[Peace-discuss] Good Things Happening in Venezuela

[chason at shout.net]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good Things Happening in Venezuela

By Michael Parenti

Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the
great class divide in that country. On my connecting flight from Miami to
Caracas, I found myself seated next to an 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 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 birthright (that is, their class advantage) is
under siege because others below them on the social ladder are now getting
a slightly larger slice of the pie.

In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives 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.. A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the
landless poor has been instituted-this past March a large landed estate
owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for
farming purposes   b.. Education is now free (right through to
university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school
enrollment   c.. The government has set up a marine conservation program
and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous
peoples   d.. Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker
cooperatives, and farmers    e.. 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  
f.. Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights
by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia   g..
"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   h.. 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 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 market price, a blessing in a society with widespread
malnutrition.

Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlepeople 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
1,000 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 person 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 described him as
"Venezuela's pugnacious president." An earlier Chronicle report (November
30, 2001) quotes a political opponent who calls Chavez "a psychopath, a
terribly aggressive guy." The London Financial Times sees him as
"increasingly autocratic" and presiding over something called a "rogue
democracy."

In the Nation (May 6, 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.

Meanwhile Chavez's opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional
coup in April 2002 against the democratically elected government, are
depicted in the U.S. media as champions of "pro-democratic" and "pro-West"
governance. We are talking about the free-market plutocrats and
corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more
people in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by
Chavez in his years of rule.

When one of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with
charges for the role he had played, the New York Times chose to call him a
"dissident" whose rights were being suppressed by the Chavez government.
Four other top military officers charged with leading the 2002 coup were
also likely to face legal action. No doubt, they too will be described not
as plotters or traitors who tried to destroy a democratic government, but
as "dissidents," decent individuals who are being denied their right to
disagree with the government.


President Hugo Chavez, whose public talks I attended on three occasions,
proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably well-informed and
well-read individual. He manifests a sincere dedication to effecting some
salutary changes for the great mass of his people, a person who in every
aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic revolution he is
leading. Millions of his compatriots 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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/private/peace-discuss/attachments/20050714/f00598b7/untitled-2.htm