You have my promise that I will order the Brian Nelson book and put it on the top of the stack for holiday reading (between now and then my life is unremediated lunacy). We’ll get back to it as soon as I’m done reading it. Obviously, even though I’m not a Venezuelan national or expatriate, my personal experiences with the situation and my friendships down there make it an important matter for me. When I get the info from Craig (haven’t seen it yet, as of this writing – 9:45 PM Thursday) we’ll talk some more in a relevant forum.

You are correct that I am emotional. There are reasons for that. My family specifically has been uprooted and hurt because of the situations Chavez himself has engineered (he has freely admitted to engineering such situations BTW). Be that as it may I apologize for all emotionalism, histrionics et al in my postings. However I also believe in your responses you may have been pigeonholing me and making assumptions about me just as I was about you. Without realizing it you were provoking me. Simply put your initial postings sound like something out of the VIO.

With that in mind you are correct in that we will definitely agree on some things and disagree on others. From my perspective all the good you have seen could have been brought about without all the bad that accompanied it. That’s just my view and nothing is pretty much going to change my mind about it. I’m sorry, I just don’t see what’s so special about it that it couldn’t have been done by someone else or at least done without all that political vitriol.

I highly recommend a book by Brian Nelson called the Silence and the Scorpion. He heavily researched it by interviewing people over the years to get the best first hand account of events surrounding April 2002. It paints an unflattering picture on both sides. Basically the losers are all the believers.

For me, if Chavez’s reason to be was to rile up the population and motivate them to be active politically and take charge to enact positive change that time has long past. He’s part of the problem and no longer part of the solution. It’s time to renew and bring fresh ideas and work together from both sides. But I’m convinced that’s not going to happen while he’s still in power. Chavez does not believe in political opponents, alternation of power, he only sees enemies that must be crushed. For me this is plain in his speeches and his actions.

Most famously the way he shot down a 1st draft of a bipartisan Education Law that was written by representatives from both sides of the political divide: He declared it was not the revolutionary law he had asked for and that if presented to him he would not sign it; he would hit it with the bat Sammy Sosa had presented to him as a gift. This incident is fairly old (2001ish) and you may not find references to it in current literature

(Leonardo Carvajal wrote a book and refers to these events though he himself is fairly biased, the account is accurate enough since it matched what I remembered at the time, I was still studying and followed the law closely).

And with that I bid Adieu, feel free to write me at my blog or email. I think Craig sent it to you.

Cool down, will you? I did say that I would look further into the situations regarding the aftermath of the coup and the imprisonment of the police chiefs. I also never accused you of calling Chavez a despot or a dictator – I was responding to other comments made by other correspondents here, and to the general tone of the discussion where Chavez was concerned – so I could waste as much time looking for an example of your doing so as you could looking for an example of my claiming you did.

Obviously there are things about the Chavez program and the man himself we’re not going to agree about (and as in the case of his palsywalsying with slugs like Ahmadinejad and our apparent mutual opinion of the ineffectuality of the opposition, it seems like the things we do agree about infuriate you just as much anyway). Being (I believe you once wrote) from Venezuela you have much more of a personal emotional investment in the situation than I do. But I did revisit some of the clinics and trade schools last year myself and they were doing just fine. I also saw a few brand new ones. I don’t doubt that the budgeting of these projects has been mishandled; if this government has proved anything, it’s that it knows how to add two and two and get seven. Some of this is no doubt due to the corruption you pointed out, which is an awful thing, and some to mere accounting incompetence. I think this has been rather worse in the agricultural sector than just about anyplace else. But I also know that clearing up the slums of Caracas is a long, long term project – millions live in these areas and it’s not getting fixed overnight, especially with the fluctuations in world petroleum prices. I also know that “free market capitalism” in Latin America isn’t going to make a dent in them nearly as quickly as a concerted national program to do so. I’ll stick to my position and say that what’s been accomplished is pretty remarkable – considering how much time Chavez has had to work with and how many, many years (centuries?) it took the problem to develop.

