Why The US Demonises Venezuela's Democracy
On 30 May, Dan Rather, one of America's best-known journalists,announced that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez would die "in a couple of months at most". Four months later Chávez is not only alive and campaigning but widely expected to win re-election on Sunday.
Such is the state of misrepresentation of Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world – that a journalist can say almost anything about Chávez or his government and it is unlikely to be challenged, so long as it is negative. Even worse, Rather referred to Chávez as "the dictator" – a term that few, if any, political scientists familiar with the country would countenance.
Here is what Jimmy Carter said about Venezuela's "dictatorship" a few weeks ago: "As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we've monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world."
Carter won a Nobel prize for his work through the election-monitoringCarter Center, which has observed and certified past Venezuelan elections. But because Washington has sought for more than a decade to delegitimise Venezuela's government, his viewpoint is only rarely reported. His latest comments went unreported in almost all of the US media.
In Venezuela, voters touch a computer screen to cast their vote and then receive a paper receipt, which they verify and deposit in a ballot box. Most of the paper ballots are compared with the electronic tally. This system makes vote-rigging nearly impossible: to steal the vote would require hacking the computers and then stuffing the ballot boxes to match the rigged vote.
Unlike in the US, where in a close vote we really have no idea who won (see Bush v Gore), Venezuelans can be sure that their vote counts. And also unlike the US, where as many as 90 million eligible voters will not vote in November, the government in Venezuela has done everything to increase voter registration (now at a record of about 97%) and participation.
Yet the US foreign policy establishment (which includes most of the American and western media) seethes with contempt for Venezuela's democratic process. In a report timed for the elections, the so-called Committee to Protect Journalists says that the government controls a "media empire", neglecting to inform its readers that Venezuelan state TV has only about 5-8% of the country's audience. Of course, Chávez can interrupt normal programming with his speeches (under a law that pre-dates his administration), and regularly does so. But the opposition still has most of the media, including radio and print media – not to mention most of the wealth and income of the country.
The opposition will probably lose this election not because of the government's advantages of incumbency – which are abused throughout the hemisphere, including the United States, but because the living standards of the majority of Venezuelans have dramatically improved under Chávez. Since 2004, when the government gained control over the oil industry and the economy had recovered from the devastating, extra-legal attempts to overthrow it (including the 2002 US-backed military coup and oil strike of 2002-2003), poverty has been cut in half and extreme poverty by 70%. And this measures only cash income. Millions have access to healthcare for the first time, and college enrolment has doubled, with free tuition for many students. Inequality has also been considerably reduced. By contrast, the two decades that preceded Chávez amount to one of the worst economic failures in Latin America, with real income per person actually falling by 14% between 1980 and 1998.
In Washington, democracy has a simple definition: does a government do what the state department wants it to do? And of course here, the idea of politicians actually delivering on what they promised to voters is also an unfamiliar concept. So it is not just Venezuela that regularly comes under fire from the Washington establishment: all of the left and newly independent governments of South America, including Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia are in the crosshairs (although Brazil is considered too big to get the same treatment except from the right). The state department tries to keep its eyes on the prize: Venezuela is sitting on 500bn barrels of oil, and doesn't respect Washington's foreign policy. That is what makes it public enemy number one, and gets it the worst media coverage.
But Venezuela is part of a "Latin American spring" that has produced the most democratic, progressive, and independent group of governments that the region has ever had. They work together, and Venezuela has solid support among its neighbours. This is the former president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, last month: "A victory for Chávez is not just a victory for the people of Venezuela but also a victory for all the people of Latin America … this victory will strike another blow against imperialism."
South America's support is Venezuela's best guarantee against continuing attempts by Washington – which is still spending millions of dollars within the country in addition to unknown covert funds – to undermine, delegitimise, and destabilise democracy in Venezuela.
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Re: Why The US Demonises Venezuela's Democracy
By Lee, Terri at Oct 08, 2012 04:40 AM
BOYCOTT 2012! www.electionboycott2012.org
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Chávez: people's hero in final showdown
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Oct 06, 2012 05:44 AM
Hugo Chávez: people's hero in final showdown
The ailing Venezuelan leader still commands hysterical devotion from his supporters, but Henrique Capriles, his younger, healthier opponent in next Sunday's election, is snapping hard at his heels
In some ways, it is just like old times. Huge crowds mob the presidential candidate as he swings through dusty villages and towns promising a new Venezuela. They surround his bus, chanting his name, and when he emerges they scream and surge forward, desperate to embrace him. Many clutch notes – handwritten pleas for a job, a house, an operation – and if they manage to slip them into his hands or pockets they near explode with joy. "He knows things can't go on like this. He knows we're ready for a change," Josmir Meza, 25, a student, shouted over cheers.
