Related: Saying Goodbye to Hugo Chavez
"Thousands flock to say goodbye to Chavez" by William Neuman and Christine Hauser | New York Times, March 08, 2013
CARACAS — Thousands of people waited for hours Thursday to pay a moment of respect to the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez....
The lines, steeped in loyalty and grief, started Wednesday and stretched through the night at a military academy Chavez attended. He will lie in state until his funeral on Friday....
Despite a rocky economic record and strings of broken or half-filled promises during his 14 years in office, the fundamental legacy of Chavez was intangible: He has changed the way Venezuelans think about themselves and their country.
The procession Wednesday stretched for miles....
Conditions for the poor have improved, and their ranks have shrunk. Government programs have boosted access to low-cost food and health care, though many of those programs are plagued by inefficiencies.
Yeah, good thing AmeriKa's are so efficient.
So sick of shit-ass, pot-hollering-kettle, crap media.
But Chavez presided over a divided country. He mercilessly taunted and insulted those who disagreed with him....
In other words, he behaved exactly as an AmeriKan jewspaper.
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Also see:
"One president after another arrived at the academy, where the funeral took place, dressed in black and waving to rambunctious crowds of Chavistas, as Chavez’s supporters are known. The dignitaries at the academy’s Honor Salon not only included Chavez’s close friends from the region, among them President Evo Morales of Bolivia and President Raul Castro of Cuba, but also Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who received warm applause from the other politicians, celebrities, and government functionaries. The United States, which Vice President Nicolas Maduro earlier this week implied had taken part in a plot to infect Chavez with cancer, sent an understated delegation, Representative Gregory Meeks, Democrat of New York, and former Massachusetts congressman William D. Delahunt, who years ago frequently met with Chavez. The United States does not have an ambassador based in Venezuela, the last one having been ousted by Chavez during one of his frequent spats with Washington."
Yeah, never mind the attempted AmeriKan coup of 2002.
"Passions and provocations of Hugo Chavez" March 08, 2013
The tragedy of Hugo Chavez was that his genuine concern for Venezuela’s poor was accompanied by a deep authoritarian streak. Chavez, who died Tuesday, became a bogeyman of the American right because he confronted US business interests, and of the State Department for taunting and defying US administrations of both parties. But Chavez is more properly judged by the mixed results he brought the people of Venezuela — greater well-being for the poor, but also the quashing of legitimate opposition and free expression at a time when much of Latin America is moving in a more democratic direction.
The Venezuela that Chavez served as a military officer was dominated by an elite clique that largely ignored needs of the broader population. After failing at his first attempt to gain power through a coup, he ran successfully for president. Once in office, he began using his country’s vast oil wealth to improve the lot of the country’s poor. According to Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, Chavez cut poverty in half and extreme poverty by 70 percent.
His support for the poor did not stop at Venezuela’s borders. Since 2005, Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Citgo, has donated about 200 million gallons of heating oil to low-income families in the United States, including 60,000 in Massachusetts. Those donations implicitly needled the United States for tolerating the kind of inequities that Chavez had vowed to stamp out in Venezuela, but they also served a genuine need.
To consolidate control over Venezuela’s most important industry, Chavez raised taxes on US oil companies, and nationalized projects of Exxon and ConocoPhillips. Such moves earned him the enmity of the Bush administration, which backed a coup against him in 2002. Chavez survived, and felt further emboldened to form alliances with US enemies, including Syria and Iran.
Thus, he looms larger in the American imagination than the record warrants. Right-wing commentators have likened Chavez, who fed his own people, to Kim Jong Il, who starved North Korea’s. Chavez was a provocateur who gleefully taunted the United States, sometimes to the detriment of his own nation, but he wasn’t the unmitigated tyrant that his most vociferous detractors have claimed. Hopefully, his death will clear the way for better relations between the United States and Venezuela.
Yeah, his death was a possible good thing.
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"What Chavez meant to the poor" by James Carroll | Globe Columnist, March 11, 2013
Hugo Chavez was a buffoon and a demagogue. But was that all?