Moreover, I believe I mentioned the confused and inefficacious state of the opposition once; I would hardly call that bringing it up “over and over.” Nor did I imply that anyone who voted for Chavez or Chavista candidates at some other time was stupid for voting for opposition or independent candidates. What I wrote – very clearly, I think – was that I would look into what happened. Why that merited such histrionics out of you I don’t know.

I don’t know how to read your comments about the “common people” or “the masses.” They sound contemptuous, which would be unfortunate. And your inference that what they say or think doesn’t matter contradicts your concerns with the government’s pressure on the independent media, such as it is. After all, if you claim that what the “masses” think or say doesn’t matter, and what the “middle class” says works to Chavez’ advantage (one would assume because it simply entrenches his image among the masses – whose opinion you claim doesn’t matter (?) – then to whom is it that the government wants so fervently to control the flow of information?

I doubt if Chavez is too dim to appreciate that in this media age cell phones and the internet make his attempts to control the formal media of television, newspapers and radio stations just about irrelevant. And since the flow of information seems to be pretty fluid anyway – you certainly aren’t short of information, at any rate, and the people I’ve met in Venezuela have a pretty good grasp of who’s doing what and to whom as well, one can only assume that whomever Chavez ostensibly doesn’t want getting information is getting it anyway – all of which means, I suppose, that what they think and say actually does matter to the government. And we’re back again to this problem of an opposition that has managed to keep itself informed and to inform others yet still can’t muster the cohesion to make a case for themselves effectively. In this part of our discussion, you seem to want to eat your arepas and have them too.

In your emotionalism about these issues I think you’re maybe missing some of my bigger points. No, I don’t think Chavez is the right guy to take the country forward from this point. I don’t think anyone should serve as long as he has. Ideas get stale, corruption sets in, defensiveness inevitably corrodes idealism. Visionaries – and like it or not, Chavez is a visionary – begin to confuse the dreams with the realities. And I also did say that I was not comfortable with the abrogation of term limits by the new constitution, mainly for these reasons. However tired you are of hearing about puntofijismo, it was the system under which many of the most intractable social and economic problems in Venezuela became ossified to the point that they required a sledgehammer approach like Chavez’ to something more reasoned. It was also the system under which so much of Venezuela’s oil wealth was siphoned off to offshore and European bank accounts so that it wasn’t even available to be applied to…well, slums like northwestern Caracas.

You can bring facts, perspectives and information you have to my attention and I assure you I’ll look into it without you ranting, name-calling, berating or trying to shove it down my, or anyone else’s, throat. If I got my information wrong, I’ll try to get it right next time. I don’t promise that I’ll look at the same circumstances in the same light as you do. In fact, I probably won’t. I’ve just seen too much on the ground in Venezuela over the years that has been good and positive and has benefited many to whom no benefits and no hope was coming before Chavez took office. But I also won’t get histrionic in response to you. It’s not necessary.

BTW Where did *I* say: Chavez is a dictator? Find it, I dare you. There’s no doubt however that many of his actions have been autocratic and repressive and that slowly he’s turning the screws, I mean he really really WANTS to be one, he’s just too smart to actually try to pull that kind of crap in the 21st Century. That fascination with the Iranian goon, the Libyan dictator, Lukashenko (even Sadam hussein remember) and so on and so forth are not accidents man. I know the US also has weird liaisons but this isn’t about the US. Chavez has gone OUT OF HIS WAY to personally visit and shake hands with these people. What happened to that old saying Gator: “Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres?”

The Ledezma case is clear and shut: Instead of respecting and abiding (as you put it) by the results of the electorate in choosing Antonio as the new Metropolitan Mayor, Chavez had a fit and stripped the Mayor of his budget, his powers and created the fictional capital admin area (Yes I know the AN created the Law, let’s stop pretending the AN was anything but a rubber stamp assembly in 2009) and APPOINTED (not even an elected official!) Jacqueline Farias to preside over the Metropolitan area. That’s not very democratic is it? THIS is a fact and you can check it.

