The Venezuelan Thing Abides

Venezuelan protesters being hosed down in Caracas

In all the hoo-hah over the "Crimean Crisis" (right, whatever), the ongoing sabotage and subversion situation in Caracas and much of the rest of Venezuela is often forgotten, not even a sideshow in the pageant of world events.

But we shouldn't overlook it.

The protests by the Prada and Gucci set in Venezuela against the Bolivarian Revolution and the Maduro government have not stopped, not by a long shot, but participation seems to have declined significantly. This may or may not be due to official repression -- which has sometimes been reported to be severe. More than likely, it is due to the protesters' lack of unity and coherent policy prescriptions.

I've said, and I'll say again, these people just want their power back. The protesters are mostly middle and upper income Venezuelans, mostly white, and mostly of the former ruling class. Their power was diminished or eliminated by the Bolivarian Revolution, and they are still resentful and determined to restore their position and status in order to once again be able to exploit and oppress the lower orders, the poor people, the zambos, indios, and negros who have seen their condition improve and their situation advance under Chavismo.

More than likely, the protests in Venezuela will resume their intensity once the situation in Crimea stabilizes -- if it does -- and the various NGOs and government agencies in Colombia and the US can once again focus their attention on detaching Venezuelans from their Boliavarian Revolution, and detaching Venezuelan oil from the clutches of the Revolutionaries.

Returning things to the status quo ante in Venezuela, when the right kinds of people ruled the unruly masses with rod and staff and they could loot the treasury at will is only just, amirite?

But these things take time in the Modern World; no longer is Gunboat Diplomacy manifested throughout the uncivilized parts of creation, no longer does Washington just dispatch the Marines any time the natives get restless under the thumb of their overlords.

The hubris that led to the bloody debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to many other interventions and drone wars against "suspected militants" -- (Good doG in Heaven, suspected? That could be anyone, for any reason or none at all. What are they thinking? Or is thinking no longer allowed among the High and the Mighty?) -- has somewhat tempered the urge to send the troops much of anywhere these days. Their fights against peoples struggling to be free -- as they interpret the term -- haven't turned out so well.

But Venezuela is being "done" nonetheless, through internal subversion and sabotage, directed from the palatial suburban spreads of the wealthy in Caracas as well as the fincas in the outlying regions, as well as from Bogata, as well as from Miami, and I think there is no doubt of consideration and direction from the think tanks and strategic centers of Washington, DC, as well.

When the time is right, and the situation is ripe, Venezuela will be returned to its rightful place among nations, subservient to the will of the Grand Pooh-Pahs in Washington, and once again, its people impoverished, embeggared, ragged and starving, under the let and authority of some of the very people who are causing so much ruckus in the streets.

At least that is the scheme, that is the plan.

Please note: This Plan, which was circulated by RT in Spanish last November, in advance of the Venezuelan municipal elections on December 8, 2013, has not been authenticated. There is no proof in other words -- none that I've seen, anyway -- that the plan as it was published by RT was ever actually created, developed and implemented in toto or in part by the actors and elements named.

And yet, rather shockingly prescient, many of its aspects have been part and parcel of the demonstrations and their string-pullers since the latest wave began right after the elections in December. There has been a mounting level of violent protest, sabotage, interference with supplies and deliveries of electricity, food stuffs, and basic supplies (the Toilet Paper Revolution, this one is) and to favorably propagandize the rebels everywhere. Whether or not the plan is authentic, in other words, it is being carried out almost to the letter.

As far as I know, no one has attempted to discredit the Plan, either. There have been ritualized denials by the State Department that their personnel have had anything to do with the uprisings, but they are as creditable as this unsourced document, maybe less so, given the fact that the State Department has a somewhat sketchy relationship with the truth now and then. So I don't know. I can't vouch for the authenticity of the document that RT circulated, but it is certainly interesting that some parts of it are being implemented in Venezuela.

Once the Ukraine Thing is stabilized and Moldova is folded into the EU's Far Periphery, I'm sure attention will once again be turned to Venezuela, where all eyes will be on that bus driver in Miraflores Palace, and getting his ass out of there.

Until then, Venezuela abides.

