[Peace-discuss] Go to Venezuela, You Idiot!

[Lisa Chason]

    Go to Venezuela, You Idiot! 
    By Jeff Cohen 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective 

    Thursday 06 July 2006 

    I don't usually take the advice of right-wingers. But I did this time.
After receiving inflamed email messages from dozens of angry rightists that
I should get the hell out of the USA and go to Venezuela, I accepted their
challenge and flew to Caracas. 

    "Would you like me to start a fund to ship your ass down there, Comrade
Cohen?" 

    What had provoked the often-abusive emailers was my 2005 Internet column
urging US residents to buy their gasoline at Citgo, a subsidiary of
Venezuela's state oil company. I called for a Citgo BUY-cott, to protest
Bush's interventionist foreign policy, while supporting innovative
anti-poverty <http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0516-25.htm>  programs in
Venezuela. (Last winter, Citgo started a program that provided discounted
home-heating oil to low-income families in the US.) 

    "Hey moron, if you hate America so much and love Venezuela, why don't
you go there?" 

    I'm glad I listened to the conservative chorus. In late June, I headed
to Venezuela with a fact-finding delegation sponsored by the respected US
human rights group, Witness for Peace. The grueling trip covered much ground
and all sides of Venezuela's social/political landscape. It is a complex
country, headed by sometimes volatile President Hugo Chavez, a leftist and
harsh Bush critic who was first elected in 1998. 

    As soon as I returned home, I headed to the nearest Citgo to fill up my
tank - more committed than ever to send a few dollars toward Venezuela's
poor. 

    "You, sir, are as un-American as they come." 

    For decades, Venezuela's vast oil wealth had been squandered and hoarded
by its light-skinned elite, while most Venezuelans - largely of indigenous,
African and mixed descent - lived in dire poverty. Today, oil revenue from
Citgo and elsewhere is funneled into social programs (called "missions") to
benefit the country's poor majority. They're reminiscent of FDR's New Deal
programs ... born of our economic bust. But Venezuela's missions are fueled
by a boom - a boom in oil prices that is likely to persist for years. 

    "Because of Chavez, communism is thriving in South America." 

    From what I could see, capitalism is thriving. Foreign oil interests
continue to profit handsomely from Venezuelan petrol, but they now pay a
fairer share of taxes and royalties. So do the 80 McDonald's restaurants in
Venezuela, which were briefly shut down last year over alleged tax cheating.


    Multinational companies and the old elite are doing fine in today's
Venezuela. So well that some Venezuelan leftists denounce Chavez - despite
his talk of building "21st century socialism" - as a tool of corporate
imperialism. 

    Like other oil-exporting countries, Venezuela in the past allowed its
domestic productive economy to atrophy. Besides oil, it produced little -
with food largely imported. Today, people in poor areas are organizing
themselves into productive and agricultural co-ops, supported by
low-interest government loans. We visited a federal bank that underwrites
women-run businesses nationwide. 

    My guess is that if Chavez succeeds in Venezuela - a big "if" in a
country of endemic corruption, poverty and crime, in the backyard of the US
superpower - its economic system will end up looking more like Sweden than
Cuba. 

    What's not debatable is that the poor have found hope in the Chavez
administration - which is why he's perhaps the most popular president in our
hemisphere. So popular that Chavez critics in the US government and
Venezuelan opposition concede that they won't be able to defeat him in
December when he seeks re-election. 

    "The trouble with all you liberals is that you're anti-American and hate
democracy." 

    Participation in democracy is booming in Venezuela under Chavez. That's
partly due to polarization, but also because so many poor people feel
empowered enough for the first time to get active in politics. A massive
2005 Latinobarometro poll conducted in 18 Latin American countries showed
that Venezuelans are among the top in preference for democracy over all
other forms of government, in satisfaction with how their democracy is
functioning, and in belief that their country is "totally democratic." 

    "The oil money never gets to the poor.... You must have been paid by
Chavez to write what you wrote." 

    Across Venezuela, it's hard to miss the new investment in public
education. Schools are being upgraded in urban and rural areas and are
required to offer free breakfasts and lunches, arts, music and after-school
activities. Unlike in the US, these are well-funded mandates. Illiteracy has
been virtually wiped out, according to UNESCO, thanks to adult education
that has penetrated the poorest neighborhoods. 

    In poor communities, federally-subsidized stores called "mercals" sell
food at half the market price. In the capital of Caracas, thousands of
government-funded soup kitchens offer free lunches every weekday to the
indigent; our delegation was headquartered in a church that served 150 free
lunches per day. Across the country, new housing is being built to replace
shantytown "ranchos" that so many Venezuelans live in. 

    Thousands of free ("Barrio Adentro") medical clinics have been built
inside neighborhoods that never had doctors before - so many clinics that
you can spot them from the highway. These are staffed largely by doctors
from Cuba; in return, Cuba receives Venezuelan oil. When we asked a
community leader how local residents reacted to the Cuban doctors, he
explained that most Venezuelan doctors won't serve in poor barrios: "People
in our community don't care whether the doctors are French, German,
Canadian, Mexican or Cuban - as long as they're here to help." 

    "Go to Venezuela and kiss up to the anti-American dictator." 

    If Venezuela is a dictatorship, it must be the first in world history in
which the opposition controls most of the media. And the first in which
demonstrations occur regularly outside the presidential palace (organized by
various groups, especially low-income activists complaining about broken
promises and government inefficiency). 

    Dissent is alive and well in Venezuela. Any casual viewer can see
anti-Chavez criticism all over TV, the country's dominant medium and largely
in the hands of conservative business interests. The opposition used its
power on TV to support a short-lived military coup in 2002 (strike 1), an
employers' oil lockout in 2002-2003 (strike 2) and a failed recall election
in 2004 (strike 3). Chavez won nearly 60% in the recall vote - which was
monitored closely by international observers. 

  _____  

    Jeff Cohen is a media critic and former TV pundit. His new book, Cable
News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, can be pre-ordered
at http://jeffcohen.org/. 

 

 

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