(1)History
First off, one should probably read up on the various Venezuelan politicians, most notable of which is definitely Hugo Chavez. I am just going to cover the basics with a focus on the U.S.'s involvement in Venezuela.
Chavez was elected in early 1999. He was elected legitimately and on a platform of centre-left social democracy. He began instituting social democratic policies and was incredibly popular especially among the poor. Throughout his presidency, Chavez become increasingly left. By the end of his presidency, Chavez had become quite the Marxist, though not in the 20th century, Leninist fashion; but rather an adapted version of modern times. Chavez liked to call it "Socialism in the 21st century."
In April of 2002, there was an attempted coup to oust Chavez in favor of a right-wing strongman. The coup was backed mostly by the elites and some members of the military complex, but most disturbingly, the coup was also backed by the United States, both our government and media. The day after the supposedly successful coup the "New York Times" even went as far to commend this undemocratic, Machiavellian, totalitarian power-grab. The U.S. government had prior knowledge to the coup and likely supported it when it was in its infancy. Three days after the start of the coup, the soldiers who were supposed to detain (and possibly kill) Chavez could not bear to kill their leader and refused to act. The coup thus failed due to Chavez' immense popularity with the soldiers and people.
Chavez' response was relatively moderate - there were no hangings like some in our media may lead you to believe. He readjusted some of his policies in order to satisfy some of the opposition including reappointing the former members of the board of directors at the state oil company which was a primary reason for the coup. He even appointed some of the coup plotters back to their former position.
When attempting to further nationalize the nation's oil reserves later that same year, Chavez faced what the Venezuelan media called a "general strike" by the nation's oil workers. However, it was primarily the managers, business leaders, and technical workers involved in the strike, essentially meaning that this so-called "general strike" was really an "elitist strike" dissatisfied with their diminished political power. The Chavez administration fired some of the strikers and filled their role with members of the military and unemployed. The strike then ended.
Hugo Chavez died in 2013 from Cancer. He was succeeded by Nicolas Maduro who was then Vice-President. Though not as popular as Chavez, Maduro narrowly won the election that occurred shortly after he assumed the presidency. The election was ranked fair by most (if not all) world-wide democracy and election ranking institutes. Maduro's main program thus far in his presidency has been the attempt to curve Venezuela's high crime rates. So-far, they have been moderately successful.
(2)Analysis
It should be noted that it is facetious and extremely misleading to call President Maduro the "bus driver". While true he did in fact drive a bus in his younger and more vulnerable years, he has been in politics since the early 80s and helped start the party that got Chavez elected in the first place. He was also the Foreign Minister from 2006-2013 and the Vice President 2012-2013. Calling Maduro the "bus driver" or "Chavez' bus driver" would be like calling any of our past three presidents the "pot-smoker" simply because they smoked pot in their youth. Plus, why is it even a bad thing for the president of a country to be a former bus driver? Does that not embody the "American Dream" better than we ourselves embody it? Instead of addressing the intelligence of the actor and the effectiveness of his policies, calling him the "bus driver" simply caricatures him and-in-so-doing disregards the complexity of the situation. It fails to even address the situation.
Within Venezuelan media there is a prevalent trend to consistently attack Chavez' reforms regardless of the actual substance of the specific reform. The amount of vitriol in the Venezuelan media towards anything Chavez only does the country a deep disservice. Instead of reporting on the news, the news actively conspires against the government, and they use their affluence to fund and promote opposition leaders and organization. After all, the opposition controls most of the wealth in Venezuela. The bias can be shown by what the opposition called the select strike in 2002: a "general strike." The media in Venezuela fails to do the job that is assigned to it: provide adequate news to the Venezuelan people. Hence, the actual government - that is, not the government as the opposition would have believe them to be - is at a severe disadvantage. Much of the success of the socialist-inspired programs is dependent upon proper knowledge of that program by the Venezuelan people.
Despite the popular misconception concerning the Venezuelan government's involvement and censorship of the media, 95% of the Venezuelan media is privately owned, and a good chunk of them - easily a majority - are anti-Chavez/Maduro. By-enlarge, the Venezuelan media is owned or significantly influenced by business elites, wealthy landowners, and foreign corporate dogs, all of whom are tactically against Chavez' reforms for reasons characteristic of corrupt bourgeois slave-masters. It would be as-if 95% of the U.S. media were owned by Rupert Murdoch and geared toward producing the pre-packaged, reactionary, laissez-faire rhetoric that Fox News has become famous for.
The bias of the the Venezuelan media is mirrored in the west. A couple of weeks ago, NPR gave a glowing report on the potential for a violent regime change in Venezuela. This only encourages people in the west to be unnecessarily critical of the Venezuelan regime. Which in turn, causes the western governments to become even more anti-Venezuela. Which then causes the Venezuelan government to reciprocate that distrust and hate, only leading to a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing misinformation and vitriol.
