Tuesday, March 5, 2013

CONSIDER THESE considers: CHAVEZ


CONSIDER THESE considers: CHAVEZ.
They called him defiant and a populist.
He had enough petrodollars available to practice oil diplomacy abroad seeking independence for Venezuela and other Latin America countries and he helped launch Banco del Sur, a development bank funded and run by Latin American countries as an affordable, a source of aid alternative to the unpopular measures required by the IMF and the World Bank to become fully operational by April 2013 (1)
He was called defiant.
He had enough petrodollars to fund health-care for millions of slum dwellers, education for the thousands of illiterate people of the rural and urban population and job training programs in his oil-wealthy country where 61% of the people survived on a few dollars a day, many without running water. His “missions” acted as a parallel government and were controlled by him. They provided hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans with monthly stipends to learn everything from reading and writing where to setting up cooperative farms. (He also started a program to sell cheaper heating oil to low-income households in Boston, Mas. USA in 2005 – yes, as in Boston, Mas, USA (2)
He was called a populist.
He borrowed the term ‘endogenization” from economics: a process from within the economy with products from within for the people within and applied it in his own version as opposed to changes brought by globalization that was for the investors, not by globalization for the people. And he discouraged consumerism of foreign products in favor of local food (3) - in a very difficult effort to beat the powerful hegemonies in the market.
Were the programs costly? Yes. Were millions of people given an opportunity to live better for the first time? Yes. Did he manage to capture the trust not only of the poor but of the middle class as well? Yes again. The last election percentages were 55% for Chavez, 48% for the opposition.
It would require a more extended article to refer to the evaluations of the economic ups and downs of applied “Chavism” and the degree of democracy Chavez governed at. But democracy versions are way more than one as are the versions of political culture and socio-economic circumstances.
Because he didn’t stay in – and return to - power by accident, Chavez’s legacy will indeed be there even if his opponent Capriles who favors Brazil’s centrist mix of free-market economics with strong welfare policies were to become his heir instead of Maduro, named successor by him.
In the meantime – and even beyond- the question however could be: when is the populist a patriot, when is independence a synonym for defiance?
You may not like the “Chavez” doctrine or you may simply hate it for very good reasons – yet Greeks used to say: “Αλλαπεχθρόν δητα πολλά μανθάνουσιν οι σοφοί» (Aristophanes) “The wise learn many things from their enemies”.

Now that could be a helpful statement.

  1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/12/venezuela.banking
  2. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a3i7Jw3mxo8c
  3.  http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110384192022808595,00.html
- Elena Spilioti

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