Hugo
Chavez And The Rise Of
Black-Indian Power
By William Lorens
Katz
22 December, 2006
Black
Agenda Report
Hugo
Chavez has won another landslide election as President of Venezuela
with more than 61% of the vote, exceeding previous vote totals, and
carrying all 23 of Venezuelan states. His victory surpasses popular
U.S. Presidents. Not only has he won high office twice before, but in
2004 he defeated a recall election by a whopping 59%. And during his
Presidency his embattled regime has foiled efforts to overthrow him
through strikes and armed conspiracies. He claims the U.S. State Department
was behind these efforts, including assassination attempts. But after
his current landslide even the opposition takes a different view. Chavez
is not a dictator, said Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the opposition paper
TalCual, and a key advisor to Manuel Rosales, the losing candidate.
But he's not a Thomas Jefferson either, Petkoff hastily adds. [New York
Times, December 5, 2006, A3.]
Chavez is getting stronger
as an unintended consequence of war and globalization, said Harvard
Professor of Latin American history Kenneth Maxwell. In the last five
weeks candidates leaning more to President Chavez and Fidel Castro than
President Bush were elected to head the governments of Brazil, Ecuador,
and Nicaragua; and before that Chavez favorite Nestor Kirchner, twice
jailed by the military dictatorship, was elected in Argentina. The political
thinking of Chavez thanks to NAFTA, the U.S. invasion and occupation
of Iraq and Afghanistan is gaining adherents. Earlier this year Juan
Evo Morales Ayma was elected Bolivia's first indigenous president, so
the role of people of color also is rising in the Americas.
The role of people of color
is rising in the Americas.
Many who approve Chavez's
policies and even applaud his confrontational approach to President
Bush wince at his rash rhetoric and find as ominous his description
of Cuba's one-party system as a revolutionary democracy. In his September
address to United Nations General Assembly, the day after Bush spoke,
Chavez famously said ?the Devil came here yesterday and it smells of
sulfur today.Harping on his provocative metaphor the U.S. media were
able to bury his illuminating talk under acerbic headlines and dismissive
comments. The mildest media criticism was he had failed to show proper
deference or common courtesy to his host country's titular head. Few
media sources acknowledged that his speech won occasional applause,
and some delegates even smiled or laughed at his anti-Bush jibes. When
asked, Rafael Correa of Ecuador called Chavez's comment an "insult
to the devil." Correa had earlier called Bush a dimwit but after
he was elected President of Ecuador, Bush called to congratulate him.
The mainstream media failed
to mention Chavez's public assertion that through CIA agents, secret
funds, and connections to rich Venezuelans, Bush sponsored plots to
have him removed from office, including by assassination. Chavez has
chosen to deal with this danger with increased security and brash metaphors.
The Bush administration has
long reacted to Chavez with sputtering fury. Yet today the President
of Venezuela sits more comfortably than ever atop a fourth of the world
oil supplies equal to that of Iraq. Venezuela supplies a fifth of US
oil needs, and continues to be Chavez's leading customer.
The State Department has
cast Chavez as a tyrant in the class of Saddam Hussein, or a Marxist,
or a ferociously anti-American clone of Castro. Lately, the characterization
has been downgraded to populist intended as a sharp criticism. Actually,
his Bolivarian revolution springs from multicultural grass roots that
pre-date the foreign invasion of the Americas that began in 1492, centuries
before Karl Marx, Castro, Hussein or populism.
The Chavez Bolivarian revolution
springs from multicultural grass roots that pre-date the foreign invasion
of the Americas that began in 1492.
Like four-fifths of Venezuelans
today, Chavez was born of poor Black and Indian parents. Since the days
of Columbus, descendants of the Spanish conquerors have claimed the
privilege of governing Latin America. They have effectively barred Indigenous
people from high office. Chavez stands as a direct challenge to white
domination of South American governments.
Chavez is not only proud
of his biracial legacy, but has been using oil revenues to help the
poor of all colors improve their education and economic standing. He
also has flatly rejected Bush administration efforts to isolate Cuba,
counts Castro a friend, and has repeatedly accused the U.S. of meddling
in his country, in Cuba and around the world. He has pointed to the
history of interventions by the United State that began with the Monroe
Doctrine of 1823. Latin Americans, particularly those of his economic
and racial background, are increasingly walking to polling booths to
register their view throughout Latin America.
Chavez rules a country where
three percent of the population, mostly of white European descent, own
77% of the land. In recent decades millions of hungry peasants have
drifted into Caracas and other cities, to live in barrios of cardboard
shacks and open sewers. Chavez wants to reverse poverty, provide jobs,
provide education and health care, and redistribute vacant lands. He
has begun to transfer fields from giant unused or abandoned haciendas
to peasant hands, and though landlords have responded with alarm, he
has promised further distributions.
Chavez wants to reverse poverty,
provide jobs, provide education and health care, and redistribute vacant
lands.