He has NOT bent over backwards to allow the locals to handle their things, another of your FACTS. It is NOT a fact. Deal with it! I once again called you on your Bullshit and again you gave me the runaround about how he may be worried about old cronies leeching again from the system. Yada, yada, yada. The People ELECTED these people, the same people who elected Chavez. Why are these people so wise to Elect Chavez and at the same time too stupid for electing opposition candidates at the local level that he feels the need to intervene in state and regional affairs?

What did the local leader do to incur interference? He got ELECTED. Remember the “masses” ELECTED these governors and put their trust in them. For Chavez to take infrastructure and power from them as soon as they were elected is nothing short of a blatant power grab. Remember these governorships were fine under RED leadership, what changed? they were booted out of office because they were incompetent. And Chavez took over the administrations of these places willy-nilly. What happened to abiding by the decisions of those people for their new governors to handle the airports, hospitals and ports? Not very democratic at all it it?

Common folk can complain and bitch all they want because they don’t have POWER. Are you basing freedom of speech on how the middle and upper class lunatics rave about Chavez? Pfff they’re not worth his time, if anything he gains by letting them rant.These are not the people I’m referring to. When push comes to shove, the TV, radio and the newspapers (except for Plomovision) apply self-censorship because many a time the government has slapped on a fine or a weird tax following a particularly heinous opinion column or news item. The government doesn’t care what people SAY about them, what they want to control is the flow and reach of INFORMATION, which is different.

This has happened many times already to the newspaper Tal Cual following biting columns by Laureano Marquez and Teodoro Petkoff.

The firebrand (and lunatic if I may add, she does the opposition no favors) Marta Colombina was FIRED because her political programs were getting Televen into trouble with the government. The regulator CONATEL kept pressuring them with threats to fine them with until they disposed of her.

Look Chavez is not a traditional tinpot dictator, but to call him a democrat is to drink a special kind of political Kool-aid only the very Ideologically committed can do.

I know of all of his wonderful initiatives, how often have you gone back to see them after several years of operation? Need I remind you they are all unsustainable in the long run because they depend on an ever increasing price of oil? More often than not it’s one school, or one hospital or one building that are fine, the rest are run down and forgotten. I know this for a fact, I’ve seen many a Barrio Adentro module completely abandoned or taken over by squatters before I left Venezuela and my friends and family have kept me up to date on their status. Not good! My Aunt is pro-Chavez but even she complains about all the BS hospital initiatives and she’s been working as an MD for years and years, I trust her word more than yours because she is there day after day seeing the daily chaos. You go back and visit every so often, sorry man.

As for the shanty towns, they are alive and kicking, I was there as recently as last year, maybe the northwest in Caracas is looking good to you, but the rest of the city in the north, center, east and southeast STILL host many many run-down slums. To say nothing of the Vargas situation which STILL hasn’t been fixed despite more than a decade of money and effort.

Corruption has ballooned under Chavez thanks in part to CADIVI and record oil prices. I’m personally tired of hearing of this “puntofijisimo” nonsense. All this worrying about not letting old schemers back into the system has blinded folks to the fact that the current schemers are LOOTING EVEN MORE MONEY than all previous governments. I mean come on Gator, tell me FONDEN isn’t just another black box piggy bank for the Governing Political party to finance its own little operations. And that thing is BILLIONS of BILLIONS of dollars making Lusinchi look like a petty thief.

I’m not saying the opposition is better, far from it. You don’t need to bring up over and over again and how clueless these people have been for years. They are the primary reason the man has lasted so long in power. I actually agree with most of the points regarding the old schemers and most political dinosaurs, but I’m a big believer in that politicians are like diapers, they must be changed often and for the same reason. This diaper has 12 years of stink in it already, it’s really time to change it. Venezuela would run much better if both sides had balanced power and were able to keep each other honest. But when the power structure favors one side too much…

For the record I don’t want Chavez to die, I wish him a speedy recovery, otherwise him dying would make him a Martyr and create a Peron situation in Venezuela. I want the people to finally declare they’ve had enough and vote him out of office due to incompetence even if it takes another presidential term to do it.