The Venezuela Thing Updated

In all the hoo-hah over Ukraine, Pierre, Greenwald, Ames, Carr, Wheeler, et al, the situation in Caracas gets obscured.

Even if you are in the midst of the disturbances, it may be difficult to figure what's really going on and who the players are, let alone what their motives are. As best I can understand it, the middle and upper classes see an opportunity to get what they believe is their rightful power back from the monos, salvajes y zambos (monkeys, savages, and sambos) who stole it from them 25 years ago.

They will not rest until they are victorious and have possession of the Venezuelan government once again.

And they have the financial and technical backing from United States and Colombian interests (and probably more besides) in their quest.

According to a report published by RT News last November (in Spanish), the current wave of protests and disturbances were planned last summer at a meeting which included representatives of the USAID, several Colombian NGOs, opposition Venezuelan politicians and an American "security" consultant firm. The authenticity of the plan has not been verified according to RT, and yet, so far as I know, it has not been disputed. In fact, it appears that the plan is being implemented to the extent it can be, an implementation that commenced in earnest when the opposition was unable to win at the ballot box in the December 8 municipal elections.

There is no real dispute that American agencies, interests and NGOs have been actively supporting the disturbances in Caracas and elsewhere in Venezuela, though how deep their involvement has been remains to be seen. As always in these situations, there are legitimate complaints over various aspects of the Venezuelan government and society, grievances that should be aired. The problem is that the airing of these grievances is manifested through violent street protests, rather than through the democratic means available. The protests have become so violent at times, the government has cracked down with violent means of its own leading to a vicious circle of tit for tat and ever more violence.

On the other hand, it appears that many Venezuelans do not want this to get out of hand. Consequently, despite the constant violent agitation, Venezuelans seem to be working toward a resolution that acknowledges legitimate grievances and reinforces democratic institutions, while suppressing violence to the extent possible.

In fact, a government investigation was conducted regarding violence at the Feb 12 protests and a number of those deemed responsible for attacking opposition demonstrators were arrested and are being held for trial.

President Maduro, while excoriating the opposition, has repeatedly called for "peace," and so far, the only ones protesting in the streets against the government have been middle and upper class dissidents; the poor have refused to engage in these protests, even though the economic problems the protesters have been highlighting affect the poor most of all. Of course, for the agitators the lack of participation by the poor in the protests means the classist nature of them is quite starkly revealed.

Maduro, for his part, appears to be unwilling to deal with even legitimate grievances from the protesters so long as they remain in the streets and engaged in sabotage and violent demonstrations.

It appears to be a stalemate.

Also, one part of the equation that generally isn't reported in the United States media is that there are repeated large procession in favor of Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolutionary government, processions I won't call protests or counter-protests because that is not what they seem to me to be. That they receive barely a mention in this country, while the protests and the violence that accompanies them are frequently highlighted is a factor of the American propaganda industry which of course is aligned with the Better Classes, the capitalists, and the oligarchs.

The main complaint about Maduro himself is that he is a "bus driver," and thus unfit to be el presidente. They said much worse things about Hugo Chavez, but the point about Maduro I've heard over and over is that he is neither charisma nor leadership aptitude. Strangely, he seems to be muddling through.

If my sense of the relentlessness of the current wave of regime change activities is correct, every one of the targeted governments, including Venezuela's, will fall before 2016. This will be crowed by the Obama administration as an international triumph even greater than "getting Osama bin Laden." The point being that war, invasion and occupation is the least effective means of achieving the ends of the Plutocrat class.

The Great Game is ugly business...

Not All Revolutions Are Worthy of Our Support

The Maidan in Kiev, Jan 2014, before the explosion

And (so-called) progressives and leftists are fools to support the ones under way or recently manifested. Some of these uprisings and revolts are rightist, reactionary, counter-revolutionary, corporatist, globalist, and deeply contrary to the People's interests and well-being.

This sequence of reactionary, rightist, crypto-Fascist uprisings seemed to get going in Cairo last year when tens of thousands, and then reputedly millions, turned out in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt to denounce and demand the end of the elected Morsi regime. When Morsi refused an ultimatum from the military, the military removed him, by main force, and when Morsi supporters gathered in the squares of Egyptian cities to protest this clear violation of the democratic process, the military mounted snipers on rooftops to shoot into the crowds of protestors -- something that Morsi didn't do in the face of the protests against him and his rule.

