which just goes to show quite how interesting and groovy I really am.

A question about the Gini coeficient. Venezuela has something like 95% of all export income coming from oil sales, accounting for 45% or so of the government revenues.

Basically, that removes a lot of the high disparity people from the equation – the economy is basically in the hands of the goverment officials who, in theory, are supposed to earn a reasonable salary. No room for the stratosferic ascent of the ultra-mega-rich .001% like in the US.

Would that influence the calculation of the Gini index much?

Jésus: Oil influences the raw Gini score but doesn’t factor into how it’s calculated. There’s been some debate over how to account for stuff like Venezuela’s massive capital flight and the super-profits earned by multinational corporations because of the overvalued currency, but no real tweaking of the way the INE does the calculations.

With so much speculation and ignorant flailing around in Keane’s critique of Anderson and now on this thread, it’s easy to forget that we do have some access to real knowledge of Venezuelan society. There’s a consensus that oil dissolved the old agrarian class structure and drove the development of a “rentistic” form of capitalism that’s defined in part by its relatively low income inequality (with a high-wage working class, a large middle class, a capitalist class made up mostly of mid-sized financial-commercial groups that are dependent on the state, etc.). I think you’ll find this gives you most of what you need to explain why Venezuela has been, with Uruguay and Costa Rica, one of the least unequal societies in Latin America for several decades.

There’s also some interesting research on how inequality has evolved in the Chávez era. In an analysis of household surveys that was published in the BCV Review in 2009, César Gallo concluded that declining inequality between 2002 and 2007 was tied to the growth of the middle class and wage compression in the middle of the income distribution. If you think about it, this is consistent with a common stereotype of how Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela has worked: where you used to see one well-paid graduate of UCAB in a given position, you’ll now see two or three poorly-paid graduates of Misión Sucre. Interestingly, given all the speculative sound and fury about populism and redistributive policy, Gallo also found in another article that income transfers had no effect at all on the evolution of inequality.

I’ll have to wait for all of the data from 2012 before I can finish it, but I’ve written several drafts of a paper that follows the distribution of the oil rent through four mechanisms (overvaluation; state expenditure; subsidies and low non-oil taxes; capital investment) in the Chávez era. The tentative conclusion is that, understood in class terms, there’s been little or no real re-distribution of income; the average real wage has declined and the functional distribution of income has tilted slightly from labour to capital. Since I’ll be making a few mild criticisms of Hugo Chávez, I’ll have to let Corey Robin and Doug Henwood know when it’s published so they can organize another one of these embarrassing hasbara missions.

Jesus Couto Fandino,

I must say, that doesn’t bother me one bit, and I’m sure ill sleep quite well tonight knowing that people like you aren’t going to be able to vote.

I’m seconding this, for his insults *and* constant threadjacking (across numerous posts) *and* the overposting (which rarely contributes to a discussion).

Barry,

If I’m asked by one of the owners of this blog, I’d be happy to tone down my rhetoric, and ignore Mr. Fandino. It’s their blog, after all.

Mr. Fandino isn’t one of the owners of Crooked Timber, though, so I’m not prepared to tone it down merely on *his* request. I’d be interested to see if the staff at Crooked Timber prefers to side with Venezuelan oppositionists, or with supporters of the Chavez Government.

Jesús: It looks to me like it was written by the former planning minister Felipe Pérez Martí. If he didn’t write it, someone’s put a lot of time and effort into producing a fairly convincing fake. ABC, being ABC, sensationalized the bit about a “bomba atómica económica”, but it’s hardly a scandal to learn that some chavistas are discussing the country’s most pressing problems or that some of them think Jorge Giordani’s doing a lousy job .

Anderson: “You, little twerp, are someone who has sent 25,700 Tweets for a grand total of 169 followers. Get a life.”

So you admit that his accusations are true.

I think it’s unlikely that Anderson is reading this comment thread, Billikin. You might as well go shout at a crowd of strangers.

As to the “accusations”, the only straightforward factual error identified in Keane’s critique has already been corrected. We’re safe to enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that Venezuela only has the third highest homicide rate in Latin America.

The remaining “accusations” both have to do with interpretation, and Keane doesn’t seem to have a particularly firm grasp of the underlying issues.

