The usual image of Hugo Chavez is that he is a clownish dictator that hates freedom of the press, this is an extremely shortsighted view imo.
In this post I will expose my view of Chavez presidency.

The good things Chavez has done is first of all that he reduced poverty, he reduced poverty from 60% to 23%. Also Venezuela was the first country from Latin America that the United Nations development program proposed.
How has Chavez managed to reduce poverty? The good old trick of telling the IMF and the World Bank to **** off.
The venezuelan state took control of the oil and the results have been great, not necessarily for the big macroeconomics number but for the people in the marginal neighbourhoods of Caracas.

Another good thing that Chavez has done is spending much more money on public education and healthcare, what libertarians like to call "free ponies" for many venezuelans its more than a free pony, its ****ing dignity.
The state has given dental healthcare to people who had never received it before not only that but Chavez also created literacy programs for adults that were left behind in the good old days of oligarchy, thanks to those programs adults that couldnt read can now do it, he literally changed the lives of many people who were never considered before.
Also you have to consider that the extra healthcare and education that Chavez has given to venezuelans are not being considered in the poverty statistics. All of this has naturally been exposed on the USA media, because they want their citizens to have a whole view of what is going on Venezuela, its part of their pledge to freedom.


Sarcasm aside, naturally USA isnt too happy about Chavez because he is not willing to bend over and pass the natural resources so that the multinationals can continue profiting, because after all its all about the profits and not the suffering of human beings.

USA takes dissidents very seriously so they helped organized a coup against Chavez, the coup in 2002 was mainly organized by the elite venezuelan class because they were not too happy of losing the political power and some minor economic power.
The coup was pushed over by the help of the lovely venezuelan media that previously had just had the role to entertain venezuelans and keep them away from the real important issues, but now that Chavez was threatening the power of the elites so the media took a more relevant rols and supported the coup.
The latinamerican elites and US goverment had once again gotten away with opressing the will of the majority or so they thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d'%C3%A9tat_attempt

The people that lived in the marginal neighbourhoods of Venezuela and were now being considered didnt agree with the coup and went in hundreds of thousands to protest to the goverment house, the pressure of the venezuelans was so much that the interim president decided it was better to step down.



Has everything Chavez done been good? Good enough to win elections and beat the right but he has made some mistakes, the first mistake and the biggest one imo is the fact that he seems to soft on some criminals, crime rates have increased in Venezuela which doesnt seem to correlate with the fact that poverty has been considerably reduced and inequality slightly reduced.
Other mistake Chavez has made is not rethink his price controls policies, price controls seemed to work at first by giving access to cheaper food to people that didnt have much money in goverment supermarkets but all that has produced a clandestine black market.
Another error is the problem Venezuela is having satisfying the demands of electricity and water, AFAIK they have barely made it and this is being taken care of at the moment, Venezuela is going to install a Nuclear plant butthurting USA a little more in the process.
Another problem is corruption within the state, this is a problem all less developed countries have but nonetheless is a problem under Hugo Chavez administration.
The last issue I will touch here ( there have been other of course) is inflation, here are the levels of the Chavez era each year: 23, 16,12, 22,31, 21,16,13, 18, 30. Not exactly what poor people need.
But just for fun here are the levels when the neoliberals that were educated in USA were in charge during the 90s( excluding 1999): 40, 34, 31, 38, 60, 59, 99, 50, 35.

Just in case somebody wonders the foreign debt levels were preety much the same until 2008 then they increased from 40million k to 60 million k.
Unfortunaly Venezuela is still very dependant on the foreign markets and they were hit by the recession, I personally think Chavez management of foreign debt has been good in spite of the increase, its still managable and around 17% of its total GDP.

Another area of criticism of Chavez is his foreign policy, I think Chavez biggest achievement in this area is suggesting the idea that what is good for USA isnt necessarily good for South America, Ecuador and Bolivia have followed the steps of Chavez and naturally both had have to dealt with an angry elite. Also Chavez was an important actor in founding the UNASUR which a union of the southamerican countries.
Chavez allies arent exactly good guys, we have Iran, Russia, Cuba to name 3.
However I dont think we can blame Chavez for this after all we all sell and buy stuff to China.
A valid criticism of his policy however is his tone, I think he should be a bit more diplomatic and should lower his tone a bit, there is no need for such an abrasive speech.


Now the fun part, human rights in Venezuela.

