Whither post-Chávez Venezuela

To put the entire subject of Venezuela into perspective from a yanqui point of view, I suggest reading the following snippet by Matthew Yglesias.

The late Hugo Chavez is controversial because of American aspirations to global military hegemony. People who vocally oppose those aspirations find themselves subjected to a massive amount of scrutiny of their human rights record that leaders who support it manage to completely avoid. Thus Chavez is an authoritarian strongman while King Abdullah II of Jordan does cameos on Star Trek Voyager. And since American aspirations to global military hegemony are uncontroversial inside the United States, critics of said aspirations develop an outsized level of emotional affiliation with foreign leaders who are subjected to this kind of hypocritical scrutiny. Matthew Yglesias - Slate

That quote more or less gives us the parameters of an American discussion of Hugo Chávez and the future of his movement, revolution or regime, whichever you prefer.

Cutting to the chase: in my opinion, if the Venezuelan army and Venezuela's poor hang together and the bottom doesn't totally drop out of oil market, Chavismo will survive, either as a potent force for change in Venezuela, Latin America and the Third World in general or in a degenerate form like Argentinian Peronism, with Chávez in the role of Evita. Whatever happens, the poor people of Venezuela will never forget him and will always worship his memory, in some ways he is more powerful dead than alive.

First the army. To really have any idea of Venezuela's future you would have to be a fly on the wall in a Venezuelan army junior officer's mess. One of the USA's problems south of the border nowadays is that they no longer train and network most of Latin America's army officers like they used to in Cold War days, and neither are they the exclusive suppliers of those country's weapon systems anymore. That is why the US backed coup against Hugo Chavez failed: only the older, Yankee trained officers were behind it, the young officers, the ones who make successful coups, backed Chávez.

As to oil, I would imagine that Russia, China, Iran would be quite willing to supply the necessary expertise to help restructure Venezuela's limping oil industry in order to dilute American influence.

For me the question is whether what follows Chávez will be a serious revolution or simply a demagogic fraud like Peronism has become. A revolution means a total change in the social and economic relations of a country. Many observers, who don't sympathize with Chávez's goals predict that his regime will quickly disintegrate without his hand on the helm. I'm not at all sure they are right.

We should take into account that Chavez didn't just suddenly drop dead of a heart attack.... the regime has had plenty of time to prepare... also we should take into account that the revolutionary infrastructure and revolutionary "consulting" services available to Venezuela come from the Castro brothers, who are the world's most successful revolutionaries, and if nothing else, certainly brilliant survivors.

An example of the brothers' ingenious handiwork is using the Cuban model of turning the ranchito (favela) "comadres" (gossipy, neighborhood, old wives and general busybodies) into the eyes and ears of the regime with cost-effective neighborhood "committees". The Cubans are supplying the type of know how that the CIA, the State Department and the USIA used to supply to South America's right wing dictators. The survival of the Castro brother's life's work may depend on Venezuelan oil and I wouldn't want to be standing between the Castro brothers and survival, it could be hazardous to ones health

Certainly the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela are mutually dependent and the Castros are very hard, intelligent and experienced men and will not let everything they have built up over decades just slip through their fingers only because Chavez has died.

So those are the elements: the army, the oil and the Cubans and most of all, the poor people of Venezuela, who for the first time in their history are playing a leading role in the drama of their lives. DS

Fidel retires

"This is the event that fifty years of U.S. policy was designed to stop." Sarah Stephens - Huffington Post

David Seaton's News Links

Compared to Switzerland, Castro’s Cuba is truly a vile tyranny. However, compared to neighboring Haiti, the favelas of Brazil or even post-Katrina New Orleans, for that matter, Cuba is Switzerland.

Cuba may be the only country in the world where African slavery once existed where today there are no children of color living in squalor, without preventive medical care or proper schooling. Could that have been achieved without such brutal repression? It is difficult to say, because it has never happened anyplace else.

I wrote this in a post last year about infant mortality in Mississippi:

On lifelong reading and observation I have come to the conclusion that African slavery and its aftermath form a pan-American nation and that Mississippi has more in common with the Dominican Republic than with Iowa and more in common with Haiti than Vermont. So I don't compare Cuba, for example, with Sweden, France, Lichtenstein or Canada. I compare it with Jamaica, Brazil and... Mississippi.

I 'll stand on that. DS

Ecuador Elections: give it back to the Indians

David Seaton's News Links

If you were trying to find some common factor that defines our era, it is the previously silent finding voice. The new, inexpensive communication systems put those with common language and values into comfortable contact with each other across formidable physical obstacles. Thus Muslims around the world, combining Arabic, the Koran and the Internet, are in the process of forming a common Islamic consciousness, much to the discomfort of non-Muslims. Language + shared values + similar economic conditions X Internet = trouble for those in charge. In Spanish America all these ingredients exist: common language, colonial past and downtrodden Indians. Unlike North America, all the South American rivers run in the wrong direction and all the mountains are in the wrong place and this has kept the different peoples separated. The white settlers of one Latin American country are not interested in the white settlers of the other countries, looking only toward Europe and especially to the USA which is seen to guarantee their position economically and if necessary militarily. Fluid communication between the impoverished Indians of the different countries, or even communication between the Indians of any one country was science fiction until the very recent past. All this has changed in only a few years. All the ingredients being in the pot and the heat turned up, the smells from the kitchen are wafting through the house. DS
Ecuador Elections: This eruption is irreversible - The Guardian
Abstract: The red tide sweeping through Latin America, checked in Peru and Mexico, has achieved another memorable record this week in Ecuador. The substantial electoral victory of Rafael Correa, a clever, young, US-educated economist and former finance minister, marks a further triumph for Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his Bolivarian revolution, which has long sought to ignite Latin America's "second independence".(...) Unlike most US-trained academics in Latin America, Correa is an economist of a radical persuasion. He has been an outspoken critic of the neo-liberal economics of the globalised world, and an opponent of the so-called Washington consensus that has imposed this ideology on Latin America in the past 20 years. He cannot be easily dismissed as a caudillo or a populist, but was the intelligent choice against his absurdly rightwing millionaire opponent, Álvaro Noboa, whose electoral bribes were too outrageous to be effective. Yet significantly, both candidates stood outside the existing party system. The Correa victory marks a seismic explosion in Ecuador's traditional politics. During the past decade, a series of popular demonstrations, military coups, and temporary governments have given clear warning of changes to come. Similar shifts occurred in Venezuela and Bolivia, where the termites of bureaucratic incompetence and corruption hastened the collapse of the old order. Nothing was left but an ineffective opposition that has proved leaderless and demoralised. Correa, like Chávez and Morales, will move swiftly towards establishing a constituent assembly to give a more representative voice to the country's indigenous majority.(...) Whatever the psephological details, the wave of popular feeling aroused in Ecuador, as in Bolivia earlier this year, clearly indicates the irreversible shift in power. The peoples subdued by Cortés and Pizarro 500 years ago are beginning to rebel against white settler rule. Simón Bolívar, after travelling through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru during the independence wars in the early 19th century, recorded his impression in 1825 that "the poor Indians are truly is a state of lamentable depression. I intend to help them all I can: first as a matter of humanity; second, because it is their right; and finally, because doing good costs little and is worth much." READ IT ALL