The Shape of Collapse, #4: Latin America
by Jason GodeskyIf there’s a part of the world where the hopes of avoiding collapse are coalescing, it’s undoubtedly Latin America. From Cuba’s permacultural revolution, to Venezuela’s oil supply, to Brazil’s ethanol, the hopes for helping civilization stick around a little longer all linger in Latin America. Unfortunately, what’s good at avoiding collapse is rarely good for human beings; collapse is, after all, an economizing process that improves quality of life. The mixture of brutal dictatorships alongside the best hopes for continuing civilization is no mere coincidence.
Cuba
Even social progressives impressed by Cuba’s social programs cannot deny the brutality of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. In 1965, Castro opened labor camps for “social deviants”—including homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Of course, embargoes and isolation have usually served to empower dictators by impoverishing their countries, as the Iraqi embargo empowered Saddam Hussein. The same has happened in Cuba. But the collapse of the USSR cut off much of Cuba’s food supply.
In the Caribbean, neither the history of colonial domination, including slavery and monoculture agriculture based on export crops, nor the climate, tropical and unsuitable for feed-grain production, allow for the easy satisfaction of food needs with local production. This has been made more difficult by the post-1990 disintegration of the Soviet Union, which resulted in the collapse of Cuban exports and imports and the loss of the preferential terms of trade of Cuban sugar for Soviet oil. In addition, during this time there has been a tighter U.S. blockade and increasing U.S. hostility. This is the “periodo especial” (special period) announced by Fidel Castro in 1990.1
“Peak Moment” episode #27, “Learning from Cuba’s Response to Peak Oil,” featuring Megan Quinn from the Community Solution.
By 1993, the average Cuban was taking in only 1,863 kilocalories, with just 46 grams of protein. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) considers 2,400 kilocalories and 72 grams of protein per day to be sufficient.2 The response was an urban permaculture project on a scale the likes of which the world has never before seen. Abandoned lots were turned into community gardens with imported soil, rooftop, backyard and porch gardens provided food, and organic agriculture grew food without the need to import extra materials. By 2000, the average Cuban diet included 2,600 kilocalories a day, though the usual challenge of horticultural societies—how to get enough protein—is still evident in the fact that the Cuban diet still lags behind the FAO’s recommendation of 72 grams of protein per day, providing only 68 (though still a clear improvement over 1993 figures).3
To give you an example: In 1991 the food production reached 0.9 kilos per square metre. In 1994 we achieved 3 kilos per square metre, solely by using organic methods of agriculture. Families have become self sufficient in beans, tomatoes, corn, honey etc.
Excess production is sold on the free market, which is a new government initiative. So about 30% of necessary foodstuffs can be supplied by the community itself.
The benefits have been not only in more produce, but new social relations were created. There is a strong sense of solidarity and collectivity, and the barter system is commonly used for food exchange. The community as a whole is healthier, and gardening has become an enjoyable recreational activity.4
90% of Havana’s fresh produce is grown inside the city, and it provides 30% of its total food supply. This is a massive improvement, though it also clearly falls short of the notion sometimes touted that permaculture could make a city self-sufficient. Cuba still relies on food imports.
The US government wants to starve the Cuban people into submission. Cuba, like other countries, has to rely on trade to supplement its own food production. The Cuban government guarantees one free litre of milk per day for each child under eight years of age. Some of this milk has to be imported from Canada, or as far away as New Zealand. Our import costs are therefore very high.5
Venezuela
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez is one of Fidel Castro’s biggest fans. He’s not a Communist, but he is an ardent socialist, and from the far-right point of view of the United States, the two are as indistinguishable as the Democrats and Republicans are to the rest of the world. The U.S. media has consistently been more interested in propoganda about Chávez than the facts, trying to paint him as crazy, while at home he is celebrated as a third world savior able to stand up to American imperialism and globalization. There is plenty of real things in Chávez’s past to criticize him for, though; like when he said to famed terrorist Carlos the Jackal, “My doctor has told me that my spirit must nourish itself on danger to preserve my sanity, in the manner that God intended, with this stormy revolution to guide me in my great destiny.”6 Chávez is unquestionably a dictator and local strong man who’s dismantled may of the democratic practices in Venezuela. He’s absolutely paranoid, but he also may have good reason to be—the 2002 coup was almost certainly backed by the U.S., and his government undoubtedly is frequently undermined by American interests, and the interests of the rich, white minority that he’s unseated.
But that’s also what makes him such a controversial figure. Chávez’s enemies are largely the same people who have exploited Venezuela’s population for decades, and the furor with which they hate Chávez is directly proportional to how effectively he’s halted their predations.
