Setting the Record Straight on

Hugo Chavez & Venezuela

Many in the mainstream media bemoan Hugo Chavez’s successful referendum ending term-limits as an assault on democracy. Chavez, according to this view, is a dictator who has succeeded at nothing more than the destruction of his nation. A basic recollection of U.S. history and a look at the economic facts make the absurdity of this position all to clear.

In terms of the outrage over ending term limits one has to wonder if the mainstream media is equally outraged at the near lack of term limits in Congress. More specific to the presidency one must wonder how the mainstream media spent Presidents’ Day. After all, if we applied their condemnation of Chavez to U.S. history it seems we might today refer to FDR as our own dictator since he served, during a time of critical transition not unlike Chavez in Venezuela, from 1933 to 1945. In fact, had FDR not died at the start of his fourth term in office he would have served a total of 16 years in office.

Ironically, while the New York Times today leads the charge against Chavez’s “so-called” power grab, which of course is democratically endorsed by the Venezuelan people, this same newspaper of record declared at the time of FDR’s death: "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House.”
Meanwhile, Florida Congressman Connie Mack has unleashed an all out assault on Chavez declaring that he is leading Venezuela to a “communist abyss.” Mack when on to say that Chavez’s 10 years in power has lead to “Higher poverty, more crime, rampant inflation" and more. New York Times says about the same. The facts, however, flatly contradict these depictions.
Despite dire predictions about its economic future with a socialist at the helm, a 2007-2008 report shows that Venezuela’s economy has significantly improved under Chavez’s presidency. The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s report contradicts popular dogma that Venezuela is headed from “oil boom” to “oil bust.” [Report here] Since the nation became political stable in 2003, the “economy has had continuous rapid growth….” Leaning on the nationalizing of the country’s oil, Venezuela’s revenue has increased even faster than spending between 1998 and 2006. Moreover, while most point to the pitfalls of the government’s over reliance on its oil industry, the report shows that the government has drawn up its budget with conservative estimates for oil prices, planning on 29-dollars a barrel when the average was 60.20 dollars. The nation also has enough money in official international reserves to be debt free.

Chavez has used this growth to invest in infrastructure, increasing the number of primary care physicians from 1,628 for 23.4 million people, in 1998, to 19,571 for 27 million people today. Subsidized food is also available at nearly 16,000 stores across the country, offering customers an “average savings of 27-percent to 39-percent compared to market prices in 2005 and 2006, respectively.”[1] In all, the central government’s social spending has gone up from 8.2-percent of GPD (1998) to 13.6-percent (2006). Most impressively, the Center for Economic and Policy Research reports that the government has slashed the nation’s poverty rate from 55.1-percent in 2003 to 30.4-percent at the end of 2006. While inflation of Venezuela’s currency is a problem, it has become less so during the Chavez years, dropping significantly from 36-percent (1998) and 100-percent (1996) before Chavez, to 19.4 today.

Chavez has accomplished all of this by refusing the flat-world, free market fundamentalist program. He has ushered in laws which insist all private banks dedicate a fifth “of their lending portfolio to ‘micro-loans’ for small businesses and small-plot farmers.” He’s also taken foreign national corporations head-on, kicking oil companies like Shell out of Venezuela, and signing contracts with state oil companies of Brazil, China, and India. If globalizers such as the IMF truly wished to see indigent peoples rise to a basic level of health and subsistence they would not so fiercely attack Chavez, whom the The Wall Street Journal described “a tropical version of the International Monetary Fund, offering cut-rate oil-supply deals and buying hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds from financially distressed countries such as Argentina and Ecuador.” Yet the reflexive denunciation of Chavez, the spastic and unreasoned clumping of Chavez with dictators and authoritarians is a flagrant indication that the true interests of the elite in the United States, in the government and in the world of business, base their denunciations, first and foremost, on whether or not a leader is good for their own business interests or not. The reason globalization establishment can not condone what Chavez is doing is because he is cutting off the flow of capital from Venezuela to the United States, reducing U.S. investors profits.

In short, progressives must stand with the people of Venezuela and demand that American politicians and assorted folks in the elite get their hands off of Venezuela’s democracy. In case you haven’t seen it already check out The Revolution Will Not be Televised (5th video down) and learn about how the U.S. government, funded by our tax dollars, attempted to overthrow Chavez despite the will of his people. For a fact sheet on the recent referendum go here. Finally, call your congressperson and tell them not to support Connie Mack’s H. Res. 161. You can find your representative's phone number here. More info at http://www.veninfo.org/