First, he takes on Anderson’s suggestion that a coup “put [Hugo Chávez] in office” as though this is an attempt to trick the reader into thinking he wasn’t elected. This is just silly. There’s nothing at all controversial about linking Chávez’s rise to power to his role in the 4-F coup attempt (you can do a Google image search of “museo militar Caracas” or “gorra tricolor” if you don’t believe me) and it’s hard to believe that even the kind of smug American liberal who makes up the New Yorker’s core readership could be so poorly educated and so lacking in knowledge and curiosity about the outside world that I need to worry they’ll come away from Anderson’s article thinking he literally took office on the day of his “por ahora”. (I just double-checked this and it turns out I’m mistaken; those smug American liberals are stupider than I’d imagined and the New Yorker has decided they do need a remedial lesson in Venezuelan history. How you people can continue to live in such a sad and hopeless country I’ll never know.)

The second “accusation” is that Anderson’s description of Venezuela as “one of the world’s most oil-rich but socially unequal countries” is somehow misleading. I won’t get into Keane’s tortuous and not very competent attempts to prove this point. There’s nothing controversial in pointing out that Venezuela is one of the least unequal countries in Latin America. As I pointed out in an earlier comment, this has been the case for decades.

All I want say here is that you seriously need to take a moment to think about your politics if you’re the kind of person who thinks it’s a worthwhile use of your time (not to mention NACLA’s money and reputation) trying to minimize the extent to which Venezuela is still a highly unequal and polarized society. I’ve been to dozens of street protests, marches, union meetings, etc., in Caracas, Barcelona, Maracay, Valencia, and Puerto La Cruz, and I’ll say without the slightest hesitation that I’ve never come across anyone who’d endorse Keane’s claim there’s been an “enormous” reduction of inequality in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. All of his sad flailing around trying to make it look as though Venezuela is headed down the path to becoming some kind of Nordic social democracy reminds me a lot of Mario Silva’s assertion on La Hojilla that the Arab Spring must have been the work of the CIA because Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria all had much lower Gini coefficients than Venezuela’s.

And for the record, I’m all into “Oil is for the Venezuelan people”. The question is not that, is what use do you do of the oil riches. And in that Chavismo has been … same as what was before. All short-term thinking, not really “sowing the oil” and transforming the country.

Walt, without entering in the debate about Anderson’s phrasing (which I would like to check but seems is behind a paywall of the New Yorker), and acknowledging that the “most unequal” bit was misleading (another thing is to explain how it was reached), I have to say you (and all Americans) have been subject to 2 campaigns. One of anti-Chávez propaganda and one of pro-Chávez sainthood.

For all the mistakes (and again, I’m not going to defend them – those are mistakes and his attitude to being told about it is despicable) what I can read of Mr Anderson report on the New Yorker is, in general, accurate in the broad lines. I’ve no doubt that Chávez and many chavistas were and are 100% sincere in their intention to help the poor (others are just in it for the money – but that was also in the previous Venezuela). What they are not too good are in actually achieving the objectives, and one of the reasons is the “defend the revolution” mentality, where any single criticism has to be met with derision, harassment, “CIA plots”, whatever instead of just cold analysis and rectification of the mistakes. In Chávez Venezuela the important thing was to be a Chavista – competence, knowledge about how to manage a particular thing, open minds, nothing of that was required to get into power. Zeal, devotion for the leader and willingness to attack dissidents were supposed to fill in for the lack of actual practical knowledge in running things from the electrical infrastructure to the economy.

While the problem seems to be rethorical for many of you (who is selling me the pro/anti Chávez propaganda and for what reason), it is not rethorical for Venezuelans, and, I fear, not rethorical to other countries. I live now in Spain and I see all the same signs that led to something like Chavismo here. Maybe here it will take a right-wing bent, maybe left wing. But the question is relevant – when I go to vote and have to choose I want to be able to choose Izquierda Unida as they have been very coherent and clear in their criticism of the current system. But the Chávez worship of segments of IU make me afraid. I’m going to vote for a democratic left alternative or for something that will morph into what I left behind?