When the snipers weren't able to adequately control the protests against the military coup in Egypt-- a "coup" by any other name, since the "world community" (ie: the United States government) refused to call it a coup -- the golpistas sent in the infantry and armored transport (otherwise known as tanks) and massacred hundreds and then thousands of Morsi supporters, massacred as many as it took to kill the protests against the coup, but the protests wouldn't die. Thousands, then tens of thousands of survivors of the massacres were arrested, disappeared, many were tortured, and still the protests would not die.

Institutional Failure and the Rise of the Rebel

I've been pondering the situations in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, and so many other places where neo-Fascist uprisings are underway with the full support, let it be said, of the EU and the US Government and its dozens of "democracy" NGOs, as well as the no doubt abundant collaboration of our amazing and ever-so-patriotic black ops and security apparats. Not to forget our ever-eager propaganda media spreading lies and half-truths in order to shape American opinion in favor of these neo-Fascist led crises.

Why is this happening now, I wonder, and why is it so easy to bamboozle the masses to accept this bullshit as the genuine rise of the People? Why is it so easy for the propaganda media to evade the whole issue of the violence inherent in all of these revolts and pretend they are all "peaceful" and "innocent" and that they are being brutally attacked by corrupt, tyrannical governments? Never mind that these governments were, by and large, elected and are not behaving tyrannically in any relative or rational sense at all.

I saw Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose last night night before last [this post has been in the hopper for a while, and will continue being edited...] prattling like the bitter old man he is about the Ukrainian Thing and going off into fantasies of Russia as Putin "wants it to be." His imagination is obsessed with Russia and "containing the Soviet Union," for in Putin he sees a reincarnation of Stalin and  the reassembled and reestablished Soviet Union, something that the Free World must prevent or destroy at all costs. The Ukrainian Thing has nothing to do with Ukraine, in other words. It's all about preventing the rise of the New Stalin and his perfidious reestablishment of the Soviet Union and its Empire of yore.

The man is mad. The man is out of his frigging mind. He's old and he's bitter and his hatred for Russia and the Russian people knows no bounds. He won't rest until the Russian state is no longer even a remnant of its Imperial and Soviet extent. He won't rest until it is gone altogether, shattered into a thousand pieces, in ruins and destitute. He is our Cato the Elder, I guess, screaming out: "Russia delenda est!!!" every chance he gets.

The horrible thing is that our remnant governmental institutions and much of the corporate sector that owns them believes this shit even more fundamentally than Brzezinski himself does. He's almost mild and sane compared to them. This is one reason why we have been inundated with such relentless and bloodthirsty propaganda about the the troubles in Ukraine -- but have heard and read so little about the almost identical uprisings elsewhere.

It is yet another instance of institutional failure on a massive scale and yet another instance of how the vacuum is filled with madness, brutality -- and wherever possible, with rebellion.

The insane fantasy that Russia under Putin is somehow seeking to re-create and re-assemble the Soviet Union, and Putin himself is trying to become The New Stalin has been driving much of American foreign policy in the region for as long as Putin has been on the political scene in Russia. Anyone who's not the drunk but compliant Yeltsin, in other words, is seen as a threat to be contained and/or overthrown, the sooner the better. The Global Hegemon will not be content with anything less than submission, abject, full and willing.

Our government has never gotten beyond its fantasies of the Soviet Union, and many of our institutions are similarly locked in combat with something that truly never was -- the great and powerful monster they think it was and believe it still is.

And that's why Ukraine is being torn apart by the EU and US. Rent as fully asunder as, oh, say Yugoslavia was, or as the Soviet Union itself was under Yeltsin, back in the day. Our failed institutions, locked in the past, are still fighting the subversive and hot wars they dreamed about winning during the Cold War.

This can be nothing but insanity.

As insane as the behavior of these failed institutions is, it doesn't mean that the rebellions themselves entirely lack legitimacy. As I've said in other posts, people under oppression have a right and duty to rise up against their oppressors. That should be a given.

