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.