NOTHINGLAND—OR VENEZUELA?

[Say_What]

Beautiful...

<clips>

NOTHINGLAND—OR VENEZUELA?
EDUARDO GALEANO

A strange dictator, this Hugo Chávez. A masochist, with suicidal tendencies: he established a constitution that allows the people to get rid of him, and then took the risk of this happening in a recall referendum, which Venezuela is the first country in history to have held. He was not punished: 5,800,629 Venezuelans voted for him to remain president, with 3,989,008 against—a margin of 19 per cent. This was the eighth election Chávez has won in five years, with a transparency of which Bush could only have dreamed.

Faithful to his own constitution, Chávez accepted the referendum called by the opposition, and put his presidency at the disposal of the people: ‘You decide’. Until now, presidencies have been interrupted only by death, putsches, popular uprisings or parliamentary proceedings. The Venezuelan referendum has ushered in an unprecedented form of direct democracy. An extraordinary event: how many leaders would be brave enough to do such a thing? And how many would remain in power afterwards?

This tyrant invented by the mass media, this fearsome demon, has just given a tremendous vitamin-injection to democracy, which, both in Latin America and elsewhere, has become rickety and enfeebled. A month prior to the referendum, the 81-year-old former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, that flawless democrat whom the media so adore (despite his impeachment on corruption charges), openly called for a coup d’état. In an interview from his Miami base—in which he also argued that Chávez should ‘die like a dog’—he stated in the plainest terms that ‘the path of violence’ was the only possible one for Venezuela, and discounted the referendum because ‘it is not part of Latin America’s specific character’. Our specific character or, in other words, our precious heritage: a deaf and dumb populace.

Until only a few years ago, Venezuelans went to the beach when there were elections. Voting was not, and still is not, compulsory. But the country has gone from total apathy to total enthusiasm. The torrent of voters, standing in the sun for hours in enormous queues, overwhelmed the structures that had been put in place by the electoral authorities. The turnout was 70 per cent, up from an average of 55 per cent in previous elections. The democratic flood also made it difficult to use, as had been planned, the latest technology for preventing ballot fraud, in this country where the dead have the bad habit of turning out to vote, and where some of the living vote several times.

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR26302.shtml

[LdyGuique]

1. tsk tsk, how perfidious -- a tyrant who misuses elections

and actually wins with a huge bulge of the popular vote. :)

[Say_What]

2. Where the People Voted Against Fear

Galeano is such a great writer.

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Where the People Voted Against Fear
by Eduardo Galeano

From the January 2005 issue of The Progressive . . .

A few days before the election of the President of the planet in North America, in South America elections and a plebiscite were held in a little-known, almost secret country called Uruguay. In these elections, for the first time in the country's history, the left won. And in the plebiscite, for the first time in world history, the privatization of water was rejected by popular vote, asserting that water is the right of all people.

The movement headed by President-elect Tabare Vazquez ended the monopoly of the two traditional parties--the Blanco and the Colorado parties--which governed Uruguay since the creation of the universe.

And after each election you would hear this exclamation: ''I thought that we Blancos won but it turns out we Colorados did"--or the other way around. Out of opportunism, yes, but also because after so many years of ruling together, the two parties had fused into one, disguised as two.

Tired of being cheated, this time the people made use of that little-used instrument, common sense. The people asked, Why do they promise change yet ask us to chose between the same and the same? Why didn't they make any of these changes in the eternity they have been in power?

Never had the abyss between the real country and electioneering rhetoric been so evident. In the real country, badly wounded, where the only growth is in the number of emigrants and beggars, the majority chose to cover their ears to block out the oratory of these Martians competing for the government of Jupiter with highfalutin words imported from the moon.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1113-20.htm

[bemildred]

3. Senor Galeano is superb.

His trilogy (Memory of Fire) on Latin American history is a must read.

[Say_What]

4. We should start a thread of Eduardo's works :-)

Alarcon interview part 3 is at Progreso--don't know if you posted it yet or not.

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau_ant&otherweek=1109829600

[bemildred]

5. Someone (not I) put it up a few days back.

A bit more cognitive disconnect for Americanos.

[Say_What]

6. Do you remember where it was? n/t

[bemildred]

8. Found it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=109361

[Say_What]

9. Thanks! I thought you meant a thread about Galeano :-) n/t

[yebrent]

7. South America is the untold story of the Bush Presidency.

Under Bush the Lessor, we are quickly losing control of South America, and this is a very good thing. (Sometimes I'm glad Bush's head is in the Middle East, unlike Reagan, who seemed to obsess about Central and South America)

I have a funny feeling that South America will soon be THE beacon of progressive hope and the primary birth place of new progressive ideas of government and social structure. Many South American governments seem to be the loudest critics among "developing" Countries against globalization and the rich making fortunes off the backs of the poor. If they continue to work together, they could potentially create serious financial problems for the international corporate conglomerates that have ruled South America for so long.

During my lifetime South America could become the model continent for progressives the world over.