Venezuela And Other Musings

I haven't said much about it, but the press reports from Venezuela have been just atrocious. Our news has been full of stories about Chavez "surviving" a recall (he won in a walk), and almost nothing about which Venezuelans are mad at him and why (is land redistribution a taboo in the US press?). There's also nothing in our press about how the Bush people aren't fond of Chavez--or that egalitarian social and political movements in Central and South America have never been well received in Washington (you could ask Aristide about that--remember him?). Don't believe me? Just look into the history of liberation theology (more on this in a bit).

Greg Palast has about the best write-up I've seen on the situation there, and why Chavez (though he's far from perfect) doesn't deserve the thrashing he regularly gets in the American news.

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez -- dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress giving land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.

So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in elections and today in a referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our democracy-promoting White House?

Why indeed? Read the rest of the article; Palast suggests some answers.

But back to liberation theology. Check out this site for some more information (I find the picture of the crucifix at the top of the page particularly striking, but that's just an aesthetic aside). It's also fascinating to me that theologians in the United States haven't come to similar conclusions about the large disparities in wealth and income here in America. I mean,is "the awareness that it is blasphemous to care for people's souls while ignoring their needs for food, shelter and human dignity" absent from US Christianity? Granted, the gap between rich and poor is not as dramatic in the US as it is in, say, Nicaragua, but that disparity is the largest among all industrialized countries. Doesn't that bear pulpit-based commentary?

Ernest Partridge of The Crisis Papers has an article that approaches that question, and it's worth your time. In addition, Thomas Frank's newest book, What's the Matter with Kansas? addresses the same subject.

It's all food for thought.