Chavez's ?21st century socialism
has repeatedly held out an olive branch to its capitalist foes, and
keeps an open-market system. Though foreign oil companies continue to
pull in large profits, he does insist corporations pay back taxes and
higher royalties. Once they walked away with about 84% of Venezuela's
oil profits, but he has demanded 30% of those profits. Banks and credit
card companies report large increases in deposits and loans.
At this moment with oil prices
booming and accounting for 47% of government revenues and 80% of exports
everyone in the country is doing well, including his wealthy adversaries.
The stock market has risen 130% this year, and the economy is soaring
over 10%, the highest growth rate in the Americas. Chavez has stated,
"All this stuff about Chavez and his hordes coming to sweep away
the rich, it's a lie. We have no plan to hurt you. All your rights are
guaranteed, you who have large properties or luxury farms or cars."
But the most dramatic beneficiaries
of ?21st century socialism are the poor. Three million people have enrolled
in one of the government's four free educational missions that offer
[1] basic literacy, [2] primary school education, [3] high school equivalency
and [4] university education. The number of households in poverty dropped
from 42.8% in 1999 when Chavez came to office, to 33.9% in 2006. During
the same period households that suffered extreme poverty dropped from
17.1% to 10.6%. The official unemployment figure had been more than
cut in half, and the poorest 25% of people has seen their consumption
rate more than double.
The poorest 25% of people
have seen their consumption rate more than double.
Chavez has brought education
to almost a million children who never sat in a classroom. And with
10,000 Cuban doctors, sent by Fidel Castro, he has opened 11,000 medical
clinics primarily in barrios. To Venezuelans, President Chavez believes
in payback.
In 1998 and 2000 Chavez won
the Presidency by majorities Republicans and Democrats here dream about.
In 2002 he defeated a two-day coup attempt engineered by the local elite
in alliance with the US, and in the recent recall vote, 90% of voters
turned out to keep him in office. Chavez's strength rests with his poorest
citizens. It is also evident that many of his constituents have mobilized
behind a broader agenda than his, one stressing participatory democracy
and elevating the status of women. At this point, President Chavez does
not see this popular movement he unleashed as a threat, and may try
to lead it.
Chavez also announced a program
called Petrocaribe to provide inexpensive oil to small Caribbean and
Caricom countries, and the larger Antillas such as Cuba, Jamaica, and
Dominican Republic. He also expanded this plan to bring affordable heating
oil to the poor in U.S. cities such as Chicago, New York and Boston.
When he tried to provide humanitarian relief for victims of Hurricane
Katrina the White House flatly rejected his offer and called it a publicity
stunt that insulted the government's ability to help its citizens.
?Simon Bolivar, Founding
Father of South America's Revolution and the first elected President
of Venezuela was also of African and Indian lineage.
Over the centuries South
Americans have endured a crop of caudillos, or military dictators. Many
began sounding a radical note only to be overthrown by the CIA or other
foreign forces. Some remained in power by shifting their policies after
visiting the American ambassador's residence in Caracas.
This former paratrooper seems
to spring from a time when Africans and Indians armed and united to
fight the first European invasion. For inspiration Chavez can reach
back to the misty dawn of the foreign landings when heroic Black and
African men and women rose to battle invading armies and their Christian
missionaries. In 1819 Simon Bolivar, also of African and Indian lineage
and the Founding Father of South America's Revolution, became the first
elected President of Venezuela. Vicente Guerrero, an illiterate Black
Indian guerilla General during the Mexican Revolution, took his army
into the Sierra Madre mountains where he trained them to wrest their
country from Spain's colonialism and also taught himself to read and
write. Mexico's ruling white elite mocked his lack of education and
called him a ?triple-blooded outsider.? But in 1829 after Guerrero came
down from his mountain refuge, he became President of Mexico, the first
Black Indian head of state. Guerrero wrote Mexico's constitution, emancipated
its slaves, ended racial discrimination and abolished the death penalty.
His foes in Venezuela also
consider Chavez a racial outsider, but the faces of millions of his
supporters refute the charge, and his message continues to triumph at
the polls. He seems to relish his role as Latin America's chief antagonist
to the Bush administration. Many believe his audacity instills courage
and provides cover for Latin American leaders who have the audacity
to challenge the giant to the north.
?Chavez?s foes in Venezuela
consider Chavez a racial outsider.
Time will tell if Chavez's
programs and supporters can protect him from the machinations of his
wealthy Venezuelan foes and their powerful U.S. allies. Ordinary Venezuelans
have initiated their own revolution, and though at this point it undergirds
Chavez's political and economic strength, it may take new directions.
Hugo Chavez and his people,
historically poor and oppressed, are attempting to write an exciting
chapter in the heroic record crafted originally by millions of unknown
African and Indian people in the Americas, and continued by Simon Bolivar
and Vicente Guerrero.
William Loren Katz is the
author of forty books, including Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage [Atheneum,
New York] now in a new edition celebrating its 20th year. His Black
Indian website is: WILLIAMLKATZ.COM.
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