Small article on Venezuela by Eduardo Galeano from 2004 to share with friends of Venezuela:

[Judi Lynn]

EDUARDO GALEANO
NOTHINGLAND—OR VENEZUELA?
A strange dictator, this Hugo Chávez. A masochist, with suicidal tendencies: he established a constitution that allows the people to get rid of him, and then took the risk of this happening in a recall referendum, which Venezuela is the first country in history to have held. He was not punished: 5,800,629 Venezuelans voted for him to remain president, with 3,989,008 against—a margin of 19 per cent. This was the eighth election Chávez has won in five years, with a transparency of which Bush could only have dreamed.

Faithful to his own constitution, Chávez accepted the referendum called by the opposition, and put his presidency at the disposal of the people: ‘You decide’. Until now, presidencies have been interrupted only by death, putsches, popular uprisings or parliamentary proceedings. The Venezuelan referendum has ushered in an unprecedented form of direct democracy. An extraordinary event: how many leaders would be brave enough to do such a thing? And how many would remain in power afterwards?

This tyrant invented by the mass media, this fearsome demon, has just given a tremendous vitamin-injection to democracy, which, both in Latin America and elsewhere, has become rickety and enfeebled. A month prior to the referendum, the 81-year-old former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, that flawless democrat whom the media so adore (despite his impeachment on corruption charges), openly called for a coup d’état. In an interview from his Miami base—in which he also argued that Chávez should ‘die like a dog’—he stated in the plainest terms that ‘the path of violence’ was the only possible one for Venezuela, and discounted the referendum because ‘it is not part of Latin America’s specific character’. Our specific character or, in other words, our precious heritage: a deaf and dumb populace.

Until only a few years ago, Venezuelans went to the beach when there were elections. Voting was not, and still is not, compulsory. But the country has gone from total apathy to total enthusiasm. The torrent of voters, standing in the sun for hours in enormous queues, overwhelmed the structures that had been put in place by the electoral authorities. The turnout was 70 per cent, up from an average of 55 per cent in previous elections. The democratic flood also made it difficult to use, as had been planned, the latest technology for preventing ballot fraud, in this country where the dead have the bad habit of turning out to vote, and where some of the living vote several times.

More:
http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2524

Don't forget to look for his WONDERFUL book, Open Veins of Latin America.

OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

by Eduardo Galeano
Translated by Cedric Belfrage
New Introduction by Isabel Allende

“A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive expose which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read.” — CHOICE, American Library Association

Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.

Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.

Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.

More:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/openvein.htm

You can get it in paperback for only 12.24 by now, at Amazon, and used for 4.90

It's worth far more than its original price back when he first published it. You won't want to be without it again.

[Peace Patriot]

1. And send Barack Obama a copy! (of both) nt