Within a relatively short period of time—and amidst considerable opposition—Chavez’s rural and urban land reform measures have given millions of peasants, urban poor and indigenous people increased economic security and a leg-up out of poverty and squalor. The agricultural development law introduced at the end of 2001 is shaking up an unjust land tenure system where less than 2% of the population owns 60% of the land. …
The land reform laws are thoroughly despised by the Venezuelan landowning elite and capitalist class, who have denounced it as an act of “Castrocommunism” and an attempt to introduce “Cuban slavery”. One of the very first things the leaders of the failed 2002 coup did was attempt to overturn these laws.7
Before Chávez, a small, white minority ruled the country, oppressing a large, darker-skinned peasantry that made up most of the country’s population. Chávez changed that, much to the chagrin of the small, white minority. Greg Palast described one of the “massive protests” portrayed in the U.S. media as a sign of popular resentment against Chávez’s dictatorship. He attended such a march, as well as another march, 20 times larger, in support of Chávez. He also noticed some differences in demographics.
Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers in Venezuela. Note their color. White.
And not just any white. A creamy rich white.
I interviewed them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.
And the color of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola nuts—just like their hero, their President Chavez. They wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts.8
There is no doubt that Chávez is a dictator. The real question is, does he actually embody that long-rumored mythical creature, the benevolent dictator? To date, Chávez has used his power to return land, power and prosperity to Venezuela’s oppressed majority, and to remove it from the hands of largely foreign and foreign-backed magnates who once controlled the country. This is also why Chávez is so hated by the United States: he defies the neocolonial order. He’s seeing to Venezuela’s interests before ours. This is an extremely dangerous situation for a country as oil-rich as Venezuela.
Venezuela has an oil economy. It is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and its oil reserves are among the top ten in the world. Oil typically generates 80 percent of the country’s total export revenue, contributes about half of the central government’s income, and is responsible for about one-third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Increases in world oil prices over the last few years have allowed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to push the government’s social program spending, expand its commercial ties to other countries, and boost his own international profile. Chavez’s anti-U.S. rhetoric has raised concern because he has threatened to stop exporting Venezuelan oil and refined petroleum products to the United States, its biggest oil-trading partner. Although Venezuela is trying to develop new markets for its crude oil, a significant short-term shift in oil relations between Venezuela and the United States is unlikely since Venezuela remains heavily dependent on oil exports to the United States.9
Chávez offered that oil wealth to Native Americans and the U.S. poor.10 He’s used more of it to bring Latin America together against U.S. meddling, and to spread his “Bolivarian Revolution.”
Venezuela is South America’s third largest market and is actively pursuing further economic integration with other countries in the region. In July 2006 it became a member of the South American trade group Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur), joining Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
- Argentina. Venezuela and Argentina have made agreements to create an investment bank for infrastructure development, as well as joint hydrocarbon exploration and development in both countries, according to Oxford Analytica. Venezuela has also purchased $3.5 billion in bonds to help pay off Argentina’s debt.
- Brazil. In 2005 Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras invested roughly $190 million in oil exploration and production in Venezuela, according to Petrobras’ website. PDVSA and Petrobras are also building an oil refinery in northeastern Brazil. Crude oil will be supplied by both countries to refine a projected 200,000 barrels per day.
- Colombia. In 2005 Venezuela and Colombia signed an agreement to build a $335 million gas pipeline to be operational in 2007. It will supply gas from northern Colombia’s La Guajira gas fields to Venezuela’s Paraguana refining complex in western Venezuela.
- Bolivia. Venezuela and Bolivia signed agreements in January and May 2006 for Venezuela to supply preferentially priced diesel and invest $1.5 billion in the Bolivian oil and gas sector in exchange for Bolivian goods and services, according to Oxford Analytica.
- Ecuador. Under agreements signed in May 2006, Venezuela is expected to refine up to 100,000 barrels of Ecuadorean crude oil per day at discount prices, according to Voice of America.
- Cuba. Commerce between Venezuela and Cuba will increase by 42 percent this year to about $1.7 billion, says Bloomberg news service. Venezuela is selling up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, discounted by as much as 40 percent.11
Venezuela has the oil and the refining capacity to perhaps smooth over its own energy descent. The question will be whether that will make Venezuela a target for invasion as the U.S. oil supply becomes tighter. Chávez seems paranoid, but he also has good reason to be. His actions are making him a savior in the third world against neocolonial domination, and bringing South America together as a region to defend itself against foreign intervention. These are precisely the right moves Venezuela would need to follow if it were preparing to defend itself against invasion.
