The occasion was the Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez launched into one of his usual bullyboy tirades, this time denouncing former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar as a “fascist.” José Luís Zapatero, Spain’s socialist prime minister, rebuked Mr. Chávez for his rudeness.
Mr. Chávez tried to talk over the Spanish leader – at which point King Juan Carlos leaned forward, looked the Venezuelan dictator in the eye, and spat, “Why don’t you shut up?”
Long live the King!
MFB
Gosh, what ever happened to Iberian dignity? It’s amazing they didn’t end up under the table clawing each others’ eyes out. Philip II would never have sunk to such a level.
Wilfred
If I was Chavez, I would have spit in the king’s face; it’s the 21st century, the world doesn’t need kings. In South America, where I’ve lived the past 11 years, Chavez is a real hero to black and mulatto people, the kind whose slave labor Spanish Kings used to enrich themselves – I must have missed the King’s apology to the victims of Spanish imperialism.
Chavez is a radical, in a place that surely needs it. The king is a reactionary. Aznar was connected to the falangists, the ones whose victims were just named martyrs by pope Benedict. Part of the seamless transition from fascism to democracy in Spain was the deal the king brokered to protect the Falangists from prosecution.
Fuck the king.
Michael D.
but apparently, you are just fine with Chavez, who is attempting to re-write the constitution so that he can be president for life.
As for Juan Carlos, Spain would likely still be under a brutal dictatorship if it was not for him.
Kallisti
Sorry, but he was elected in huge victory, survived a coup, and won a recall vote with 60%. I just don’t see how “dictator” works, here.
We’re Americans. We’ll generally take elected nutbags over kings and queens of any nobility. It’s kinda’ part of why the nation exists.
dslak
Just because somebody who guts a nation’s constitution was popularly elected doesn’t mean he’s not a dictator.
dreggas
Amen.
Ned R.
Romanticism about Chavez is misplaced — but so too is assuming he’s the new Hitler or the like; the picture is very complicated and is changing with time. FWIW, I’ve actually been to Venezuela in recent years, and when I was there my impressions were that Chavez is a populist who uses all means at his disposal to ensure his stature on that front remains high. It was at the height of the recall campaign and ads and posters for both sides were everywhere, but media coverage was definitely tilted for and shaped by Chavez. Those folks I knew who were opponents, far from being members of some elitist old guard irritated by his very existence, were more precariously-hanging-on middle-class irritated that his oil and monetary policies had helped produce massive inflation that had wiped out their savings.
Right now it’s been clear in the time since that he’s been aiming to consolidate power further — and power is power, and seeks to justify itself first and foremost. It’s a steady slide and anyone who actually believes in a democratic process had best stop deluding themselves on that point re: Chavez. But friends of mine there haven’t fled in fear yet or the like, and my sense is more one of profound irritation with him than anything else. It’s a strange, strange dynamic, but Venezuela’s a very fascinating country.
jake
For those of you who want the story rather than some yahoo’s “opinion”
What I find refreshing about this story is the fact that Carlos said “Shut up,” Chavez responded and they went on from there. Imagine if you will that Queen Elizabeth II told GWB to shut up. (We are not amused by your mangling of the English language, we would like you to shut up!)
The wingnuts would scream blue murder and we’d be arming for war against the EvilFascistCommie Brits.
Elvis Elvisberg
Wait a minute here. King Juan Carlos worked to democratize Spain.
The relevant fact here is that Chavez was acting rudely enough that the conference organizers turned off his mic.
Ned R. seems to have the best perspective on how Chavez is acting and how he is regarded in Venezuela.
chopper
any other opinions on chavez aside, the dude was being an ass.
rachel
Yah, seriously. I’d put his remarks in the “not necessarily untrue from a certain perspective, but definitely not helpful or useful” column.
Wilfred
I wouldn’t place too much stock in most, if not all, South American constitutions as they were all written by governing oligarchies intent on maintaining power. The Brazilian Constitution even has a clause saying that it can’t be changed.
Unless you have seen and experienced black, mulatto, mestizo or caboclo life in South American you don’t know what you’re talking about. In the hands of the right-wing, pre-Chavez Venezuela is now portrayed as Periclean Athens, while the current version is rampant Bolshevism; they tried that with Lula in Brazil, too.
