Venezuela Watch

The problem is that most Bolivians live outside the modern economy - free market or feudal. This is a hold over of the social dysfunction that has plagued the Andean countries (and others in South America) throughout modern history. It is wrong to blame the free market for the effects of this, and is is even more wrong to assume that Authoritarian populism and government ownership of the means of production will solve it.

It is true, as you say, that more regional trade would likely benefit all on the continent. Historically there was little of that in South America as each country looked independently to European patrons for trade and cultural influences. It is also unfortunate that memories of the War of the Pacific of 1880 still limit obviously needed mutual actions for the common good, more than a century later. It is noteworthy that Morales is not focused on either of these fundamental problems, and is, in fact, worsening them. That was the motivation for my comments.

The U.S. embargo of Cuba is an anachronism - just like the leader of that unfortunate country. I doubt seriously that it would be enacted today, but also recognize that more harm than good would be done by removing it now. The fact is that Cuba produces nothing we or anyone else wants in the free market, and has no money with which to buy the products of others. Cuba's economic isolation is quite obviously the product of its own social and economic policies, and not the U.S. embargo. (The EU is quite free to increase its lending and trade with Cuba if it wishes - odd that it doesn't do this.) It will take several generations to wash out the enervating effects of totalitarian socialism in Cuba (consider what a generation of it did to Germans!), and I have no desire to see this country pay for the process by lending them money or investing in a land without laws or freedom.

It's wrong to blame free market for the effects, but it can be noted that the forces of the free market took, universally, advantage of the situation. You might say that this is to be expected - trying to get the most out of an enterprise like mining a country's natural rescources while trying to avoid to employ a large workforce is a sound principle of capitalism. However, it still bypasses the local economy, in a way. And it is telling that many countries are experiencing this problem. Chile and Ecuador, not your typical "communist dictatorships", are trying to find solutions for exactly that problem (even though Chile has been faring quite well, recently. But that's maybe just due to the proportion of easily minable natural resources/population). Oh, and I've been to Kentucky, and I've noticed that the problems there are quite similar, so I'm not going to buy a line like "Well, that's a typical South-American problem".

Problem is: how do you reintegrate the population into the market? You have lots of unskilled workers, and lots of natural resources. Sure, alphabetization programs, education, etc. sound nice, but constitute a long term solution. What do you do in the meantime?

So... back to local trade agreements. Yeah. Those would be beneficial. So, in principle, ALBA would not necessarily be a bad thing. However, as fbaezer said, the timing is quite noteworthy - nationalizing the gas fields, alienating traditional local trading partners like Brazil, while proclaiming to join ALBA... That smells a wee bit like populism. As does his announcement to legalize coca farming...

old Europe,

I think we actually agree on most of this. Indeed I accept your description of the application of capitalism in Bolivia. I would add that under the stratified social and political conditions that have long existed there, capitalism would usually yield a better outcome for the affected portions of the society than would its alternatives under the same conditions.

Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia are indeed somewhat analogous. However we have learned that relatively generous social welfare programs tend, as an unintended and perhaps perverse side effect, to freeze the basic social causes of the problem in place. The transformation of the population, if it is to be effective, usually has to emerge from within. The hell of it is that income disparity is the essential voltage or pressure that is required to motivate beneficial changes in behavior. As long as there are no artificial barriers to the economic rewards of productive behavior, this will work. In Bolivia there are such barriers. In the Appalachian region of the U.S. the barriers are only local - during five decades during which the population of this country increased from 160 million to almost 280 million, the population of this region has remained static, or in many areas decreased. There has been a persistent exodus of people from Appalachia who have found better lives in the midwest and other areas of the country - this is the usually overlooked benefit of the free economic conditions here..

I believe most of the economic transformation of Chile came as a result of the free market economic principles applied during the Pinochet years. They undeniably broke the back of the stagnant labor market and investment conditions that preceeded them. The subsequent center left governments have merely continued the basic policies they inherited. It is also telling that Chile is virtually the only country on the continent in which the police are not for sale. (Also they, and Rio Grande del Sul in Brasil, have a lot of Germans - and just enough Irishmen to soften their rough edges.)

