[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Parenti / Good Things Happening in Venezuela / Apr 04

[Morton K.Brussel]

A pertinent and contrarian article whose message you won't find in our 
mass media, nor even in academic venues, about Venezuela/Chavez.

--mkb

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ZNet Commentaries <sysop at zmag.org>
> Date: April 3, 2005 9:27:18 PM CDT
> To: brussel at uiuc.edu
> Subject: Parenti / Good Things Happening in Venezuela / Apr 04
>
> Commentaries are a premium sent to Sustainer Donors of Z/ZNet and that 
> to learn more folks can consult ZNet at http://www.zmag.org
>
> Today's commentary:
> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-04/02parenti.cfm
>
> ==================================
>
> ZNet Commentary
> Good Things Happening in Venezuela April 04, 2005
> By Michael Parenti
>
> Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered 
> the great class divide that besets that country. On my connecting 
> flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an 
> attractive, exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her 
> prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first 
> opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez. 
> Unfortunately, I was right.
>
> Our conversation moved along famously until we got to the political 
> struggle going on in Venezuela. "Chavez," she hissed, "is terrible, 
> terrible." He is "a liar"; he "fools the people" and is "ruining the 
> country."  She herself owns an upscale women's fashion company with 
> links to prominent firms in the United States.
>
> When I asked how Chavez has hurt her business, she said, "Not at all." 
> But many other businesses, she quickly added, have been irreparably 
> damaged as has the whole economy. She went on denouncing Chavez in 
> sweeping terms, warning me of the national disaster to come if this 
> demon continued to have his way.
>
> Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of 
> attack: weak on specifics but strong in venom, voiced with all the 
> ferocity of those who fear that their birthrights (that is, their 
> class advantages) are under siege because others below them on the 
> social ladder are getting a slightly larger slice of the pie.
>
> In Venezuela over 80 percent live below the poverty level. Before 
> Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their 
> children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual 
> fees. The neoliberal market "adjustments" of the 1980s and 1990s only 
> made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies 
> in consumer goods.
>
> Successive administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption 
> and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing 
> malnutrition and desperation.  Far from ruining the country, here are 
> some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:
>
> - A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the 
> landless poor has been instituted. Just this month (March 2005) a 
> large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by 
> agrarian workers for farming purposes.
>
> - Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a 
> dramatic increase in grade school enrollment.
>
> - The government has set up a marine conservation program, and is 
> taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous 
> peoples.
>
> - Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and 
> farmers.
>
> - Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry - 80 
> percent of which is still publicly owned---have been halted, and 
> limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration.
>
> - Chavez kicked out the U.S. military advisors and prohibited 
> overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in 
> Colombia.
>
> - "Bolivarian Circles" have been organized throughout the nation, 
> neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at the community 
> level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and 
> other public services.
>
> - The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair 
> streets and neglected drainage and water systems in poor 
> neighborhoods.
>
> Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in 
> Chavez's home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, 
> two of whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men 
> who were there on a one-year program.
>
> The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not 
> have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, 
> but care was severely rationed by the private market, that is, by 
> one's ability to pay. Dental care was distributed like any other 
> commodity, not to everyone who needed it but only to those who could 
> afford it.
>
> When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with 
> people seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of 
> the Chavez government availed themselves of the free service, 
> temporarily putting aside their political aversions.
>
> Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along 
> with some of the clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from 
> Cuba. Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to 
> work in the free clinics.
>
> Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently 
> opposed to the free-clinic program, seeing it as a Cuban communist 
> campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians' earnings. That 
> low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first 
> time in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries 
> much weight among the more "professionally minded" practitioners.
>
> I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that 
> are located around the country, mostly in low income areas. These 
> modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some 
> produce and fruits at well below the market price, a blessing in a 
> society with widespread malnutrition.
>
> Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlemen and made 
> staples more affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run 
> by women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose 
> function is to provide low-income women with funds to start 
> cooperatives in their communities.
>
> There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was 
> started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory and a T-shirt 
> factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has 
> put about a thousand people to work. The workers seem enthusiastic and 
> hopeful.
>
> Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker 
> cooperatives. Or perhaps it's not surprising, given the near monopoly 
> that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The 
> wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five 
> television stations and all the major newspapers.
>
> The man most responsible for Venezuela's revolutionary developments, 
> Hugo Chavez, has been accorded the usual ad hominem treatment in the 
> U.S. news media. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle (12 
> September 2004) described him as "Venezuela's pugnacious president." 
> An earlier Chronicle report (30 November 2001) quotes a political 
> opponent who calls Chavez "a psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy."
>
> The London Financial Times (12 January 2002) sees him as "increasingly 
> autocratic" and presiding over something called a "rogue democracy."
>
> In the Nation (6 May 2002), Marc Cooper---one of those Cold War 
> liberals who nowadays regularly defends the U.S. empire - writes that 
> the democratically-elected Chavez speaks "often as a thug," who 
> "flirts with megalomania." Chavez's behavior, Cooper rattles on, 
> "borders on the paranoiac," is "ham-fisted demagogy" acted out with an 
> "increasingly autocratic style." Like so many critics, Cooper 
> downplays Chavez's accomplishments, and uses name-calling in place of 
> informed analysis.
>
> Other media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez "mercurial," "besieged," 
> "heavy-handed," "incompetent," and "dictatorial," a "barracks 
> populist," a "strongman," a "firebrand," and, above all, a "leftist." 
> It is never explained what "leftist" means.
>
> A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of 
> social resources and human services, and who supports the kinds of 
> programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a 
> rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance the 
> insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.)
>
> The term "leftist" is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media but 
> seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined, 
> allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact which 
> precludes rational examination of its political content.
>
> The leftist Hugo Chavez whose public talks I attended on three 
> occasions proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably 
> well-informed and well-read individual. Of big heart, deep human 
> feeling, and keen intellect, he manifests a sincere dedication to 
> effecting some salutary changes for the great mass of his people, a 
> man who in every aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful 
> democratic revolution he is leading.
>
> Millions of his compatriots widely and correctly perceive him as being 
> the only president who has ever paid attention to the nation's poorest 
> areas. No wonder he is the target of calumny and coup from the upper 
> echelons in his own country and from ruling circles up north.
>
> Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to 
> assassinate him. I can believe it.
>
> Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights) 
> and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press) which was nominated 
> for a Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, The Culture Struggle will 
> be published by Seven Stories Press in the fall of 2005. For more 
> information on Parenti, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.
>
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