It’s quite simple. You want FREEDOM – bring back the oligarchy, you want Social Justice (in places and with people that have never known it), try something different. As my friends say: “Stand in front of the guns or behind them”.
Maybe so, but what is the relative percentage of that class and ‘elites’ with the working poor and destitute? That’s social and economic reality in South America.
VidaLoca
I’d offer as a wild-assed, ignorant, top-of-my head guess that if you’re a Latin American populist there are two people who you’d want to be insulting at any point in your day when things got a little slow: number one would be the President of the US, whoever that was a the time, and the other would be the King of Spain — whoever that was at the time, any other political positions aside. In other words, for “being an ass” substitute “playing to the base”.
demimondian
Wilfred, you need to shut up and listen here.
Chavez called the previous Prime Minister of Spain a Fascist. Now, if you called me a fascist, I’d be insulted, but, really, it’d be a rhetorical device referring to something that neither of us had really experienced. Juan Carlos played a huge role in the fight against the real thing — he’s qualified to tell someone that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
As to viewing Chavez as a liberator…he’s not. He’s just another convenient petro-dictator in the grad tradition of the King of Saudi Arabia, the Shah of Iran, and the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.
dslak
First of all, this is simply a matter of semantics which still does not refute the claim that Chavez is behaving like a dictator.
This objection could however also be made against the US Constitution. After all, it allowed slavery. Does this fact mean that the whole thing should have been thrown out, or do we have legal means to redress its shortcomings? Such shortcomings, in themselves, don’t mean that someone who violates a constitution isn’t behaving in a dictatorial fashion.
I can’t speak to the status of constitutions in South America, but presumably, even in Brazil, they could simply strike the clause that says the constitution can’t be changed.
Zifnab
If you ignore the glitch in her HTML and don’t mind her music and art posts, ALARANA has some good commentary on Venezuela what with having relations in the region and a long history with the country.
That said, everything I’ve read from her has been rather negative. From Chavez’s disregard for the national infrastructure to his mafia-style use of the military to crush decent to his Communist-style “intuition” that leads him to generate one national clusterfuck after another, he hasn’t exactly endeared himself to the hearts of anyone who values competency in government. The man is the poster child for why communist-style authoritarian regimes don’t work.
Bob In Pacifica
Kings are there by the grace of God. The Big Guy Upstairs put them here on earth to mediate his messages to the rest of us, and to lead us in our earthly duties.
Chavez is a rude guy who was elected with a big majority.
I hear that they discovered a big new oilfield somewhere in Brazil.
Wilfred
Everyone I associate with is from the left. In South America that still means something. While I may not think all that highly of Chavez, I prefer him to anyone and anything that has contributed to the centuries of misery endured by people of the same class as Aznar and, God help me, a fucking king.
You should come down here and bad-mouth Chavez to people who have never had enough to eat and against whom the deck has been stacked for hundreds of years. Chavez speaks for people who have never had a voice, like Lula once did, before he became the houseman that the West can accept.
You people forgot the language of revolution. You ought to read a bit more of American history before condemning people like Chavez.
I don’t care whether Aznar was associated with the Falangists or not, although if you listen to the Spanish today, nobody was. What matters to me is the colonial legacy and the persistent injustices it has created among the wretched of the earth.
I don’t care fuck all nothing about the feelings of kings.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“He..survived a coup”
Not surprising, as he tried to carry out a coup himself in the early 1990s.
Tim F.
It doesn’t matter whether or not Chavez is Idi Amin today. Idi Amin started out as a fairly genial populist as well. Any time a government strips oversight and disempowers the opposition, particularly when it does so on a wave of popular support, it always flows downhill into totalitarianism. Human nature will inevitably respond to the lack of transparency by acting in ways that it would be ashamed to do in the sunlight, and then the very existence of those bad acts ratchets the need for more secrecy upwards again.
Chavez will become far worse than Castro because Cuba has to survive with an inefficient economic system driving a basically agrarian production base. Chavez has a guaranteed money spigot that lets him become whatever kind of regional power he likes without ever compromising with anybody. Instead, as oil passes $150 and $200 bbl, it will be the rest of us who have to compromise with him.
Human nature is a fairly predictable entity. Discounting the insane behavior almost always follows incentives, and for the Chavez government every incentive points in a very ugly direction.
michael
plus, Aznar _is_ a fascist.