First of all lets start with the good parts, before Chavez arrived nobody gave a **** about the indeginous people of Venezuela, the situation of those people improved thanks to the revolution but of course this isnt mentioned either, after all why would it be mentioned? Has the first world ever cared about the rights of indigenous people? Not with the great example USA showed.
Do you guys care that a bunch of them were killed last year on Peru? You know why they were killed by Alan Garcia? Because they were on the way of a freetrade agreement with USA, the indians opposed to their habitat being destroyed, I wonder if that made the news, Im sure it did.

Anyway indeginous people comment aside , Chavez has also pushed gender and gay rights.

Ok now the real fun part the bad stuff that Chavez has done.
Venezuela has done bad stuff during the Chavez regime lets break it down in 5 categories. Here are the following human rights violations the Venezuela state has supposedly done:

- Awful prisions
- Bad judiciary system
- Extrajudicial executions
- Closing down press.
- Harrasing dissidents.

The first 3 were things that were happening before Chavez arrived and by bodies that are not directly related to the executive. So its obviously very important to compare the situation before Chavez and after Chavez arrived. I mean even the nicest guy in town is going to be head of state of a state that violates human rights the day after he steps in office.
I dont feel Chavez can be held responsible for the first two human rights violations, those human rights violations are the result of decades of corruption, negligence, lack of will,etc.
The third one is more delicate, there is no evidence that the deaths have any political background. If you want to criticize Chavez for this you can do so however this is also the result of a long history of negligence and lack of will throghout decades, but if there was really a will in the goverment I think this barbaric police practice could be considerably stopped. Btw there is no official data on this or any hard evidence that it has actually happened chances are it has, however there is definetly not evidence that they are at all related to orders from the executive branch.
The fourth is what hurts the feelings of all the freedom fighters, I dont want to fully defend Chavez here because this is an issue Im still pondering but I do wish to note that Venezuela is probably the only country in the world where you turn on the TV and they whine that there is no freedom of the press, I dont see the media in North Korea complaining about lack of press freedom.
Also the stations that were closed pushed the coup, they lied to the venezuelan public , manipulated date and tried to overthrow a goverment that was democraticly elected. I insist would a british TV station that lied about the monarchy and promoted to overthrow them allowed to continue to broadcast?? Im not sure. Also a lot of the press that promoted the coup and celebrated it for 24 hours is still functioning!! FFS!!! If Chavez is such a hater of freedom why havent those newspaper and TV station that openly oppose him been closed???!!
The fifth issue is what bothers me a bit, dissidents are in fact being harrased, I understand a big powerful corporation being harrased but not the little guy that just happens to disagree with Chavez. I think this is being exagerated by anti-revolutionaries but there is a complain that 40 people are in jail without really good reasons. However I dont have any evidence that people that have disagreed with Chavez are being massively executed or anything.


Check out Colombia record of humans rights if you want to hate on somebody.
Comparing Chavez to Mao, Stalin or Castro is awfully wrong and ignorant. Chavez was democraticly elected they werent, Chavez hasnt commited political genocide they did, etc.
Chavez lost a referendum on 2007 and he lost full control on September this year but keep on the hating.




Chavez is a guy that stood up for his people and fought for them and I respect that. However I think he is attached to power and Im worried that he might do something crazy in the future, I think someone new a bit more reformist should step up to the plate and steady the ship but without abandoning the pledge to equality and dignity of everybody.

Did I miss it, or was their absolutely no mention of Bolivar or his revolution ITT. Do VEers and/or Chavez consider him the heir to Bolivars legacy? Do you?

The bolivarian revolution is the name of the venezuelan socialist movement, it is not tied directly to Simon Bolivar. Simon Bolivar was a guy that fought for the independece of many southamerican countries.
Aparently they give a socialist interpretation to Bolivar ideas. I dont really care if the interpretation is valid or not. I think its vaguely related because they are promoting taking away the economic resources of the multinationals have unfairly obtained so that the people are the ones that can profit for them. If you ask me I dont think Bolivarian revolution is a good or accurate name but my knowledge of Simon Bolivar is very limited.

Chavez's policies and their implementation are referred to as the "Bolivarian Revolution." The official name of VE is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

I can't comment on whether OP considers Chavez the 'heir to Bolivar's legacy.' But it is generally understood that VE since Chavez has been an exercise in implementing Bolivar's ideals.

OK i'll bite...how do you feel about nationalization of companies and resources? Any reason why we shouldn't look at it as a dead end for economy?

P.S When i visited VE in 1999, most of the local people i spoke with, were pretty crazy about him, but all my friends in the country (mostly young professionals with promising careers) were pretty much terrified...

OK very good. I learned something new.

I think nationalization of companies and resources depend on the type of company or resource being nationalized, Im in favor of third world countries nationalizing natural resources because the advantages private insitutions have over the state are much less than when it comes to stuff like Oil.