That is coming from the Globe's alleged liberal peacenik.
Upon his death last week, the Venezuelan president was remembered in the United States for many things: his rambling speeches, his abusive anti-American rhetoric (George W. Bush is a “devil” and a “donkey”), his human-rights violations (independent judges get locked up), his nationalization of industry and oil, his inflationary economic policies, his inability to deal with out-of-control crime, and his mad embrace of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Venezuela had replaced the Soviet Union as the main supporter of Communist Cuba, and Chavez seemed to regard himself as another Castro brother. With his passing, Washington could hope for a thaw in its relations with a nation that, through all the turmoil, remains its fourth-largest source of imported oil.
But in death, as in life, Hugo Chavez challenges a basic assumption that the United States has long made about Latin America. For more than a century, that vast region has represented a venue for the free market — a place from which to draw resources and to which to sell products. Across eras of dictators, revolutions, juntas, death squads, trade treaties, the war on drugs, the war on terror, and, lately, democratic socialism, Washington has been unflagging in an aggressive protection of its own economic interests. And even as political structures have evolved, as North-South relations have periodically shifted, and as blatant imperialism gave way to subtler neoliberalism, the underlying character of Yankee dominance has never changed.
For the United States, it was all too easy to dismiss Hugo Chavez as a throwback; his anti-US denunciations echoed other self-styled populists such as Fidel Castro or Daniel Ortega, the long-time Sandinista leader and current president of Nicaragua. And Washington could smugly note how Latin revolutionaries have been consistently corrupted by power, betraying those who gave it to them.
Yet underneath the hateful rhetoric and broken politics of the region lies a basic condition to which the United States has always been blind, but which people of the South can never forget. That condition is mass poverty.
“I bring food to the hungry,” the Brazilian cleric Dom Helder Camara famously said, “and they call me a saint. I ask why there are so many hungry, and they call me a communist.” Known as the “archbishop of the poor,” Camara was a prophet of liberation theology, the left-leaning Catholic movement from which Hugo Chavez took inspiration. The Venezuelan leader began by asking Camara’s question. That is why millions of poor people recognize Chavez as theirs, and why there was so much open grief in the streets of Caracas last week.
Over time, Chavez moved from being an idealistic firebrand advocating for the poor, to being a force for the their empowerment, to becoming perceived as the latest reduction to the absurd of socialist self-importance. Across roughly the same period, liberation theology itself went from being the inspiration of millions to a broadly discredited disappointment. Denounced as Marxist, a source of class conflict, unfair to the affluent, too obsessed with material matters, and condescending to the pieties and values of poor people themselves, liberation theology was rejected by establishment Catholicism and marginalized. Chavez and his Christian ideology were alike in falling short and being denigrated....
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"Dozens celebrate Hugo Chávez’s life, legacy in East Boston" by Sarah N. Mattero | Globe Correspondent, March 11, 2013
In a modest room in the Consulate of El Salvador in East Boston, dozens of people gathered Sunday afternoon to celebrate the life and legacy of the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, with speeches, photographs, and videos.
“We had to do something because of his passing,” said Jorge Marin, a coordinator for the group Boston Bolivarianos. “And to inform the American public of what he stands for. Fight back the misconceptions.”
A photograph of Chávez was projected onto a screen, and all eyes were fixed forward as men and women took to the microphone and shared their stories — mostly in Spanish — about the Venezuelan leader who inspired and influenced people worldwide.
Chávez, who died of cancer last Tuesday in Caracas, at age 58, was a polarizing figure who made enemies as well as admirers. But at the Sunday afternoon gathering, despite heavy winter garb, many had found ways to add a splash of red to their attire in his honor. Some wore red hats, shirts, and socks; one woman sported a replica of his signature red army beret and clutched a Chávez doll dressed in a military uniform as she listened to the speeches.
Just as Chávez’s funeral drew leaders from more than 55 countries, a mix of Venezuelans, Americans, Latinos, and even some people from India spoke about what Chávez meant to them and to their native countries.
