12-14-06, 9:12 am
In Venezuela, the political opposition operates freely, as seen in pre-election rallies during the most recent (and previous) national elections there. The two largest Venezuelan dailies, El Universal and El Nacional, and the three largest television networks, Venevision, Radio Caracas Television, and Globovision, are relentlessly hostile to the Chavez government. The owner of Venevision, Gustavo Cisneros, is an arch-enemy of Chavez and was a coup plotter in 2002. All of these private media organs and others operate freely in Venezuela.
In the 3 December 2006 presidential election, Chavez won 61.2% of the vote, carrying every state, including that of his opponent, Manuel Rosales, Governor of the State of Zulia. During the attempted coup against President Chavez, Rosales was the only governor to sign on to the Carmona Decrees, “on behalf of the governors.” Despite Rosales open support of the military coup, he was not removed from office, nor prosecuted, much less imprisoned--as surely would have happened if Chavez were the “dictator” that Bush and sycophants in the U.S. corporate press declare Chavez to be.
With respect to Bush’s comment that Chavez should invest “his petrodollars with the people of Venezuela and give them a chance to, you know, get out of poverty,” who can know what the reference point was for such boilerplate Bushite babbling; but as usual, it bears no relation to existing reality. For those of us who bother to read, President Chavez and his Bolivarian government have used oil wealth to eradicate poverty and illiteracy and has provided health care to the poor of Venezuela (and some people outside Venezuela) in an unprecedented manner. Unquestionably, these actions are the most definitive and salient characteristics of the Chavez government, and has made him probably the most popular leader of the Americas.
The phrase used in Venezuela is “sowing petroleum” among the country’s poor majority. In 2004 alone, the Venezuelan government spent more than $3.7 billion on housing, free medical clinics, schools, and literacy programs targeting impoverished Venezuelan communities. It also spends approximately $300 million per year on subsidizing food in discounted supermarkets for the 58% of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 per month, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
By 2006, Venezuela’s public spending had more than tripled from the time Chavez became president in 1999. In the seven years of the Chavez government, over 1.4 million Venezuelans have learned to read and write. Three million more who had previously been excluded because of poverty were incorporated into primary, secondary, and university education. Almost 70% of the population receives free medical attention, and free medicine, for the first time in Venezuelan history.
Social programs with particular targets are a feature of the policy of sowing petroleum. They are called “missions” and include Mission Madres de Barrio (Mothers of the Slums) in which single mothers are paid as caregivers and can borrow from a special women’s bank. The poorest housewives receive about $229 a month. Mission Barrio Adentro (Into the Slum) provides free medical care to poor neighborhoods of Caracas. Mission Robinson is a literacy campaign that has taught approximately one million people to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. Mission Ribas offers night classes for some 600,000 youth who had dropped out of school, including a small stipend for attending class. Mission Sucre has served some 70,000 high school graduates to prepare for university study.
Bush postures that he, by contrast to Chavez, favors helping the poor. Bush’s form of alms comes via globalization, also known as “the Washington consensus.” This means that Bush pushes for policies that emphasize lowering or eliminating tariffs, reducing restrictions designed to protect worker rights, labor safety, mandating environmental protection, cutting public spending for schools and health care, and the privatization of state-owned companies. In supporting these policies Bush stated, “Our goal is to promote opportunity for people throughout the Americas, whether you live in Minnesota or Brazil. And the best way to do this is by expanding free and fair trade.”
This ideal of neoliberalismo (as Latin Americans call economic globalization) has been experienced by the poor as they see multinational corporations entering their countries and communities in search of the lowest wages, the fewest environmental safe guards, and zero to no enforcement of worker salary and safety protections. Most Latin Americans associate the phrase “free trade” with the destruction of local industry, the rolling back of social safety nets, and further impoverishment. Though many North Americans have been duped by the propaganda flooding the U.S. press, most Latin Americans see “globalization” for exactly what it is--a means of continuing the historic exploitation of Latin American resources by U.S. multinational corporations.
Venezuelans are not so naïve. In their past, former governments pursued neoliberalismo as did the administration of Chavez’ predecessor, Carlos Andres Perez. According to World Bank and International Monetary Fund statistics, under Perez, Venezuela had a high rate of economic growth, but also the highest rate of economic inequality in its history, along with unprecedented levels of poverty and malnutrition. Moreover, the purchasing power of the minimum wage declined by more than 2/3 between 1978 and 1994, and the country, then filled with illiterates, experienced one of the world’s largest increases in economic inequality in the 1990s.
Between 1984 and 1995, the portion of the Venezuelan population living below the poverty line increased from 36% to 66%. Extreme poverty increased there from 11% to 36% (Pan-American Health Organization). And despite the so-called economic growth, according to World Bank statistics, the percentage of the Venezuelan population categorized as “middle class” decreased from 60% in 1982 to 34.4% in 1990.
The increase in misery and inequality under the Washington consensus, termed “savage capitalism” by John Paul II, has led to political movements and governments throughout Latin America opposed to neoliberalismo. In the words of U.S. General Brantz Craddock, Chief of the U.S. Southern Command (i.e. overseer of Latin America), “The free market reforms and privatization of the 1990s have not delivered on the promise of prosperity for Latin America. The richest one-tenth of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean earn 48% of the total income, while the poorest tenth earn only 1.6%.” Thus we should not be surprised that throughout the hemisphere there will continue to be resistance to the globalization policies that even sincere U.S. government officials (the empirical, not the faith-based crowd) view as failures. Though he is just one symbol, this wide-spread resistance is embodied by President Chavez.
Bush is simply too ignorant or too dishonest to offer intelligent commentary on Latin America. In May of 2002, in a conversation with former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Bush asked him, “Do you have Blacks, too?” Cardoso later kindly commented, regarding Latin America, Bush was still in his “learning phase.” (Der Spiegel 19 May 2002, www.rense.com/general25/braz.htm)
Bob Woodward’s recent book, State of Denial, has an account of Bush’s conversation with “Bandar Bush,” a.k.a. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. and family friend to the Bush clan. In 1999, when Bush first thought of running for president he confided to Prince Bandar, “I don’t have the foggiest idea what I think about international foreign policy.” Bush’s ignorance is underscored in his recent comments about Venezuela and its president Hugo Chavez.
--Jeffrey Crafts is a local public school teacher and apart time college instructor.
From Virtual Ciizens