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and his “New Bolivarians” are at the vanguard of a broader movement against economic imperialism and exploitation policy. No longer content to accept the domination of Western economic forces, the New Bolivarians are looking to nationalize resource wealth and ensure self-determination by exerting control over the very energy resources that the West so badly needs. Chavez, in cooperation with factions in Panama, Cuba, Bolivia, Peru, China and elsewhere, holds Venezuela’s massive oil and gas reserves in a new iteration of the Cold War game of Mutually Assured Destruction. Already, he has expressed his lack of interest in increasing oil output as demanded by OPEC, is actively nationalizing Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, and is preparing to divest Venezuela of Citgo in a move designed to enable Venezuela to export their heavy, sour crude to either the US or China—the high bidder gets the oil, and Venezuela wins. Chavez’s policies of using oil wealth to provide medical care and housing to Venezuela’s poor, and his agenda of land reform and wealth redistribution have made him an incredibly popular and powerful figure at home. Already the broad appeal of his Bolivarian model is spreading: Bolivia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Nigeria and other hydrocarbon-rich nations are preparing to follow suit. Chavez’s bold moves are a grave threat to a Western economic system that is dependent on one-way resource flow from the Third World. Perhaps that explains the overtly anti-Chavez US policy, or the failed assassination and coup attempts backed by the US?12
If played well, Venezuela could retain aspects of a modern, industrial society while most of the rest of the world suffers complete collapse; Venezuela could easily become one of the last major pockets of civilization in the world. Chávez’s actions are consolidating that possibility. Of course, it should come as no surprise that the last pockets of civilization should survive by the imposition of complete dictatorship. For all he’s done for the Venezuelan people, there can be no doubt that it is Chávez’s authoritarianism that will most set the mold for civilized leaders to come.
Brazil
If Chávez’s growing dictatorship is a chilling reminder of exactly what it means to escape collapse, the promise of Brazilian ethanol may be even more arresting. Brazil has been trumpeted as the poster-child of biofuel success. Brazil’s sugarcane has allowed for 40% of its gasoline consumption to be replaced with biofuels, requiring 45,000 square kilometers of sugarcane monocropping in 2000, or about the combined area of Vermont and New Hampshire. Ethanol proponents often forget that much of Brazil’s success owes to how uniquely well-adapted the climate there is to growing sugarcane.
Ethanol saves oil and reduces pollution!
The ecological effects of ethanol have hardly been positive. While the air quality in the cities improved, it was disastrously negative in the rural areas, since all those sugar cane fields needed to be burned at a certain point in the growing season. Deforestation grew from those larger sugar cane fields, growing the nation’s primary fuel. Small farms and varied agriculture were replaced with vast fields of sugar cane. And new class of seasonal workers was created.
But drive to the outskirts of Palmares Paulista and a much bleaker picture emerges of what President Lula has dubbed Brazil’s “energy revolution”. On one side, thick green plantations of sugar cane stretch out as far as the eye can see; on the other lopsided red-brick shacks crowd together, home to hundreds of impoverished workers who risk life and limb to provide the local factories with sugar cane.
Economic refugees fleeing the country’s arid and impoverished north-east, these men earn as little as 400 reais (£100) a month to provide the raw material that is fuelling this energy revolution.
Palmares Paulista is both a burgeoning agricultural town and a social catastrophe. “They arrive here with nothing,” said Valeria Gardiano, who heads the social service department in Palmares, a town of 9,000 whose population swells each year with the influx of between 4,000 and 5,000 migrant workers.
“They have the clothes on their bodies and nothing else. They bring their children with malnutrition, their ill mothers-in-law. We try to reduce the problem. But there is no way we can fix it 100%. It is total exploitation,” she said.
Activists go even further. They say the “cortadores” are effectively slaves and complain that Brazil’s ethanol industry is, in fact, a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.13
Another aspect of Brazil’s sustainability is that its ethanol use is set off by hydroelectric power. The hydroelectric program is unsustainable, though; electricity is generated by dams along the Amazon’s tributaries, which disrupts the Amazon rainforest, aggrevating global climate change. The 2001 drought, resulting directly from ecological losses of the rainforest, resulted in a 95% reduction in energy that year, as too little water flowed to power the hydroelectric dams. The response has been to build even more dams.14
The United States and Brazil are the two leading biofuel producers, but U.S. ethanol is heavily subsidized by the government. More recently, the U.S. has begun making agreements to import Brazilian ethanol—and to check Chávez’s regional ambitions.
U.S. officials said they expect to sign accords within a year that would promote technology-sharing with Brazil and encourage more Latin American neighbors to become biofuel producers and consumers.
The United States and Brazil together produce about 70 percent of the world’s ethanol, a fuel that President Bush has called a cornerstone in reducing U.S. dependence on oil.
“It’s clearly in our interests—Brazil’s and the United States’s—that we expand the global market for biofuels, particularly ethanol, and that it become a global commodity of sorts,” said R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state, who led discussions with Brazilian government officials on Wednesday.
For the United States, the initiative is more than purely economic. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has exploited regional frustrations with the market-driven economic prescriptions that the United States has promoted throughout the region for years, and he has used oil revenue to promote several regional economic alliances.15
While ethanol in the U.S. must be heavily backed by the government to be viable, the secret to Brazil’s ethanol is slave labor. Biofuels might allow Brazil and other regions where sugarcane grows well to hold out longer while the rest of the world experiences energy descent, but just like the looming shadow of authoritarianism in Venezuela, the secret to such success on the Brazilian model would be a new kind of serfdom—biofuels for the aristocracy, harvested by a growing peasantry.