The crowd laughed and cried along with the speakers, capturing the stories on camera or video, while coordinators from the Boston Bolivarianos projected videos of Chávez, including one showing him singing Venezuela’s national anthem.
Those who knew the words sang along just louder than a murmur, a few lifted their left fists toward the ceiling. “¡Chávez vive!” they chanted in the poster-filled room, the images capturing Chávez’s political career and support for Chavez’s movements, including the Bolivarian Revolution and ALBA, or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.
“We always supported the revolution,” Marin said.
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The people of Venezuela have their say:
"Venezuelan opposition to run for president" by Vivian Sequera | Associated Press, March 11, 2013
CARACAS — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles announced Sunday that he will run in elections to replace Hugo Chavez, setting up a make-or-break encounter against the dead president’s hand-picked successor, a close adviser to the candidate says.
“My fight is not to be president, my fight is for Venezuela to move forward,” Capriles said in a televised address. He said the members of the ruling party “are the ones who became sick by power. You fear losing it.”
Venezuela’s election commission has set April 14 as the date of the vote, with formal campaigning to start just 12 days earlier.
Oswaldo Ramirez, a political consultant to Capriles, said the 40-year-old opposition leader will demand that officials extend the campaign period by moving up the start date by more than a week, and that acting president Nicolas Maduro not be allowed to abuse state resources to boost his chances during the campaign.
Maduro has already announced his intention to run as the candidate of Chavez’s United Socialist Party. On Sunday he picked up the support of Venezuela’s small Communist Party as well.
In a speech accepting the party’s nomination, Maduro insisted he was running for president out of loyalty to Chavez, not vanity or personal ambition, and called on the people to support him.
‘‘I am not Chavez,’’ Maduro said, wearing a simple red shirt. ‘‘In terms of intelligence, charisma, historical force, or capacity to lead. . . . But I am a Chavista and I live and die for him.’’
Capriles faced a stark choice in deciding whether to compete in the vote, which most analysts say he is likely to lose amid a frenzy of sympathy and mourning for the dead president.
Some say a second defeat for Capriles just six months after he lost last year’s presidential vote to Chavez could derail his political career. If he waits, a Chavista government led by Maduro might prove inept and give him a better shot down the road.
Analysts predict the next five weeks will increase the nasty, heated rhetoric that began even before Chavez’s death Tuesday after a nearly two-year fight with cancer....
On the streets of Caracas on Sunday, opinion was as divided as always in a country that became dramatically more polarized during Chavez’s 14-year rule.
??
Also see: The Venezuelan Vote
Hey, really, what is one more distortion and lie, 'eh?
‘‘It’s not fair,’’ said Jose Mendez, a 54-year-old businessman of the choice the opposition leader faces. Maduro “has an advantage, because of everything they have done since Chavez’s death, all the sentiment they’ve created. . . . But the guy has nothing. He can’t hold a candle to Chavez.’’
But Ramon Romero said the opposition was just making excuses, and had no chance of victory in any case.
‘‘Now their odds are even worse,’’ said the 64-year-old waiter and staunch Chavez supporter. ‘‘They don’t care about anyone, and [the voters] have been lifted out of darkness.’’
David Smilde, an analyst with the US-based Washington Office on Latin America, said the opposition needs to run a candidate in the presidential election even though he believes it will almost certainly lose.
That would give the opposition an opportunity to clearly articulate its platform and vision.
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"Presidential hopefuls sprint through race" by Christopher Toothaker | Associated Press, March 30, 2013
CARACAS — It’s Holy Week in Venezuela, a time when millions traditionally take a welcome pause from work and politics to go on vacation. Yet that hasn’t stopped Venezuela’s time-pressed presidential candidates from sprinting through the holidays toward an April 14 election to replace the late Hugo Chavez, as they try to define both themselves and each other within weeks.
Both Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor, and opposition Governor Henrique Capriles face the challenge of spelling out a vision for a future without Chavez....
