If you hate Hugo Chavez, then FIGHT what created him-U.S. imperialism in the Americas.

[Ken Burch]

Hugo Chavez gets a lot of stick from those who say they dislike his "authoritarianism".

But if they really want to stop what they see as authoritarianism, those who hate Chavez and the methods he has used need to do something they have so far refused to do...study the history of this hemisphere.

The choices Chavez made were not arbitrary...they were not random...they were based on his study and analysis of over a century of American arrogance and intervention throughout Latin America.

They were shaped by every economic blockade we launched, every coup we staged, every corporate theft of wealth and resources, every aggressive action our leaders ever took throughout the hemisphere.

It was that heritage that drove him to the choices some so sanctimoniously object to here...the lack of ABSOLUTE democratic purity(as if there have been many Latin American countries that were democratic utopias), the distrust of opponents, the attempts to limit propaganda against his revolution and in favor of restoring the right-wing past.

If you don't want to see any more Chavezes, then work like hell to get THIS country to do what it should always have done...LEAVE THE AMERICAS ALONE!

If we had a democratic hemisphere, a hemisphere where governments could get elected and carry out the program it promised to bring in for the people, , WITHOUT the risk of blockade or coup, WITHOUT "trade deals" that force that government to rule for "El Norte" rather than the good of those who elected it, there would be no need for the kind of things that Hugo Chavez felt he had to do.

It was never about Chavez being a willing despot(if he's a despot at all). Nor was it ever about him wanting power for power's sake...the man isn't Stalin, or even Napoleon. It's about the choices a small, poor country has to make when trying to stand up for its rights against an arrogant U.S. regime(this isn't said about any particular administration, since we've never had a U.S. administration with a decent, progressive policy towards Latin America).

To stop the things that offend your precious "democratic sensibilities", you have to take your stand against centuries of arrogance on the part of OUR country.

And if you won't do that, you have no right to condemn what countries to our south do to preserve their sovereignty and their dignity...because you will have helped force them to do those things.

It really is that simple.

[Tempest]

1. It wasn't just Chavez in Venezuela

-BOLIVIA: Evo Morales
-BRAZIL: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
-ARGENTINA: Nestor Kirchner
-URUGUAY: Tabare Vazquez
-CHILE: Michelle Bachelet

All leftist leaders who came to power from a result of imperialism and their puppet dictators.

[Ken Burch]

2. Morales and Vasquez(and also Correa of Ecuador) are hated by the same people who hate Chavez.

Morales, Vasquez and Correa are guilty of not deferring to American wishes.

Those who denounce them approve of Lula, Kirchner and Bachelet, and hold them up as "the 'good progressives'" because those three surrendered to capital and gave up on any real program of social transformation-they "know their place".

You are right that all came to power as a response to imperialism, though...it's just that the people of Brazil, Chile and Argentina were betrayed by the leaders THEY elected-the ones who caved in.

[Tempest]

4. Damn, I forgot Correa.

And as far as Lula, do you have cites to him surrendering capital and giving up on real social transformation?

I'd like to see what you have because it contradicts what I've read on his government.

[malaise]

25. Ding ding we have a winner

[HarveyDarkey]

3. I greatly admire him

and I'm also, to the best of my ability, fighting the US imperialism and hegemony in this hemisphere, not to mention worldwide.

[Ken Burch]

10. Glad to hear it. If you get that, you aren't the sort of person this thread is aimed at.

Thanks for your post.

[I Cant Dance]

5. But I don't hate him. He is the democratically elected President of

Last edited Sun Mar 3, 2013, 01:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Venezuela who has presided over a time of economic prosperity for most of his people. Incomes are up, poverty is down, inequality is down, infant mortality rates have declined, unemployment is down, debt is down, and substantial educational gains have been made.
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2009-02.pdf

I really don't understand why many Americans demonize him. (Actually I do understand why. Many Americans cannot live without boogeyman).

[Ken Burch]

8. Good. This isn't aimed at you.

It's about those who see themselves as "more democratic than thou" who make sanctimonious comments about "authoritarian leaders", and who delude themselves into thinking that it's possible to make meaningful change in Latin America, thanks to the history of U.S. domination, without taking some steps that might not be suffeciently "pure" on
some notion of mythical democratic perfection that doesn't exist anywhere in the world.

Chavez is mainly demonized in the U.S. because he won't defer to us. That's what it's really about-the notion that THIS country is entitled to call the tune throughout the hemisphere.

[Judi Lynn]

6. The best thing anyone could do who feels deep rancor is to actually learn LatAm history.

Once people have even a glimmering of what has happened in Latin America at the hands of U.S.American meddling, sabotage, destroying leftist elected leaders, giving substantial multi-level support to overthrowing entire governments, staffing Latin American newspapers with CIA, as they did starting at least as far back as El Mercurio, owned by Augustin Edwards in Chile, to first prevent Salvador Allende's election, then to undermine him, then to mold perception to support the murderous, torture loving, death squad user General Augusto Pinochet (as only ONE example), his U.S.-backed replacement, it will become automatic to want to look for more and more information, as much as possible in the time available.