Argentina
Argentina is a “neo-Europe,” as Alfred Crosby called them.16 It lies at a southerly latitude analogous to Europe’s northerly latitude, and thus has general length of day, climate, and seasonal properties similar to Europe’s. European crops adapted well, and the socio-political result of such early ecological prosperity has been a tradition of wealth in Argentina that has never been particularly common in Latin America.
Then came November 2001.
It is difficult to believe that 100 years ago, Argentina had one of the largest economies in the world, and the per capita income was about 70% of that of the United States (today, that number is about 25%). Historically being the richest country in the continent, many Argentines used to consider themselves more European than South American, although recently this attitude has begun to evaporate.
Some of the more memorable scenes from the documentary include its dire illustrations of shanty towns that look remarkably similar to those of apartheid-era South Africa, demonstrating the widening divide between the rich and the poor. Young and Dworkin also take the viewers into the street corners of Buenos Aires, where organized groups of activists, many of them unemployed, gather on a regular basis to discuss ideas and proposals for future actions, such as street demonstrations, tax revolts, land occupations, and more ambitiously, lobbying government officials to refuse additional IMF loans. Every suggestion is voted on democratically by the group, with each member having a vote.
This egalitarian form of organization mirrors many of the factories recently taken over by workers throughout the country. With the economic collapse came the abandonment of hundreds of businesses by their owners. But instead of joining the ranks of the unemployed, some workers decided to not-so-legally take control of their companies and manage them democratically, without bosses. The film examines the worker-controlled Ghelco company, Industrias Metalurgicas Y Argentina (IMPA), and the celebrated Brukman clothing factory of Buenos Aires.17
Argentina suffered a major economic collapse in November 2001, thanks to the neocolonial tinkering of the IMF. Argentina’s collapse illustrates where the scenarios of post-apocalyptic horror go awry. In times of trouble, humans instinctively form tribes to see them through. Though the economic factors that converged in November 2001 were forming for years, even decades before, and the result was quite predictable, it nonetheless was experienced as a sudden and unexpected collapse of the Argentine economy. There were protests, clashes with police, and bloody riots, but there was also cooperation and the formation of communities to deal with the aftermath. By comparison to the authoritarianism and serfdom glimpsed in the “hopeful” signs that Latin America might be able to avoid collapse (at least for a little while), the collapse that has already occured in Argentina reminds us that collapse is an economizing process that ultimately improves quality of life. Argentina still suffers from crushing poverty because of that collapse, and because it now inhabits a shadowy boundary realm where it is incapable of collapsing, but incapable also of doing otherwise.
A Regional Picture
Some of the best hopes for keeping civilization going can be found in the dictatorships and serfdoms of Latin America, and Latin America is beginning to operate more and more as a single region. That is something that frightens the United States, and could accelerate the collapse of the West by removing an important part of the neocolonial periphery to exploit. Unfortunately, too many of these factors are bound to their specific climate, like the success of biofuels, while even Venezuela’s oil supply will peak and go into decline. Latin America may offer a pocket of civilization’s survival for some time to come, but it will be largely incapable of conquering its neighbors.
The wild card for Latin America’s future will be U.S. intervention. Will the world’s last “hyperpower” use its last ounce of military strength to invade Venezuela and drain its last drops of oil, of will the emerging regional identity prove strong enough to resist an over-extended and exhausted U.S. military? If so, Latin America may well be home to centers of civilization even a century from now or more, while the rest of the world collapses to much simpler forms of organization. While North Americans are reduced to hunting, gathering and gardening in egalitarian bands and villages, Latin America may well enjoy serfdom beneath autocratic, neo-feudal lords, living in crowded cities fed with urban agriculture, biofuels, and the very last drops of heavy, sour crude.
It should serve as a reminder that there are much worse things than collapse—not collapsing being foremost among them.
Don’t be misdirected from the American media misportrayals ; Chavez has a liking for single person rule, but he’s still very far from being a dictator. Free elections, free and very critical media, that doesn’t make it a dictatorship.
Comment by Linca — 21 June 2007 @ 4:51 PM
It’s also easy to be misled in the other direction. Chávez shut down all the media except the state-controlled radio and TV stations, and is pressuring the legislature to eliminate his term limits and extend his power until 2008. He’s consolidating control under himself, eliminating any means of expressing dissent, and eroding the other parts of the Venezuelan government even faster than Bush is eroding the U.S.’s. He’s absolutely a dictator. Sure, he was voted in, but so was Hitler. Most dictators are voted in.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 4:58 PM
“Chávez shut down all the media except the state-controlled radio and TV stations”
What’s your source? The fact that Chavez has to ask the legislature to extend the term limits is proof he’s not a dictator. A dictator doesn’t have to ask, he has the power to just do it himself without authorization from parliament. Chavez has authoritarian tendencies but he’s not a dictator.