Chávez and his movement cant be a blueprint for the left answer to the problems we are facing. Sincere desire or not, their methods and achievements are not something to emulate.

Walt: I haven’t offered any assessment of Chávez at all. Nor have I tried to justify any of what you call Anderson’s “lies of omission”. As I wrote to the New Yorker in an email asking for a correction of the (now-corrected) claim about how Venezuela’s homicide rate compares to the rest of Latin America, I think his writing is sensationalistic and lacking in any historical or comparative perspective.

I’m happy to know that you understand that you shouldn’t expect to get an “objective assessment of Chavez” from an anonymous stranger engaged in an entirely different argument on a blog comment thread. If you’re looking to immunize yourself from the “anti-Chavez propaganda campaign” you feel you’ve been subjected to as an American, you’d be much better off looking to a book on Venezuelan history or a recognized expert on contemporary Venezuelan politics and society.

Just in case there’s any confusion, I don’t endorse anything in Jesús’s assessment of the current situation in Venezuela. One comment I made was addressed to him because he posed a question on a topic about which I have a little bit of expertise. Another was a reply to a question he posed directly to me.

Looks to me like none of you is “on the ground” in Venezuela or anywhere else in Latin America, nor have you been. This is one of the reasons why I infrequently join threads on political blogs. That is not to say that Anderson’s disinformation pieces and his flatulent reluctance to do his homework as a journalist cannot be pointed out clearly by folks who have never been to Venezuela, as they violate the basic rules of journalism which Anderson claimed to cherish in a “workshop” he gave in Mexico a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, this thread has been infiltrated by folks plagiarizing Fox News–or in their pay–and others claiming inside dope, just like Anderson does, and whose comments place that claim in very dubious territory. Reminds me a bit too much of a thread on Blogcritics started right after Chávez visited the podium of the UN General Assembly in 2006 where he commented on its lingering sulphurous miasma–by the annointed political editor of the site who when I confronted him on his lack of direct knowledge of Venezuela posted that Venezuela was in Central America….

Just a few quick comments:

1. Caracas is not the most dangerous city on the planet. When that particular piece of Fox News disinformation was being concocted a few years ago, there was a brief moment of breath intake here in Mexico because Ciudad Juárez WAS declared the most dangerous city on the planet, actually beating out Bagdad. And it was thanks to ex-presidential chairholder Calderón’s having sent the army in to rape and pillage as usual. Like any large city, Caracas has its problems, but I have never felt especially uneasy walking around Caracas fairly late at night–something I would not feel comfortable doing in Cuernavaca, Mexico and in both Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador, for examples. As a country, Mexico is much more dangerous than Venezuela. The difference that is not addressed is that Mexico City is much less dangerous than the provinces, and therefore doesn’t show up near the top of violent large cities, so folks who don’t live here doon’t understand the situation. Ciudad Juárez, which held down the top slot for a few years recently, has a population of fewer than 1.5 million people–approximately 20% the size of Caracas.

If you look at the history of colonialism, you will find that in general, it leads to violence–and it is not easily erradicated, as the colonial mentality remains for a long time. It is particularly prominent here in Mexico in all sectors of the society because although Mexico has had two revolutions–one beginning iin 1810 and another 100 years later, it is not an independent sovereign nation. Venezuela has taken great steps to throwing off the yoke of colonialism and its latest form neoliberalism, but as is evident from the violence created by rightwing diehards and mercenaries from Colombia and Central America as well as local guns-for hire, that yoke is not going down quietly into the dustbin of history.

2. It is untrue that the border with Colombia is closed until after Sunday’s presidential election to deprive Venezuelans living in Colombia of being able to vote. They can vote in the Venezuelan consulates, and they are well aware of that, as there is even a Facebook page on the topic–so have no need to crossing into Venezuela to vote–where they are probably not even registered to vote.

The border is closed to prevent paramilitaries associated with Alvaro Uribe and the Venezuelan opposition, such as the several who were arrested during the past few days, from crossing into Venezuela to create violent attempts at destabilizing the country.

3. Gini coefficient: As most of you know, this can be calculated several ways–the most common two ways being pre-tax and post-tax, the latter also referencing social spending in a given country. Petroleum revenues contribute to the availability of money spent on social programs in Venezuela, but they do not compell the way it is spent. They are necessary, but not sufficient.