The trouble for Hugo Chávez is that he is no longer that candidate. In 1998, he was an insurgent outsider, a young, athletic campaigner who promised to overthrow the established order and "refound" Venezuela. He was unstoppable and roared to victory.
Fourteen years later, however, as he seeks a third term in next Sunday's election, it his youthful challenger, Henrique Capriles, 40, who electrifies the crowds.
Chávez, 58, in contrast, is an ailing, elusive figure who now represents the establishment. He wishes not to storm the presidential palace, Miraflores, a pink, neocolonial spread in downtown Caracas, but to keep it. Having dominated Venezuela like a colossus, leading his socialist revolution to consecutive electoral landslides, he is facing the electoral fight of his life.
With both sides depicting the vote as an existential test to vanquish or save the unique political and economic experiment known as chavismo, the stakes could scarcely be higher. If Chávez loses, his movement will almost certainly fracture, dismaying foreign supporters who hailed the "Bolivarian revolution" as a leftwing showcase. If he wins, critics at home and abroad will warn of a slide into autocracy and dysfunction.
Either way, it will be another chapter in the great drama that is the life of Hugo Chávez. How a boy from a humble family in Sabaneta, a speck of a town on the vast grasslands known as los llanos rose to become not just president but a global figure simultaneously adored and reviled is a remarkable tale.
Like the fireside legends of horsemen, demons and rebels that so enchanted the young Hugo – he memorised the poems, stories and songs – his rise is the stuff of myth. He was the second son of schoolteacher parents; if a girl, they planned to call him Eva (Venezuela's version of Eve), complementing the firstborn who was called Adan (Adam), but instead named him after his father. As more children arrived (six, all boys), the two eldest were sent to live with their grandmother, Rosa, a kind, industrious woman who doted on the boys.
Hugo was by all accounts a happy, chatty boy who when not at school played baseball with a homemade bat and ball, painted, read books and supplemented household income selling his grandmother's "spiders", sugar-coated papaya strips. "I would go round shouting, 'Hot spiders, tasty spiders for pretty girls!'" he recalled recently. As a skinny teenager with big feet he was nicknamed Goofy.
By the 1960s, Venezuela, once a sleepy corner of South America ruled by dictators, was a fledgling democracy with growing oil revenues and hunger for modernity. A new elite and middle class grew amid the skyscrapers but most rural migrants ended up in hillside shacks around cities.
Hugo, a talented baseball player, dreamed not of politics but pitching for the major leagues. He became a military cadet hoping to vault from the academy to baseball clubs in Caracas. Instead, he fell in love with soldiering. "A uniform, a gun, an area, close-order formation, marches, morning runs, studies in military science – I was like a fish in water," he recalled later.
As Chávez moved up the ranks, he studied the writings of Simón Bolívar, the 19th-century liberator who ousted the Spanish, as well as philosophers such as Nietzsche and Plekhanov. He also noted extreme poverty and inequality amid the oil boom. Inspired by revolutionary military leaders in Panama and Peru, and leftwing Venezuelan intellectuals, an idea began to form: revolt.
Over a decade, he gathered fellow officers into a conspiracy to replace what they saw as a venal, sham democracy with a progressive, real democracy. The February 1992 coup was a military fiasco, letting the unpopular government survive, but Chávez turned his televised surrender address into a political triumph. Eloquent and dashing in his red beret, he introduced himself to a startled nation – "listen to comandante Chávez" – and said his objectives had not been met "por ahora", for now. He deserved 30 years in jail, went the joke: one for the coup, 29 for failing.
Pardoned and released after two years, he was adopted as a figurehead by a coalition of grassroots movements and leftwing parties and stormed to victory in the 1998 election, cheered not only by the poor but a middle class fed up with ossified political parties. With a barrel of oil just $8, the petro-state was near broke.
Few outside Venezuela, until then best known for beauty queens and oil, knew what to make of this mercurial arrival who praised Fidel Castro but said he was neither left nor right but seeker of a Blairesqe "third way". Within a few short years, Chávez became one of the world's most recognisable and polarising figures.
Vehement rhetoric – he railed against the wealthy as "squealing pigs" and "vampires" who looted oil wealth – endeared him to the poor and alienated the middle class and traditional elites. They called him a monkey and worse. In April 2002, the elites briefly ousted him in a Bush administration-backed coup, tried again with an oil strike, then a recall referendum. Chávez survived and grew more radical, declaring himself a socialist and nationalising swaths of the economy. Soaring oil prices gushed billions into the treasury, which he used to fund Cuban-run health clinics and other social programmes, easing poverty. He created a state media empire that promoted a personality cult and tightened executive control over the armed forces, the judiciary and the legislature.