The question is, do these rebels represent the genuinely oppressed? And what, ultimately, do they want?

In Venezuela, the fact that the people rising up are not oppressed is starkly obvious. The rebels are almost entirely composed of los ricos or their wannabes. They are often blonde, well-dressed, well-coiffed, well-housed, and well-educated. They are the upper crust of Venezuelan society, and they want their power back. They resent being ruled by the Lower Orders, people they consider to be "salvajes"  and "animales" -- people only fit to be ruled, not to rule over los caballeros themselves. The very idea of it, ptui!

These class and race divisions giving rise to rebellion in Venezuela are very stark and obvious as they have been throughout the Bolivarian Revolutionary period under Chavez and Maduro, and as they have been throughout Venezuela's history since it was settled by German immigrants under Spanish rule. Of course they want their power back. They believe it is their right. Democracy? Piffle!

The anti-Bolivarian propaganda in this country has been strenuous and relentless since the establishment of the Bolivarian Revolution in the late '90s. When there was a coup against Chavez in 2002, American media, led by the New York Times, exploded with joy and rapture. Unfortunately for the celebrators, the coup only lasted a couple of days, and Chavez regained his presidential palace to continue on the path he'd set -- toward ever more democracy and social justice, something populations in Latin America had long yearned for, yearnings long thwarted by institutions established to prevent the rise of the People. Ever. Institutions that were enabled by the Spanish, by the governments that won their independence from Spain, and not much later by the United States government which took charge of the Hemisphere as its own private backyard empire.

The Bolivarian Revolution reversed the power structure of Venezuela, putting the long oppressed majority in charge and curtailing the power of los ricos to rule over them. A rather mild version of social and economic justice was instituted. The rich were not deprived of their wealth -- at least not entirely -- only their power over the state, power which was reserved to The People as a whole.

The uprisings of the rich against that state of affairs have been ongoing for close to two decades, and they have often turned bloody. The state, under Chavez and Maduro, has been remarkably tolerant of the mischief made by the rebels, essentially declaring an amnesty for the rebels time and again, in an apparent effort to include them in the Revolution. The burden the rebels are attempting to throw off does not appear to be that of genuine oppression, for it is difficult to find any significant effort to oppress the rich in Venezuela or to confiscate their wealth, or to silence their voices, or to interfere significantly with their ways of life. The burden the rich in Venezuela seek to throw off is a psychological one, the burden of their own sense of powerlessness -- though they are not truly powerless in the Bolivarian system at all, not any more so than anyone else is truly powerless.

One of the remarkable features of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is the widespread use of direct democratic councils through which Venezuelans of all classes are empowered, and by which the country has been able to progress in the interests of all the people, not just a few.

And it is that very empowerment of the whole people as well as the extensive provision of basic housing, healthcare, education, and justice for all that the rebels seek to eliminate and destroy. When they talk about Maduro's "exit" they're talking about overthrowing the entire Bolivarian system and remaking Venezuela into a version of what it used to be, putting the closed sign on the institution of People's democracy and ending such frivolous nonsense as social and economic justice once and for all.
--------------------------------------------
Now that the Ukrainian uprising has apparently succeeded in driving out Yanukovych and ending his rule (though it's not entirely certain), rebels in Caracas are no doubt encouraged. If they can only turn the military and police away from Maduro's government, they're home free, yes?

How might they do that?

Money talks, as we've been seeing in almost every corner of the globe, every aspect of life.

The rule of money, the failure of institutions, and the rise of rebels are all tied together. This year may well turn into one for the books.

[Events have intervened to cut short this post, though I'm sure it's quite long enough!]

Venezuela and Ukraine, Two Peas in the Pod

From Democracy Now!


On Ukraine with Stephen Cohen:


On Venezuela with George Ciccariello-Maher


Also, too, Venezuela with Mark Weisbrot from CCTV

[Potentially] Alarming Developments in Kiev, Bangkok, Caracas, Sarajevo. Cairo Set the Standard...