People who haven't bothered to look don't realize the vast scope of what has happened without acknowledgement by our corporate media working in the service of the U.S. State Department at all times. Spoon fed calculated, manipulated, measured propaganda can never satisfy a healthy mind.

Why wait for decades until the information finally becomes well known, through the Freedom of Information Act, declassified documents, etc., when you can start learning now, on your own?

Once you have a clue, you can't be at rest, morally, until you know the truth, or as much as possible.

It takes a whole lot of confusion to compel U.S. Americans to leap to these hostile positions they adopt regarding leftist Latin American leaders. It's about time to take the initiative and start working themselves out of their easily misled perceptions, if they have even the slightest doubt they know the truth about US and everything south of the U.S. border.

I appreciate this thread. Thank you.

[Ken Burch]

9. And thank you, Judi, for fighting the good fight here for such a long time.

Some "liberals" really live in a bubble, don't they?

[Deep13]

11. So, our first step is...what now? nt

[Ken Burch]

13. 1) Learn the history if you don't know it.

2)Accept that the United States must simply be ONE country in this hemisphere...no more important than any other, and with no right to impose its will on the rest of the hemisphere;

3)Do all that you can to organize against the idea that the United States has the right to treat this hemisphere as "our sphere of influence", that our leaders are entitled to insist that the resources and wealth of the hemisphere go to OUR billionaires, rather than to the people who live in the countries where those resources exist and where that wealth is taken from.

4)Tie that in with the idea that our truest hope of prosperity and stability lies in accepting that people throughout the hemisphere have a RIGHT to a decent standard of living, and a right to be treated with dignity and respect...we will truly be a strong country and country with a good life for all only when we stop trying to deny those things to the countries south of us.

That's a start. Go ahead and go to work and keep up with your laundry while you're at it.

[Deep13]

23. Sure, I accept all that.

But thinking and doing aren't the same thing.

[Ken Burch]

29. No, but the action follows the thought.

Everybody needs to find their own forms of action, and with as many other people as possible.

This isn't just about Latin America...it's about US, as well.

It's about whether the wealth is shared by all, or hoarded by the few.

[reformist2]

12. Those who hate Chavez probably think we should just get a bigger stick.

Sorry to say, many Americans only care about democracy inside the US - and even then, more for their own groups than others.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. A lot of Americans just mindlessly repeat what they hear and see in the media

It's as simple as that.

[truebluegreen]

26. And many Americans who only care about democracy inside the US

wouldn't recognize it if they fell over it.

[Ken Burch]

27. For them "democracy" means "capitalism".

[Whisp]

15. I have no problem with Chavez, I have a Lot of problems with some U.S. warmongering shitbags.

and bagettes.

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. Exactly so. From the "Banana Wars" of the late 19th - early 20th centuries through our despicable

actions through the 1950s, we created the atrocity that spawned South and Central America's enmity toward us, just as we are doing right now in the ME.

Here we are a century after we sowed the seeds of ill will in what should be our allies, still trying to bend them to our will, and in the century to come our great grandchildren will still be paying the price for our crimes in the ME and Central Asia.

[Whisp]

17. anyone who smells sulphur when speaking of Bush the Lesser is okay in my books. n/t

[Brother Buzz]

18. You are a donkey, Mr Danger

[upi402]

31. He is even more disgusted with Bush than me

It's the fault of the media that a dolt like Bush was ever elected the 1st time.
We need a real media here. We need someone to make it happen here, like they stopped the propaganda there.

[Cleita]

19. If you hate Chavez and Morales, you have bought into the

model our industrial corporate exploiters of South America want you to buy into. We, the British and other colonial exploiters of the Americas don't like leaders who fight them and kick them out of their countries like Chavez is doing his best with the oil companies and Morales with mining interests. They prefer corrupt dictators who do what they want them to and allow them to exploit their countries' natural resources for their own profit while the poor citizens of those countries go hungry. We seem to like those guys just fine, yet most of them are no better than the North Korean dictators.

As far as Chavez being a despot, he has been elected every time in very fair and open elections as has Morales and those elections are far less corrupt than ours have been over the years since the selection of George Bush. I think we need to clean our own house before we start nosying in others.

[MrModerate]

20. America's record in central and south America is dismal, for sure . . . But:

US policy is hardly the only factor at play or even the most important. History has a lot of 'splainin' to do, and not just Yanqui history.

And saying that the US should stay out of Latin America is both impossible, unreasonable, and unwise. The US and Latin American economies are interdependent on many, many levels. We as a nation and as individuals — and Latin American nations and individuals — are mutually dependent.

And we live in each others' back yards.

