Stephen Sackur provides a misleading and one-sided picture of Venezuela after a brief visit there, during which he interviewed President Hugo Chávez ("A Chat with Chávez -- Oliver Stone's New Lead Tells All," 14 June). I am the co-writer of Oliver Stone's forthcoming documentary on Chávez, South of the Border, and was present throughout the interview.
Sackur says that Chávez "categorically denied claims frequently aired in the U.S. that Venezuela is supplying Iran with uranium." But Venezuela does not even produce uranium, as Chávez told him during the interview.
Sackur paints a distorted picture of economic failure under the Chávez government. "In the capital's sprawling hillside barrios, jobs are scarce," he says. But jobs are much less scarce today than when Chávez took office, with 8% unemployment v. 15%... There were very large increases in access to education at all levels, including a doubling of enrollment in higher education...income inequality under Chávez was reduced more than anywhere in Latin America. By 2008 Venezuela had the most equal distribution of income in the region...
Most of the western world thinks that Venezuela is some kind of dictatorship where Chávez has made people poorer. They have no idea why he has been re-elected twice, each time by a larger majority. This kind of reporting explains why they are so misinformed; sadly, it is all too typical...
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan. He has written numerous research papers on economic policy, especially on Latin America and international economic policy. He is also co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and president of Just Foreign Policy. This article was first published in the Guardian on 22 June 2010 and republished by CEPR under a Creative Commons license.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/weisbrot230610.html 
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