That’s produced a race sometimes jarring in its aggressiveness and exhausting in its tempo. Both candidates have led multiple rallies each day and used deeply personal language against each other.
Maduro has even threatened to have Capriles imprisoned for questioning whether Chavez really died on March 5, as the government had announced.
Shannon O’Neil, a Latin American studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said emotion over Chavez’s death will dominate this election.
Maduro has used the government’s enormous bureaucracy and its media....
Maduro also has the support of the socialist party’s governors in 20 of Venezuela’s 23 states, O’Neil noted.
‘‘They are going to use a full court press to ensure that Maduro is elected,’’ she said.
Maduro’s challenge has been keeping that public sympathy for Chavez alive, a task he’s tackled through sheer repetition and unending eulogy.
Almost as if he was a Holocaust survivor.
He pays homage to the late president day in and day out, while warning that Chavez’s populist programs benefiting Venezuela’s poor majority are at risk.
One website has even been counting the times Maduro mentions Chavez’s name....
‘‘Maduro is not Chavez,’’ said Andres Izarra, a former Chavez information minister who is on Maduro’s campaign team. ‘‘Maduro is his son. Maduro is the one that Chavez said will carry his flag, carry on his legacy. . . . That’s how he’ll win.’’
The 50-year-old Maduro has also adopted Chavez’s confrontational language, echoing the attacks on what Chavez used to call his ‘‘historical enemies’’ — the ‘‘imperialists’’ in the US government and the ‘‘oligarchs’’ of Venezuela’s opposition.
Critics said Chavez used the rhetoric to keep the country polarized and his supporters agitated while diverting attention from problems at home.
‘‘I alert all the people about the oligarchy and its obsession to destroy the Bolivarian revolution that our comandante Chavez built, to destroy democracy,’’ Maduro told a March 16 rally. ‘‘They have already begun with dollars financed by the imperialist elites.’’
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"Chavez heir barely wins; opposition rejects count
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Nicolas Maduro, 50, the longtime foreign minister to President Hugo Chavez, was favored to win, but his early big lead in opinion polls was cut in half during the past two weeks in a country struggling with the legacy of Chavez's management of the world's largest oil reserves.
Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime — one of the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates.
Makes you wonder how Chavez remained so popular, doesn't it?
"We can't continue to believe in messiahs," said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer who voted for Capriles in the central city of Valencia. "This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can't fix everything."
In a Chavista stronghold in Petare outside Caracas, Maria Velasquez, 48, who works in a government soup kitchen that feeds 200 people, said she voted for Chavez's man "because that is what my comandante ordered."
Reynaldo Ramos, a 60-year-old construction worker, said he "voted for Chavez" before correcting himself and saying he chose Maduro. But he could not seem to get his beloved leader out of his mind.
"We must always vote for Chavez because he always does what's best for the people and we're going to continue on this path," Ramos said. He said the government had helped him get work on the subway system and helps pay his grandchildren's school costs.
The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed the backing of state media as part of its near-monopoly on institutional power.
Honestly, folks, I'm just sick of the subtle little insults and hypocrisy of my state mouthpiece.
Challenger Henrique Capriles' camp said Chavista loyalists in the judiciary put them at glaring disadvantage by slapping the campaign and broadcast media with fines and prosecutions that they called unwarranted.
At rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves.
Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles' backers "heirs of Hitler." It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.
Why not? Why not let him take control of Venezuela. Jews are obviously running most western governments anyway, so why not?
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"A narrow win for the heir to Hugo Chavez; Maduro hints at better ties to US" by William Neuman | New York Times, April 15, 2013
CARACAS — Hugo Chavez’s revolution will go on, buoyed for now by a cult of personality that outlived him.
And what do you think your media sells you, 'murkn?
Venezuelans elected his handpicked political heir, Nicolas Maduro, to serve the remainder of Chavez’s six-year term as president, officials said late Sunday, and he is expected to continue most of Chavez’s policies.
