Monday, March 08, 2004
A worrying trend
I REALLY dislike Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela who seems to be showing signs that he would rather lead according to the model of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Half a million people marched through the streets of Caracas to protest the National Election Council's decision to force the opposition to prove that over 1 million of the signatures they gathered were in fact valid. Keep in mind that that council is full of Chavez appointees, and given signs that Chavez would lose a recall election, are ill disposed to allowing that referendum to go forward.
Venezuela IS a divided country. While many in the middle classes oppose him, his base of supporters are the poor and disenfranchised. The fact that the poor support him, however, is not a sign that what he offers them is really what will help them. Chavez is doing everything in his power to undermine free enterprise in his country. He is fighting against a free trade area of the Americas, and unfortunately, is finding a receptive audience to that opposition beyond his borders (as well among those poor and disenfranchised Venezuelans).
This simply won't help the poor of Venezuela, any more than trade barriers helped American workers during the Great Depression.
If Chavez was a free marketeer with dictatorial aspirations (something which could be said of Chile's Pinochet), at least one could say that he was sowing the seeds of his eventual downfall, as a wealthier and more prosperous population would eventually demand, and get, the democracy they deserve (other examples include Taiwan and South Korea, both of which were ruled for decades by military dictatorships). Unfortunately, Chavez is doing things to ensure that his people remain poor for the foreseeable future, thus ensuring that democracy will gain little purchase in a land of poverty and want.
Of course, America has little leverage to influence events in Central and South America. We regularly propped up dictators who did what the United States told them to do, then knocked them over when they stopped doing that (in fact, one might accuse the US of doing the same thing in Iraq, however justified I consider removing him from power to have been). Furthermore, the cost of our futile drug war is borne more by people in Central and South America than by the citizens of the United States. We don't have to live with Colombia's civil war, or deal with the unrest which results from Bolivia's attempt to shut down the only source of revenue available to indiginous farmers.
That's why Chavez finds inflammatory statements against the US to be so useful. We too often take a blatantly self-interested approach to events in the region (our drug war being a good example), leading the locals to question whether what America wants is truly in their interests.
Chavez uses anti-American demagoguery because it resonates with Venezuelans, and that is largely OUR fault.
I REALLY dislike Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela who seems to be showing signs that he would rather lead according to the model of Cuba's Fidel Castro. Half a million people marched through the streets of Caracas to protest the National Election Council's decision to force the opposition to prove that over 1 million of the signatures they gathered were in fact valid. Keep in mind that that council is full of Chavez appointees, and given signs that Chavez would lose a recall election, are ill disposed to allowing that referendum to go forward.
Venezuela IS a divided country. While many in the middle classes oppose him, his base of supporters are the poor and disenfranchised. The fact that the poor support him, however, is not a sign that what he offers them is really what will help them. Chavez is doing everything in his power to undermine free enterprise in his country. He is fighting against a free trade area of the Americas, and unfortunately, is finding a receptive audience to that opposition beyond his borders (as well among those poor and disenfranchised Venezuelans).
This simply won't help the poor of Venezuela, any more than trade barriers helped American workers during the Great Depression.
If Chavez was a free marketeer with dictatorial aspirations (something which could be said of Chile's Pinochet), at least one could say that he was sowing the seeds of his eventual downfall, as a wealthier and more prosperous population would eventually demand, and get, the democracy they deserve (other examples include Taiwan and South Korea, both of which were ruled for decades by military dictatorships). Unfortunately, Chavez is doing things to ensure that his people remain poor for the foreseeable future, thus ensuring that democracy will gain little purchase in a land of poverty and want.
Of course, America has little leverage to influence events in Central and South America. We regularly propped up dictators who did what the United States told them to do, then knocked them over when they stopped doing that (in fact, one might accuse the US of doing the same thing in Iraq, however justified I consider removing him from power to have been). Furthermore, the cost of our futile drug war is borne more by people in Central and South America than by the citizens of the United States. We don't have to live with Colombia's civil war, or deal with the unrest which results from Bolivia's attempt to shut down the only source of revenue available to indiginous farmers.
That's why Chavez finds inflammatory statements against the US to be so useful. We too often take a blatantly self-interested approach to events in the region (our drug war being a good example), leading the locals to question whether what America wants is truly in their interests.
Chavez uses anti-American demagoguery because it resonates with Venezuelans, and that is largely OUR fault.