Before Chavez was able to recover state control of the petroleum industry, which had been nationalized during the first term of Carlos Andrés Pérez but was still controlled by the oligarchy and Big Oil (Exxon, etc.) there was little money to spend on much of anything–especially keeping in mind that petroleum was just over 7 bucks a barrel when he took office in 1999 (he had to go around to the various leaders of OPEC to get that group off its knees–hence the famous pics of him with Hussein and Gaddafi, among others) No matter how you slice the Gini, it is a pretty fair indicator of inequality or equality of wealth distribution. The US government plays a lot of games to try to keep its Gini below 5.0, but even a casual glance around you on the part of those living in the US should make you aware of that manipulation.

4. Jon Anderson is a fake journalist. One of a long line of gringo fakes who either write to order based on US government policies for money or write to order hoping to receive some. When he has been caught in the past in other lies, he has always claimed that he has “exclusive, secret” information that no one else has. When his bio of Che Guevara came out in 1997 along with a bunch of others, for the 30th anniversary of Che’s assassination by the CIA in Bolivia, he claimed to have had exclusive access to family files and documents controlled by Che’s widow, and had become one of the family. His first piece on Chávez for the New Yorker was published in 2001, and reprinted in Spanish the same year by Gatopardo magazine, then based in Colombia–the version I read. In it he played armchair psychiatrist, apparently having interviewed someone who claimed to have been Chávez’ personal psychiatrist, made unacceptably racist comments about the appearance of Chávez’ 3-year-old daughter, gave the readers such important inside information as that Chávez occasionally smoked cigarettes (another Anderson exclusive), and in general trivialized Chávez’ revolutionary posture. After twelve years I don’t remember much else about it, but I figured if Anderson had gone to this much trouble to make Chávez seem like a Quijote wannabe be failed baseball pitcher, the guy just might be worth checking out and getting to know–as well as his Bolivarian process.

I was fortunate to have been able to do so in April of 2003, and to have maintained my contact with that process since then. So Anderson inadvertently did me a favor, as he turned me on to the Bolivarian Revolution in spite of his intentions to the contrary, and I have been able in my travels and conferences and so forth to turn others on to it, including in the Middle East.

Sunday’s election is expected to be won by Maduro. The mainstream media both inside and outside Venezuela has been promoting violence, questioning the electoral system–which Jimmy Carter called the “best in the world”–and gearing up to claim fraud–for the umpteenth time, despite the easily-audited system and despite all of the elections since Chávez took office having been certified as clean and exemplary by international bodies. The opposition candidate apparently doesn’t look too presidential with his bugged out eyes and bent baseball cap, so the BBC reprint in today’s Morelos state version of La Jornada had a photo od Maduro driving a bus to a rally with the caption that it was opposition candidate Capriles. I had to laugh.

But it’s very serious business, as the US and its henchmen and usual hired guns will do everything in their power to derail democracy in South America and grab the planet’s biggest petroleum reserves. YOUR tax dollars as work, as always.

I must have allucinated being born, raised, and reach 30 years old in Caracas, then. Also, if anybody in the CIA is listening, my paycheck is years late.

Jesús:

1. Nice try with the Spanish allucinating, ecept that it’s spelled alucinating in Spanish. One l. Not like the English hallucinating. You’ve been so long in an English-speaking environment that your Spanish seems to have hit the dustbin of history. (I have been away from an English-speaking environment for 20 years, yet I seem to do a reasonable job of handling spelling and syntax in English and the same reasonable job in Spanish.) Just for the record, so you believe I still can manage an analysis of English, your statement should have read: I must have hallucinated being born, raised and living until the age of 30 in Caracas, then. Pick a language and use it to debate here: your choice.

2. I would like to request that you tell us what year you LEFT Caracas for Miami, and how much time you have spent in Venezuela since then.

3. I did not refer to you directly anywhere in my post, yet you assumed my criticism was directed towards you. Please tell us why you made that assumption.

4. I also don’t recall indicating anything about you or anyone else on this thread having been hired to post here by the CIA. A little wishful thinking?