But there were signs that the strident, Chavez-style anti-American rhetoric that Maduro used during the campaign would now be set aside to improve Venezuela’s strained relations with the United States.
Maduro, the acting president, narrowly defeated Henrique Capriles Radonski, a state governor who ran strongly against Chavez in October.
Election authorities said that with more than 99 percent of the vote counted, Maduro had 50.6 percent to Capriles’s 49.1 percent.
Translation: the election was fixed as far as the CIA could do it, but it still wasn't enough.
Capriles refused to recognize the results, citing irregularities in the voting and calling for a recount.
The turnout, while strong, appeared to be somewhat below the record levels seen in October, a sign that Maduro may not enjoy the same depth of passionate popular support that Chavez did.
“These are the irreversible results that the Venezuelan people have decided with this electoral process,’’ Tibisay Lucena, the head of the electoral council, said as she read the results on national television shortly before midnight Eastern time.
Tensions had mounted during the evening as the counting proceeded, and both sides held news conferences hinting at favorable results for themselves, setting the stage for a possible fight over the outcome, which was much closer than had been expected.
Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States with immense reserves, and under Chavez it has also been a major thorn in Washington’s side, wielding its oil and its diplomatic muscle to oppose US policy everywhere from Cuba to Syria.
Also see: Cuba Cries For Chavez
Chavez, who died of cancer on March 5, built his political career on flaying the United States and its traditional allies in the Venezuelan establishment, and Maduro followed his mentor’s script throughout the campaign with an acolyte’s zeal.
But over the weekend, with his election victory looking likely, Maduro sent a private signal to Washington that he was ready to turn the page.
Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, who was in Caracas as a representative of the Organization of American States, said in an interview that Maduro called him aside after a meeting of election observers Saturday and asked him to carry a message.
‘‘He said, ‘We want to improve the relationship with the US, regularize the relationship,’ ’’ Richardson said.
Good luck. Now hand over that oil.
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"Hugo Chavez heir says US incites violence" by Vivian Sequera and Fabiola Sanchez | Associated Press, April 17, 2013
CARACAS — Venezuela’s president-elect blamed the opposition Tuesday for seven deaths and 61 injuries that the government says have occurred in disturbances protesting his election, and he accused the United States of organizing the unrest.
Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles later accused the government of being behind the violence.
President-elect Nicolas Maduro’s accusation against Washington came after the US State Department said it would not recognize the results of Sunday’s unexpectedly close election without the vote-by-vote recount being demanded by Capriles.
I wish the world had said it wasn't going to recognize Bush.
‘‘The [US] embassy has financed and led all these violent acts,’’ Maduro, the chosen heir of the late Hugo Chavez, said during a televised meeting at the headquarters of the state oil company.
Earlier, he said he would not allow an opposition protest march called for Wednesday in Caracas, saying Capriles was ‘‘responsible for the dead we are mourning’’ from violence during protests across the country.
Maduro then summoned his supporters to take to the streets Wednesday in the capital, raising the possibility of a confrontation with antigovernment protesters.
But Capriles called off the planned opposition march. ‘‘Whoever goes out into the street tomorrow is playing the government’s game,’’ he said. ‘‘The government wants there to be deaths in the country.’’
He called accusations by officials that he is mounting an attempt to overthrow the socialist government a smoke screen to divert attention from his demand for a recount.
‘‘I want to ask Mr. Maduro to calm down a bit. I think he’s sort of going crazy,’’ Capriles said at a news conference.
So am I by reading this shit.
According to the regime-friendly National Electoral Council, which quickly certified Maduro’s election Monday, he defeated Capriles by 262,000 votes out of 14.9 million ballots cast.
Outside the capital, a march to demand a recount turned violent in the capital of Barinas, home state of Chavez.
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"Spectator rushes stage at Venezuela’s inaugural" by Vivian Sequera and Michael Weissenstein | Associated Press, April 20, 2013
CARACAS — A spectator rushed the stage and pushed Venezuela’s new president away from the microphone as he delivered his inaugural address on Friday, startling millions watching on national television before the intruder was tackled and dragged away.