Venezuela approves oil partnership contracts

CARACAS, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's National Assembly on Friday approved Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) partnership contracts with 16 foreign and local firms to create joint venturesfor exploiting 15 oilfields.

The Assembly announced the creation of 21 joint ventures set bythe national oil corporation with its collaborators.

The joint ventures will pump nearly 400,000 barrels per day, almost 13 percent of Venezuela's total output. Venezuela is considered the world's fifth crude oil producer.

Under the new plan, PDVSA has an average share of 63 percent.

The foreign firms in question are British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell from the Netherlands and Spanish/Argentinian giant Repsol YPS.

On December 30, 2005, Repsol became the last firm to accept the change after buying shares Exxon Mobile had in an oilfield they exploited together. Enditem

Editor: Zhang Lihong

Mexico beats Venezuela in big game

Bravo Helps Mexico Beat Venezuela 1-0

Omar Bravo scored on a penalty kick in the 58th minute to help Mexico beat Venezuela 1-0 on Friday night in a World Cup tuneup match in front of 58,147 fans at the Rose Bowl.

Chavez, Morales take centre stage at summit in Europe
Email Print Normal font Large font By William Schomberg, Vienna
May 13, 2006


Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is making a name for himself with his anti-US stance.
Photo: AP

Advertisement
AdvertisementLEFT-WING Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and new Bolivian President Evo Morales were to confront European and Latin American heads of state last night with their brand of South American socialism.

Mr Morales, who swept to power last year on pledges to use Bolivia's resources to help fight deep poverty, was making his first presidential trip to Europe.

He relished the chance to challenge his region's former colonial powers and heavyweight neighbour Brazil for their "pillaging" of his country.

Venezuela and Bolivia have riled governments from Brazil to Spain recently ?- Venezuela by throwing an Andean trade group into chaos and Bolivia by nationalising its oil and gas sector and accusing foreign energy giants of breaking its laws.

"I am sure that the issue of nationalising the oil and gas resources is much more … worrying for some countries," Mr Morales said.

Mr Chavez arrived at the summit in Vienna later, to the cheers of supporters. The summit will bring together nearly 60 heads of state and ministers from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mr Chavez, a former paratrooper who once led a failed coup before winning power in Venezuela through the ballot box, was also due to attend a rally with a daughter of former revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Some of the other early arrivals spelt out concerns at Venezuela and Bolivia's partnership, which is developing into a political axis in South America. Mexican President Vicente Fox warned that they risked isolation from other countries in the region.

"The greater the integration, the greater the development opportunities," he said. "We do not want to go in the other direction."

cont; http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/chavez-morales-take-centre-stage-at-summit-in-europe/2006/05/12/1146940734743.html

Bolivia's Morales Says Repsol, Petrobras Won't Be Compensated
May 11 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales said oil companies including Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Spain's Repsol YPF SA won't be compensated after he seized their oil and gas fields to nationalize petroleum reserves.

``There is no reason to indemnify them,'' he told reporters at a news conference in Vienna before a meeting today of European Union and Latin American leaders. ``What we are looking for are partners not bosses that exploit our oil resources. We are not chasing out anyone. But they cannot have ownership.''

Bolivia took control May 1 of the country's oil and gas fields and gave foreign energy companies operating in the country 180 days to agree to new contracts with the government.

cont; http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=a0T0Jb.cHx5Y&refer=latin_america

And this, from The Times:

Pope tells Chávez to mend his ways
From Richard Owen in Rome

THE Venezuelan President's audience with the Pope yesterday was not the vote-winning photo opportunity that he might have hoped for.

Instead, Pope Benedict XVI, increasingly wary of foreign leaders using meetings at the Vatican for political purposes, gave Hugo Chávez, the aggressively populist left-wing leader, a stern lecture on the need to respect religious freedom in a nation where 96 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic.

