Adios Chavez
By Sazzad Hussain
07 March, 2013
Countercurrents.org
The icon of hope for the downtrodden and underprivileged, the true inheritor of Simon de Bolivar and the follower of Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez, the President of Latin American state of Venezuela is no more. He breathed his last on 5th March following an epic battle with cancer for two years. Regarded as a dictator by the US, Hugo Chavez was the immensely popular head of state whose policies transcended political boundaries across Latin America opening new state systems meant for inclusive growth and welfare for all the citizens. Now, as his death created an irreparable loss to the cause of emerging welfare-socialistic aspirations of the millions of people of the global south, it is time to reflect on the life and works of this twenty first century visionary and statesman to peruse the alternative path for development and world peace.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias was born to schoolteacher parents in 1954, he qualified in military arts and sciences at the National Military Academy, became an officer in a paratrooper unit, and started his political career in the early 1980s by founding a secret organization, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, which took its name from the nineteenth century Latin American independence leader Simón de Bolivar. His first big move was an attempted military coup in 1992, for which he was imprisoned for two years before being pardoned. Ordinary people’s suffering under austerity measures made Chavez to rename his group as the Movement of the Fifth Republic, which later merged with other groups to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and won the 1998 presidential election on a socialist manifesto, promising millions relief from a system which had put oil wealth into luxurious lives for the rich and profits for the oil corporations.
After becoming the president Chávez removed corrupt military officers and started a national reform programme. Venezuela, a leading exporter of oil has the world’s largest oil reserves at 1.36 trillion barrels, and Chavez promptly nationalized the main oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), putting the profits into very effective social programmes. This resulted in social spending increased by 61 per cent or $772 billion between 2000 and 2010. The country got the region’s lowest level of inequality during his term with a reduction in its Gini coefficient (a measure of statistical dispersion) of 54 per cent. “Venezuelans’ quality of life improved at the third-fastest pace worldwide and income inequality narrowed during the presidency of Hugo Chavez, who tapped the world’s biggest oil reserves to aid the poor. Venezuela moved up seven spots to 73 out of 187 countries in the United Nation’s index of human development from 2006 to 2011, a period that covers the latter half of Chavez’s rule”—writes Charlie Devereux & Raymond Colitt in Bloomberg. That progress trails only Cuba and Hong Kong in the index, which is based on life expectancy, health and education levels. Poverty is down from 71 per cent in 1996 to 21 now, and extreme poverty is down from 40 per cent to 7.3. The programmes, or Misiones, have reached 20 million people, and 2.1 million have received senior citizens’ pensions, a sevenfold increase under Chávez. The country has also cut food imports from 90 per cent to 30 per cent of its consumption, and has reduced child malnutrition from 7.7 per cent in 1990 to 5 today; infant mortality has declined from 25/1000 to 13 in the same period, and the country now has 58 doctors per 10,000 people (as against 18 in 1996). As many as 96 per cent of the population now have access to clean water, and with school attendance at 85 per cent, one in three Venezuelans is enrolled in free education up to and including university. In 2001Chvez inacted a law that cut foreign oil companies’ share of the sale price from 84 to 70 per cent, and they now pay royalties of 16.6 per cent on Orinoco basin heavy crude which they earlier used to pay only 1%.
After bringing revolutionary changes in the home front, Hugo Chavez joined hands other Latin American leaders in establishing welfare states on socialist principles. The beginning of the twenty first century saw the phenomenal rise of the left and socialist political forces across Latin America electing populists governments in countries which had been crushed to inequality and economic turmoil due to prolonged military dictatorships and American economic exploits. Chavez’s success brought similar presidents in Argentina (Nestor Krichner and Christina Krichner), Brazil (Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva and Dilma Rousseff), Bolivia (Evo Morales), Ecuador (Rafael Correa), Uruguay (Jose Mujica) and many more. In 2004 Venezuela and Cuba set up ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas, to encourage 'fair trade' not free trade. Bolivia joined in 2006 and later Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Ecuador and five Caribbean countries. ALBA's objective is almost diametrically opposed to the free trade agreements, aiming instead to promote trade on the principle of solidarity instead of competition—a state-centered instead of a neoliberal approach toward integration. The exchange of Cuban medical personnel and Uruguayan cows for Venezuelan oil is just one early example of the type of agreement reached under ALBA. Cuba and Venezuela have also collaborated under ALBA to provide literacy training to the peoples of other ALBA member countries, such as Bolivia. The key concept is to trade and exchange resources in those areas where each country has complementary strengths and to do so on the basis of fairness, rather than market-determined prices.
For natural reasons Hugo Chavez, like Fidel Castro of Cuba, has been an enemy number one for Washington. One of US’s problems with him were that he kept oil revenues within Latin America. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which buys U.S. treasury bills and other assets, Venezuela at one point withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve, and since 2007 has aided other Latin American countries with $36 billion, most of which has been repaid back. Worst of all for U.S. regional hegemony, Mr. Chávez himself said Venezuela is no longer an oil colony, that it has regained its oil sovereignty, and that he wanted to replace the IMF with an International Humanitarian Bank based on cooperation. Uruguay already pays for Venezuelan oil with cows. Mr. Chávez wished the IMF and the World Bank would “disappear”, and his passionate concern for Latin American countries’ sovereignty made him a decisive figure in the 2011 creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac). Although a Christian, he did not accept the Church’s authority in politics. Chavez also maintained a very close contact and cooperation with Tehran, Washington’s number one enemy in the Middle East. For these reasons in 2006 the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy called him a demagogue out to undermine democracy and destabilize Venezuela.
This great amigo visited India during a brief stopover in Mumbai en-route to Saddam Hussain’s Iraq in 1999 with little media attention. Amidst the flare of western media blitz, less is focused in India about Chavez in our public discourse which deserves a timely discussion. Chavez was a defining figure in Latin American politics for fifteen years—for which the whole world got inspirations for an alternative. Adios Chavez.
Sazzad Hussain is a freelancer based in Assam , e-mail:[email protected]
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