El Cruzado
I wouldn’t bet on the survival of the Spanish monarchy past Felipe VI (that will be the prince’s title as soon as Juan Carlos dies or quits). For some reason as the years go by, Spain feels more like a republic and less than a monarchy.
That said, even republicans are for Juan Carlos back home. He was instrumental in bringing democracy to our neck of the woods by carefully juggling the extremes (both fascist true believers and the occasional far leftist with a few grudges) while letting a coalition of old regime technocrats transform the thing into a reasonably good democratic system.
As for Chavez, he looks like, beyond his political ideology if he’s got any, he’ll be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. It’s a sad comment on the state of political life around there that he doesn’t appear to be particularly worse than what they had there before.
El Cruzado
Also, I never voted for him nor would in a million years, but Aznar was well past his fascist past and acted as just a rather run-of-the-mill christian democrat when he was president. Unfortunately power got up to his head, but even then it wasn’t anything that threatened to break the constitutional order (unlike some others around these parts…).
I’ll also give him one more thing: he did step down after two terms as he had promised (there’s no term limits in Spain, and there was nothing preventing him from backing off his words)
Ned Raggett
Spot on.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Everyone I associate with is from the left.
You should come down here and bad-mouth Chavez to people who have never had enough to eat and against whom the deck has been stacked for hundreds of years. Chavez speaks for people who have never had a voice, like Lula once did, before he became the houseman that the West can accept.”
When Chavez came to power in 1998 the GDP per capita (PPP) in Venezuela was $5,800. In 2006, the GDP per capita had barely shifted to $5,880. That’s a 0.2% rate of growth. That’s even with an increase in oil prices from ~$25/barrel to ~$50/barrel over that period (petroleum’s ~30% of Venezuela’s GDP).
When Lula came to power in 2002, the GDP per capita (PPP) was $7,660. In 2006, it was $8,820. That’s a rate of 3.6% growth. I think the numbers speak for themselves, frankly.
I was in Venezuela in 2001, and wasn’t surprised when there was a coup attempt in 2002. The country was as divided as any I’ve been in.
God help Venezuela if oil ever returns to $50/barrel, is all I can say, ‘cos then all the social programs put in by Chavez are going to evaporate. All the neighbourhood snitch squads (the ‘Bolivarian Circles’) aren’t going to protect against the government collapsing in that case.
jenniebee
VidaLoca – exactly what I was thinking. We tend to react to Chavez’s rhetoric here, as we reacted to
Ahmenijthe Iranian president’s visit, without considering that they are playing not to us but to their constituency back home. And we tend to see foreign socialist regimes, especially those in countries we don’t look at as having equal stature to us, in a fairly reactionary light.Incidentally, when googling “Cuba toture” the results are articles that, curiously enough, all predate 9/11. And they describe things that have made Don Rumsfeld scoff and Jonah Goldberg yawn.
Wilfred
This is the kind of stupidity that I never can quite believe. I’ve lived in Brazil for 11 years, and have not left the country for 7, and if you think that that statistic has any relevance in the lives of nearly 75% of the population you are out of your mind.
It’s interesting how immediately someone radical appears everyone becomes so conservative. So for all of Chavez’s supporters, and there are plenty, life was so good before? I doubt it.
Correct. A good question for Americans is why they never heard anything about Venezuela before Chavez took over.
Sarcastro
Frango regna.
srv
I had heard the women were hot.
Dreggas
Maybe because they didn’t have a headline grabbing loudmouth firebrand for a leader?
A socialist, populist dictator is still a dictator. As far as the comparisson of the American Revolution to anything Chavez is doing, there is none. For one thing we wrote a constitution and, last I checked, we didn’t have a leader who tried to re-write it to make himself or herself president for life.
You can go on an on with your man crush on Chavez, he’s nothing but a dictator in populists clothing, if there’s any comparisson to be made between the US and him it’s between him and bush, both have tried stacking the courts and their respective legislatures, bush failed since we actually had elections here in ’06 and the republicans lost.
Chavez figures he’ll just re-write their constitution. Like other have said he’s playing to his base with the same veracity bush has here, further when oil does run out or the price drops watch all those poor venezuelans now enriched (more like bought and paid for) go right back down into the gutters.
