Educate me on Chavez

[rockymountaindem]

This Chavez fellow from Venezuela seems to stir a lot of passion on both sides, yet I'm embarassed to say that I don't know anything about him or his policies.

What can you tell me about him?

[Danger Duck]

1. He's a gentle lover.

yet a stern ruler.

[sofa king]

2. Without citations....

Having spent all of one week in Venezuela twenty years ago, here's what I know.

Perhaps more than even Columbia, Venezuela is a democracy in name only. Four out of five people in the country live below the poverty level while a virtual oligarchy consisting of the the top twenty percent (at most) control the economy, the government, and the nation's considerable oil reserves.

Hugo Chavez isn't exactly the poster child for democracy, either. I know he spent some time in jail for participating in one of the many coup d'etats which have wracked Venezuela. Also in keeping with aspiring military dictator chic, Chavez has a high-but-not-pretentious rank in the Venezuelan Army. He's a Colonel, I believe, just like Qaddafi.

But Chavez is obviously a rare bird of sorts, because after getting out of jail he was legitimately elected on a populist platform which centered upon eradicating corruption and attacking poverty issues. This did not please the upper 20% of the nation, as they profit handsomely from both of those things. He's also had to take on his own judicial branch in a rather undemocratic fashion, which gives his enemies plenty of ammunition against him.

That's what I know. Here's what I suspect. One of Chavez's more unpopular moves amongst the traditional ruling elite was a sort of land reform in which government land holdings were made available to the poor. I'm not certain about this, but it seems as if the state-owned oil company was particularly annoyed by this move and I have a hunch that it's because the oil company knows a lot more about the country's oil reserves than they're letting on. Venezuela has a considerable German heritage, particularly among the ruling elite, and the Germans are some of the best damned geologists on earth.... but I digress into pure speculation.

After September 11, 2001, the Venezuelan economy took a sympathetic hit, and Chavez's popularity began to drop precipitously. By Spring, 2002, a coup attempt removed Chavez for maybe a week. The Bush Administration was suspiciously sympathetic to the usurpers, but the OAS refused to recognize the new government and soon Chavez was back in business.

As you recall, 2002 was when the neoconservative wing of President Bush's administration had secured virtually free reign to fuck up the entire planet in an attempt to recast America as leader of a new Delian League.

I don't think that it's too much of a reach to state that the Bush Administration cares fuck-all about our own poor, much less Venezuela's. And while heated debate continues elsewhere, you won't get a lot of argument here that the Bush Administration cares fuck-all about democracy, freedom, and fair elections, except when those terms are used as a euphamism for overthrowing other nations in order to control their oil reserves. It sure looks to me as if America decided that Venezuela--an oil-producing nation conveniently close--needed a good dose of "freedom" in the form of a new compliant military dictatorship.

Chavez seems to have beat that rap somehow. And he's been quite vocal about who he thinks was behind the 2002 coup and the 2002 general (read: oil company) strike which further crippled the nation. He has the unique distinction of being the first world leader to (publicly) call George Bush an "asshole," and told Bush to get his grubby fingers out of Venezuelan politics, 'cause he wasn't going to go quietly into pampered retirement like Aristide did in Haiti.

With the loving caress of American military might being applied elsewhere around the globe, Chavez appears to be temporarily safe from invasion, while his very Bush-like opposition tries to pick the ant shit from the pepper and invalidate the recent referendum on Chavez's leadership which he appears to have legitimately won this month. Are they auditing the auditors of the election audit yet?

If you ask me, Chavez probably ain't the best world leader in the box, but he sure as hell isn't as undemocratic, dishonest, uncaring, manipulative, exploitative and greedy as my President is. And my country has an election coming up soon, too. This November.

[unslinkychild1]

3. Ya SofaKing

I was gonna flame your ass (not really :)) for, errr... , biased comments until I found you totally, like, FAIR, man, even in acknowledging your own ignorance, sort of (I'm not saying YOU'RE ignorant, mind, just that you state it in the perspective of opinion and personal experience--THANK YOU)!

Now, since I'm a newbie (sort of--been lurking here for years), I don't know how to post links and am too lazy to bother. To the first poster, and YOU, ya SofaKing, I will point out some places to look--try COUNTERPUNCH, and Greg Palast, and Antiwar.com. They've had some excellent articles of late, and while not completely unbiased, they also have LINKS to credible shit, so you can make up your own mind.

Personally, I think Chavez is GAWD. Fuck the rich bastards. I lived in Mexico for a year as a teen, so I know how graphic the difference between rich and poor is, and how GAWDAWFUL INDIFFERENT to the whole gamut the rich are. FUCK THEM.

In case you were wondering, ya SofaKing, "ya" is a term of respect in Arabic that I picked up from some Iraqi friends, so peace, friend.

[Baja Margie]

4. You hit the nail

on the head, sofa king, excellent summary, thank you.

[Doomsayer13]

5. good, and fair analysis

I don't count myself among the Chavez worshippers on this board, but you pretty much sum it up. While I am happy that the Venzuelan people has a leader that cares about their most needy, I also am weary of his autocratic tendencies.

[unslinkychild1]

6. ummmmmmm........

how can someone be "autocratic" when the majority select/elect him like SIX TIMES???? You may be right, so please, edjumacate me. Sure, land redistribution, but it was FALLOW land, and I am not aware that it was GOVERNMENT land. It was rich bastards' land that just sat there, from what I know. Pray tell, what ARE his "autocratic" tendencies? No flame intended--I'm just curious, with bias already stated---CHAVEZ IS GAWD!