He called George Bush a "donkey", "Mr Danger", "an asshole" and, during a memorable UN speech, "the devil". Supporters such as Ken Livingstone, Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Noam Chomsky paid homage in visits to Caracas. After winning a second term in 2006, Chávez won a referendum abolishing term limits and talked of ruling until 2021, then 2030. That looks fanciful now. Ahead in some polls, he trails in others.
He remains revered in the barrios. "He is a gift, he means everything to us," said Aleira Quintero, 55, a red T-shirted canvasser in Petare. But even supporters are fed up with horrific crime rates, inflation, shortages and crumbling infrastructure. Bridges collapse, refineries blow up, blackouts shroud cities.
Chávez has proved a shrewd political strategist and inspired communicator but disastrous manager, warping the economy with contradictory controls, creating and dissolving ministries by caprice, launching and abandoning initiatives, neglecting investment and maintenance. Despite record oil revenues, Venezuela is borrowing billions to try to plug the holes.
Charisma, giveaways and institutional control, not least the ability to monopolise the airwaves, could yet clinch re-election but Chavez faces two formidable obstacles.
Drained and bloated by cancer treatment, he sometimes has trouble walking. Instead of the barnstorming of old, his public appearances are few and often melancholic. "If it were up to me, you know I'd get down off this stage and I'd go walking, as in times past," he told a rally, tears in his eyes. Some supporters fear the cancer is terminal and that a vote for Chávez is a vote for uncertainty and power-grabs by unloved ministers and courtiers.
The other obstacle is Capriles. Unlike previous inept, shrill opposition leaders, the state governor is a disciplined, energetic campaigner. A jogger and basketball player, his nickname is El Flaquito, the skinny one. He has seized the initiative by crisscrossing the country, visiting 274 towns, and casting himself as a centrist who will keep Chávez's social programmes while offering competent administration. To woo "soft chavistas" he does not call Chávez a dictator or even Chávez. Conscious of the name's power, Capriles calls him "the candidate of the (ruling party) PSUV".
Whether the president wins or not – and given his electoral track record you would be foolish or brave to bet against him – his fame will live on. In or out of power, there will be no forgetting the name Hugo Chávez.
THE CHAVEZ FILE
Born In 1954 in his grandmother's home in Sabaneta, Barinas State. His parents, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez and Elena Frías de Chávez, were schoolteachers. Chávez was raised by his grandmother, a devout Roman Catholic. He graduated from military academy in 1975.
Best of times Chávez won the presidency in 1998 with promises to sweep away corrupt, entrenched political parties and help the poor in the oil-rich country.
Worst of times Rumours of Chávez's terminal cancer dominated the election campaign against his youthful challenger, Henrique Capriles.
What he says "I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions."
Chávez expressed disappointment with the US president in a rare interview with the western media.
What others say "Chávez controls the state, the army, the party and welfare organisations. No one enjoys the same legitimacy, no one can claim to replace him. If he does leave politics, there would be several transition processes: to find a short-term stand-in, a new leader and a candidate capable of winning the election. They are not necessarily the same person."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/sep/29/hugo-chavez/print
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Re: Chávez: people's hero in final showdown
By Ali Noor, Mohamed at Oct 06, 2012 08:56 AM
Why are you feeding us this drivel from the mainstream press. I don't come to Znet to get the same rubbish as spouted incessantly from corporately compromised TV and Radio and papers. Please don't waste my time!
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Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant
By Tatsuo, Miyachi at Oct 06, 2012 05:42 AM
How Hugo Chávez Became Irrelevant
By FRANCISCO TORO
Caracas, Venezuela
AS Hugo Chávez, the icon of Latin America’s left, struggles to hang on to his job, it’s tempting to read tomorrow’s closely contested election in Venezuela as a possible signal of the region’s return to the right. That would be a mistake, because the question that’s been roiling Latin America for a dozen years isn’t “left or right?” but “which left?”
Outsiders have often interpreted Latin America’s swing to the left over the last dozen years as a movement of leaders marching in ideological lock step. But within the region, the fault lines have always been clear.
Radical revolutionary regimes in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua joined Cuba, the granddaddy of the far left, in a bloc determined to confront the capitalist world, even if that meant increasingly authoritarian government.
A more moderate set of leaders in Brazil, Uruguay and Guatemala put forth an alternative: reducing poverty through major social reforms without turning their backs on democratic institutions or private property rights.
As Fidel Castro’s favorite son, Mr. Chávez has always been the leader of the radical wing. And Brazil’s size and economic power made it the natural leader of the reformist wing.
