Chavez: Demon or Democrat? [View All]

The Bush Administration's -- and our national media's -- demonization of the democratically elected Chavez is due to his refusal to allow the Bush administration or its operatives in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), such as Paul Wolfowitz, to dictate Venezuela's economic policies.

Bush's free market policies are calculated to increase the wealth and power of his global capitalist friends and donors (such as the Carlyle Group and American oil industries) while reducing the majority of the population to poverty.

Chavez has pushed back, not only on behalf of Venezuela, but on behalf of South America as a whole. He envisions a continent free from economic slavery and focused on improving the quality of life for all its inhabitants.

Chavez has dared to help other South American countries to escape the confiscatory high interest loans from the IMF by loaning them the money to pay off the IMF loans at reasonable interest rates and with no requirement that the countries privatize their national resources or cut back on social welfare programs, two of the IMF's favorite loan conditions (c.f."Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", Berrett-Koelher, 2004).

Venezuela's new Constitution, drafted by an elected assembly in 1999, provides an impressive array of rights and liberties to its citizens, indeed more than those provided in the U.S. Constitution, and sets up an Ombudsman to insure that the government respects them. (see English language version at http://tinyurl.com/yedotn). And, unlike under the Bush regime, everyone is guaranteed access to its courts for the protection of their constitutional rights, rights which can not be rescinded under any circumstances. (See Const. Article 27 above). All governing officials are democratically elected and all legislation is considered and passed by a democratically elected National Assembly.

Perhaps Chavez's major crime, in the eyes of the Bush Administration, our national media and Venezuelan elites, is that he has committed the dangerous act of using the profits from the country's oil resources to bring free health care, universal literacy, low cost food, public housing and job training to the millions of Venezuelans who never had access to such things before his 1998 election. They would have us believe that such "irresponsible" policies are devastating the Venezuelan economy. The opposite is true, private business is booming in Venezuela and its economy is growing at the rate of 12% a year.

What is the real danger Chavez presents to U.S. neo-conservatives and their corporate friends? The danger that, if Americans knew the truth, they might begin demanding the same freedoms and benefits provided by Chavez's democratic Venezuela.