Reddit mentions of HUGO: THE HUGO CHAVEZ STORY

I saved this post a long time ago. It isn't updated for Maduro, who by all accounts is a clownier, more superstitious version with even less skill than Chavez. And the post is 2 years old, so I don't know if the links still work. I'll post it anyways - in two parts, because it encompasses around 14000 characters, and Reddit only allows for 10000 for comments.

None of this is to say that either of them, Maduro or Chavez, didn't come with grave, grave flaws and incompetencies. It is however one of the more useful presentations of the other side that I've come across.

Part 1/2

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The Accusation Chavez led a coup. It is often remarked that Chavez led a coup in 1992. Two example is this New York Times article and this Washington Post article. Conveniently, the context of the coup is left out. Despite producing more the $300 billion of oil wealth between 1958-1998, the equivalent of 20 Marshall Plans, the majority of Venezuelans were living in shocking slums. By the 1990s, quality of life indicators for ordinary Caracas residents were below Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Between 1970 and 1997, workers' incomes declined by 50%, while poverty doubled between 1984 and 1991

President Carlos Andres Perez, on orders from the IMF, increased oil prices for Venezuelans. This led to increases in transport costs, to the point where Caracas residents were spending, on average, 25% of their entire wages on bus fares. (Jones, B. “Hugo! p. 116) Food riots broke out and Perez sent the army in. 3 days of terror ensued. The LA Times, Bart Jones speaks of Red Cross workers being gunned down in the street, “mass graves” being filled with “mutilated corpses”, “tied up corpses” with “bullets in the back of their heads” and children being gunned down as the armies fired indiscriminately into shanty towns. (Jones, B. Hugo! pp.121-124) Much of the army leadership was deeply shocked at this. They began to gather around a young Colonel called Hugo Chavez and conspired to rebel against the President. The rebellion of 1992 failed, and Chavez was sentenced to what amounted to a life sentence, yet, the rebellion was so popular with the public that the new president, Rafael Caldera was essentially forced to release Chavez just 2 years later. After getting out he immediately began to organize for a Presidential election.

Myth: Partially confirmed

Myth 2- The Venezuelan economy is a shambles. In this Guardian article, the author wonder how long the Venezuelan economy can totter on. Figures from the World Bank, hardly a Chavez ally, show a different story. Venezuela's GDP has more than tripled under Chavez, while net national income has also nearly tripled. Meanwhile, both the United Nations Development Project and the World Bank agree that unemployment has dropped from over 11% to under 8%. When asked themselves, Venezuelans have the highest confidence in their economy of any Latin American country. Venezuela's external debt has dropped precipitously. Meanwhile, Venezuela's stock market is the best-performing in the world. You may have heard stupid Chavez is causing massive inflation, but the facts are the opposite. One year before Chavez took office, inflation was an eye-watering 103%. It is now in the teens. The high-point inflation under Chavez was lower than the lowest inflation under the previous 2 presidents.

Myth: Busted

Myth: Chavez is a dictator
This one is so ubiquitous I won't give examples.

Voter turnout in Venezuela in the October 2012 election was above 80%, higher than any election in US history. Under Chavez, voter turnout in Venezuelan elections has increased by 135% (1998 turnout: 6.3mil, 2012 turnout:14.8 mil. That means almost two and a half times as many people vote nowadays than in the 1990s. The number of registered voter has risen by over 70% under Chavez.

Jimmy carter and the Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Carter Center recently stated “the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” The European Union Election Observation Mission agreed, saying “the system developed in Venezuela is probably the most advanced in the world to date” The number of polling stations has increased by 38% in 10 years. One year pre-Chavez, only 11% of Venezuelans believed elections were clean. By 2006, 2/3 believed they were. Venezuelans rate their democracy the second best in Latin America. Venezuela has by far the most politcal parties in Latin America, and confidence in them is the highest in the region. In 2002, 80% of Venezuelans believe their vote influences policy. Venezuelans were asked to rate their democracy from 1-10 How does Chavez do it, it must be because...

