Re: NYTimes.com Article: Hugo Chávez

this says a lot more about the NYT and the whole press mess than it does 
about Chavez et al
gunder frank

On Thu, 6 Mar 2003 threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

> Date: Thu,  6 Mar 2003 08:48:27 -0500 (EST)
> From: threehegemons@aol.com
> To: wsn@csf.colorado.edu
> Subject: [ISO-8859-1]  NYTimes.com Article: Hugo Chávez [ISO-8859-1] and
>     the Limits of Democracy 
> 
> This article from NYTimes.com 
> has been sent to you by threehegemons@aol.com.
> 
> 
> "The international community became adept at monitoring elections and 
>ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The Venezuelan experience illustrates 
>the urgency of setting up equally effective mechanisms to validate a 
>government's practices."
> 
> This article is evidence of a factor not often discussed in understanding the 
>current situation:  the modern day equivalent of the 'comprador bourgeoisie', 
>praying the 'international community' will rescue them from the masses should 
>the latter actually succeed in attaining a democratic voice.
> 
> Steven Sherman
> 
> 
> threehegemons@aol.com
> 
> 
> Hugo Chávez and the Limits of Democracy
> 
> March 5, 2003
> By MOISÉS NAÍM 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> WASHINGTON - For decades Venezuela was a backwater,
> uninteresting to the outside world. It could not compete
> for international attention with nearby countries where
> superpowers staged proxy wars, or where military juntas
> "disappeared" thousands of opponents, or where the economy
> regularly crashed. Venezuela was stable. Its oil fueled an
> economy that enjoyed the world's highest growth rate from
> 1950 to 1980 and it boasted a higher per-capita income than
> Spain from 1928 to 1984. Venezuela was one of the
> longest-lived democracies in Latin America. 
> 
> Venezuela is no longer boring. It has become a nightmare
> for its people and a threat not just to its neighbors but
> to the United States and even Europe. A strike in its oil
> industry has contributed to a rise in gasoline prices at
> the worst possible time. Hasil Muhammad Rahaham-Alan, a
> Venezuelan citizen, was detained last month at a London
> airport as he arrived from Caracas carrying a hand grenade
> in his luggage. A week later, President Hugo Chávez praised
> the arrest orders of two opposition leaders who had been
> instrumental in organizing the strike, saying they "should
> have been jailed a long time ago." Mr. Chávez has helped to
> create an environment where stateless international
> networks whose business is terror, guns or drugs feel at
> home. 
> 
> Venezuela has also become a laboratory where the accepted
> wisdom of the 1990's is being tested - and often
> discredited. The first tenet to fall is the belief that the
> United States has almost unlimited influence in South
> America. As one of its main oil suppliers and a close
> neighbor has careened out of control, America has been a
> conspicuously inconsequential bystander. 
> 
> And it is not just the United States. The United Nations,
> agencies like the Organization of American States and the
> International Monetary Fund, or the international press -
> all have stood by and watched. In the 1990's there was a
> hope that these institutions could prevent, or at least
> contain, some of the ugly malignancies that lead nations to
> self-destruct. 
> 
> Instead, the most influential foreign influence in
> Venezuela is from the 1960's: Fidel Castro. The marriage of
> convenience between Cuba and Venezuela is rooted in the
> close personal relationship between the two leaders, with
> Mr. Castro playing the role of mentor to his younger
> Venezuelan admirer. Cuba desperately needs Venezuelan oil,
> while the Chávez administration depends on Cuba's
> experience in staging, managing or repressing political
> turmoil. 
> 
> Another belief of the 1990's was that global economic
> forces would force democratically elected leaders to pursue
> responsible economic policies. Yet Mr. Chávez, a
> democratically elected president, has been willing to
> tolerate international economic isolation - with disastrous
> results for Venezuela's poor - in exchange for greater
> power at home. 
> 
> The 21st century was not supposed to engender a Latin
> American president with a red beret. Instead of obsessing
> about luring private capital, he scares it away. Rather
> than strengthening ties with the United States, he
> befriends Cuba. Such behavior was supposed to have been
> made obsolete by the democratization, economic deregulation
> and globalization of the 1990's. 
> 
