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At left, artist's impression of Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez during an emotional speech to the nation. At right, Pres. Chavez in officially benign pose. |
Our man reports on what Belafonte, Glover didn't see
By GREGORY LAUFER
of TheColumnists.com
I recently had occasion
to spend a month trekking solo around one of our southern neighbors,
rebaptized the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by its notoriously
firebrand leader, Hugo Chavez.
I wasn’t the only gringo who flew south for the winter to
a land where gasoline is cheaper than water and a bottle of beer
costs 40 cents.
One of the most widely circulated national dailies, El Nacional, detailed the visit to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, of a mixed bag of 14 American personalities. Our respective agendas were, however, at great variance. I had no plan other than to pack as much fun into my too-short respite from law school.
My compatriots, on the other hand, included
such non-political luminaries as actors Harry Belafonte and Danny
Glover. They had convened to take firsthand stock of Chavez’s
so-called Bolivarian revolution. Herded around by the Venezuelan
ambassador to the United States and a clutch of government ministers,
these social leaders and human rights activists, as the local
press enthusiastically pinned them, “decided to come to
see what is really happening with our own eyes.”
The contingent completed a light-speed circuit through the country’s
infamous districts or barrios for the poor, which Chavez
has pledged to improve. They're also the neighborhoods where
he mines most of his political support.
Part of Chavez’s initiative is a program known as “Barrios Adentro” (“Into the Barrios”), which has overseen the construction of reading centers and medical clinics in some of Venezuela’s toughest neighborhoods. Venezuelans with even average analytical competence--that is, most of the administration’s detractors--acknowledge that Chavez has been blessed with sky-high oil prices. In a country where oil sales account for a staggering chunk of revenues, the recent surge in worldwide oil prices is a windfall for the government and manna for Chavez.
Chavez strategically doles out monetary gifts to his supporters (often during electoral periods) and has been able to lend a helping hand across the Caribbean to Cuba and down through the Andes to Bolivia.
His extra-national initiatives have not gone unnoticed at home. The Venezuelan opposition--weak and diffuse by most accounts--has wondered aloud, though without obvious effect on the pro-government hoi polloi, about why money is being sent abroad when there are so many needy within the country’s borders.
The government hasn’t responded to
these questions head-on. Given its astoundingly high approval
ratings, it needn’t bother. In any case, the answer is clear:
Chavez, surrounded by yes men, fancies himself a counterweight
to the American empire and President Bush, who Chavez has taken
to calling “Mr. Danger.” Chavez is only too eager to
assume his place on the international stage.
The American contingent attended conferences and were led through
city slums and state-run cooperatives by their handlers, who
no doubt scripted the trip so as to blind their guests to the
country’s decay. Afterward, Belafonte announced, “There
are many places in the world where they don’t speak well
of President Chavez, or the efforts he is making for the Venezuelan
people.”
Belafonte added that President Bush is actually “the greatest
terrorist in the world” and then vowed the support of millions
of Americans for Chavez’s revolution. (How many Americans
actually know the difference between Venezuela and other countries
in the region?)
At least by the news accounts I read, not once did any of the Americans question how it is that in the seven years since Chavez came to power, there has been no appreciable change in the number of Venezuelans living in poverty. State-sponsored cooperatives aside, there has been no entrepreneurial boom.
Indeed, one of Chavez’s most divisive
acts--and most celebrated by the poor--has been hise sanctioning
of the “informal” market. This has led to a pell-mell
metastasis in central Caracas of street vendors huckstering tee-shirts
and sneakers and making smooth navigation impossible. The Americans
commented on none of this, confining themselves to puffing up
their hosts and making vituperative remarks about the Bush administration.
Unlike the American contingent, I walked the streets of the Caracas
barrios on my own terms and without bodyguards in tow.
In past trips to Latin America, I have also ambled through the
shantytowns of Mexico City, Bogotá, Lima, Quito and La
Paz. Caracas’ might well take the prize for being the filthiest,
most depressing, and most dangerous assembly of haphazardly built,
ramshackle cinder-block-and-corrugated-tin dwellings I have ever
seen in the Americas. True, I saw medical clinics and reading
centers. The fruits of Barrio Adentro are admittedly visible.
But healthcare and literacy do not alone make for a prosperous
society.
Most recently, anti-war militant Cindy Sheehan, her appetite
for the limelight now irrevocably whetted, appeared side-by-side
with Chavez during his weekly televised tirade called “Hello,
President,” in which he boasts to his people of the many
projects the government is undertaking on their behalf. Whether
Chavez was using Sheehan or vice versa is hard to say; mutual
parasitism may best describe their relationship.
Chavez got to parade before millions of his impoverished subjects
a bona fide Yankee whose apostasy toward her own government lends
de facto credence to Bolivarian principles, while Sheehan
got yet another round of free group therapy and an opportunity
to ignite what she has already professed to be a futile campaign
to be the next senator from California.
Strangely, not one of Chavez’s recent guests commented on
how difficult it was getting either into or out of Caracas. I
suppose that most of them didn’t read the local newspapers,
which for the last several weeks have blazoned on their front
pages headlines and photographs about the collapse of a viaduct
that linked the capital to the country’s main airport, Maiquetía,
about twenty-eight kilometers north. (I actually had to change
my flight to leave out of Maracaibo, the country’s second-largest
city).
Successive governments have known about the viaduct’s structural
defects for at least two decades, but, for lack of funds, innovation,
and impetus, they ignored the festering problem. For all of Chavez’s
bombast about social infrastructure projects, he, too, stonewalled
in the face of engineers’ negative prognoses, preferring
instead to hobnob with Fidel Castro and propping up leftist candidates
like Evo Morales.
Getting to the airport now can take four to six hours along a two-lane, unlit, snaky mountain road. Importing vital goods to the capital has been hampered at great inconvenience and expense. And thousands of Venezuelans have been cut off from school, work, family and friends. (The only benefit to come out of this calamity is the conversion of the national highway on both ends of the viaduct, which now has zero traffic, into a makeshift soccer field).
I don’t know how Belafonte et al traveled
around. My guess is that they, unlike the Venezuelan everyman
they came to meet, did not have to suffer this mess.
Apparently, some of our more notable countrymen don’t just
need to be re-schooled in history; an unbiased lesson in current
events is also very much in order. Then again, we could just
ask them to stick to calypso and acting, which, unlike politics,
they understand rather well.
Gregory Laufer is a graduate student in law at Cornell University who has toured extensively in Latin America. This is his seventh column for us.
©2006 by Gregory Laufer.
This column first posted Feb. 6, 2006.
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