WTF?!!
The red-jacketed man appeared to be trying to address the crowd instead of attacking President Nicolas Maduro, but the interruption raised instant fears of assassination.
Translation: the CIA and its Venezuelan partners have something cooking in the oven.
‘‘He could have shot me here,’’ Maduro said, dressing down his security detail before continuing with his address.
Barely five minutes into the speech, the man in a red, long-sleeved jacket ran on stage and said ‘‘Nicolas, my name is Jenry’’ before security converged from all sides.
The broadcast on state television cut away, then returned to the lectern and Maduro, who continued his speech.
The incident marred the ceremony in which Venezuela’s ruling party cemented its grip on power.
Gee, WHO would have wanted to do that?
The socialist government packed thousands of red-clad supporters into the streets outside the inauguration of late leader Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor, who is battling to establish his own authority.
The crowds were smaller and more subdued than those that turned out for Chavez, however, and the opposition boycotted Maduro’s swearing-in, hoping that the ruling party’s last-minute decision to allow an audit of nearly half the vote could change the result in the bitterly disputed presidential election.
See: Venezuela to certify vote result
Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles said the audit announced Thursday night will prove he won the presidency. Government officials appear to be confident there will be no reversal of the result by a weeks-long audit that’s only slated to begin days after Maduro’s swearing-in.
Still, the audit was a sudden reversal for a government that insisted all week that there would be no review of Sunday’s vote and took a hard line against the opposition that included allegedly brutal treatment of protesters. The announcement appeared to stem from pressure from some of the South American leaders who held an emergency meeting in Lima, Peru, on Thursday night to discuss Venezuela’s electoral crisis — and wound up endorsing Maduro’s victory.
Even if it leaves the vote standing and calms tensions, the recount will strengthen Venezuela’s opposition against a president whose narrow victory left him far weaker than his widely popular predecessor Chavez, analysts said. That will complicate Maduro’s effort to consolidate control of a country struggling with shortages of food and medicines, chronic power outages, one of the world’s highest homicide and kidnapping rates, and steep inflation that’s around 25 percent and accelerating.
Now we see why the rigged vote.
Hundreds of red-clad Chavistas marched through Caracas ahead of the inauguration, shouting and blowing trumpets. But the showing, at least by mid-morning, was a faint echo of rallies during the Chavez era. ‘‘The most significant thing to emerge from this is the political victory’’ for the opposition, said Maria Isabel Puerta, a political science professor at the University of Carabobo. ‘‘The opposition’s role is strengthened and Capriles’ leadership is consolidated.’’
‘‘We are where we want to be,’’ a satisfied but cautious-looking Capriles told a news conference after the Thursday night announcement. ‘‘I think I will have the universe of voters needed to get where I want to be.’’
Some analysts said the government-controlled recount would almost certainly confirm Maduro’s victory and force the opposition to accept it. Others saw the possibility the audit could turn up enough irregularities to throw the election result into question and spawn turmoil.
‘‘It opens a sort of Pandora’s box,’’ said Edgar Gutierrez, an independent political analyst in Caracas.
In a declaration released after the 3½-hour meeting, the South American presidents asked ‘‘all parties who participated in the election to respect the official results’’ and said they ‘‘took positive note’’ of the electoral council’s audit decision.
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"Venezuela tensions high after congressional brawl" by JORGE RUEDA and CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER | Associated Press, May 02, 2013
CARACAS — Tens of thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets of the capital Wednesday in rival marches by the opposition and the government less than a day after a brawl on the floor of Congress injured several opposition lawmakers.
Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles walked in a crowd of supporters through upscale neighborhoods in the east of Caracas during a march to celebrate International Workers’ Day.
He called for an end to a government crackdown on his backers and reiterated plans to challenge his narrow election loss in both Venezuela’s court and the international justice system.