Shit like this is why I don’t hang around Kos much anymore. People have fucking beer goggles on for Chavez rather than waking up and realizing the truth. Tyranny by the majority is still tyranny and Chavez is nothing more than a socialist military dictator.
I guess it’s ok because he’s “our dictator” in some of circles further to the left. Heh.
Brad
Anyone bashing the king on here is just plain ignorant. I’m as republican (small “r”) as they come, but having lived in Spain, he is by far one of the best monarchs in modern history. Democracy in Spain survives because of him, and he’s possibly the first down to earth monarch (as much as that is possible, anyway) in history. The guy is great, and besides, the Spanish public needs to know how Prince Felipe’s personal life is going.
Wilfred
You don’t like Chavez because he doesn’t obey your bourgeois sensibility about what government, culture and society should look like, plus he’s mestizo. Tough shit.
For me, I am way to the left of anyone you’re likely to meet at Kos, let alone here. Chavez is a necessary intermediary for I hope will eventually happen in South America, which is certainly not democratically elected governments that might suddenly declare war on un-threatening smaller countries in order to install democracy.
In South America, the world really, the more freedom you have, the less justice you have for those who have nothing. Perfect capitalist freedom gives you Manchester, 1835 — talk about economic growth! Hell, come to Brazil, I’ll show you 8 year olds working in sugar cane fields, meeting the ethanol needs of the world, or picking oranges 12 hours a day for 100 dollars a month. Why do you think things are so cheap in the United States?
The reality right here and now in this part of the world is based strictly on class consciousness. If you don’t like that kind of talk, close your eyes the next time you buy something made in Venezuela or Brazil.
Say what you want about Chavez, he did more for people with nothing than anyone else ever did.
Steve M
Wilfred wrote
“You people forgot the language of revolution. You ought to read a bit more of American history before condemning people like Chavez.”
Perhaps you should recognize that the American Revolution was led by men who were cut from the Conservative cloth. They were radical for their time, yes, but only to a degree. They NEVER let power get into the hands of the ‘common man.’ The very idea was horrifying! Consider: the Electoral College, selection of senators by the state legislatures rather than direct election, the term and power of the Senate, and so on.
These men, not unreasonably, were most concerned with maintaining their wealth and property against the extremes of mobocracy.
Zifnab
Like fuck he doesn’t. He’d make a great Republican – total disregard for the rule of law, whining on and on about “culture” and “values” while he commits various crimes of suppression, and attempting to solidify a one-party system with himself at the top.
His race has absolutely, positively nothing to do with it. I don’t even know where you’re getting this “he’s mestizo” bullshit. He’s a thug and we wouldn’t like him any more than if he was Tony Soprano.
Dreggas
I couldn’t give a rats ass whether Chavez was a mestizo or not why? Uh well I don’t have the same prejudices that those in Latin and South America have. One day you’ll wake up and realize that Just like bush your beloved “Emperor” has no clothes either.
Dreggas
It’s a big deal down in the South American countries. Almost a caste system where if you are native you are shit, if you were mixed blood (ie spanish/amerindian) you were even shittier because your spanish ancestors were animals for mating with animals.
At least that’s my understanding of it. You weren’t pure and somehow we are supposed to know this and this is why we call Chavez, who is really a dictator, a dictator. See it’s the YOU’RE ALL RACIST card.
PeterJ
The problem with kings and queens is that while the current king or queen might be great, then next one might not be and then you’ll be stuck with him or her for life.
And even worse, they aren’t selected due to any merits of their own, which for example the pope or a supreme court judge are, but because of who their parents are.
Like Warren Buffett said, you don’t compose the olympic team by selecting the children of those who won 24 years earlier.
Simeon
I’m not sure where this idea that the Brazilian Constitution can’t be changed comes from… ??? It was adopted in 1988 and there have been 61 amendments since then.
Zifnab
*cough* Harriet Miers *cough*
yet another jeff
It seems that the question really isn’t about whether or not Chavez is good for Venezuela…and if that’s good for the world. The question really is whether or not he should have been told to shut up when he was being an ass…
srv
Demi and Zif continue to carry the White Mans Burden.
Their truth to power will set all those folk down there right. We know better. Che was a monster, compared to the Bolivian Junta.