Morning Screen Grab from Kiev

Generally speaking, people have a right -- and duty -- to rise up in the face of tyranny and oppression. It's not easy, and it can be very risky for those who engage in it, but by and large, large scale social progress is made by means of protests and uprisings of the oppressed all over the world and in all eras.

Generally speaking, the progress that has been made through the means of protests and uprisings has been more or less liberating to those who have previously been oppressed, and that liberation has generally led to more liberation from tyranny and oppression. Thus, most uprisings of the sort we have witnessed for decades now, since the beginning of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union in the '80s, have led to more and more liberated societies and nations.

But the liberation from tyrannical regimes, be they Communist or otherwise, often comes at a huge price to the erstwhile liberated masses, a price that's paid in institutional failure, economic collapse, desperate living conditions, and destruction of social cohesion. The notion that what is lost is somehow "creative" -- thus the term, "creative destruction" so popular among the economic, social and political hit men (and women, I'm looking at you, Legarde) and mercenaries roaming the globe -- simply ignores or even celebrates the suffering left in the wake of so many Color Revolutions and the like over the years.

"Ukraine is burning" ran a breathless headline by one of my favorite authors over at dKos, jpmassar, one of the usually brightest and most keyed in to matters of uprising, revolt, and revolution they have over there. Well, I'd been watching the livestream from Kiev for a good portion of the day already, a livestream that I noted was labeled: Євромайдан -- революция,(ie: "Euromaidan -- Revolution"),  in the upper right corner, something most Americans might miss because they can't read the Cyrillic alphabet, and the corner label would just appear to be some gibberish in a foreign language. Probably (ick) Russian and therefore, given the way media and politics work in the world, slanted to favor the (ick) Russian point of view about (the foreign and unfamiliar) Ukraine.

Uh, no. In fact, the video feed was coming from a rather slick media operation run by the rebels who were burning their barricades in a spectacle in Independence Square in Kiev. As I watched the livestream, it was clear this wasn't just a slick media operation, the visuals were being consciously designed for maximum propaganda impact, not unlike Soviet filmmaking back in the day. It was really very well done, I have to say, but at the same time, it was highly deceptive and manipulative.

First of all, the images made it seem as if the city was on fire -- it's not -- and that the uprising was... general. It's not. These sorts of things don't generally involve a large percentage of the whole population, but they can involve a large proportion of a certain segment of that population (which is apparently what was going on in Cairo and Egypt too just prior to the al Sisi coup which overthrew the Morsi government and led to a brutal and bloody crack-down on Muslim Brotherhood resistance to the coup. But I'll get to that in due time...) The theory is that if a large enough segment of a single population sector or multiple sectors can be convinced to participate in demonstrations and protests and rebellion, then the Revolution is not only nigh, it has already come -- and quite likely whatever results from it will be something like victory for the rebels.

Revolution does not require and will hardly ever involve the whole population in any case. Most people will rationally choose to stay out of the way.

The images last night from Kiev also made it seem that there was some kind of "heroic" action taking place. Debris was being continually fed into the bonfires burning ("gloriously") in Maidan Square, luridly illuminating the scene. Police and firefighters were occasionally seen milling around the margins of what seemed to be a large -- but indistinct -- crowd. Now and then, there would be close ups of the fires and some silhouettes of the crowd passing back and forth in front of the blaze. From time to time, fireworks would be ignited and Molotov cocktails would fly through the air. There was no sound most of the time, but occasionally, there would be heard the pop-pop-pop of gunfire or fireworks, and from time to time, one could hear what sounded like many voices raised in song (was it the Ukrainian national anthem? It was.) Flags were flying, but what was on them was indistinguishable in the dark and the smoke. Some seemed tattered, battle worn, others more or less pristine.

The images from from at least three cameras, and probably more, were being intricately and expertly interwoven, so as to show close-ups, medium and long shots in turn, and at one point, a camera was focused on the silhouette of a young person climbing the outside of a building near the square. A lurid orange glow came from inside the building, and soon enough it would be apparent that the building was on fire. What was the silhouetted figure doing, though? I couldn't tell, and I didn't watch that scene long enough to find out, but in daytime views this morning, it appears he may have been heroically hanging a heroic Revolutionary banner on the outside of the burning trade union building -- or maybe he was just showing off, who knows? It made for some dramatic imagery, however.
-----------------------------------
Since the murderous rampages of Al Sisi's forces in Cairo in response to protests against the military coup there, I haven't been much inclined to watch the Global Revolution streams or closely follow the various uprisings that have been or are taking place, whether in Venezuela or Thailand, Ukraine or Bosnia  or much of anywhere else, because it seems to me that they are all rightist rebellions for the purpose of installing rightist regimes which will serve the interests of international finance. It's sickening.