I think your cry shouldn't be "stay out," but rather "don't be evil" or "don't be stupid."

And if so, I agree with you.

With regard to Chavez, I don't think he's anything even remotely resembling a Venezuelan patriot. He wanted to extend Chavismo over the entire region; he wanted to, eventually, do to his neighbors what Hitler did to his. And only Chavez' illness prevented a cosmic smashup that would have occurred whether the US was involved or not.

[Ken Burch]

28. "he wanted to, eventually, do to his neighbors what Hitler did to his"?

I had actually found a lot of common ground with what you'd written up to then...but...really? really?

You're saying Hugo Chavez wants to turn people in to lampshades?

As Stewie Griffin would ask "What The Deuce?".

[MrModerate]

32. No, not the lampshade part . . .

Thus highlighting once again the rhetorical risk of invoking Hitler. I meant bind them into a Chavez-led hegemony.

[Ken Burch]

33. I'm not sure I'd call it a "hegemony"-Chavez' idea was more like an anti-imperialist alliance.

And there is something to be said for the countries of Latin America setting up their own economic alliance and financial sector so they will be less subject to pressures to conform to neoliberalism from the U.S. and Europe.

What you've actually let yourself be persuaded by mainstream discourse into doing in that passage was to demonize any group of countries that ended up allying themselves against the Anglo-Euro-American corporate agenda-you simply assumed, on one level, that any grouping of Latin American countries against the status quo from the North was morally equivalent to the Axis in World War II.

I do hope you'll de-Godwin your post now.

[cartach]

21. No wonder

so many in this world of ours hate the "Ugly American".

[catnhatnh]

22. This time of the year in New England,

they run an advertisement with Joseph Kennedy slamming most oil companies and thanking Citgo, Hugo Chavez, and the Venezuelan people for the gift of heating oil for low income New Englanders. Every time I see it I laugh at how the Chavez haters asses are being chapped. And I remember that we low income folk up here have so much more than the poor throughout South America.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

24. We can't fund the arts in schools, they are frivolous.

But look at what "La Sistema" (the orchestra system that starts 100,000 slum kids on an instrument at age five in Venezuela) produces. Founded by economist Jose Antonio Abreu:

The Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel:

Gustavo Dudamel is now the Principal Conductor of the L.A. Philharmonic, and he's just a kid!! He's a product of La Sistema as a violinist. Another program has been created in Los Angeles for kids.

I learned teamwork and split-second timing in orchestra--I hated sports.

[upi402]

30. We murder their elected leaders

and install "leaders" our corporations tell the CIA to install.

Rinse, repeat.

Then a "coup" organized by the corrupt elites gets turned around, and POOF! Chavez is a rat bastard. LOL



We can't even inform Americans enough to stop Bush from being re-selected. Not hopeful.

[geek tragedy]

34. Promote positive, stable institutions and defund the militaries.

Look what an awful mess Honduras is compared to Costa Rica (which has its own issues, but still)

One man can never be the solution.

[Ken Burch]

36. Good thoughts.

And, in Venezuela it isn't simply about one man...the attacks on Chavez are really attacks on the workers and poor of Venezuela for getting a share of the decision-making power for themselves, for reshaping their own destinies.

Capriles will try and put a stop to that if he ever becomes president-and even the most "liberal" of U.S. presidents would be likely to back him, simply because he'll invoke the hammer-and-sickle "C word" to scare them into it.

[geek tragedy]

40. It's about a lot more than Chavez--essentially a class struggle.

But, he's made himself indispensable. If the medical prognosis is as dire as it seems, what institutional reforms will have been put in place?

The problem with rule by even a benevolent President with sweeping powers is that everything he does can be done away with by his successor.

Whoever the Venezuelan people choose should be respected by the US. But that respect should be conditional on that president supporting all human rights, including economic ones.

[Ken Burch]

41. You're right that it's about much, much more than him.

Of course, even without sweeping powers, everything a benevolent president does can be swept away by a U.S.-backed coup(see Chile, 1973).

[geek tragedy]

42. True that. My worry isn't the USG getting involved so much as

international corporations doing so.

[Ken Burch]

43. Both will, for both are deeply intertwined.

The boundaries between "the state" and "the corporations" are now hopelessly blurred in the "free market" world.

[a la izquierda]

35. I teach Latin American history for a living.

I love the wheels turning in my students' heads when I bring up Che, Fidel, Chavez and Morales.

[Ken Burch]

37. Good for you.

I've always loved your posting name, by the way.

[a la izquierda]

38. Thanks...

and thanks for posting this, by the way. I am always amazed how little many Americans know about Latin America. I don't know why...Americans don't know their own history.

[Ken Burch]

39. We like to think that we are free from history.

That whatever this country does as a nation is different and better(even if its what other countries have done)simply because it happens to be US doing it.

That's a really bad habit of mind.

Like some less-aware Christians, Americans need to accept that we are OF this world, not apart from it.