Comment by Joe Licentia — 21 June 2007 @ 5:32 PM
Chavez didn’t renew the authorization of one channel (RCTV) to emit on public hertzian network. There are still other independent channels ; RCTV still emits on satellite and cable ; newspapers are still free. (Independent and free meaning owned by the wealthy and strongly anti-Chavez elite).
As for extending term limits, that’s a mostly American features, plenty democracies including America until WWII didn’t have it.
Comment by Linca — 21 June 2007 @ 6:27 PM
Your enemy’s enemies are not necessarily your friend. Chavez can do good things for Venezuela and be an authoritarian dictator. Nobody ever said that being evil was necessarily part of being the authoritarian dictator. That hardly makes authoritarian dictatorship a model form of governance, though.
It’s a veneer, and a thin one at that. The Congress simply renews his power to rule by decree every few years. By the same token, the Roman Emperors kept the Senate around and paid lip service to it. The contrivances of democracy keep people loyal to a dictatorship long after the last vestiges of any actual popular power are gone. This is something that will be vital for U.S. citizens to remember as our government follows the same path.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 8:03 PM
I tend to agree with this. When I first heard about the Congress giving him a six-month license to rule by decree in order to implement certain reforms, my attitude was, well, if he goes back to being a constitutional president after that six months, he’s not a dictator. That he wants to extend his license so makes me inclined to agree with Jason on this issue.
It’s also worth noting that the Sandinistas (FSLN) are back in power in Nicaragua after the most recent election. They won’t have quite the grip on power they had previously, but it’s significant that they are once again the power in the land. I was a major supporter of the FSLN back during the good old daze of being a college-campus radical leftist. In retrospect, I guess they proved their willingness to abide by a constitutional system when they lost the election in 1990 and stepped down, but Daniel and Humberto Ortega as well as Tomas Borge and their faction within the FSLN had a lot to do with the authoritarian-leftist bent the Sandinista regime developed as the 80’s wore on. Another strike against the Sandinistas in my personal evaluation is that they stole a lot of property that was supposedly government-owned public property when they lost the election of 1990 in order to ensure they had funds for remaining a viable organization. But the kicker was that Daniel Ortega’s stepdaughter revealed that back in the 80’s, Ortega pressured her into giving him sexual favors (she was a teenager at the time) and used her Nicaraguan patriotism to get her to do so (Ortega being the Leader of the People and all that). After this was revealed, Ortega made a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” type deal with the head of the ruling party of the National Assembly at the time, one provision of which is that his stepdaughter’s allegations would not be investigated by the Nicaraguan authorities. That all just stinks so badly that I wouldn’t have been able to spin that one even back in the good old daze. To the Sandinistas’ credit, about half the rank-and-file party membership want that man gone. Unfortunately, the other half are the faction that supports him and his authoritarian crypto-communist bent.
On biofuels: I don’t know about teh EROEI of sugarcane ethanol, but I can say confidently that if the US were truly interested in producing a biofuel that yielded a positive EROEI, they’d be growing hemp instead of corn for that. Hemp biofuel would certainly also ultimately prove unsustainable, but corn vs. hemp biofuel is kind of like a Twinkies and Pepsi diet versus a tap-water and whole-wheat bread diet. Both will prove a bad idea in the long term, but one is clearly a vast improvement over the other.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 21 June 2007 @ 8:28 PM
It takes some very specific conditions to make biofuels EROEI-positive. Brazil might have that, but the U.S. almost certainly does not. Like so many “alternative fuels,” what works great for individuals doesn’t scale to society-wide implementations.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 8:34 PM
And since we all know what monocropping does to the land, Brazil certainly won’t have that advantage indefinitely.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 21 June 2007 @ 8:45 PM
Time isn’t a credible source on Chavez, that’s like citing Microsoft for information about primitivism. What it calls “shut[ting] down an opposition-run TV network” was the refusal to renewal the license of RCTV, as Linca said. That station openly supported the 2002 coup and, when the coup was reversed, chose to play the American movie “Pretty Woman” instead of reporting on it. Under American law, if a TV channel openly supported an attempt to overthrow the government the way RCTV did not only would it have been immediately shut down after the defeat of the coup, its managers would have been tossed in jail or executed. By American standards, Chavez is exceedingly tolerant of dissent. See http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3107
Chavez’s ability to “rule by decree” was granted for 18 months. It’s not renewed every time it comes up, Chavez was not ruling by decree before this resolution was passed. The resolution also limits his powers, it’s not carte blanche to do whatever he wants. This is not the first time Venezuelan presidents have been temporarily granted these powers - previous presidents did it in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s yet it never resulted in dictatorship. Time and other corporate news outlets didn’t pay much attention to them because they weren’t enemies of the US government. George Bush has more power than Chavez does through executive orders and signing statements, which, unlike Chavez’s “rule by decree”, were neither authorized by congress nor allowed by the constitution. See http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_eric_win_070126__22enabling_22_a_false_p.htm
See also http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3009
Chavez IS evil, but he’s not a dictator. This “dictator” stuff is a standard smear used against any country the empire doesn’t like.