[Doomsayer13]

7. Here are some examples

I'm not saying he wasn't democratically elected, I'm saying he has undemocratic, autocratic tendencies. But I suppose it is in keeping with the country's history. Anyways, here are some examples -

- His allies in the judiciary violated the constitution by requiring his opponents to gather millions more signatures than necessary in order to force a recall

- He institued a "court-packing" scheme, similar to what Roosevelt wanted to do, and added 11 supreme court justices as well as lowering the confirmation requirement from 2/3 to a simple majority, which in the Chavez government ensured him control of the judiciary branch

- He forces private television and radio stations to air his speeches live, at his whim

- He has jailed his political opponents, like Henrique Carpriles Radonski, a reformist who sits in jail under false charges of trying to incite riots

I'm not saying he hasn't done good things, but he's no saint either.

[mitchtv]

9. rightly or wrongly

he reminds this old timer of Juan Peron. No he is not prefect, but he was elected. More than Chimpy can say.

[sofa king]

8. Thanks, all!

Sorry for the lack of citations and any mistakes I've no doubt made. I especially need to look into the land giveaway thing because I think that is one of the central issues and giving away private land, fallow or not, is a heck of a lot different than giving away government land (my understanding however is that an enormous portion of the country's interior is a rough equivalent of park land). On the other hand, it's really just a subset of the issues which seem to make the world turn these days: oil, money, power, and greed.

That one short week in Venezuela was one of the more important ones in my life. Caracas is one of the most interesting cities I've ever seen--magestic and tragically sad at the same time. I couldn't help but admire the people I met. Many were very determined and outspoken individuals, unafraid to point out the problems their nation faced and highly interested in fixing those problems. It seems to me that Chavez would precisely appeal to that sort of person--and I met a heck of a lot of them.

I'd also point out that a lot of the arguments I've read in favor of Chavez make some sense. Venezuela seems to have had a rich recent tradition of corrupt governments which pander to a small part of the population while personally enriching themselves. (Among other things, I saw the Caracas chief of police's palatial estate. He drew about $20,000 a year in legitimate salary.) Chavez being part of a coup against that sort of a government might not deserve to be called "undemocratic." Similarly, if the rule of law is designed to protect the very wealthy while leaving everyone else hanging out to dry, then I can see why Chavez would autocratically attempt to bypass the judicial system.

At any rate, it's not my country's place to support the guy's overthrow if he's being fairly elected, and most sources seem to think he is.

Oh, and next time I'll spell "ephemism" correctly. (edit: but not this time, dammit!)

[slaveplanet]

10. Uhm, Ya, about that Coup

Palast has good insight about all that 1.} because the IMF/WB/WTO master plan documents were leaked to him & 2.)because he was in direct communications with Chavez before the Coup.

http://infowars.com/palast_interview.html 3/4/2002
snip-
AJ: This is just amazing. And so, drive the whole world down, blow out their economies and then buy the rest of it up for pennies on the dollar. What's Part 4 of the IMF/World Bank Plan?

GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela.

AJ: And they install their own corporate government.

GP: What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would
support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the
current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to
double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the
government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to
raise taxes on the oil companies. -snip

and here to shed some light on how the Coup was resolved for the uninitiated:
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=169&row=1

Carmona then decreed the dissolution of his nation's congress and supreme court while the business peopled clapped and chanted, 'Democracia! Democracia!' I later learned the Cardinal of Caracas had led Carmona into the Presidential Palace, a final Genet-esque touch to this delusional drama. This fantasy would evaporate ‘by the crowing of the cock,’ as Chávez told me in his poetic way.

Chávez minister Miguel Bustamante-Madriz, who had escaped the coup, led 60,000 brunettes down from Barrio Petare to Miraflores. As thousands marched against the coup, Caracas television stations, owned by media barons who supported (and possibly planned the coup) played soap operas. The station owned hoped their lack of coverage would keep the Chavista crowd from swelling; but it doubled and doubled and doubled. On l3 April, they were ready to die for Chávez.

They did not have to. Carmona, fresh from his fantasy inaugural, received a call from the head of a pro-Chávez paratroop regiment stationed in Maracay, outside the capital. To avoid bloodshed, Chávez had agreed to his own 'arrest' and removal by the putschists, but did not mention to the plotters that several hundred loyal troops had entered secret corridors under the Palace. Carmona, surrounded, could choose his method of death: bullets from the inside, rockets from above, or dismemberment by the encircling 'bricks and milk' crowd. Carmona took off his costume ribbons and surrendered.


Taking on the oil giants


I interviewed Carmona while I leaned out the fourth floor window of an apartment in La Alombra, a high-rise building complex. I spoke my pidgin Spanish across to his balcony on the building a few yards away. The one-time petrochemical mogul was under house arrest - the lucky bastard. If he had attempted to overthrow the President of Kazakhstan (or for that matter, the President of the US), he would by now have a bullet in his skull. Chávez, in a gracious if strained nod to the ultimate authority of the privileged, simply confined Carmona to his expensive flat.

[lostnfound]

11. Did you see this thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=68371

[Robbien]

12. You also have to keep in mind that the corporatists control the media

both here and in Venezuela. Take every news report with a grain of salt because the corporatists really really really do not want Chavez in control of that oil rich country.

Chavez is taking control of the media in Venezuela. There is going to be a huge difference in the reporting swinging the other way. Probably just a biased, but biased in another direction.