Hugo Chavez and 21st Century Latin America

Hugo Chavez, the charismatic and provocative leader of Venezuela for the past 14 years, passed away yesterday at the age of 58 after succumbing to his year-and-a-half battle with cancer. He had overwhelming support among Venezuela's poor, whose lives he sought to better, and he encountered great opposition from many of Venezuela's wealthy.

I spent some time in Venezuela in the late '90's – both before and after Chavez' election to the Venezuelan Presidency. In the runup to the 1998 election, his lead was overwhelming. He won easily with the strong support of the country's poorest, who turned out in huge numbers to vote. And there were many, many poor people. The vast hillside slums were visible on the drive into Caracas from Simón Bolívar International Airport, which is 10-15 miles from downtown Caracas. These insubstantial makeshift homes seemed to built on top of one another – a tragedy waiting to happen. As a Venezuelan colleague once remarked, “That all those houses are still standing is a sign that God must exist.” I have never seen anything like it - either before or since.

Progress has been made since he took office in1999 but much remains to be done. After nationalizing the oil industry, the government has been able to pour revenues into projects to alleviate the worst of the conditions. Poverty rates are down from 50% to 32%. More than $300 billion dollars have been spent on social development projects including health care, education, and affordable, government-run grocery stores. Cuban doctors provide free treatment at neighborhood clinics, and university enrollment swelled from 894,000 students in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2010. More than 3 million people have signed up to receive government homes. In the period from 2010 to 2012, about 250,000 of these homes have been built. [Ian James, AP Oct. 4, 2012]

Chavez' support among the “Chavistas” remained strong enough to win a fourth term in 2012 by an eleven point margin – 55-44. Turnout was over 80% for the election. The margin of victory was down from his overwhelming 26 point margin in 2006 but compares favorably to recent US elections. In the US, we haven't seen a President win by more than 11 points since 1984 and we haven't had an 80% turnout since 1876!

Since the time of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has taken a strong, and often misguided, interest in Latin American affairs. From the 1890's onward, we have often intervened more than 50 times – usually on behalf of capital and business interests as well as on behalf of right-wing dictators and military or para-military forces. A listing can be found at theYachana.org website but I'll just refresh you memory of some of them here:

• 1898 – seized Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain
• 1907-12 – intervened in Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Cuba to protect “US interests”
• 1914 – began a 19 year occupation of Haiti
• 1925 – Marines sent to suppress a general strike in Panama
• 1954 – CIA directs an exile invasion in Guatemala after newly elected government nationalizes unused US's United Fruit Company land. This support continued for decades ultimately resulting in 200,00 deaths
• 1961 – CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails with the sanctions against Cuba begun in 1962
• 1973 – CIA-backed coup ousts democratically elected Marxist president in Chile
• 1980's – interventions to support rebels against left-leaning governments in Nicaragua and El Salvador, including CIA-directed “Contra” operations

With oil-rich Venezuela going the socialist route, it was inevitable that the US would oppose Chavez.

Whether or not the United States knew of, or was involved in any way with, the “47-hour coup” that tried unsuccessfully to remove Chavez in 2002 is a matter for debate. An investigation conducted by the U.S. Inspector General at the request of US Senator Christopher Dodd, requested a review of U.S. activities leading up to and during the coup attempt. The OIG report found no "wrongdoing" by U.S. officials either in the State Department or in the U.S. Embassy but it also concluded that: "It is clear that NED [the National Endowment for Democracy], Department of Defense (DOD), and other U.S. assistance programs provided training, institution building, and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government." [Wikipedia]

 

Although he has been a burr in the side of United States policy, Chavez considered himself a friend of the American people. Venezuela was the first to offer the United States help after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Chavez offered money and personnel to help in the relief effort. The Venezuelan state-owned CITGO Petroleum Corporation offered $1 million in aid. Since 2005, CITGO has helped low-income Americans with a home heating oil program that has so far subsidized or donated $465 million worth of heating oil to people in 25 states and the District of Columbia. At today's prices near $4/gallon, the current value of the donated or subsidized oil would be over $1 billion.

So, fourteen years on from Chavez' “Bolivaran revolution”, where does Latin America stand? Where does the United States stand in relation to its neightbors to the south? Since Chavez' election in 1998, left-wing presidents have been elected in twelve Central and South American countries. Besides Venezuela, the people of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador and Peru have seen fit to join the “pink tide”, as it has been named by some journalistic pundits. Only Honduras and Paraguay have moved to the political center since then. Without a return to blatantly illegal interventions in the internal affairs of Latin American countries, the United States will not be able to regain its influence over Central and South America. And that's a good thing. How much more consistent with our own stated democratic ideals would be an approach that allows Latin America nations to develop in the way the majority of their people think best. Of course, there remains the ongoing injustice being perpetrated against Cuba more than 50 years after Fidel Castro took power there and 45 years after a wounded and captured Che Guevara was executed by Bolivian Special Forces in an Andes village. Is it politically possible for this injustice to be ended? President Obama, secure in a second term, has a unique opportunity to do this but whether he has the political will is uncertain.

Venezuela is reeling after the death of its President and its status as a democracy will be put to the test in the Presidential elections scheduled to be held within 30 days. Right now the talk is of unity but Venezuelans have been stocking up on gasoline and food. The major question is whether any other candidate will have the power to draw poor voters to the election booth. (Come to think of it, this is eerily similar to what will be facing a post-Obama Democratic Party in 2016.) In any case, even an opposition candidate may have a difficult time undoing all of Chavez' policies even if he or she wanted to.

Other Interesting Stuff

The population of 12 “pink tide” nations plus that of Cuba represents 2/3 of the total population of Latin America (400 million out of 600 million).

The 2004 award-winning film The Motorcycle Diaries relates the journey of 23-year old Ernesto Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado through South America. As he encounters the poverty and social injustices of 1954 Latin America, Ernesto begins reformulating his political beliefs.

Poverty in the United States is nowhere near that of Latin American countries. Still the disparity between the richest and the rest of us has been growing for the past three decades and promises to remain high. When you have 5 or so minutes, you should check out thisYouTube video that has gone viral with more than 3 million views.

 

The toll of American interference in Latin American countries is not to be measured solely by its interventions. For decades, the US Army School of the Americas trained Latin American students in “counter-insurgency” techniques. Among its graduates can be counted former dictators and military leaders in many Latin American countries. The SOA was re-christened in 2000 as WHINSEC – The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. While not as off the deep end as its predecessor, WHINSEC continues to face criticism. Now here's one place we can save tax dollars. Shut it down. The School of the Americas Watch is an organization that is dedicated to closing this infamous institution.  And just so you don't think this is the opinion of just “pinko” organizations..My Catholic grammar school teachers were of the RSM order (Reverend Sisters of Mercy).  There is a short article about the SOA on their website: "The School of theAmericas: Its History, Funding, and Global Influence."