Wilfred
In most of South America, Argentina probably the best exception to the rule 9and that only because there were almost few Indians, relatively few slaves and no miscegenation), race is everything. Social problems are typically over-determined with economic/socio-cultural digressions when the only factor is skin color.
You and Zifnab are typical crotch-sniffing liberals. You satisfy your mealy-mouthed ‘left’ politics by criticizing the republicans who, after all, hated dictators so much they actually got rid of one. But when faced with the racial politics of South America, out come the freeper chimp noises and the Chavez is a dictator mantra. Of course, you would never advocate the, say, extra-judicial murder of Chavez, who you seem to have elevated to the same status of Pinochet and Stroessner?
Next time you see images of Venezuela look to see the color of Chavez’s supporters. Once Chavez is gone they can go back to being steel-batoned and fire-hosed by the police.
Onkel_Fritze
As for Chavez’ left credentials, the guy will just say whatever goes down best with his supporters. A true socialist would be horrified with a religious nut like Ahmadiniyouknowwho, and not cozy up to him, like he repeatedly did.
The distribution of wealth in South America is obscenely crooked, but a crazy person like Chavez is not going to change that in the long run. He’s going to spend all his petro-money on his pet-projects and his police-state, plunge his country into crisis or even civil war and leave everybody worse off.
Bubblegum Tate
If only the king had followed up his comment with, “I can’t believe you don’t shut up!” That would’ve been awesome.
Dave Trowbridge
What’s awesome is that the king used the intimate form of speech, as though speaking to a child or animal. That’s a kind of insult that’s almost impossible to do in English.
grumpy realist
Regardless of how dictator-like Chavez has acted in Venezuela and whether he’s actually good for the place–the fact is, Chavez was acting like an intemperate, stinkingly rude ass, and got called on it. Served him right. You act like a five-year old, you get treated like a five-year old.
Wilfred
Fuckin’ ay, yo! ‘Calle tua boca, pentelho, porra!’ Just the way the Master talks to the Slave.
Surreal. How do you get treated when you vote for waterboarding, or grant funds that wind up killing thousands of innocent people?
Dreggas
Quite Frankly South America needs to clean up its own act, that their politics is racial says something about just how fucked up they are. There’s nothing Freeperish about calling a spade a spade. Chavez is a fucking dictator, he’s using the money from nationalization of the oil to buy and pay for a constituency all the while punishing those who prevented his first coup. I forgot though, because I am obviously not sniffing the right crotches I am not sufficiently heady with awe at the venezuelan socialist paradise created by his lord highness Hugo Chavez.
You like him so much? Go there and quit fucking complaining about everyone and everywhere else. When the bottom falls out and takes Venezuela with it, Chavez will be nothing and his country will be right back where it is.
As for my “left” politics, hardly pal. Maybe left of center but not nearly far enough over the edge where I see someone like Chavez as any sort of hero, same goes for Che. Thugs are thugs no matter what banner they operate under and dictators are dictators no matter if they have populist support. Like I said tyranny by the majority is tyranny period.
srv
You people are really funny sometimes.
Yeah, can’t we all get along?
I mean, sheesh, PM Aznar (they guy he called fascist) couldn’t recognize the Venezuelan coup leaders fast enough (their ambassador appeared on TV with them). I mean, nothing wrong with Spain supporting OVERTHROWING A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED LEADER.
How dare that petty dictator!
El Cruzado
Formal addressing is very rarely used in Spain these days (as opposed to many latin american countries where it’s the rule with anyone but very close family/friends), apparently not even by the king anymore. To Spanish ears the way he said it is maybe out of place for the occasion, but not offensive per se. They might think differently in many latin american countries, but on the other hand I don’t think those were Juan Carlos’ prepared remarks, so he basically talked like he would at home.
Wilfred
Too funny.
Zifnab
I’m a supporter of sound fiscal policy, transparent government, and healthy government programs that benefit the most people in the most need. I’m also for a fully functional infrastructure and reality-based domestic and foreign policy.
I’d have no problem with Chavez’s focus on poverty and wealth redistribution, but he’s been horribly negligent in handling the general business of the state. He’s repeatedly massacred the electoral process. He allows roads and bridges to collapse. He’s got a crime problem within Caracas itself and throughout many of his other major cities. His wealth redistribution is unsustainable, with Robin Hood-esque policy causing brain drain among the professional classes. He has a serious corruption problem within his own political party. And his foreign allies? North Korea? Cuba? Iran? He’s basically sold his oil industry off to Chinese on pure ideological grounds – and if you think Exxon and Shell are hard to work with, wait till you deal with Petro China. He’s got polution problems and education problems, all of which he refuses to let get discussed in the local media, because it makes him look bad.