Señor Chávez, who arrives in London this weekend, last year described the Church as a "tumour" and denounced Venezuela's bishops as out-of-touch, elitist "devils in cassocks".

The Vatican noted drily that during the 35-minute audience Senor Chávez, who faces elections in December, had "briefed the Holy Father on projects for social change under way in his country".

Señor Chávez, who professes to be a "Catholic Christian" but accuses the Church of "siding with the rich", had told Italian newspapers that he hoped to discuss "world poverty" with the Pope and receive a "papal blessing". But the Pope reminded him to respect the Holy See's freedom to name bishops, said that he hoped the Santa Rosa da Lima Catholic University would "always maintain its Catholic identity" and attacked attempts to eliminate religious instruction from schools as part of Señor Chávez's reforms.

Yes, I also read that story fbaezer. It was an effective Photo op. Chavez is started his international PR campaign.

By the way, shouldn't this thread be renamed "Venezuela & Bolivia Watch"?

Yes we should.

There are 11 elections coming up this year in South America. Nicaragua is next.

Basic geography: Nicaragua: Central America

Venezuela & Bolivia have somehow merged in the discussion. given the characteristics of their presidents.
Peru could join, if Humala wins. Happily, so far it seems he will not.

Good Things Happening in Venezuela

By Michael Parenti



Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the great class divide in that country. On my connecting flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, I was right.

Our conversation moved along famously until we got to the political struggle going on in Venezuela. "Chavez," she hissed, "is terrible, terrible." He is "a liar." He "fools the people" and is "ruining the country."

She owns an upscale women's fashion company with links to prominent firms in the United States. When I asked how Chavez has hurt her business, she said, "Not at all." But many other businesses, she quickly added, have been irreparably damaged as has the whole economy. She went on denouncing Chavez in sweeping terms, warning me of the national disaster to come if this demon continued to have his way.

Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of attack: weak on specifics, but strong in venom, voiced with all the ferocity of those who fear that their birthright (that is, their class advantage) is under siege because others below them on the social ladder are now getting a slightly larger slice of the pie.

In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal market "adjustments" of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. Successive Administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation.

Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:

A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted?-this past March a large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes
Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment
The government has set up a marine conservation program and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples
Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers
Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry?-80 percent of which is still publicly owned?-have been halted and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration
Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia
"Bolivarian Circles" have been organized throughout the nation, neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at the community level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and other public services
The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair streets and neglected drainage and water systems in poor neighborhoods
Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez's home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, two of whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were there on a one-year program. The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, but care was severely rationed by one's ability to pay. Dental care was distributed like any other commodity, not to everyone who needed it, but only to those who could afford it.

When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of the Chavez government availed themselves of the free service, temporarily putting aside their political aversions.

Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from Cuba. Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to work in the free clinics. Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently opposed to the free clinic program, seeing it as a Cuban communist campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians' earnings. That low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first time in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much weight among the more "professionally minded" practitioners.

I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that are located around the country, mostly in low income areas. These modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce and fruits at well below market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.

Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlepeople and made staples more affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run by women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose function is to provide low-income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.

There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory and a T-shirt factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has put about 1,000 people to work. The workers seem enthusiastic and hopeful.

Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker cooperatives. Or perhaps it's not surprising, given the near monopoly that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five television stations and all the major newspapers.

The person most responsible for Venezuela's revolutionary developments, Hugo Chavez, has been accorded the usual ad hominem treatment in the U.S. news media. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle described him as "Venezuela's pugnacious president." An earlier Chronicle report (November 30, 2001) quotes a political opponent who calls Chavez "a psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy." The London Financial Times sees him as "increasingly autocratic" and presiding over something called a "rogue democracy."

In the Nation (May 6, 2002), Marc Cooper?-one of those Cold War liberals who nowadays regularly defends the U.S. empire?-writes that the democratically-elected Chavez speaks "often as a thug," who "flirts with megalomania." Chavez's behavior, Cooper rattles on, "borders on the paranoiac," is "ham-fisted demagogy" acted out with an "increasingly autocratic style." Like so many critics, Cooper downplays Chavez's accomplishments and uses name-calling in place of informed analysis.