You would think rolling blackouts and the way the energy sector has been mismanaged since 1999 would be enough but…

Sorry Gator, If you really do believe that this man’s initiatives are great for the country in the long run and that he really IS capable of governing the country by penning these wonderful posts full of “realismo magico” then by God you REALLY DO live in Macondo.

I’m sorry I’ve ranted for far too long. Feel free to write me to my blog if you want, not that I guarantee I will answer back but I will make an effort though I for one do not see the point. I will not infest HBT with anymore of this sordidness.

I just felt I needed to ALERT people to NOT take what you said as Gospel when a reality check was clearly required.

Awesome.

Poor Wilson Ramos. I hope he comes out of this okay.

Thanks for clarifying what transpired viz. the commanders of the coup, but given that Chavez was willing to abide by the verdicts of the court with regard to them still militates against classifying him as a dictator. No real despot would have tolerated that, hissyfit or not. That he “retired” the officers who would not abide by the directives of the elected government without prosecuting them further argues against any claims of despotism on his part. I wasn’t aware of the long term imprisonment of the police chiefs – by “the shootings” I assume you refer to the murders during the demonstrations in downtown Caracas, but I promise you I will look into that. It’s news to me.

Fram what I’ve read, Chavez didn’t exactly make a yeoman effort to keep Carmona from “escaping” – sending opponents, or letting them flee, into exile is a time-honored tradition in Latin America.

He also abided by the electoral rejection of his first round of constitutional amendments, as I recall, and made some significant changes in the document prior to its approval in the second round of elections. I wasn’t comfortable with the degree of authority it gave him nor with its abrogation of the limits to the number of terms he could serve, but as I recall the election itself was closely observed and the OAS dismissed the number of “irregularites” that occurred as insufficient by a wide margin to account for the margin by which it passed

I’m also going to promise to look further into those regional power-struggle issues you mentioned. I’d heard different versions of what went on there – things like old line corruption or suspected cooperation with subversive elements being involved. Yes, yes, I know that’s also a time-honored tradition of accusation by those in power to protect their authority, but the extent of corruption in the pre-Chavez, “Puntofijismo” days was also pretty well documented and stamping that out has been one of Chavez’ main objectives since before he was elected himself. Before I pass judgment on his efforts to keep politicians with connections to the old system out of power, I’d like to know exactly what those local leaders did to incur his interference.

As far as the “cowed” opposition, none of the folks I’ve met in Caracas ever struck me as the least bit shy about voicing their opinions about Chavez, pro or con. But most of them also seemd to feel that the biggest problem with the opposition was much more their own inability to agree on courses of action amongst themselves than on any of the roadblocks that Chavez supporters throw in their way. They have frequently expressed their exasperation with their inability to cohere or cooperate with each other, and their disunity was, if you will recall, a big part of Chavez’ ability to recover from his own reputation as a failed coup leader himself and pull together a winning majority in the first place.

I will say that there’s nothing “kool aid” about the enormity of his slum-clearing, school, trade academies, small business development and hospital building projects. I’ve seen those first hand and the scope and reach of them is impressive. Especially remarkable is the transformation of the urban landscape on the northwest side of Caracas, where over the course of a few years I saw hundreds and hundreds of acres of squalid, horrifically dangerous jerrybuilt slums replaced by much cleaner and more modern public housing units. One could only guess at the electoral margin Chavistas pull from those neighborhoods.

And when you say that he keeps winning because he has the support of “the masses,” isn’t that a bit like saying that he keeps getting a majority of the vote? Usually, that’s referred to as “democracy,” isn’t it? Look, I’m not a fan of everything Chavez has done; his alliances with vicious pinwheels like Ahmadinejad, the late unlamented Muammar Khadafy or the thuggish Lukashenko in Belarus especially stick in my craw. But then our own alliances with mass murderers like Augusto Pinochet, the Somoza family, a string of authoritarian South Korean leaders, or brutal authoritarians like the Yemeni government or the Saudi princes don’t exactly thrill me either. To a very sizable extent American hostility to his regime was responsioble for driving Chavez into the arms of those whose enmity for this country was a far more trustworthy basis for doing business than his dealings with the United States have been. But the bottom line is that the authority Chavez has to remake Venezuelan society was authority that was voted into his hands by those you have referred to as “the masses.” And among the main reasons that they gave it to him was that they understand that to deal with the sort of corruption and malfeasance that was such an entrenched aspect of the Venezuelan economy, you can’t be especially gentle or polite. It’s too bad that the US has been part of the problem rather than part of the solution in Venezuela.