Myth: Chavez Controls the Media There appears to be an authoritarian dictator crushing freedom of the press in Venezuela. We read about it all the time. How many free outlets are left?

As Mark Weisbrot has shown in an extensive study, the Venezuelan state owns about 5% of all media outlets. Both the BBC and Le Monde agree on the 5% figure. In comparison, state owned media accounts for 40 and 37% of British and French television. 9 out of the top 10 selling newspapers in Venezuela are virulent anti-Chavez, and by virulent, Le Monde Diplo calls it “hate media” while Richard Gott in the Guardian says the largest station, RCTV is a “white supremacist channel” and JMH Salas reports that they regularly assault him with words like “sambo, thick-lipped monkey” “ape” (Chavez is the first-non white President) In contrast to what we read, Venezuelans believe there's about as much freedom of speech as there is in Spain Myth: Busted

Myth: There are food shortages in Venezuela

Actually, venezuela has doubled the amount of cereals it produces in just 10 years,as has milk, eggs and pork. Child malnutrition has dropped by 2/3 in 10 years, too. So, are there food shortages? Look at this anti-Chavez blogger's post He shows that food shortages mean the most popular mayonnaise is gone, but there are clearly 4 or 5 other brands still available. Again, white sugar is gone but there is plenty of brown left. Only one brand of powdered milk is left. The reason for this is Chavez instituted price-controls and gave people jobs, increasing their purchasing power. This meant for the first time in their lives, ordinary people can afford dairy produce. If you think about the logic behind this, you can find out a lot about how the media see ordinary people. In the 1990s when children were dying from malnutrition, there were no stories of food shortages, but now that rich people like themselves can't find Kraft mayonnaise and have to settle for Hellmans, that is a shortage. Myth: Busted

Myth: Venezuela is the most dangerous place in the world

There can be no doubt that there are many murders in Venezuela, as this chart of reported homicides shows.. Those claiming crime was the country's major problem increased from less than 1% in 2001 to 65% in 2010. And yet, when asked whether they or their family were victims of crime, “yes” dropped from 49% in 2000 to 28% 2010. Your chances of being a victim of crime have dropped by half while your fear of crime has spiked 6500%.