Its true that a private oil company its more efficient than a state company but when it comes to simply exploiting natural resources the slight more efficience is not enough to compensate the fact that most of the profits leave the country or stay in the elites of society instead of being for the benefit of everybody.

As an example the inefficient state Chilean company CODELCO brought 21 millon k of dollars in 4 years. Codelco controls 28% of the chilean copper.
The multinationals that control like half of our copper has brought only 5 million k of dollars in 4 years in terms of taxes, in other words we are being raped by our corrupt politicians and the multinationals.

you can have all the capital and all the labour you want.
without the knowhow its practically worthless. that is why they need the private companies and chavez knows this, that is why he takes with one hand and begs with the other. http://www.chrismartenson.com/forum/...ist-pigs/11740 problem is noone is gonna rush to invest when the legal structure is not there..corruption and legal uncertainness is a BIG obstacle for economic growth as we have seen in so many other countries troughout history.

its probably a good idea to strive for cooperation. not violently overtake stuff that you dont know how to run and then hope for the best. its easy enough to promise goodies at the expenses of the rich, and maybe it works atleast for some time...but soon enough reality strikes and for some reason peple dont like their property being stolen...so when the capital and knowhow starts deteriorating..well you get the picture soon enough there will be no wealth to redist but people still need to eat and power hungry leaders still crave for power.


edit: there are parallelsto russia and the story of http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish...orkovsky.shtml its interesting to note, that at first amnesty international were unwilling to give their support to this cause although they did change their mind later. apparently human rights are not as important when the victim is rich.

greywolf, I think you are mixing different issues. I see nationalization of resources, cooperation with multinationals, investment in knowledge, foreign investment, class warfare.

I think nationalization of some profitable natural resources like copper and oil is the best idea in long term, I also think the State should invest in educating part of its population to run the company. However on short term I think its very reasonable to raise taxes and try to cooperate with multinationals instead of calling them evil capitalistic pigs.
Note that I want to insist this logic only applies to natural resources and to specific companies that need long term investment. I dont want to nationalize the company that makes underwears or lamps.
This model seems to have been succesful on Asia, of course the questions is whether that model can be followed by us because we are a different cultures.

On foreing invesment, I agree that Venezuela is unstable and corrupt but I think that is the fault of all the sectors not just Chavez, Chavez wasnt the one that went for a coup.
But I do agree with you that Chavez hasnt given the best signals and could do better here.

On the class warfare I think there is a big big difference between telling the foreing multination that is profiting from the Oil that the oil will now be controlled by the goverment and going to the local meat company and telling the owner that now the meat belongs to the goverment.
I dont think anybody has a right to privately own a natural resource like oil because the resource was there, however if you have worked hard and invested and came up with cows then its a different story, the cows wouldnt be there if you hadnt worked while the oil would still be there if you hadnt done ****.
I think the first is not theft and its not at the expense of the rich its at the expense of somebody who isnt even venezuelan! The second one is more complex and it has happened in Venezuela in different sectors, some of them have been justified but even if the expropiated companies were rightly punished for speculating with prices and failing to comply to laws its definetly not a very exciting enviroment to invest in, Chavez knows this so he actually subsidized some private companies. The big question is are this decisitions being made by the people , are the local councils and unions that Chavez has promoted working??

I have to admit that the last couple of years have not been very good for Venezuela , the question is whether the revolution is on its way down or if it just runned into a bump.

I also want to add that to say that state companies only work for a small time and then reality strikes is ignoring the evidence that Asia provides and other companies like for instance CODELCO from Chile.

Im not here to say rah rah Chavez, I want to examine the venezuelan process and see the good and the bad stuff.

Chavez took over in 1999, in 1998 oil was in the $11 a barrel range. In 2010 it is in the 70-80$ a barrel range. Just googling some quick numbers

Venezuela has ~27 million people and exports ~2 million barrels of oil per day. Those 27 million people have an average income of $13,000 a day. So to make the numbers easy lets say Venezuela exports 0.067 barrels per person per day, and lets say oil is 60$ per barrel more expensive now than in 1998. So thats 4.02$ a day per person more * 365 days = $1467.30 per person, per year that the increase oil prices have brought into the country. Thats a pretty big leap over 10 years (and I lowballed all the numbers, they export slightly more than 2 million a day, have fewer than 30 million people)- so to credit Chavez with reducing poverty how much would it have decreased if oil was still at $11 a barrel?

