Stratfor carries an analysis on Chavez today that I find way off the mark. They say:
"Chavez has
fundamentally changed the nature of Venezuelan politics. His election was a
response to the growing ineffectiveness of the two-party system that dominated
Venezuela during the 20th century. His prioritization of Venezuela's poor
population gave him an unrivaled power base but also empowered Venezuelan
communities and redistributed oil wealth. In many ways, Chavez has become the
father figure of Venezuela. The majority of Venezuelans will mourn his passing".
I take exception
to this statement. Chavez is the return to a style of Venezuelan politics that
we felt was gone forever, that of the “caudillo”, messianic leader who promises
the quick fix to the poor for tomorrow, knowing that he cannot deliver, that
tomorrow never comes. It is true that
his ascent o power was triggered by dissappointment with an ineffective
democracy but remedies can be worse than the illness, as all thinking
Venezuelans realize. His policy of handouts, contrary to what the report
affirms, has only given the poor an illusion of well-being, money in their
pockets but not better living conditions an certainly a very dangerous
environment where almost 20,000 Venezuelans are being murdered every year. Handouts
are not the manner to redistribute oil wealth since structural social investment
is simply replaced by non- reproductive social expenditure. Chavez is not a true father figure. If anything he is a Godfather figure, a la Corleone, distributing cash but not empowering the poor to become creators of wealth. Venezuelans who will mourn his passing are those who cannot fend for themselves and have to rely on the Godfather, in exchange for their total subservience.
9 comentarios:
Así estaremos de jodidos en la percepción internacional de nuestra real situación que Stratfor dice tal enormidad. No cabe duda, el chavismo hizo los deberes, como diría un español, contando con la chequera de todos nosotros, que han manejado como les ha salido del forro.
Además, otra pesadilla más: ya empieza la hediondez a culto a la personalidad post-mortem, a "no llores por mí Argentina" (Vnezuela, para el caso). Los bandidos están muy interesados en crear el mito (en el sentido de conjunto de creencias e imágenes idealizadas que se forman alrededor de un personaje o fenómeno y que le convierten en modelo o prototipo) para aferrarse al poder. Y con ayuditas ¿inesperadas? como la de Stratfor...
Isn't Stratfor the private intelligence company that got hacked a couple of years back spilling the list of its clients? What a joke.
Its founder George Friedman recently wrote a book: "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century". Worth a read if only because it is hilarious. Here is a fellow way out on Alpha Centauri. This dude however is laughing all the way to the bank with loaded clients such as the Pentagon and other Washington big shots.
I can not believe Stratfor wrote this.....But if it did, it shows a very superficial analysis of chavez and his totalitaristic way of handling Venezuela.
Shame on you Stratfor, your analysis stinks, to put it mildly.
I do believe that Chavez has fundamentally changed the nature of Venezuelan politics, as it is indicated by Stratfor today. During the 14 years of government, democracy was transformed into autocracy. The violation of Venezuela in all fields, politics, health, legal, social, historical, cultural, economic, etc enforced the creation of an unemployed manpower that helps preserve the most perverse and inefficient government that the country has faced in many, many years. I wonder who paid for this publication. I wonder if anyone knows about the reactivation of the international public relation firm that is in charge of "cleaning" the dirty face of the Chavez government. Maybe the writer has not been informed that Venezuela imports 87% of all goods from "the evil United States". The author of the article ignores that in 2012, 21.692 people were assessinated in Venezuela, that Caracas is the most expensive city in the Latin America, and that we have a good record of double digits in inflation. I wish Stratford publishes a summary of all indexes that do not speak in favor or support the silly and ridiculous statement. One thing I agree with them: Venezuelans will mourn Chavez's death and will keep mourning when they wake up and realize that the country economic future now belongs to China, and Russia; and that in fact, the country is no longer an independent republic because Cuba owns it finally. Whoever wrote this statement, did show an incredible ignorance of a reality.
Io non so per ché i commenti sono in inglese. Questo blog è visitato principalmente per venezuelani e non credo che sia necessario scriverne in una lingua diversa dallo spagnuolo.
Uno entiende que si el autor, Gustavo Coronel, escribe algo primero en inglés para otro sitio o si lo citado está en inglés, permanezca así, así como en los casos, que no son mayoría, de eso estoy seguro, cuando el comentarista tiene como lengua materna el inglés. Hablo y entiendo perfectamente, porsia, el inglés.
E Per ché il signore commenti in italiani?
Esta nota va en inglés porque es una carta que le envié a Stratfor sobre su artículo. Pero algunas veces deseo escribir algo informativo para lectores de habla inglesa. Tengo alrededor de un 30% de lectores en USA y Europa y no se cuantos hablan español.
Io non parlo el italiano má me piace la Italia, Firenze, Puccini, Boticelli y los spaguettis.
It's time for a rant.
Chavez certainly has changed Venezuela and, it might be added, the region as a whole, but not in any way for the better.
The economic data says that Venezuelans are seeing the purchasing power of their incomes collapse after five currency devaluations, which have created an inflation rate higher than any country in the region. And that's only the start of the bad news. Venezuelan private investment in the country has been declining steadily for the last five years or so and government investment, which has been rising, has still resulted in declining GDP, as the recent economic reports and forecasts have made clear. The store shelves are frequently empty, goods and services are not uniformly available at any constant rate throughout the country, and the government's ability to respond is declining--even as the price of oil rises--because the petroleum industry is a mess.
That situation isn't going to get better, it will almost certainly get worse.
And the level of political dialogue has already soured due to officially-denied yet publicly-visible press censorship and intimidation of the opposition on a huge scale. Democratic freedoms are a joke without the rule of law to enforce them and the latter does not exist.
There's so much more. . . .
Yet the liberal and progressive pundits in places like Stratfor in the more developed centers of North America and Europe continue to turn their heads away from the truth so they can still get their invitations to their kaffee klatsch get-togethers where they pat each other on the back in the truest paternalistic fashion telling themselves that only they have the vision to understand the hard sacrifices that must accompany the arrival of social justice in a nation like Venezuela. Their arrogance is a particular kind of imperialism all its own, because it assumes the inequality and backwardness of nations and peoples writ large.
And they inflict their imperial arrogance on nations like Venezuela.
May God save us from Chavista hoodlums and their kaffee klatsch allies!
Eso quedó perfectamente claro en lo que escribí: que Ud. a veces pone comentarios en inglés por los motivos que expuso, que cuando se cita un artículo lo lógico es que permanezca en inglés y que algunos comnetaristas seguramente tienen el inglés como lengua materna. Si relee mi comentario lo verá.
La boutade (eso es francés) es para mostrar que un humilde escribidor como el suscrito puede ser pedante también escribiendo en otro idioma distinto al materno, el español. No era con Ud., como podrá ver (y tampoco lo de pedante, por si acaso). A lo mejor quise hacer una broma y me salió morisqueta. Me disculpo, entonces. Y saludos. Siempre atento a sus escritos
No hay problemas. Me pareció divertido el italianazo!
Muchos saludos y gracias por entrar al blog!
Gustavo
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