This is not at all what the Occupy Movement was and is about, but every one of these uprisings is using Occupy tactics (along with a little ultra-violence) to gain and have its way. It has reached the point where even otherwise rightist supporters are wary and somewhat puzzled at what is going on.

It's fairly obvious to me. By utilizing the successful tactics of the Arab Spring and the later Occupy Movement to gain the attention and widespread sympathy of media and oppressed peoples around the world, factions of the oppressor class are seeking to mobilize media and world opinion on their behalf to undermine and overthrow governments which dare to take more interest in the people than in the oppressors.

This is obviously what's been going on in Caracas, so obvious it's breathtaking in its chutzpah. But in Thailand, Bosnia, and Turkey it's not been so obvious at all, as it seems the rebels have valid complaints and they are not trying to impose rightist rule -- and the oppression of the lower orders that goes with it -- at least not on the surface. Scratch a bit below the surface, however, and you will find many of the same dynamics, of a minority class based revolt, generally of the relatively well off, backed by a rising plutocratic class, trying to force ("inject") their interests into the popular consciousness enough to be able to overthrow the duly constituted and elected government and replace it with their own unelected one.

They use the tactics of Occupy, Arab Spring, and the Color Revolutions of Gene Sharp -- because they work, or they can work. But their intentions are to impose, to rule, to plunder, and to oppress.

Kiev is not actually burning, but it could erupt in flames at any time. The fires in the square last night were for show, and the show is one of a rightist, populist character, one we're seeing more and more of around the world.

And I have no doubt our metastasizing surveillance and security state apparat is deeply involved in every one of these uprisings. But will that story ever be told in the chest thumping, fist pumping, but largely content-free New Media ventures of Omidyar or any other billionaire? I doubt it.

Even the once iconoclastic Mark Ames and Yasha Levine now of Pando appear to be neutered and are mostly silent about the global rightist coups.

Yes, it's alarming.

Hugo

Viva

After a long struggle with an unspecified cancer, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has died.

He was a man of extraordinary zeal, strength and courage who set out to change The Way Things Are in Venezuela, to shine a light in the darker corners of his country and the global plutocracy in general, and to build up his people, to develop the human potential of Venezuela and Latin America in general and to serve as an inspiration for struggling peoples everywhere. "Si, se puede."

He became a monumental figure to me and many other Americans as well as struggling peoples around the world when he did this at the United Nations in 2006:

 

""The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world." [President Bush] ...came [to the General Assembly] to share his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world."

This made him the implacable enemy of the United States' government, which, through various nefarious means, set out to destabilize and destroy him and his quest for social and economic justice.

In this strange war of many unkind words and some bizarre deeds, Hugo always seemed to wind up on top -- at least until he took ill with an initially entirely mysterious malady, eventually acknowledged as cancer which was being treated in Cuba. There are claims, naturally enough, that his malady was induced by some means or secret method of the CIA or one of the other "agencies" Our Government unleashes on its enemies. Cuba is the laboratory.

Castro's Cuba, the other implacable enemy of the United States' government. Forever condemned to perdition, the both of them, Cuba and Venezuela, at least for so long as their "strong-man dictators" hold sway over the unfreedom of the people.

In these cases it is abundantly clear that those who clamor loudest for "liberty" and "freedom" devoutly wish the freedom from responsibility to others, the liberty to exploit and enslave whomever they choose. They wish the "liberty" and "freedom" of the olden days in which a handful of hyper-wealthy owners-plunderers took from the masses without let or hindrance, what they wanted and when they wanted, as if by right, with no obligation toward the masses, or indeed any interest in them beyond how they could be made to serve Their Betters more fully, efficiently and profitably.