All of this may be moot for the near term since rumors I hear from my friends down there are that Chavez is actually very ill and that his long term prognosis is not very good. Some of that may be wishful thinking on the opposition’s part but, if not, and some of the hardcore ideologues in the Bolivarian party who are quite a bit less humanistic than Chavesz rise to power, a lot of his current opponents may wish they had him back.

Oh, another thing – Chavez systematically and pretty quickly pardoned the leaders of the coup against him.

Gator, on this, I must contradict you. The main generals (General Vazquez Velazco was one of them, the commander of the army) indicted by the prosecutor general were acquitted by the Venezuelan Supreme Court and Chavez immediately went ballistic on TV. He didn’t pardon anybody, he merely retired the guys who didn’t follow his orders and basically ignored everybody else who wasn’t involved directly that the state couldn’t prove had complicity in the events. They ferociously attacked on state TV all sorts of political personalities just for the heck of it in the infamous “national assembly investigative committees” (Similar to those McCarthy committees you mentioned).

Also Pedro Carmona (the 48 hour president) was promptly arrested and was going to be sent to prison to await trial God knows when when he gave security forces the slip and petitioned political asylum in Colombia. Not that I’m defending his stupidity, but he wasn’t pardoned by Chavez, not by a long shot.

Ditto with former Admiral Tamayo, he also sought political asylum, not pardoned.

The two main commissioners of the Metropolitan Police that were indicted in the events surrounding the shootings are still awaiting trial by the government after languishing more than 7 years in jail. Awaiting trial. No pardon for them either.

For many years Carlos Ortega, a labor (LABOR!) leader, was on the run. He was indicted despite being AGAINST the events that unfolded that put Carmona into power. He was later found, arrested and sent to prison. He got away and as far as I know is still on the run. Not Pardoned. (Not that he’s some great saint, that guy actually has a LOT to answer for, just not for that specific event).

Then again, he’s bent over backwards to leave civil crime to local authorities, mindful both of not wanting to create a repressive infrastructure

While at the same time, when opposition governors took the reins at Zulia and Carabobo states in the last governor elections, he immediately proceeded to take over Airport, Port and Customs administrations in these states effectively denying the local governments control and revenue of these important locations for entry and exit of the country and imports/exports, giving it to the Military.

But calling him a “dictator” or yammering on about repression

And when Antonio Ledezma took over as Metropolitan Mayor unseating the pro-government administration that came before, Chavez immediately abused his authority to create a fictional capital administration, appointing Jacqueline Farias by fiat (!) and stripped the Metropolitan Mayor of his budget and his powers basically leaving the Mayorship an empty shell with all the authority vested on his locally appointed crony. That’s naked political repression and Ledezma had to go on a hunger strike just to get the attention of the OAS and their involvement in this abuse of political power. Look it up.

when Venezuela has a very vocal dissident and opposition faction

Which has been cowed into celf-censorship in the last decade. RCTV’s license was not renewed and was effectively removed from the airwaves (the only opposition minded TV station with national reach). Televen and Venevision have since become pro-government TV and pretty much reduced or eliminated politically sensitive programming. Globovision is the last remaining major TV station that is 100% anti-government (And really, they only help the government; the stuff they show is idiotic and biased to the point of stupidity) but they only broadcast in two major cities and more than 70% of the country can’t tune in to its signal.

