Bolivarian Celebrations in Venezuela
By Aleksander Boyd
London 02 Apr. 04 – Nearly one year ago there was much discontent in the opposition camp owing to the presidential invitations sent to the best and brightest of the world’s left intelligentsia. The troop of ‘guests’ descended in Venezuela to bestow credibility upon Hugo Chavez, the new found Latin American hero. Richard Gott, Marc Weisbrot, Ignacio Ramonet and other rather disgraced ‘personalities’ assisted to the commemoration of the rescue of the country’s democracy.
This year, however, after having killed and tortured some and engrossed the list of missing persons, no self-respected lefty seems to be willing to go to the Bolivarian bash. I wonder why. Is PDVSA running out of money? Or has the re-incarnation of Ché lost its appeal? I really don’t know, nevertheless the list of attendees of this year’s celebration shows that Chavez has had to recourse to, literally, the final scum; the ones whose intellectual stature is not taken seriously anywhere, lest of course Venezuela’s presidential palace. I would like to give a tip to desperate PR chavistas; there’s a place in London called Speaker’s Corner. In there you may be able to find few ‘intellectuals’ eager to help you spread the anti-imperialist bullshit, even more so if you offer them incessant quantities of Polar bear and a return ticket to the Land of Grace. And should you fail to recruit people there you can always call the Global Women Strike or Trans-Africa members for Don King appears to be quite busy these days.
I have been accused of being extremely harsh and hateful towards the first world supporters of Chavez. Years ago some one back home (Venezuela) said to me that Rafael Caldera was a man of probity. He went further stating that Caldera had 4 university degrees and was certainly one of the country’s foremost intellectuals. I stood in awe. I could not believe what I was hearing from that man and the only thing I could utter was “are you bloody stupid?” He asked me why, given the credentials of Caldera. I said “precisely, I could almost forgive a disastrous running of the State by a donkey, such as Luis Herrera or Lusinchi, but how can you possibly argue in favour of Caldera and make use of such a ludicrous line of reasoning, when we all know that he is as useless as the imbeciles that preceded him in the presidency? Furthermore, being his government more corrupt than previous ones, how can the man’s probity even be mentioned?”
A similar argument can be applied to these self-appointed ‘experts’ in Venezuelan affairs. If one is to take into consideration the credentials of some of them we must conclude that either they pay their way out of university or the education system in first world countries is so rotten that it allows such individuals to gain credentials that otherwise would mean probity, honesty, rectitude and high ethic values. I do not know whether you have realised how often these pundits are referred to as “Latin American experts” or worse still “Venezuelan maestros.” Who gave them that title though? What makes them so damn infallible? For most of them would die if they were to live in their own countries with a Chavez-like pariah. They continue ranting about the US invasion, the CIA coup, what CAP did 15 years ago, as if Venezuelans are cursed for ever and ever to suffer from incompetent leaders just because we had them in the past.
The entirety of their reasoning could be encapsulated as such “since previous governments were corrupt, useless, disregarded the constitution and were immensely selfish vis-à-vis the poor it is all right for Chavez to do as he pleases.” The aspect they seem to have forgotten is that Chavez was not elected to continue with the maladministration. If I remember correctly he was going to “fry up a few politician’s heads,” he was going to build an egalitarian society, he was going to rescue -in his first year at the helm- the street kids, he was going to build houses for the poor, the macro-economy was going to be given priority…
A couple of days ago I received an e-mail by some ‘Fulbright Scholar’ in which he defended his pro-chavez position owing to his beliefs. Let me stress that I do not find anything wrong with that, what is fundamentally evil is trying to obviate the gross failure of Chavez knowingly. Mind you chavista apologists maintain that there are not political prisoners in the country. However the uncle of my wife continues in detention for no reason. General Martinez is under arrest since 2002 without reason, 9 activists are in jail in Tachira State since 2002 for no reason. The constitution is being systematically violated with total impunity, alas they can see none of it. The head of the Constitutional Chamber can extra-limit his powers and piss all over the constitution, but that’s OK. CNE officials can disregard rulings from the Supreme Court, but that’s fine. The Attorney General is a presidential lackey, no problem with that at all. However they want us to believe that Sumate, after receiving 54K, was going to oust the government of the fifth largest oil producer of the world. US intervention is unacceptable but it’s all right to bring in 20.000 Cubans and send 73.000 barrels of oil per day to Fidelito for free. Give me a fucking break…
For this and other reasons I can have nothing but contempt and profound revulsion for this so-called defenders of Chavez, simply educated human scoriae.
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