In downtown Caracas, the government held its own march, featuring songs praising President Nicolas Maduro and his mentor, late president Hugo Chavez. Both sides appeared to be trying to avoid confrontation by choosing separate locations.
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What it is all about at bottom:
"Politics of oil in Venezuela" by Farah Stockman | Globe Columnist, March 12, 2013
In 1999, Hugo Chavez, the newly elected president of Venezuela, threw the opening pitch at a Mets game at Shea Stadium. He slammed the gavel to close the day’s trading at the New York Stock Exchange. He visited the White House, where he was so excited to meet Bill Clinton that Clinton hardly got a word in edgewise.
So what went wrong? How did Chavez become such a thorn in the side of the United States?
To fully understand the answer, you have to understand a key factor that shaped the admiration and angst that Chavez felt toward America: oil. Indeed, ever since 1922 — when prospectors hit a vein of crude in a sleepy lakeside Venezuelan town — oil has shaped the way millions of Venezuelans have viewed the United States.
Venezuela’s oil industry, which accounts for nearly half of government revenue, was built by roughnecks from Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. They brought baseball and Boy Scouts to Venezuela. But they also brought a Jim Crow mentality, according to Miguel Tinker Salas, a Pomona College professor who authored a book on the history of the oil industry in Venezuela. The Americans relaxed at whites-only golf courses and social clubs. They lived in gated communities with servants and manicured lawns. Meanwhile, Venezuelan villages sprung up on the other side of the razor wire, populated by people seeking work as day laborers in the oil fields, or in bars and brothels that catered to Americans.
Oil became the only ticket to prosperity. It made Venezuela one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, but also one of the most unequal. In the 1950s, when Chavez was so poor that he was kicked out of school for lack of a pair of shoes, oil wealth built lavish hotels in Caracas, and a Christian Dior boutique.
For much of the last century, the US government didn’t care whether the leader of Venezuela was a dictator or a democrat. All that mattered was that the oil kept flowing. The CIA worked with Venezuelan strongmen to repress labor unions and communists in the oil fields.
But no big deal.
Because of oil, Venezuelan leaders didn’t have to invest wisely or develop new industries. They stayed in power not because they governed well but because they doled out the oil profits to the right group of people.
When oil prices were high, the money was enough to support a growing middle class, which was replacing Americans in the oil industry. As democracy took root in the 1970s, Venezuela nationalized its oil. But Venezuela paid off the oil companies, and kept up good relations. Venezuelan middle managers kept the oil flowing.
That worked until the 1990s, when oil prices collapsed. Revenue plummeted. Venezuela’s government cut back spending. Unrest spread. That’s how Chavez came to power. He pledged to “democratize” the oil industry and spend the profits on the poor, who had never benefited from oil before.
But a coup against Chavez took place in 2002, after he replaced the board of directors at the state-run oil company. The industry revolted, and called for a series of strikes that stopped the flow of oil for the first time in history. A junta took power, and named as president Pedro Carmona, the former manager of a petrochemical company.
It’s no accident that George W. Bush, from oil-producing Texas, supported Carmona, even as Carmona nullified the constitution and dissolved the National Assembly. Carmona seemed more capable of keeping the oil flowing than the soldiers whom Chavez wanted to put in charge.
The coup collapsed when the poor poured into the streets to demand Chavez’s reinstatement. Chavez returned to power and fired 20,000 oil workers. He traveled the world railing against the United States.
US officials returned the favor. But many acknowledged that Chavez wasn’t the root of the problem. It was the politics of oil, which have proven poisonous all over the world.
“People who think the problems of Venezuela are due to Hugo Chavez don’t understand that he was a symptom of the collapse of. . . a model that is based on the distribution of oil wealth,” said Arturo Valenzuela, a former senior official under Presidents Clinton and Obama.
Chavez “got his hands on the faucet that produces the wealth,” Valenzuela said. “His detractors wanted to get rid of him so they could get their hands back on that faucet.”
Chavez is dead now. But unfortunately, the “oil-ocracy’’ that kept him — and his predecessors — in power remains alive and well.
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