He’s a bad leader. Period.
That he’s managed to channel his country’s substantial natural resources into hand-to-mouth social programs is admirable, but ultimately unsustainable. In ten years, if the price of oil drops, he’s going to get dragged out into the street and shot by his own supporters when the government comes crashing down around his ears.
El Cruzado
I’m genuinely curious: did he do that before or after the US “recognized” the “new government”? I don’t remember exactly the order of all the events. But if they followed it would be one of a pattern of really stupid things Aznar did following Bush (sad but true, he sounds like the reasonable one in the transcripts of his conversations with W. that were leaked to the Spanish press). Not that there weren’t a number of domestic stupid things done by his government (including our own little Katrina, AKA the Prestige oil spill fiasco) but it seems like to be really stupid in the international arena, Spain still needs a sponsor.
yet another jeff
Fine Wilfred, how about calling a shovel a shovel?
yet another jeff
Well…I guess that settles that. Anyone who was against the US invading Iraq has no room to criticize Chavez since Chavez looks like his people.
Wilfred…do you think Chavez was being an ass that should have hushed, due to decorum and protocol, if no other reason? Do you feel he was unfairly told to shut up?
Zifnab
Che picked up a gun when everyone else was shooting at each other. He could have been a Gandi or an MLK and I think Central America could have been a better place had he followed that path. Or it could have been the same with Che’s body stacked on top of all the other would-be Gandis and MLKs.
Either way, I’d give Che far more leyway in his actions in the same way that I’d give General Eisenhower more leyway during the Normandy Beach Invasion or General Sherman in his march through Atlanta. Che was fighting in the middle of a civil war. Chavez doesn’t have anything even resembling that excuse. He took unarmed men as political prisoners, used armed thugs on peaceful demonstrators, and strong armed law abiding TV stations and newspapers.
To compare Chavez to Che Guevera gives Chavez far more credit than he is entitled to.
Dreggas
That would be too easy but much like the 28%’ers to see Bush for the dictator wannabe he is…
yet another jeff
Dreggas…that was meant towards Wilfred’s highlighting of “calling a spade a spade”…fun when people take speech cliches as racial slurs…there should be something like a Godwin’s Law against doing that.
Dreggas
Oy. I wasn’t even seeing that. Then again I don’t see racial implications around every corner.
Wilfred
I don’t care one way or the other. I’m interested in seeing the dispossessed of South America acquire political consciousness and use it to attain power in order to correct four hundred years of race-based exploitation.
But you ask a valid question. Chavez is a symbol to many people I work with, the king of Spain is an anachronism, an ambulatory appendix of Empire. As far as manners go, Lula is constantly criticized by the upper classes because he speaks poor Portuguese; critique of manners and education is always class based. I spent enough time in Andalusia to know that this is true of Spain, too.
I won’t criticize Chavez’s manners because I wouldn’t show any respect to Bush or Cheney or the Waterboys, and shrieking about my bad manners wouldn’t make a bit of difference to me.
Zifnab
Which is your problem. Quit looking at Chavez as a symbol and start looking at him as a politician. Start grading him on job performance rather than rhetoric. Quit supporting people you’d like to have a beer with.
Chavez has made a number of serious policy blunders and he refuses to own up to them, instead using mob and military force to shut people up. He’s EXACTLY like George “The Decider” Bush. And that’s why so many of us despise him.
srv
I’d have to look up who went first. But the entire Revolution Will Not Be Televised is available online at google.
Wilfred
Your problem is you’re looking at this from thousands of miles away. Chavez is not a symbol to me but a symbol to a lot of people who don’t believe that things can or will ever change – this is the true colonial legacy in South America. The importance of populism, however imperfect, in some countries is that it gives some sort of proof that the world can change – that’s why Chavez matters. When he tells Bush or Aznar to piss off he is the poor mestizo or caboclo telling the cop, the patrão, to piss off. That’s the symbolism I’m talking about. That’s why Che and Fidel are still admired here and why Charlie Chaplin was absolutely idolized.