Comment by Joe Licentia — 21 June 2007 @ 11:17 PM
Also, Hitler wasn’t voted into office. He lost the election for President, but was appointed Chancellor by parliament and the “lesser of two evils” President who defeated him.
Comment by Joe Licentia — 21 June 2007 @ 11:20 PM
What makes you say he’s evil?
Comment by venuspluto67 — 21 June 2007 @ 11:28 PM
No one’s pretending that TIME’s unbiased, but what would be a credible source? The state-owned media in Venezuela? He rules by decree; isn’t that, by definition, a dictator? TIME may slant the interpretation, but they don’t make things up.
What laws would those be? And why didn’t that result in the execution of Rupert Murdoch under the Clinton administration?
The Nazi party swept the Parliament on a platform of installing Hitler as chancellor. That’s pretty much being voted in.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 11:34 PM
Yeah, it’s actual the “evil” part I doubt, not the dictator part….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 June 2007 @ 11:34 PM
Credible sources would be non-american media - even Le Monde (French “paper of record”), which was very critical of RCTV’s closure, had a paper a few days later that implicitely recognised it had gone too far.
Also, the “closure” of RCTV (which actually still emits from Venezuelian territory on cable and satellite) was the non-renewal of its licence to use Hertzian airwaves.
As for government by decree, it exists in France, too. (usually the kind of things one can decree on is constitutionally limited, I’d bet it is the case in Venezuela). In countries with strong party discipline in the national assembly, government by decree isn’t that different from laws obediently voted by the parliamentary majority.
Finally, one million citizens signing a petition can demand a recall of the President, as in California ; it already happened and failed…
Comment by Linca — 22 June 2007 @ 12:19 PM
My first and arguably most personally surprising encounter with the Bolivarian Revolution was at the Ministry for Popular Participation, which was created in accord, I was told, with Chavez’s desire “that the people should take power.”
I asked the officials we interviewed, “What does that mean, that the people should take power?” After noting thousands of years of “empires obstructing people from participating in politics,” all culminating in “the North American empire,” the official said the “U.S. has had 200 years of representative government, but in your system people turn over control to others.” Instead, in Venezuela, “we humbly are proposing a system where people hold power in a participatory and protagonist democracy. We want a new kind of democracy to attain a new kind of society.”
On the wall was a diagram of their aims. It had lots of little circles, then other larger ones in another layer, and so on. The idea, they said, “was to establish numerous local grassroots assemblies or councils of citizens where people could directly express themselves.” These local councils would be the foundational components of “a new system of participatory democracy.”
The bottom layer of the vision focuses on communities with “common habits and customs,” the officials said. “We define them as comprising 200 to 400 families, or 1000 to 2000 people each.” One could of course imagine sub units within each local unit, as well, but that wasn’t immediately on their agenda, nor was it in their diagram. The local units would in turn send “elected spokespersons” to units another layer up. Units in this second layer would “encompass a broader geographic region,” and then from there, “spokespeople would be elected to another layer, and so on,” creating a network covering “parishes, municipalities, states, and the whole society.”
The participation officials, explaining their diagram and their goal, said the smallest units were meant to become “the decision-making core of the new Venezuelan polity.” Chavez and this ministry hoped to have, they said, “3,000 local assemblies in place by the new year.” Their goal was to have “enough in place, throughout the country, in 4 or 5 years, to account for 26 million Venezuelans.”
They didn’t want “a dictatorship of the proletariat or of any other kind,” they said. Strikingly, they also said they didn’t want “what Che died for, though they wanted to learn from that.” They wanted to build something new, from the bottom.
I asked, “What happens if the local assemblies want some new policy, and the ministers, legislature, or Chavez don’t want it?” “No matter,” they said, “the assemblies, once they are in place and operating, rule.”
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9067
Comment by trachys — 22 June 2007 @ 12:48 PM
You really think that American media is the only one with a bias with regards to Chávez? They’re all biased, one way or the other; some see him as a savior for socialism and the Third World, others as a madman and petty dictator grasping for power. The truth is really a little bit of both, of course. Call it a “non-renewal of Hertzian airwaves” (I’m not sure what other kinds of airwaves there are), the veneer of “polluting the public airwaves” is typical cover-up used by dictators the world over when they silence critical media.
Like your claim that it’s illegal to criticize the government in the U.S., your claim that the French Prime Minister rules by decree is also complete B.S. Fillon does not just make up laws as he sees fit; there’s a legislature.
