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Once again Chávez has triumphed in Venezuela, with unprecedented levels of voter participation and a margin of votes that would be the envy of most world leaders, especially in Latin America, where many governments would not survive a referendum, particularly if the poor voted.

The Venezuelan opposition rejects the results in a vulgar manner, kicking and screaming the way the uneducated rich do. But there is a much more sophisticated right, which does the same through language. They’re the ones who say Chávez is a 'populist' leader, so as to de-legitimize his status as a popular leader.

That’s the language of the major communications media, which highlight the death of a person – funeral and all – in an isolated incident for which government supporters were blamed. To fine-tune its target, the news is combined with another item that says Chávez won, 'although the opposition questions the validity of the outcome.'

Of course, no one says anything about the murder of a young student, a Chávez supporter, who was shot in the head. And there are only passing references to the attacks of the right upon the observers and the international press, although Jimmy Carter himself went through that experience.

Anyway, any soccer game in England is more dangerous than the Venezuelan elections.

'Objectivity' also demands an explanation of the reasons for the results. One argument says that Chávez used oil money to fund social programs, thus eliciting the support of the poorest sectors of the population. The question should be: What else should Venezuela’s riches be used for? Where did the nation’s huge revenues go in the past? If an explanation is provided, you will understand the results of the referendum and the tantrum thrown by the opposition, including the Venezuelans who voted in Miami.

In any case, the referendum did not solve the tremendous 'polarization' Venezuelan society is going through, we are told by the analysts who appear on television and the world’s most 'prestigious' newspapers.

To begin with, according to the purest positivist standards, the figures show that Venezuela is a lot less polarized than society in the United States, where 50 percent of the population does not vote and the other 50 percent splits in half.

But that analysis is dismissed by the analysts. The subliminal message is that, if the opposition had won, the 'polarization' of Venezuelan society would have ended.

It’s amusing to watch US government spokesmen demanding 'due transparency' in the Venezuelan vote. If impartial observers had been present in the latest US elections, the government spokesmen would be different today, because the president would be someone else.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Chávez had prevented his opponents from voting, tampered with the voting machines and altered the results, as Bush did in Florida and other places? Can you imagine the outcry from the right if the Venezuelan Supreme Court had ruled that Chávez should remain president?

To triumph, Chavez had to confront the monopoly of the nation’s media, the nation’s major capitalists, the parties that used to control Venezuelan political life, military coups and corporate 'strikes' financed from abroad. He had to resist the pressures of a 'Group of Friends' that included several governments that hastily endorsed his opponents’ coup.

A touch of dignity was provided by Jimmy Carter, a president so honest that he was almost ejected from the White House. However, in Venezuela the United States used all the resources it had, as well as the native oligarchy, to manipulate the electoral process, including its 'expert' publicists and public opinion pollsters.

The dangerous moral is that these means are no longer sufficient to guarantee US control over Venezuela.

Salvador Allende comes to mind. Although the United States spread money lavishly, threatened politicians and murdered the Army chief to prevent Allende’s rise to the presidency, the Popular Unity candidate won the elections in 1970.

The offensive against his government continued, through an economic strangulation of his country (along with hoarding and business shutdowns), the sabotage of the political system, the opposition of the main news media, the sermonizing of the Catholic Church and a constant threat of coups d’état.

Even so, Allende’s level of acceptance rose in the regional elections two years later and he most certainly would have won the plebiscite he planned to announce the day Pinochet attacked him with tanks and warplanes.

True, the situation in Venezuela is different, particularly because the Venezuelan Army – through which Chávez rose – has been a bulwark of the Bolivarian Revolution and has consolidated its popular nature from the time of the attempted putsch. But no one should be overconfident.

Violence may not come from the Army but it is part of the language of the right, when that sector runs out of words and other mechanisms to manipulate the democratic system.

The question avoided or deformed by most news media is: Why Chávez? Why is a society whose wealth is more than sufficient to satisfy the needs of all its citizens polarized? Why was it that in Venezuela, the richest country in the region, the neoliberal 'trickle-down' economy didn’t work and everybody had to be content with his situation, unequal though it might be?

Simply because the trickle-down effect was aimed abroad. The Venezuelan bucket had a hole that trickled onto the big foreign companies; the Venezuelan oligarchy licked the moist surface, and the rest died of thirst.

Chávez is where he is because of the ineptitude of the previous model. His process, which is appreciated throughout Latin America, points out the intrinsic weaknesses of neoliberalism and remains viable within a truly democratic system.

The dilemma facing US hegemony in the region is akin to the fable of the scorpion who asks a frog to carry him across a stream. Halfway through the stream, the scorpion stings the frog and both sink to their deaths. Therein lies the nature of imperialism, as Che Guevara once said.



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