Unfortunately international companies would probably stay away from the country that at any point of time can nationalize whatever they were investing in and who can blame them. He is also trying and in part succeeding in nationalizing banking industry and thats just flat out suicidal for the developing (or any) country.
Just like every other petro-dollar state, Chavez enjoyed some prosperity and was able to deliver on some of his promises but to say that country benefited from his regime is just ludicrous. Also it is not fair to compare VE with the rest of the region since none of them have as much oil and oil-dollars will cover a lot of mistakes.

Dude, that exactly the same thing. Between research, drilling, building the infrastructure etc huge sum of money was spent and it wasn't his money.

I think the diff is that Chavez made sure the extra money went to the poor not to the rich like before.

So we should look past the dictator for all the good he did. Kinda like all the cures, technology, art, architecture, astronomy, universitys, etc. That the Nazis did really good on. So naive to think the good outweighs the bad.

Those damn democratically elected dictators... Total barbarians, thinking that their own citizens have interests above and beyond furthering the American cause.

Take 'em all out IMO, and let's install a REAL democracy. Freedom for all! They just need to see the light, then they'll start living the right way.

Yeah, and it is probably even worse, considering the oil industry is such a capital intensive industry whereas a meat company isn't even close.

I haven't seen anyone here (and doubt I will) argue for that. You can also make a very strong case that Chavez has been using state power to shut down the opposition.

The website is biased in favour of Marxism, yet it gives a different perspective on Venezuelan life, since you can find many news outlets that cast Ven in a bad way.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5620

If you have interest in Venezuela, it's worth exploring the site.

ROFL, how brainwashed you have to be by the media to compare Chavez to the Nazis.

This. Other latin countries have different natural resources while not as powerful as oil are still quite profitable, for instance Chile has copper yet most of the copper money has gone into the pockets of powerful wealthy people.



Here is a graph that shows oil prices, its true that they have gone up but not 8 times like you suggest. Right now its a 70ish levels.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Br...ot_monthly.svg

Oil is one third of the GDP so we can say that Chavez got the benefit of having 16% more resources. This is without acknowledging that most natural resources have gone up in price, copper has enjoyed a similar boom because there is more demand.





The analogy is not the same because when you drill, build the infraestructure and take out the oil you already profited or are you suggesting that because you drilled once you have a right to take oil forever??
If I take away your cows you never got to profit from your labor.

This is true but first others tried to used their economic power to shut down Chavez.
What should Chavez do after the media almost got away with a coup against him?
Should he just say "its cool dog, dont worry"??


The article linked above is really good imo and most of the points are exposed there, I didnt want to take the lazy way out of just posting an article but since its already posted Im not going to repeat those points.

Yeah...becouse i invested billions of dollars in your infrastructure and development of oil fields i get to profit from it...If you'd have the money to invest in the first place you wouldn't have to steal it later. Easy game.

Suppose I have oil in my backyard and I tell you that you can take my oil as long as you pay me 10% of the earnings of that oil. Does that mean you know own my oil forever, that now my oil is your oil?

Development contracts usually are not open ended. It is not "forever" but it is for set number of years and that number of years is not just a number taken out of thin air. It is normally calculated on bases of initial investment and profit is mostly generated on the back end of that contract. Say we have a contract for 50 years, for first 20 i just make up the initial investment and balk of my profit comes on the last 30. Obviously not as simple but you get the idea.

Sure he has- they DID try to lead a coup against him, remember? Putting your political foes behind bars is only a bad thing when they haven't done anything wrong.

Fact is that Venezuela's elections are always held under an international microscope and there's never been any serious concerns about their legitimacy, or the legitimacy of the Chavez government, raised. The fact that so many Americans are sure that he's a dictator is just an example of how effective the American government has been at demonizing him.

The point is that a lot of what Chavez is doing is bad long term for the economy, but he simply lucked out with his implementation as it occurred in concert with a massive rise in the price of oil. Had he come to power 5-10 years earlier his actions would have much different results.

Define "economy", what does that mean??. According to you its better to not spend because its bad in the long term for the economy, sorry folks but your will continue with illiteracy because its bad for the economy in the long term, you will continue without a dentist because its bad for the economy in the long term, you will continue to be a second class citizen because its bad for the economy in the long term, your dignity is bad for the economy in the long run so **** off.


ps: I already conceded that Chavez runned good with the price of oil but that by itself doesnt explain his success with reducing poverty and extreme poverty.

I get the idea. Except that those juicy oil contracts were not given to them by the people of Venezuela, we have a type of odious debt goin on imo.
Also those companies are not angels, you think they dont bribe politicians in the third world to get their way?? You dont think those companies dont pay for the political campaigns in Chile and other countries so that the politicians continue to give them away the resources for a cheap price??