Marthe: I never claimed to be “on the ground” (I’m a Canadian living in Toronto) but I have done some research in Venezuela and I’m well-informed enough to take part in a blog debate without being accused of “infiltration” and “plagiarizing Fox News”. I think if you paid attention you’d find I don’t actually disagree with most of your critique of Jon Lee Anderson and my political take on Venezuela is much closer to yours than it is to Jesús’s.

Jesús: There’s nothing far-fetched in Marthe’s suggestion that the old PdVSA was run by a small elite that saw its interests as being more closely aligned with Big Oil than with the Venezuelan nation. The money invested in things like refineries in Europe and the U.S. was money that wasn’t available for social spending. Her understanding of the conflict between the so-called meritocracy and the Chávez government is spot on. I don’t think you can understand anything about the Hugo Chávez era if you deny the truth of this narrative.

But I do think it’s an open question how successful the Chávez government has really been in “sowing the oil”. The reason I first intervened on this thread (which I now regret as it’s been an unpleasant experience) and tried to point people to the actual research on inequality that’s been done by economists like César Gallo is that both Anderson’s claim that Venezuela is one of the world’s most unequal countries and Keane’s “enormous” reduction in poverty struck me as unhelpful caricatures. It doesn’t seem I’ve convinced anyone, though, so I’ll leave well enough alone.

I left Caracas for SPAIN the same year Chávez got into power. My English is not perfect, even if I manage to earn a living with it. Care to criticize my points too? I appreciate getting to improve my English, not so much being told I dont know what the hell I’m talking about the country I was born and raised in. Adam S at least seem to be CURRENTLY there, so I’m interested in his point of view – not that I lack relatives and friends there, but they are all pro-opposition (no doubt all oligarchs), Adam seems to be critical of aspect of the system while not unfriendly to it (or so it seems, I dont know). I would like very much to hear his opinion because is the only one that doesnt sound like Chávez propaganda.

The “Looks to me like none of you is “on the ground” in Venezuela or anywhere else in Latin America, nor have you been” phrase may be the point I decided you were including me in this. Again, I was “on the ground” for around 30 years so forgive me if I think I know a bit better how the whole 70s, 80 and 90’s in Venezuela than somebody that “spent some time in 2003” there. Amazingly all those fans of the revolution that just got “some time” there seem to recall a parallel Venezuela I did not knew when I was growing up; Adam summarized it very well with ” There’s a consensus that oil dissolved the old agrarian class structure and drove the development of a “rentistic” form of capitalism that’s defined in part by its relatively low income inequality (with a high-wage working class, a large middle class, a capitalist class made up mostly of mid-sized financial-commercial groups that are dependent on the state, etc.).”. But of course, what the hell do I know, you in your 2003 visit and “current contact” have much better knowledge about how Venezuela reached Chavismo. You may have even to explain to me what the Caracazo was and how it happened because I seems to have missed it while hiding in my home in Caracas during it.

How is Venezuela now? Again, all my contacts are not fan of the revolution – something to do with food shortages, electrical blackouts, and violent crime. Also something to do with Chavistas using the Hector_St_Clare mode of discourse to ANY kind of opposition. And the corruption. But hey, maybe they are all lying and I’m just being fed CIA propaganda.

Now please proceed to tell me one of two things – either your critics of my points, or how unfit I’m to have this conversation because

Not that I’m laying down the law or anything

No I think you ham it up for effect, that’s all. You will notice that I criticise you for being in pro-actively anti-Chavist exile. You and rf are the ones going on about the CIA.

Argument against typo is the lamest argument of all.

Amazing. Simply amazing. I’m becoming devious, while you declare me “phony” and “not in Spain” due to your Sherlock Holmes level of deduction due to a typo.

All in the same chavista pattern of saying whatever ridiculous things come to mind and attacking the opposition instead of rational debate of facts, options, plans, etc. No, if you find somebody not convinced of the revolution, it is clear they are “fake”. Or “oligarch”. Or whatever.

If your marvelous “defense of the truth” is as accurate as your assesement or where in Earth I am or who I am then is no surprise the “revolution” works for you.

Descarto.

Just saying.