Hugo Chavez: A socialist in bad times

His anti-Americanism took the better of him in his faulty analysis of the Arab Spring. He brazenly supported Moammer Gaddafi

The President of the Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez (58), who passed away on March 5, was a rare leader of our times. Attached to common people, he belonged to an almost extinct breed who kept faith in socialism. He called his variety of socialism ‘The Bolivarian socialism for the twenty-first century’. [Bolivar is a historical South American revolutionary.]

He built his political movement from bottom up among the toilers of the indigenous Venezuelans (Indians!). Thus, ignoring the fortunate class which combines wealth to a sense of racial superiority rooted in its imperialist Spanish origins. Millions of the poor in his country did not have citizenship cards (and the benefits it brings) before his reign. He was doing this when most of the socialist renegades have been playing it safe and smart, making stupid bargains altering and dimming the agenda of social change. The fall of the Soviet Union stigmatized socialism for them and they no longer believed in a future for the toilers of the earth.

Chavez was brave in reaching to the have-nots. The former US President, Jimmy Carter, paid Hugo a tribute saying that our disagreement with him would not blind us from seeing that he elevated half of his country's poor to a descent living. His example was followed by a leftist generation governing in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia. This is the generation that abandoned the politics of taking up to arms in the jungle and storming coups and committed itself to a historical compromise with other political forces in their countries.

This generation took the path of democracy to power. Chavez began as a leader of a botched coup in 1992 and landed in prison. On his release, he formed his revolutionary party and won the elections in 1999 and 2006. He for a third time for the office in 2012 in violation of the constitutional mandate. This unconstitutionality did not endear him to many, including some of his admirers.

He was unrelentingly anti-US and keen on the independence of his country. He might be excused in this by the fact that the US insulted Latin Americans by managing their countries as ‘banana republics’. He was right in his hostility to imperialism when he severed relations with Israel after its barbarism in Gaza.

But his anti-Americanism took the better of him in his faulty analysis of the Arab Spring. He brazenly supported Moammer Gaddafi, his friend. The NATO's intervention in Libya to stop the mad Gaddafi from killing his people did not sit well with Chavez. He sided with the man and protested his death and called him a martyr: ‘They killed him. This is another audacity. And we will always remember Gaddafi as a great fighter and a revolutionary and a martyr’. Slow down, man!

It is said that Chavez shall be mourned by supporters and opponents alike as a Christ. In the eyes of his supporters, he is a messiah who poured money into the poor's pockets. His  opponents viewed him as a 'Christ' because his absorption in his mission blinded him from being a statesman.. However, those committed to the wretched of the earth will for ever remember the day the working people reinstated him in power after a failed elite coup against him in 2002.

Chavez left us his deputy Nicolas Maduro, a very well-bodied young man who worked as a driver before joining the trade union movement and Chavez's party. It is hoped that he will take advantage of his newness and build bridges to the US and lessen the enmity between the two countries. He needs also to pacify the domestic opposition whose frustration with Chavez was extreme and unforgiving, and correct his country's stand on the Arab Spring. These measures might seem difficult to achieve for a successor of Hugo Chavez. But they are crucial for the Venezuelan toilers' movement to advance without major setbacks and the realization of the ‘Bolivarian socialism for the twenty-first century’.

(Translated by Engr. Yousif Z.A. Ali)