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

On the death of Hugo Chávez

A little old lady interviewed by El País in a mourning crowd of Venezuelans gave the most insightful analysis of Hugo Chávez and his probable legacy: "He gave us an identity!". 

Latin America is filled with people like that old lady, they are the overwhelming majority: poor, brown, left out and despised by the white, Criollo minority that has ruled the continent since colonial times. Chávez has given them an identity, an icon and marked a path. How attractive that identity, that Icon and that path are in South America can be judged by the reaction of Brazil's moderate president, Dilma Roussef, quoted in The Guardian, "The loss is irreparable. He was a great leader and friend of Brazil. President Chávez will live on in the empty space that he filled in the heart of history and the struggle of Latin America."

Paradoxically the conditions that brought forth Hugo Chávez in South America, obscene wealth and inequality in the midst of poverty, squalor and injustice, are being replicated right now in the developed world. Chávez's death coincides with the Dow Jones index hitting "all time highs", while, as John Gapper writes in the Financial Times, with unemployment hanging over their heads, the working poor and even university educated, middle class Americans are being encouraged to work longer hours at lower pay.... and in Europe? Much of its south is busy looking for their Hugo Chávez.

Hugo Chávez is/was not a freak accident, he is a leading indicator of the United State's loosening grip in the midst of the most important systemic crisis since the Great Depression. DS

What's up with Hugo?

David Seaton's News Links

Hugo Chávez has managed to keep his mouth shut since the 10th of June and the world's rumor mills are alive: he is dead, he has cancer, he is in coma... soon there will be sightings like Elvis.

What advantage could there be for Hugo Chávez to simply sit in his hospital bed in Havana and keep his mouth shut for a few days?

The silences of the talkative can be very powerful.

For a devious man, and Chávez, behind his clownish behavior, is a very cold and devious man, this silent stay in the hospital could provide some unique opportunities.... rather like attending one's own funeral and watching out for who cries too little or too much.

He and his security organization in Caracas could observe very closely who in the opposition or even among his followers might have plans for a future without him at the helm and might show their hands during his strange silence. Lots of interesting and even incriminating conversations may be flying around bugged telephones...

They say he'll be back in Caracas next week and why not? A night of long knives may very well follow. DS

Hugo Chávez Frías is not Martin Luther King

David Seaton's News Links
On Sunday Venezuelans will vote in a referendum that could make Hugo Chávez president for life. Tension is high, there are demonstrations, impassioned speeches for and against and even riots with people getting killed. Chávez himself is doing all he can to raise the tension by seemingly picking a new fight with someone every day. There is a significant detail here. Watching it all on the television news with the sound off, you can usually guess who is pro or anti-Chávez just by the color of their skin.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, only a fifth of Venezuela’s population is of white European descent. This makes it very difficult to trust media reports of the situation. White faces read the news on TV. Most Latin American commentators whose views reach us are members of the white. middle class, as are those that own and run the poll taking organizations. And not just in Venezuela, even in Castro’s socialist, afro-Cuban, Cuba, the leadership cadres are overwhelmingly white. Chávez’s support comes from what a Los Angeles Times editorial calls his, “brilliant instinct for rallying the country's disaffected poor.”

In 1952 an African-American author, Ralph Ellison published a ground breaking novel, “The Invisible Man”, whose title many critics feel defined the experience of people of African descent in the Americas: that of being invisible and voiceless. In the years that followed, the people of color in the United States raised their voices and became visible, to the great and continuing discomfort of many whites. The white people of the US south who once voted solidly Democratic have punished that party’s leadership of the civil rights movement by voting solidly Republican ever since… the key to the victories of Nixon, Reagan and Bush. The “Conservative Revolution”, that only favors the rich, is based on the resentment of poor whites.

North America and Latin America are very different, but perhaps the oppression of people of color is the experience that they most share in common. In North America, white people are a majority, but in most of Latin America the opposite is true. Now it appears that the people of color of Latin America: African, indigenous and mixed race are also finding their voices. Chávez is riding that wave. The more resistance he encounters the harder he’ll ride it

Every fight Chávez picks, every shouting match he gets into is meant to cement the empathy that people of color feel in seeing any person of color confronting a white man. This explains many things. For example: nothing in the third world of European ex-colonies could symbolize “whiteness” more than a member of European royalty. If that empathy translates into votes it will give him victory, its absence will sink him. DS

Hugo Chávez, the man who ate Dubya's lunch

David Seaton's News Links
A friend of mine, who is a top executive in Spain's giant oil firm, Repsol and who has been traveling all over Latin America and especially in Venezuela for over 20 years, tells me that the loss of US influence in South America since 9-11 is unbelievable for a veteran observer like he is. Spanish bank executives, who dominate the financial sector in Latin America, tell me the same story.