Trachys, that sounds all very nice, and not too different from the U.S. federalist model they’re criticizing, with its breakdown into states, counties, districts and so forth. But Stalin told us he was paving the way to a classless society with no state and no rulers. Dictators often make promises like that. What a dictator promises is not nearly as important as what a dictator does.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 June 2007 @ 1:02 PM
I’m no expert on the subject, but it seems to me that, while the truth may be ‘a little bit of both,’ it’s considerably more on one side than the other in this instance. I thought the Medialens take on this was typically on the ball, focusing (as is their wont) on the Western Media:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070613_chavez_and_rctv.php
‘A May 30 Independent leader declared:
“RCTV was the sole opposition-aligned station with a national reach. Now it has gone. All governments need media opposition to keep them honest. But it appears that President Chavez does not have much time for this concept.â€?
Refusing to renew the licence of a TV channel complicit in the demolition of democracy described above is somehow “a show of intolerance� for the Independent. In fact RCTV has not “gone� - it is being allowed to continue operating by satellite and cable.
The Venezuela Information Centre (VIC) notes:
“In Britain, TV and radio must adhere to the Broadcasting Code which embodies objectives that Parliament set down in the Communications Act of 2003. This states that ‘Material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder must not be included in television or radio services‘ and that ‘Broadcasters must use their best endeavours so as not to broadcast material that could endanger lives.’ RCTV’s role in the coup would have clearly violated these laws.â€? ‘
Grist to the mill…
PS, sorry - how do you indent long quotes?
Comment by Ian M — 22 June 2007 @ 5:06 PM
<blockquote>
RCTV is not the first opposition media Chávez has shut down. It’s the latest in a long list. But more importantly, he rules by decree.1, 2 If you want to argue that he’s used his dictatorial powers well, to help the Venezuelan people, to do good things, those are all on solid ground. But he rules by decree—he dictates, and people obey. That makes him a dictator.
No one can seriously make the case that Chávez has not concentrated vast powers in his own office and acted aggressively to silence his critics. He is without a doubt an authoritarian. The mere fact that he opposes Bush (who also has undoubtable authoritarian ambitions), or has done good things for Venezuela, does not change the fact that he is an authoritarian.
I can hardly believe I actually have to point that out….
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 June 2007 @ 5:17 PM
“What laws would those be?”
The Smith Act. It makes it illegal to advocate the overthrow of the government. This was the law used to prosecute Communists & others during the second red scare. In the ’60s the courts restricted the Smith Act so that it only applied to actively inciting people to take action to overthrow the government, not mere theoretical advocacy. Actively inciting the overthrow of the government is exactly what RCTV did during the 2002 coup. Rupert Murdock never backed a coup attempt against Clinton and thus was never arrested. If there were a coup attempt in the US and a major TV station supported it you bet they’d be prosecuted.
The US government has repeatedly used far greater force, often illegally, against social movements who were nowhere near being able to overthrow the government. Haymarket, the Red Scare, Cointelpro, etc. If something like the 2002 coup took place in the US there would clearly be a wave of repression against the coup supporters at least as large as previous attempts to crush much smaller & weaker social movements. Chavez, by comparison, only prosecuted a few of the people directly involved in the coup (not any of its cheerleaders) and left the pro-coup media alone for 5 years until RCTV’s license wasn’t renewed. There are still numerous other right-wing anti-chavez TV stations and media outlets; such as Venevision, which coup leaders openly thanked on television (along with RCTV) for their support and encouragement of the coup. You say he’s shut down other opposition media – which ones? When?
Rule by decree isn’t what makes someone a dictator. Dictatorship implies the lack of free elections and a low degree of civil liberties, neither of which is the case in Venezuela. There are multi-party elections on a regular basis, the press is probably the most anti-government in the world, and there
is a nominal degree of civil liberties. If Chavez is a dictator, then so is George Bush, Tony Blair and virtually every other leader. Not only are there free multi-party elections, but the new Constitution allows the President to be recalled (something that can’t happen in the US), which the US-funded right-wing opposition used to trigger a referendum on whether he should be recalled (Chavez obviously won).
It’s true that the French constitution allows temporary “rule by decree” but this has only been used once AFAIK. In the United States the President continuously rules by decree through the use of executive orders. Nobody said it was illegal to criticize the government in the US (not since the sedition act was repealed in 1921, anyway).
Of course all sources have their biases, but we need to use basic critical thinking here. All sources should be evaluated as to what evidence they present to support their claims, whether their claims conflict with or support their bias, etc. I prefer to use sources that are independent (neither government owned nor corporate owned) like Democracy Now, Indymedia, anarchist press, etc. Of course you have to carefully evaluate them too and try to read through their biases. Time is clearly a suspicious source on why Chavez is a dictator because of their biases; similarily we should be suspicious of any pro-chavez information from Venezolana de Televisión. If either publishes information that contradicts their biases, then that information is more credible.
Reasons why Chavez is evil:
(1)He’s the leader of a state. All states are evil.