Other media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez "mercurial," "besieged," "heavy-handed," "incompetent," and "dictatorial," a "barracks populist," a "strongman," a "firebrand," and, above all, a "leftist." It is never explained what "leftist" means.

A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of social resources and human services and who supports the kinds of programs that the Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is someone who opposes such programs and seeks to advance the insatiable privileges of private capital and the wealthy few.) The term "leftist" is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media, but seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined, allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact, which precludes rational examination of its political content.

Meanwhile Chavez's opponents, who staged an illegal and unconstitutional coup in April 2002 against the democratically elected government, are depicted in the U.S. media as champions of "pro-democratic" and "pro-West" governance. We are talking about the free-market plutocrats and corporate-military leaders of the privileged social order who killed more people in the 48 hours they held power in 2002 than were ever harmed by Chavez in his years of rule.

When one of these perpetrators, General Carlos Alfonzo, was hit with charges for the role he had played, the New York Times chose to call him a "dissident" whose rights were being suppressed by the Chavez government. Four other top military officers charged with leading the 2002 coup were also likely to face legal action. No doubt, they too will be described not as plotters or traitors who tried to destroy a democratic government, but as "dissidents," decent individuals who are being denied their right to disagree with the government.


President Hugo Chavez, whose public talks I attended on three occasions, proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably well-informed and well-read individual. He manifests a sincere dedication to effecting some salutary changes for the great mass of his people, a person who in every aspect seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic revolution he is leading. Millions of his compatriots correctly perceive him as being the only president who has ever paid attention to the nation's poorest areas. No wonder he is the target of calumny and coup from the upper echelons in his own country and from ruling circles up north.

Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to assassinate him. I can believe it.

Similar screeds were written in the 1920s and 2930s about the wonderful benefits that totalitarian socialism would bring to the Soviet Union. Later in the 1960s we heard similar things about Cuba. The truth was that the promised benefits were mostly worthless, and their price was the freedom and initiative of the people of these unfortunate countries. The result was in every case a totalitarian police state aand widespread poverty and decay. What is most remarkable about this piece is the blind credulity of its author.

Michael Parenti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Michael Parenti (born 1933) is an American political scientist, historian, and media critic. Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University and has taught at several universities, colleges, and other institutions. As of June 2004, he has had seventeen books and over 250 articles published. Parenti's articles have been published in scholarly publications, periodicals, and assorted news media. His works have been translated into over a dozen languages. Parenti also lectures frequently on college campuses across the nation; his talks and commentaries (e.g., Real History) are also broadcast to radio audiences across North America and worldwide. His book, The Assassination of Julius Caesar, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

It always amazes me that people can search so hard to find the good in a country like Venezuela, yet do nothing but spout anger and hatred towards the US.

"Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of attack: weak on specifics, but strong in venom, "

replace the word Venezuela with America and you describe the common liberal in America.

Were have I spouted hate for my country America? Or is it necessary for you to Interpret the truth as hate because it directly conflicts with what you've come to believe?

If you can't incorperate the truth in what you've believe in something is wrong.

Similarly, other noted academics in the cited earlier decades praised the coming bright new world of socialism led by such enlightened figures as V. I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro. However we now have available to us the undeniable facts of their widespread murders, oppression and corruption, as well as a vivid picture of the misery they brought to their people. I forget his name now, but note that there was a prominent writer for the New York Times who got a Pulitzer Prize for his glowing on scene descriptions during the 1930s of the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine and the great benefits it was already bringing to the population. Only later the truth came out of the mass imprisionments and the forced starvation of literally millions of people.

So much tor the reliability of academics on such issues - including those with Pulitzar prises.

George, To you care to defend your statement against the information provided?

McGentrix, Do you care to provide an example of my spout of hate for my country?