Hugo Chávez is living proof that all the talk about America's unique, hegemonic superpower status is so much horse manure. The world is already multi-polar and soon will be more so. The war in Iraq has undressed the United States. The cold war will be seen as a garden party compared to what is coming. DS

The Holocaust denier, the radical socialist, and their axis of unity - Guardian
Abstract: A billboard of Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looms over a motorway in Venezuela, marking the entrance to a factory designed to produce three things: tractors, influence and angst.(...) The influence, less visible but real enough, is for Mr Chávez and Mr Ahmadinejad, two presidents who hope this and other ventures will project their prestige and power. The angst, if all goes to plan, is for Washington. Veniran might be tucked away in the backwater provincial capital of Ciudad Bolívar but it is part of a wider attempt by Mr Chávez to forge a common front against the United States. The socialist radical is using Venezuela's vast oil wealth to strike commercial and political deals with countries that challenge the US such as Iran, Belarus, Russia and China, as well as much of Latin America and the Caribbean, to rebuff what he refers to as the "empire". "Chávez is a global player because right now he has a lot of money that he is prepared to spend to advance his huge ambitions," said Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue thinktank. "He has worked tirelessly to upset US priorities in Latin America."(...) Supporters say he has worked tirelessly to support the poor and marginalised, for example through a $250,000 (£121,000) loan to help farmers in Bolivia's lowlands build a coca industrialization plant, part of an effort to turn the leaf into cakes, biscuits and other legal products instead of cocaine. "For years we have wanted to do this but no one would support us," said Leonardo Choque, leader of the Chimoré federation of coca growers. "Then the Venezuelans come and offer us a loan with very low interest rates. And no conditions." Venezuela is also funding a new university nearby. In contrast the US is accused of bullying Andean nations into destroying coca crops without promoting equally lucrative alternative livelihoods - a big stick and a small carrot.(...) Iran is to help build platforms in a $4bn development of Orinoco delta oil deposits in exchange for reciprocal Venezuelan investments. The 4,000 tractors produced annually in Ciudad Bolívar are small beer in comparison but they have a symbolic value as agents of revolutionary change. Most are given or leased at discount in Venezuela to socialist cooperatives that have seized land, with government blessing, from big ranches and sugar plantations. Dozens have also been sent to Bolivia to support President Evo Morales, a leftwing radical and close Chávez ally, and last week dozens more began to be shipped north to Nicaragua, whose president, Daniel Ortega, is another Chávez ally and longtime bugbear for Washington. The first batch was timed to coincide with the 28th anniversary of the Sandinista revolution.(...) A colleague who asked not to be named said the Iranians had been warmly welcomed. "I love it here. It's hot and sunny and they eat rice, just like back home. Except here I go out salsa dancing." Mr Chávez inaugurated the factory in 2005 with the then Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He has struck up a friendship with his successor, Mr Ahmadinejad, and hailed their "axis of unity". "The relationship is fundamentally geopolitical rather than economic," said Mr Shifter. "It tells the world that Iran, an international pariah, is welcome in Latin America, which is traditionally regarded as the strategic preserve or 'back yard' of the United States." READ IT ALL

"Chavez of Arabia"

David Seaton's News Links

I went to school with a lot of South American kids, I enjoyed the Cubans and the Venezuelans most. Until you have partied with Caribbean folk, you can have no idea of what partying is. There is sense of energy, juissance, bonhomie and humor that are hard to find is such doses anywhere else.

Even when they are serious and they can be very, very (say deadly) serious, believe me, this pleasure at life and playful, self-regard infects everything. Spanish people are always exasperated by their Caribbean cousins lack of gravitas. Aggressive, funny and assertive.