Outwardly, the two camps have been at pains to deny that any divisions exist. There have been many pious words of solidarity and lots of regional integration accords. But behind closed doors, each side is often viciously dismissive of the other, with Chávez supporters seeing the Brazilians as weak-kneed appeasers of the bourgeoisie while the Brazilians sneer at Mr. Chávez’s outdated radicalism and chronic incompetence.
As recently as five or six years ago, there was a real ideological contest. A wildly unpopular American president prone to military adventurism helped Mr. Chávez rally the continent against Washington. One country after the next joined the radical axis. First Bolivia, then Nicaragua, Honduras and Ecuador, joined a growing roll call of radicals in 2005 and 2006.
Now the political landscape is almost entirely transformed. Barack Obama’s 2008 victory badly undermined the radicals’ ability to rally opposition to gringo imperialism. Meanwhile, the alternative was becoming increasingly attractive.
Brazil’s remarkable success in reducing poverty speaks for itself. Building on a foundation of macroeconomic stability and stable democratic institutions, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was Brazil’s president from 2003 to 2010, oversaw the most remarkable period of social mobility in Latin America’s living memory.
As millions of Brazilians rose into the middle class, Mr. Chávez’s autocratic excesses came to look unnecessary and inexcusable to Venezuelans. Mr. da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, have shown that a country does not need to stack the courts, purge the army and politicize the central bank to fight poverty. Brazil proves that point, quietly, day in and day out.
It isn’t just democratic institutions that have suffered from Mr. Chávez’s radicalism; it’s the economy, too. Venezuela’s traditional dependence on oil exports has deepened, with 96 percent of export revenue now coming from the oil industry, up from 67 percent just before Mr. Chávez took office. Nationalized steel mills produce a fraction of the steel they’re designed for, forcing the state to import the difference. And nationalized electric utilities plunge most of the country into darkness several times a week. The contrast with Brazil’s high-tech, entrepreneurial, export-oriented economy couldn’t be more stark.
For all of Mr. Chávez’s talk of radical transformation, Venezuela’s child mortality and adult literacy statistics have not improved any faster under his government than they did over the several decades before he rose to power.
With oversight institutions neutered, the president now runs the country as a personal fief: expropriating businesses on a whim and deciding who goes to jail. Judges who rule against the government’s wishes are routinely fired, and one has even been jailed. Chávez-style socialism looks like the worst of both worlds: both more authoritarian and less effective at reducing poverty than the Brazilian alternative.
And the region has noticed. The key moment came in April 2011, when Ollanta Humala won the Peruvian presidency. Long seen as the most radical of Latin America’s new breed of leaders, Mr. Humala had run on a Chávez-style platform in 2006 and lost. By last year, he’d seen the way the wind was blowing and remade himself into a Brazilian-style moderate, won and proceeded to govern — so far, successfully — in the Brazilian mold.
Now, in a final indignity, Mr. Chávez is facing a tight re-election race against Henrique Capriles Radonski, a 40-year-old progressive state governor who extols the virtues of the Brazilian model.
Although Mr. Chávez’s government has done its best to paint a caricature of Mr. Capriles as an old-style right-wing oligarch, he is unmistakably within the Brazilian center-left mold: Mr. Capriles pitches himself as an ambitious but pragmatic social reformer committed to ending the Chávez era’s authoritarian excesses.
The rest of Latin America has already been through the ideological battle in which Venezuela remains mired. By and large, other nations have made their choices. The real question in this election is whether Venezuela will join the hemispheric consensus now, or later.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/opinion/how-hugo-chavez-became-irrelevant.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print
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BRAVO!
By Lee, Terri at Oct 05, 2012 23:05 PM
This is a wonderful article! Thank you for writing it. I am among those leading an ELECTION BOYCOTT here in the United States where we do not have fair and free elections.
For more on Election Boycott 202 please see www.electionboycott2012.org and my own Zspace: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/TerriLee
Full time Election Boycott Mark E Smith wrote this wonderful article about the Venezuela elections in late August which compliments your own:
Carter Center: Venezuelan electoral system is one of the most reliable in the world - Interview with Jennifer McCoy
http://fubarandgrill.org/taxonomy/term/55
When there is a high degree of election integrity the voter turnout is high as it expresses confidence in the system.
The 'voter apathy' and 'election boycott' activism we see here in the US is a result, in part, of the reduced confidence in electoral integrity.
Mark, I think that, as you say, "Venezuela – it is probably the most lied-about country in the world..." is because it demostrates a 'Threat of a Good Example' (Chomsky). See below -
THE THREAT OF A GOOD EXAMPLE
US
Chomsky, when wondering why the
Thank you for this fabulous essay!
Terri
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