It’s also true in reverse. That’s why relatively few people vote in the US and nobody spits in Bush’s face – they’re afraid of the cops.
Unless they see it, people will not believe it can be done.
El Cruzado
FWIW, Andalusia is widely considered the most class-based (and misogynistic) area of a country that has always been traditionally quite class-based and misogynistic.
I’d like to think that my particular neck of the woods is miles better than down there, although I also admit we still have plenty to go before we get to the level of our more enlightened neighbors (aka the rest of Western Europe).
Chuck Butcher
Well, Wilfred, Bush and Chavez really ought to be best buddies considering their “ends justify the means” approach to politics. Since you’re busy espousing the same, I’d put you in the same ilk. Maybe you’re too *something* to see that once you lose your rights you get them back at the point of a gun and that is a recipe for chaos and destruction of the very things that keep the poor from starving. No one is well served by that outcome.
You make some left sounding noises, authoritarian government is just that, it isn’t left, it isn’t right – it is authoritarian first, then it is whatever socio-economic bent it is. I don’t think I’d like you in person, that rationale usually indicates other character defects, and as a leader – well I own firearms. And, yes, I am quite left.
benjoya
No More Kings! Jesus, what country is this?
Andrew
I proclaim fealty to King of Pop, circa 1984.
Zifnab
Chavez is walking down the same road as Kruschev and Castro. He’s going to bring his country to economic ruin on the back of ideology, then blame it all on his political enemies when the shit finally hits the fan. The problem with Chavez is that he DOESN’T bring change, unless by “change” you mean “a new flavor of incompetency”. We see “change” in feuding African nations on a yearly basis, with one corrupt military dictator overthrowing another, all for the “good of the people.” It’s disgusting.
No one is so afraid of the cops that they don’t vote against Bush. Show me his face, and I’ll happily spit on it. They’ve got to throw Bush face-spitters out of Republican Rallies and Presidential appearances on a daily basis.
Few people vote in the US because of apathy, because they think Al Gore and George Bush, or John Kerry and George Bush, or Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guliani, are the same candidates with different colored suits.
But Venezuela doesn’t have that problem. In fact, the differences between Chavez and his political opponents is stark. For instance, Chavez nationalizes major industry while his opponents press for free capitalism. Chavez wants income redistribution while his opponents seek to reign in high taxes and resource grabs. Oh yeah, and Chavez isn’t in prison or exile. That’s another big distinction between him and his opponents.
Dreggas
Until he controls the police (as he now does) and begins to use them to cow his enemies just like he used to be.
chopper
i honestly don’t care what a president symbolizes to somebody else. i care about whether or not his or her policies work.
srv
What’s this ‘free’ you speak of, white man?
Yes, Chevron = Freedom
John, me thinks you may be too liberal for your gallery now.
Wilfred
And exactly how or why should I give a shit about what you think of me, whether you have guns, or what your politics are? I have guns too, and where I live you actually need them for something. You have zero conception of what life is like here for 80% of the population, so take your blithering about authoritarian government on the libertarian road where it sounds and looks good.
In South America, being left means what it always has: Being committed to class struggle. Period. Here in Brazil, the police are the hired guns of the oligarchy and are responsible for thousands of extra-judicial murders every year – they just made a film extolling the process – ‘Tropa de Elite’, and your wanking on about ‘authoritarian’ government?!
You all need to get out more.
Zifnab
Yes, SRV, free market capitalism is in fact a form of freedom. You want to regulate Chevron? Cut its pollution output? Limit the scope of drilling, imports, exports, etc due to social or environmental concerns? That’s one thing. Simply privatizing every rig in the country because you’re the President and you don’t like Chevron is the sign of a despot. Even if you don’t like Chevron.
Free capitalism is the freedom to make money however you so choose. The ability to decide what you do for a living is a bedrock foundation value of a “free” society and it is what set America apart from the Communists in the 50s and 60s.
EJ
Just FYI, the expression comes from a mistake in Erasmus’ translation of one of Plutarch’s works, where he confused the word for “bowl” with the word for “shovel”. Nothing whatever to do with black people, but oddly enough, in its original context, somewhat insulting to the Macedonians.