There is an element of all of this is Chavez. What I enjoy most about his antics is that he is a surprise. I confess that I don't surprise very easily any more. DS

Iran, Venezuela and Hamas lay diplomatic minefield for Bush - Debka
Abstract: During the Bush tour, the Venezuelan government and Hamas plan to ceremonially open a Hamas Office in Caracas, licensed to handle the affairs of the substantial and affluent South American Palestinian colonies. The largest are in Chile and Nicaragua. Meshaal and his entire Damascus-based political bureau will be invited for a formal visit to Caracas. Hugo Chavez, whose nickname is a “Fidel Castro with $50m dollars,“ will extend the Palestinian terrorist leader a welcome befitting a head of state.(...) Caracas is placing its vast cash resources at the disposal of a Tehran-sponsored Palestinian terrorist militia, thereby lining up with the Islamic Republic against the United States and Israel on a new world front.(...) Venezuela is helping Iran break the economic and financial embargo the United States, Europe and Israel have clamped down on the Hamas government. Its ministers will no longer need to bring suitcases full of banknotes through the Rafah crossing into Gaza. The transfers will be wired from Venezuelan banks to institutions in the Gulf.(...) Venezuela is helping Iran break the economic and financial embargo the United States, Europe and Israel have clamped down on the Hamas government. Its ministers will no longer need to bring suitcases full of banknotes through the Rafah crossing into Gaza. The transfers will be wired from Venezuelan banks to institutions in the Gulf.(...) Hamas’ hand in power-sharing negotiations with Fatah has been strengthened. The blacklisted Hamas will no longer need the services of the internationally- recognized Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his connections with Washington to finance Palestinian government operations. The cash will flow without the Hamas government being subjected to the conditions laid down by the Middle East Quartet to recognize Israel, renounce violence and honor previous accords with the Jewish state. READ IT ALL

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

In Nicaragua: Chavez 1, Bush 0 - Greg Grandin - Washington Post

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When you live in a Spanish speaking country for any length of time and become fluent in the Spanish language and begin to mix freely and even go to school with Latin-Americans, you will receive, whether you like it or not, what might be euphoniously known as an "alternative narrative" to "American exceptionalism". This experience was the beginning of my political consciousness, such as it is. Reagan's war in Nicaragua was every bit as criminal as Bush's war in Iraq and the World Court condemned it as criminal and was ignored. A lot of the same players are involved in both stories. DS
Abstract: Both Hugo Chavez and George Bush made it clear who they wanted to win last week's presidential election in Nicaragua: the first backed Daniel Ortega, the ex-guerrilla and Sandinista leader; the second, conservative banker Eduardo Montealegre. But the difference in the way each supported their candidate says much as to why the United States is so distrusted in Latin America. Venezuela helped Ortega by selling cheap oil with long-term, low-interest credit to Nicaraguan municipalities, a popular move since the country is gripped by a severe energy crisis. Caracas also donated tons of fertilizer and provided free eye surgery to hundreds of cataract patients. Chavez's critics pointed out this aid was nothing compared with what Washington gives Nicaragua, more than a billion dollars since Ortega was voted out of office in 1990. But roughly half of this aid goes just to keeping Nicaragua's bankrupted economy afloat, either in the form of debt relief or covering currency shortfalls, which in effect works as a subsidy to U.S. creditors and exporters, thus limiting its PR value. And of course this money pales in comparison to many billions of dollars of damage that Washington caused in Nicaragua with its devastating Contra War. In fact, the U.S. conditioned its financial assistance on Nicaragua abandoning its attempt to collect the estimated $17 billion that the World Court, in 1986, ordered Washington to pay to Managua as reparations for waging its illegal war against the country. But the real difference is that Chavez never threatened to punish Nicaraguans if they didn't vote as he hoped they would. Caracas offers all carrot and no stick. The Bush administration, in contrast, warned that an Ortega victory could bring aid cuts and trade sanctions, while Congressional Republicans said that they would pass legislation prohibiting Nicaraguans living in the U.S. from sending money home. Nicaragua is the hemisphere's second poorest country, and very heavily dependent on foreign aid and remittances; and such retaliation, if enacted, would be ruinous. That Washington reserves this kind of intimidation only for small and powerless nations like Nicaragua as opposed to a country like Mexico, where it was careful not to intervene in last summer's election, only serves to reinforce the opinion of many Latin Americans that the U.S. is a bully.(...) Jeane Kirkpatrick is one of those foreign-policy hawks who blame Chavez for Ortega's comeback. In the 1980s, as Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the UN Kirkpatrick defended the Contra War as part of a broader foreign policy that would both "protect U.S. interest and make the actual lives of actual people in Latin America somewhat better." Nicaraguans are still waiting for the second half of that pledge to be fulfilled. READ IT ALL