Meanwhile the government quietly went on a crusade to create many many regional TV stations under their supervision and checked and revoked more than 200 RADIO licences. I know Radio doesn’t get the same press as TV. But this happened and nobody ever reported it. Effectively killing the radio waves as a venue to vent opinions and frustration.

– much of which represents the moneyed classes and hence doesn’t command a lot of support or respect there –

The opposition is broad spectrum of socio-economic classes and ideology. It’s funny how no one mentions Bandera Roja, a radical left leaning anarchy group (certainly not one with money) is decidely ANTI-Chavez.

The main issue is that most Venezuelans are tired of both sides. Chavez keeps winning because he has great connection with masses, uses the entire state treasury to promote his election campaigns (he outspent his adversary in 2006 by a margin of 23 to 1) and of course the opposition is filled with a bunch of political hacks and dinosaurs who are mainly out for themselves and can’t offer a decent alternative to Chavez political platform. It’s only recently that new figures have emerged that *may* have a chance to offer some kind of workable alternative.

I could go on, but clearly you drink from the same political kool-aid the rest of the extremes of both opposition and pro-goverment people do (just different and opposite flavors). So I don’t write this for your benefit but for everyone else’s benefit because I HAVE to call you on that marinated BULLSHIT you just whipped up and called FACTS.

I love you for your baseball Gator, but remind me to never ever have a political conversation with you and we’ll get along just fine.

Seriously, why do so many people fail to understand how this works. Yes, you have freedom of speech. Calling what a f**king idiot does is not encroaching on that. The *government* telling you to shut up face legal repercussions is a violation of it. See how that works?

So, here’s a quiz. Halladaysbiceps gets a talk radio show. He, in true biceps fashion, says something really awful about rape victims or Jewish people. People picket and he is fired. Biceps 1st amendment rights have:
A). Been violated! Call a constitutional attorney! This ain’t the USSR!
B). Not been violated, since you’ve been hired to represent a radio station on air and your conduct was in opposition to the editorial viewpoint they wish to express.

Biceps, I hope you find another place to rant. Take a fucking hint. Nobody likes you. Not your relatives, not your colleagues, nobody. You suck. You totally suck. I fucking hate you.

There, I’ve said it really forcefully and repeated it, just like you, so I must be right!

Incidentally, I recall him praising Chavez’ social and economic programs. I don’t recall him saying that Venezuela was “safe.”

But I wouldn’t want to go for an evening stroll through Liberty City, a few miles north of where I live, either. An eleven year old kid was shot during a driveby shooting there a week ago – in broad daylight. Motes and beams, comrades.

Yes, crime is terrible in the major Venezuelan cities. I travel there periodically – and to Colombia as well – for academic conferences and personal research work on Latin American authors and know I have to be very careful, especially at night. Chavez’ biggest failing has been his inattention to civil crime. Despite this odd notion some of you have about repression of dissent there, he hears about the crime problem all the time from both within and without the Bolivarian Party.

Then again, he’s bent over backwards to leave civil crime to local authorities, mindful both of not wanting to create a repressive infrastructure and also of the yowling about “dictatorship” he’d hear from his critics if he tried to launch a crackdown using the military or federal intelligence services. His premise has been that, if he can effect a relocation and redistribution of wealth, after a time the alleviation of poverty would result in a lower crime rate. Clearly, he hasn’t paid enough attention to police and legal system enhancements in the meantime. But calling him a “dictator” or yammering on about repression when Venezuela has a very vocal dissident and opposition faction – much of which represents the moneyed classes and hence doesn’t command a lot of support or respect there – is hysterical and dishonest. Just remember, Joe McCarthy (Dick Cheney in a former incarnation) and his “semi-official” investigative committees aren’t all that far back in our own rear view mirrors, folks – in the very heyday of our platitude-belching about “freedom” to the rest of the planet.

I found Ozzie’s rookie card. Man was he skinny.

(sarcasm hopefully obvious, but I’ll add this disclaimer)

My Solution: Lets send Ozzie down there with a bunch of armed Venezuelans to take out the dumb ass dictator, and restore law and order, with a government of the people! I think Ozzie is already thinking of doing just that!