Tag Archives: America

Oct
29
2010
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VenEconomy: Venezuela in Permanent Mourning

This article was originally posted by The Latin American Tribune

President Hugo Chávez has decreed national mourning for the death of Néstor Kirchner, the former president of the Argentine Republic, secretary general of Unasur, and, as the decree says, “his brother and comrade, his route companion.” And the purpose of this national mourning is apparently to “meditate in sorrow on the work of this immense American.”

The communiqué sings the praises of Néstor Kirchner because it was as a result of the “clear leadership, unbreakable courage, and determination of this faithful heir of the great Juan Domingo Perón that Argentina rose from the ashes to which neoliberal capitalism wanted to reduce it to once again find the place that was always reserved for it in the field of free and independent nations.”

Regardless of whether this national mourning was appropriate or not, its declaration gives food for thought.

First of all, it would have been commendable had the Chávez administration extended similar courtesies upon the death of Luis Herrera Campins (2007) and Rafael Caldera (2009), two former Venezuelan presidents who died during Chávez’s terms in office and who have earned many more credits in the struggle for the democracy and freedom of the peoples of America than Kirchner.

Not only that, thousands of Venezuelan families would also have liked to hear during the President’s constant marathon broadcasts even the slightest word of condolence for the loss of their loved ones at the hands of criminals. According to the report “A decade of impunity in Venezuela (1998-2009)” by the Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), more than 120,000 Venezuelan have fallen victims to crime and Chávez has been heard to say little, not to say nothing, by way of regret for the useless loss of those lives.

Another thought that comes to mind is that this contempt for everything that does not fit in with the revolutionary context has led Chávez to want to rewrite the history not only of Venezuela but of other nations as well.

Just as today he turns a dictator such as Perón into the “great Juan Domingo Perón,” so has he tried to erase Venezuela’s historical roots and great leaders of democracy from its collective memory. That is why he has renamed squares, parks, avenues, and freeways to remove the names of the country’s leaders, as he did with Rómulo Betancourt Park, which today carries the name of Francisco de Miranda.

In short, sadly “the State has ceased to serve constitutional freedoms and guarantees in order to serve a totalitarian ideology,” as former Ambassador Diego Arria put it this Wednesday at VenEconomy’s seminar “Venezuela 2010-2012?”

 
Sep
14
2010
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The Cost of Chavez

This article was originally posted by Front Page Magazine

Since coming to power in 1998, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has presided over radical changes inside the country. Promising to create “21st century socialism,” he has reformed the constitution, giving government-funded health care to all. He has nationalized key industries in repeated attempts to address what he perceives as an imbalance between Venezuela’s business elites and its masses of poor, including a “re-nationalization” of the oil sector. He’s worked within OPEC to keep the price of oil high and contain America’s power (while also blaming it for his economic woes).

Most alarmingly, he has turned into the bully of Latin America, purchasing large quantities of Russian weapons, threatening his neighbors with war and constantly yammering on about American assassination plots and military threats whenever he needs a boost to his domestic approval ratings. He has supported the FARC terrorists in their insurgency campaign against US-ally Colombia. Clearly, the man has been busy. So busy, in fact, that it was to be expected that he would drop at least one of the balls he was juggling. Too bad for the people of Venezuela that the ball in question was the one concerned with keeping crime low and the streets safe: Under his leadership, Venezuela has become a disaster.

The statistics are sobering, and astonishing. On the whole, the country, with 26 million people, saw a whopping 19,000 murders in 2009. To put that into perspective, the state of Texas, with a comparable population of roughly 24.5 million, experienced 1,374 murders in 2008, considerably less than a tenth of Venezuela’s total. Indeed, the United States as a whole, with roughly 12 times the population of Venezuela, recorded nearly 3,000 fewer murders in 2008 than did Venezuela in 2009. (Please note the differing years reflect the most recent available data for both nations.)

Put another way, it is safer to live in Iraq than it is in Venezuela.

 
Aug
2
2010
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Chavez Regime’s Drug Trafficking Back in Spotlight

This article was originally posted by The New American

After a series of reports brought the issue into the spotlight in recent years, allegations of involvement in drug trafficking by the regime of socialist Venezuelan “President” Hugo Chavez are making headlines once again.

In an article for USA Today, for example, Chris Hawley quotes multiple experts suggesting that the regime is at least turning a blind eye, if not directly supporting the traffickers.

“Parts of the Venezuelan military are probably trafficking with drugs and other stuff, and Chavez is not exactly motivated to crack down on them because he needs the military,” claimed Brookings Institution fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown. “He is allowing them to dabble in the trade.”

American and United Nations officials have also accused Chavez and his government of involvement in the drug trade, with the UN releasing a report in late June stating that more than 40 percent of all cocaine shipments to Europe were going through Venezuela. 

“The increasing flow of illicit narcotics through Venezuela and the continuing flow through Mexico pose significant challenges to U.S. counternarcotics interdiction efforts,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a separate report released in July. Another GAO report released last year claimed that top Venezuelan military and government officials were involved in the trade.

The allegations of Chavez’ complicity have been around for years, particularly since the regime expelled American drug agents from Venezuela. The U.S Drug Enforcement Administration was operating there until 2005, but Chavez kicked them out over supposed suspicions of spying, drug trafficking, and conspiring to bring down his regime.

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