But, spade definitely refers to a shovel in that expression. Was “spade” ever a particularly common racial insult? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone other than Archie Bunker actually use it. Seems weird to me that people would jump to the conclusion that “calling a spade a spade” has a racist derivation when other meanings of the word are much more common.
yet another jeff
So, we’d have to be really close to the situation to be able to take an impartial view of Chavez? Something we can’t do from afar and with the benefit of historical context? You seem to believe that you understand all of the commenters here from your vantage point…is it not a two way looking glass? He’s a populist…fine…we think it’s all going to go badly wrong for you guys. You don’t agree. Fine.
Just because the Left means “committment to class struggle” it doesn’t mean that you have to use that committment to turn everything into a class struggle. Isn’t the goal of the struggle something like ending the need for the struggle?
And…back to the original topic…all leaders need to be told to shut up when they’re being assholes. It will always be funny when a leader is told to shut up if said leader is being an asshole.
yet another jeff
EJ,
It seemed like the only possibility for that highlighted bit to be funny to Mr. “everything is race and class struggle”. Seemed to fit his context, taking it that way. I think it’s a common racial insult, but I’m not sure who it would be directed at.
Wilfred
Absolutely. that’s why however fucked he may be in some things, Chavez has taken a step in the direction necessary. One way was by redistributing land and investing some oil money in educating poor people. But again you have to see these thing to understand them. Here’s a Brazilian example.
If you go into the countryside, you see a lot of kids with pot bellies. It’s called ‘barriga de pirão’ – porridge belly. It comes from eating manioc flour mixed with broth three times a day – it stifles hunger and does little else. Poor people eat potatoes, rice, manioc and macaroni. All that starch dulls their minds so kids do poorly in school. In Brazil, voting is mandatory so come election day politicians give out cestas basicas – care packages with basic staples like flour, sugar, rice etc. to buy the votes of parents whose kids are fucking starving. That’s democracy in South America.
Lula changed that in the Northeast by giving family assistance to as many poor people as possible, so that maybe the kids could eat better and thus do better in school. The FREEDOM lovers hated that.
That’s one example. You can either work to change that, and be opposed by the oligarchs at every step of the way, or bullshit about FREEDOM and free markets and why Chavez is an asshole because he was rude to some king who never went to bed hungry a day in his life. Give me a fucking break.
yet another jeff
Yes, either/or. Fucking hell. So EVERYTHING is the class struggle. Stop taking everything as saying that nothing Chavez does/has done is good. That’s not being said here so that part of your argument falls on deaf ears…because it doesn’t refute anything anyone is saying.
The point is, you should consider that he could go either way at this point and y’all really should have some concerns about things he does. You know…be wary and shit.
Fine…so Chavez is an asshole who is redistributing land and investing some oil money in educating poor people.
The bit at the UN about smelling sulphur was a classic, though.
srv
This ‘free’ market you speak of sounds so wonderful. Oil companies and corporations decide what is best for the state. In fact, if they don’t like the state, they’ll just green light a coup. And if it doesn’t work out, you can always get a bailout.
If we just had spent the last 100 years listening to you, instead of being all upity about it…
PeterJ
Zifnab said:
Harriet Miers was picked because she was a loyal Bushie. That was seen as a merit. Obviously only by Bush and some other Bushies. But she was picked because of her own merits and not because of who her parents were.
HyperIon
my understanding is that it is also the poorest and least educated section of Spain. sort of like the South here in the US.
AnonE.Mouse
We’re all talking about the same Venezuela here,right?The one in South America?Because the Chavez critics I’m reading,the ones comparing him to those other popularly ELECTED “petro dictators” like Amerca’s buddies the Saudi king and the Shah of Iran,seem to be under some illusion that Venezuela was some social and economic paradise before Chavez’ presidency destroyed the country.
The references to the jailing or exile of critics and suppression of dissent have little grounding in fact,as well.In the case of RCTV(which only recently had their license renewal declined),they continued broadcasting despite their role in the failed coup of 2002(and we all know CBS or NBC would have continued to broadcast had they cheered on an attempted armed coup against the American president).They still put out their anti-Chavez message on cable and satellite.Currently, Chavez’ ex-defense minister is touring Venezuela,calling for another coup under the auspices of lobbying against the December referendum.
We’ve been here before,folks,with Iraq,with the Balkans,with Panama…pay some fucking attention for once.