> Venezuela is an improbable country to have fallen into this
> political abyss. It is vast, wealthy, relatively modern and
> cosmopolitan, with a strong private sector and a
> homogeneous mixed-race population with little history of
> conflict. Democracy was supposed to have prevented its
> decline into a failed state. Yet once President Chávez
> gained control over the government, his rule became
> exclusionary and profoundly undemocratic. 
> 
> Under Mr. Chávez, Venezuela is a powerful reminder that
> elections are necessary but not sufficient for democracy,
> and that even longstanding democracies can unravel
> overnight. A government's legitimacy flows not only from
> the ballot box but also from the way it conducts itself.
> Accountability and institutional restraints and balances
> are needed. 
> 
>   
> The international community became adept at monitoring
> elections and ensuring their legitimacy in the 1990's. The
> Venezuelan experience illustrates the urgency of setting up
> equally effective mechanisms to validate a government's
> practices. 
> 
> The often stealthy transgressions of Mr. Chávez have
> unleashed a powerful expression of what is perhaps the only
> trend of the 1990's still visible in Venezuela: civil
> society. In today's Venezuela millions of once politically
> indifferent citizens stage almost daily marches and rallies
> larger than those that forced the early resignations of
> other democratically presidents around the world. 
> 
> This is not a traditional opposition movement. It is an
> inchoate network of people from all social classes and
> walks of life, who are organized in loosely coordinated
> units and who do not have any other ambition than to stop a
> president who has made their country unlivable. Two out of
> three Venezuelans living under the poverty line oppose
> President Chávez, according to a Venezuelan survey released
> in January. 
> 
> This amorphous movement is new to politics and vulnerable
> to manipulation by traditional politicians and interest
> groups. For example, last year a military faction took
> advantage of a huge but civil anti-Chávez march and staged
> a coup that ousted the president for almost two days. By
> rejecting the antidemocratic measures adopted by the
> would-be new president, the leader of a business
> association, the movement helped bring about his quick
> downfall. 
> 
> Today the Venezuelan opposition consists of several
> factions, some of which have participated in talks with the
> government. Yet it is a mistake to equate these formal
> bodies with the widespread and largely leaderless,
> self-organizing movement that has emerged in Venezuela.
> Many foreign observers discount the opposition as mostly
> rich or middle class, a coup-prone coalition of
> opportunistic politicians. 
> 
> No doubt some protesters fit this ugly profile. Nor is
> there any doubt that the Venezuelan opposition is clumsy
> and prone to blunders. Still, it has helped millions of
> Venezuelans awaken to the fact that for too many years they
> have been mere inhabitants of their own country. Now they
> demand to be citizens, and feel they have the right to oust
> through democratic means a president who has wrought havoc
> on their country. 
> 
> It is a measure of Venezuela's toxic political climate that
> even though the constitution allows for early elections,
> and even though President Chávez has promised that he will
> abide by this provision, the great majority of Venezuelans
> don't believe him. They are convinced that in August, when
> the constitution contemplates a referendum on the
> president, the government will resort to delaying tactics
> and dirty tricks. With international attention elsewhere,
> Mr. Chávez will use his power to forestall an election and
> ignore the constitution. 
> 
> Venezuela's citizens have been heroically peaceful and
> civil in their quest. All they ask is that they be given a
> chance to vote. The world should do its best to ensure that
> they have that opportunity. 
> 
> 
> Moisés Naím, minister of trade and industry of Venezuela
> from 1989 to 1990, is editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
> 
> 
>http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/opinion/05NAIM.html?ex=1047958507&ei=1&en=541e2fea9cb243d0
> 
> 
> 
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> 




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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
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Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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