Ah Liberty!

Ah Freedom!

Anything and anyone who interferes must be isolated, crushed, destroyed. Viz: Honduras and the coup against democratically elected Manuel Zelaya in 2009, a coup backed by the United States government, operating strictly on the pattern established during the Red Scare 1950's during which any Latin American popular uprising or election to office of People's candidates were ruthlessly subverted, stamped out or overthrown.

Or take the Reagan Era, when the bloodiest reign of terror in hundreds of years was imposed from Washington's nether reaches (the various agencies and their private sector offshoots) through their proxies in Central America as a warning and a lesson to the uppity natives throughout Latin America that their impertinence would not be tolerated. The question was not "submission or death," it was merely a matter of when Death would come and in what hideous manner. Even the Church felt the wrath of Washington.

All of this was prelude.

500 Years of Prelude you might say.

Hugo Chavez was at first dismissed by the Better People of Venezuela (interestingly, Venezuela was  conquered and initially settled from Europe by Germans not Spaniards) as a zambo upstart, worthless and meaningless, and simply impossible to consider seriously. His popularity among the People soared.

Latin America has a myth of racial tolerance and indifference to matters of racial superiority or inferiority. It is a comforting myth but hardly accurate. Throughout Latin America, and through its long, tortuous history as colonies and dependencies of Spain, Portugal and the United States, Latin America has been marinating in racial discrimination, much of it derived directly from the patterns and policies instituted during the Reconquest of Iberia -- Andaluz as it were -- from the Moors.

Everyone was classified according to skin color, ethnic heritage, race, and religion, and the darker the skin, the more African and/or Indian the ethnicity, the lower down the social ladder one was. The purer the sangre (the blood) or the race -- ie: the whiter -- the higher one was. Not to be Catholic, of course, was not to be considered at all.

My introduction to Venezuela was through the telenovela Pura Sangre which didn't beat around the bush about these things...

Hugo was considered to be a zambo -- something like a mule in the eyes of los ricos blancos. A cross between an African and an Indian, therefore barely recognizable as human. So they (los ricos) thought they could get away with anything they wanted by insulting and denouncing him, perpetrating coups against him, attempting to assassinate him, subverting elections, and so on. All of this, of course, and much more was backed wholeheartedly by certain high-placed private interests, and not unexpectedly, many of the attempts at subversion and overthrow of Chavez were covertly -- and on occasion overtly -- backed by the United States Government.

The idea -- the very idea -- of using the wealth of the nation to uplift the People, as Hugo set out to do in Venezuela, was and widely is considered daft, crazy, insane, appalling, unjust, and worse. Hugo was hammered for it relentlessly by the press and media in his own country.

The very idea!

We Americans are not far from the very same situation as our own press and media giddily anticipates the next round of granny-starving budget cuts for the masses and tax cuts for the rich. They can't help themselves. They are beside themselves with glee

I've noticed that most of the objections to Chavez have to do with his supposed authoritarianism, but for the most part, these objections are not coming from anti-authoritarians. Oh no. They are coming from other authoritarians who simply don't like the fact that their authority was not the ruling authority -- or even acknowledged -- in Caracas.

In fact, for all the accusations of suppression of opposition in Venezuela under Chavez, the opposition seemed to be quite healthy and openly defiant (and wildly rich to boot) throughout his presidency. Interesting, eh?

Will Hugo's reforms and social reconceptions survive?  At this point, it's hard to say. Much the same question is being asked about Cuba after the Castros. Will it revert to the criminal hell-hole it was before the Revolution?

My own view? Yes, probably. Take the Russian example after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reversion is almost certain.

People will put up with a lot of misery -- far more than they think they can or would -- before they will take control of their fate from their Betters. They will happily let go of their own control if someone stronger and seemingly smarter comes along. Hugo's fundamental reform was to teach the People to hold on and not give up, not give over, not retreat. In other words, his goal was to ensure that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela endures long after his passing.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

So long, Hugo. Thanks for the memories, thanks for the laughs. Heaven smiles on you.
------------------------------------

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", a documentary about the 2002 coup in Caracas (enthusiastically supported by the New York Times, do not forget...)