Myth: Partially Confirmed

> It is this cultural threat that explains the ferocity and durability of elite rage and obstructionism: staging the 2002 coup even though Chavez’s democratic legitimacy was undoubted and then organising a devastating, management-led oil strike at a time when his economic policy remained more reformist than radical.
>
> By his own account, it was the implacability and intransigence of this elite, bequeathed to him by Venezuela’s capitalist history, that drove Chavez towards the idea of a more radical 21st-century socialism in 2005.
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> Like the bolivar, the claim of an “economic war” is a ludicrously devalued currency under Maduro. However, nothing suggests that provoking political problems through hoarding, cutting production, or manipulating the black-market exchange rate was ever beyond the pale for private actors with the power to do it.
>
> Companies and wealthy individuals have also always had the clearest means and the most capital to invest in the large-scale currency arbitrage that has been bleeding Venezuela dry for over a decade.
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> But the effects of oil dependency extend far beyond a particular group or class. As one of the architects of Venezuela’s social-economy drive puts it, the pervasive culture has always favoured “living off government transfers of [oil] rents instead of deservedly enjoying the fruits of productive work.”
>
> In Venezuela, social divisions are so deep and societal trust is so weak that the idea of a social contract, a national pulling-together, or even a basic acceptance of the rules of the game is a distant dream. As the local saying goes, “for my friends, anything; for my enemies, the law”.
>
> Politics must play out against a cultural backdrop that implicitly understands that you should use any means necessary to siphon off as much oil wealth as possible for you and yours.
>
> ### The trinity of misplaced faith
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> Chavez responded to these difficult circumstances by putting his faith in three things: himself, the military, and socialism.
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> Faith in himself meant improvising new institutions and funding sources linked to the presidency so that he could implement his ideas immediately and without internal opposition. Faith in the military meant placing trusted “right-hand men”, especially those involved in his 1992 coup attempt, in positions of institutional and financial power, as well as assigning key economic functions to the army.
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> And faith in socialism meant believing in the transformative power of participatory democracy and the social economy to replace the prevailing petro-state mentality of “grab what you can” with a more social, solidarity-based ethic.
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> Sadly, each leap of faith had serious unintended consequences.
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> Moving power away from the traditional state removed even the deficient monitoring and accountability that they offered, hampering control and enabling corruption.
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> The ideological convictions of trusted lieutenants from the 1992 coup turned out to be far weaker than the massive incentives to embezzle state resources, and neither were they afraid to put their subordinates to work in smuggling networks.
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> More broadly, though many marginalised citizens were undoubtedly empowered and enlightened by their experience of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, just as many relaxed into a clientelistic exchange of state benefits for political support.
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> Chavez also began to abuse the tools of his socialist transformation – particularly nationalisation and access to foreign currency – more as a means of disciplining the private sector than of reshaping the economy.
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> With the death of Chavez in 2013, this dysfunctional, highly centralised system passed into the hands of Maduro, a leader with far less capacity to control the powerful forces rending the country asunder.
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> But rather than allow democratic politics to take its course as the limitations of his administration were exposed by plummeting oil prices, Maduro waded across the anti-democratic Rubicon into which Chavez had only dipped his toes.
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> By nixing a recall referendum, jailing political opponents, invoking a constituent assembly to usurp the democratically elected parliament, and creating a link between political support and access to essential goods, Maduro has now blocked any path out of Venezuela’s crisis.
>
> ### The blame game
>
> So is socialism to blame for Venezuela’s woes?
>
> Certain statist economic policies associated with a project called 21st-century socialism are indeed implicated in many of the economic distortions and damaging incentives ravaging the Venezuelan economy.
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> But they were also implemented in a highly divided, distrustful, and conflictual society in which the oil-rich state is seen as a means of securing personal wealth.
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> Chavez’s response to implacable opposition and widespread corruption was to turn to those he trusted in the military and to the promise of social transformation through socialisation of the economy. But his faith in neither was repaid.
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> But just as capitalism itself was not to blame for the pacted corruption and murderous repression of prior governments that created the popular discontent and personal drive which brought Chavez to power, socialism itself is not to blame for the creeping authoritarianism of a Maduro regime that is now preventing replacement of a failing government and model.
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> In many ways, the blame game is a red herring, an exercise in cherry-picking to promote greater state intervention or the “free” market rather than any identifiable model. The statist might cite happy Norway before the Gulag, whereas the free-marketeer will surely prefer New Zealand’s peaceful neoliberalisation during the 1980s to the murder and torture of Chile’s under Pinochet.
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> The lesson is perhaps that there are no clean, textbook models. The real issue is whether a given political economy is producing desirable results for its citizens. Where once that was the case in Venezuela, clearly it is no longer so.
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> • _Read more from Asa Cusack_
>
> Notes:
> • The views expressed here are of the authors and do not reflect the position of the Centre or of the LSE
> • Originally published by Al Jazeera and republished with their permission; Creative Commons does not apply
> • Please read our Comments Policy before commenting
>
> - - - - - -
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> ImageAsa Cusack – LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre Dr Asa Cusack is Managing Editor of the LSE Latin America and Caribbean blog, Honorary Research Associate of University College London, and Associate Fellow of the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. He holds a PhD in Latin American and Caribbean Political Economy from the University of Sheffield and is the author of Venezuela, ALBA, and the Limits of Postneoliberal Regionalism in Latin America and the Caribbean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and editor of Understanding ALBA: Progress, Problems, and Prospects of Alternative Regionalism in Latin America and the Caribbean (Institute of Latin American Studies, 2018).
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