The Venezuelan media has become somewhat more moderate (it is still extremely vitriolic towards Maduro though) since the first coup in 2002. Most stations no longer actively promote violence like they did before the 2002 coup. However, due to the calming-down of the most of the Venezuelan media towards a more acceptable form of opposition, there has recently been a split within the opposition regarding the most appropriate way to fight Maduro. The less-extreme wing still opposes Maduro but wishes to see more unity and less polarization in Venezuelan politics. They are headed by Capriles. The more-extreme wing of the opposition is headed by Leopoldo Lopez and promotes the use of violence against the Maduro government.
Normally some civil disobedience does not bother me, regardless of where it is coming from. However, the kind of violence that Lopez and his supporters promote is abhorrent. It is categorically different than the kind of disobedience and violence I would normally support. Lopez' supporters not only attack government officials and police and military officers (which is fine), but they also attack workers in public transportation, physicians imported from Cuba to assist in the healthcare system in poor neighborhoods, university students who attend because of a Chavez' program, and other works, programs, and officials who are there to benefit the poor. The assault on the poor, those who ought to be assaulted the least, is what causes me to value the violent opposition as the pernicious monster that it is.
The usually middle to upper class protesters are only protesting to support themselves financially. They have no wish for a more equal Venezuela, because if they did, they would support Maduro or perhaps the less-extreme opposition. Thus, what we now have in Venezuela is not, like the western media would lead you to believe, a mass protest from people of all walks of life against the oppressive and violent Maduro regime; but rather a select class of bourgeois conservative reactionaries intent on violently converting the socialism of Maduro to the liberal policies akin to the Gilded Age in America. The conversion would cause the economic inequality of Venezuela, which has significantly declined in recent years, to reverse. It would stratify the already stratified classes even further.
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So are you in favor of the Maduro regime? I don't mean to force this into a false dichotomy: I understand that you can find Maduro's opposition abhorrent without supporting Maduro himself. I am just curious as to whether or not Maduro's socialism is appropriate in your eyes.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/3-shot-dead-during-unrest-in-central-venezuela/2014/03/12/ceed2e78-aa44-11e3-8a7b-c1c684e2671f_story.html
According to "The Washington Post" in the link posted above, inflation levels in Venezuela reached 56 percent last year.
I don't think that Maduro's opposition is the sole inflammatory element in these riots. It also has to be acknowledged that recent Venezuela has been inherently violent, with the world's highest per capita murder rate. Yes, these riots have increased violence significantly beyond the Venezuelan norm, but some of these conditions shouldn't be surprising to us.
Instead of simplifying the issue down to the binary "yes" or "no" answer, I am unilaterally permitting myself to answer in a more complex form.
ReplyDeleteAs was probably clear, I support the Maduro regime more than I (would) support the current opposition. But, that is not saying much, as perhaps only North Korea and a couple other despotic regimes deserve more contempt than the fascists in the opposition.
I support the Maduro regime more than I do the regimes of Iran and China. Both of which I support more than the regimes like, say, Saudi Arabia.
Taken away from the circumstances that ensnare it, I actually find the Maduro regime more tasteful than our own at times.
The fifty percent inflation rate does seem alarming at first, indeed to some extent it is. However, though the inflation rate generally does detriment everyone, it detriments the rich far more than it does the poor. In some circumstances high inflation rates can even help the poor or those otherwise indebted to some extent. This further shows why the protests are really an activity reserved exclusively for the rich and able, not the poor and destitute.
The murder rate in Venezuela is a legitimate concern. The government, both under Maduro and Chavez, has taken steps to directly fight crime and indirectly prevent crime, such as decreasing inequality. However, the areas that are protesting are not the areas with the highest crime rates, in fact they are the areas with some of the lowest crime rates.
The mere mention of the 30 odd deaths that have occurred in the past month in the Venezuelan riots shows the bias of the western media in-and-of-itself. Normally, we could not be bothered to care about thirty deaths in some developing country, in fact at times the U.S. has even endorsed millions of deaths in some developing country (see Pol Pot), but the case of our bitter enemy Venezuela the media tries to distort, exaggerate, and misinform our populace.
The 30 odd deaths that have occurred average about one death a day, some of which were even government forces dying at the hands of protesters. May 4 of 1970 four students were shot dead by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State University in the U.S. The four deaths all occurred in one day, and thus the average is higher in the turbulent Vietnam era than in Venezuela now. Another example, think of all the inmates in Guantanamo who have been denied there basic human rights under the Geneva convention, who have been brutally tortured by the supposed leader of the free and democratic world, who have been force fed to preserve the life that they no longer have the will to live for, and who still remain there without a trial or hope of it. It seems to me that if one wishes to criticize human rights violations, the best place to start would be on the home front.