Latin America is preparing to settle accounts with its white settler elite - Guardian

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A careful reader will discover in this article many parallels between Latin America and the US frontier states and former Confederacy, known nowadays as the "sun belt". The sun belt is the heart of the "red" states where the Republicans have their base. Perhaps you'll agree with me that if the CSA had won its independence, by now the Southern USA would be more like Brazil or Venezuela than like Boston or New York. And perhaps the North East and Middle West could have followed their enlightened and progressive traditions without having to share the nest with so many racists and religious nuts. DS

Abstract: The recent explosion of indigenous protest in Latin America, culminating in the election this year of Evo Morales, an Aymara indian, as president of Bolivia, has highlighted the precarious position of the white-settler elite that has dominated the continent for so many centuries. Although the term "white settler" is familiar in the history of most European colonies, and comes with a pejorative ring, the whites in Latin America (as in the US) are not usually described in this way, and never use the expression themselves. No Spanish or Portuguese word exists that can adequately translate the English term. Latin America is traditionally seen as a continent set apart from colonial projects elsewhere, the outcome of its long experience of settlement since the 16th century. Yet it truly belongs in the history of the global expansion of white-settler populations from Europe in the more recent period. Today's elites are largely the product of the immigrant European culture that has developed during the two centuries since independence.(...) Latin America shares these characteristics of "settler colonialism", an evocative term used in discussions about the British empire. Together with the Caribbean and the US, it has a further characteristic not shared by Europe's colonies elsewhere: the legacy of a non-indigenous slave class. Although slavery had been abolished in much of the world by the 1830s, the practice continued in Latin America (and the US) for several decades. The white settlers were unique in oppressing two different groups, seizing the land of the indigenous peoples and appropriating the labour of their imported slaves. A feature of all "settler colonialist" societies has been the ingrained racist fear and hatred of the settlers, who are permanently alarmed by the presence of an expropriated underclass. Yet the race hatred of Latin America's settlers has only had a minor part in our customary understanding of the continent's history and society. Even politicians and historians on the left have preferred to discuss class rather than race. In Venezuela, elections in December will produce another win for Hugo Chávez, a man of black and Indian origin. Much of the virulent dislike shown towards him by the opposition has been clearly motivated by race hatred, and similar hatred was aroused the 1970s towards Salvador Allende in Chile and Juan Perón in Argentina. Allende's unforgivable crime, in the eyes of the white-settler elite, was to mobilise the rotos, the "broken ones" - the patronising and derisory name given to the vast Chilean underclass. The indigenous origins of the rotos were obvious at Allende's political demonstrations. Dressed in Indian clothes, their affinity with their indigenous neighbours would have been apparent. The same could be said of the cabezas negras - "black heads" - who came out to support Perón. This unexplored parallel has become more apparent as indigenous organisations have come to the fore, arousing the whites' ancient fears. A settler spokesman, Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian-now-Spanish novelist, has accused the indigenous movements of generating "social and political disorder", echoing the cry of 19th-century racist intellectuals such as Colonel Domingo Sarmiento of Argentina, who warned of a choice between "civilisation and barbarism". Latin America's settler elites after independence were obsessed with all things European. They travelled to Europe in search of political models, ignoring their own countries beyond the capital cities, and excluding the majority from their nation-building project. Along with their imported liberal ideology came the racialist ideas common among settlers elsewhere in Europe's colonial world. This racist outlook led to the downgrading and non-recognition of the black population, and, in many countries, to the physical extermination of indigenous peoples. In their place came millions of fresh settlers from Europe.(...) The true Latin American holocaust occurred in the 19th century. The slaughter of Indians made more land available for settlement, and between 1870 and 1914 five million Europeans migrated to Brazil and Argentina. In many countries the immigration campaigns continued well into the 20th century, sustaining the hegemonic white-settler culture that has lasted to this day. Yet change is at last on the agenda. Recent election results have been described, with some truth, as a move to the left, since several new governments have revived progressive themes from the 1960s. Yet from a longer perspective these developments look more like a repudiation of Latin America's white-settler culture, and a revival of that radical tradition of inclusion attempted two centuries ago. The outline of a fresh struggle, with a final settling of accounts, can now be discerned. READ ALL