(2)He’s perpetuating wage slavery. BTW, most Venezuelans aren’t peasants – Venezuela is one of the most urbanized countries in Latin America.
(3)Chavez is only an “ardent socialist” when he talks to leftists. When be talks to businessmen he’s an ardent supporter of private property. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Argentina_Solidarity/message/5083 He describes his program as 21st Century Socialism when talking to the left and as Capitalism with a Human Face when talking to the right. Essentially he’s just advocating a mixed economy, not socialism (let alone libertarian socialism).
(4)Chavez has elements of a mild cult of personality
(5)Chavez has militaristic tendencies
(6)Even though he pays lip-service to socialism, that doesn’t stop him from making deals with multi-national corporations where he can get away with it. See http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/09/111772.shtml
(7)He has deployed soldiers against striking workers.
(8)Chavez is re-legitimizing capitalism & the state. Before Chavez the system suffered from an extreme lack of legitimacy and popular movements against corporate/state power were growing. Chavez has restored their faith in the system, thereby perpetuating oppression and preventing revolution.
(9)He still allows GMO companies like Monsanto to operate in Venezuela
(10) All the reasons given in Venezuela: Socialism to the Highest Bidder
Chavez is neither a dictator nor the savior of socialism – he is Venezuela’s FDR.
The Nazi party didn’t sweep the parliament. The Nazis never got more than 37% of the vote. Hitler came to power through back-room deals with other leaders.
Comment by Joe Licentia — 22 June 2007 @ 6:39 PM
Until the Supreme Court overturned nearly every conviction under the Smith Act in 1957, effectively overturning it.
No, dictatorship means, well, rule by decree. In the original formulation (in ancient Rome), it was formally defined for a specified period of time. Low degree of civil liberties and lack of elections are things that often follow from dictatorship, but they don’t define it. Rule by decree defines it. Hence the word, “dictatorship.” You can also have a terrible human rights record and no free elections and not be a dictatorship. Look at China.
No, the U.S. and the U.K. both have other governmental bodies that also have authority to make pronouncements with the rule of law. Bush is definitely heading in that direction himself, with signing statements and executive orders, but the fact remains that Supreme Court rulings and laws passed by Congress still have the weight of law. So Bush is not the only person who is able to say how things will be done. So he doesn’t rule by decree. So he isn’t a dictator. Same goes for Tony Blair. Chavez is a dictator, because he does rule by decree.
As much as executive orders strive to be dictatorial, they fall short because they’re just part of a larger legislative milieu. Same goes for signing statements.
I find these to be incredibly biased because they want so badly to have a hero to hold up against Bush, so they’ll overlook any number of nasty things Chavez does to keep his image shiny as “their hero.” This is every bit as mindless as the right-wing that so fanatically attacks him for looking after Venezuela’s interests.
Minor cult of personality?
The Nazi party won 43.9% of the vote in the 1933 election. This was a parliamentary system, so that’s pretty much a landslide.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 June 2007 @ 9:07 PM
I wasn’t disputing the fact that Chavez is a dictator (however benevolent), just cautioning against taking at face value the smear tactics of even nominally liberal media outlets like the BBC and The Guardian.
As for the incredible bias of the left wing / anarchist press, I don’t think we’ve been reading the same things. What I’ve seen are valuable counterbalances to the mainstream bias. I’ve not seen much in the way of personality cultism or hero worship. Maybe Pilger sometimes sails a little close to the wind for comfort, but then everybody knows you’ve got to take what he says with a pinch of salt(!):
Like you say, it doesn’t matter what we call them; it’s what they do that counts. Bush and Blair may not be dictators, but they sure act like they are.
[Check out my new HTML skills!]
Comment by Ian M — 23 June 2007 @ 10:20 AM
After that, they formed a majority with the Nationalist Party, which had about 7 or 8% of the vote. It is my understanding that by that time, the Nationalist Party’s platform was basically “Nazi-lite” anyway.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 23 June 2007 @ 12:49 PM
Totally agree with Michael M in that George Bush and Tony Blair act like dictators.
Watch this space for Gordan Brown who has been likened to Stalin - but without the courage that made Stalin such a successful bank robber in the early days - GBH does it by stealth.
Comment by Cassandrina — 23 June 2007 @ 2:32 PM
Well, I certainly agree that our sugarcane here in brazil is harvested by the ‘growing peasantry’.
Howerver our hydropower doesn’t come only from the amazon basin. Most of it comes down from Itaipu, a shared project between Paraguai and Brasil that provides most of the South and Southeast regions with electricity plus minor damns among the planalts of these regions.
Not to mention President Lula have taken a couple of economic measures called ‘Bolsas’ (Funds) who provide the overimpoverished families with a meager income for their children that are actually in school.
Unfortunately there are cities whose only income comes from age-retired old people, invalid-retired people, and in many families, form the ‘bolsas’.
Ou country already lives under economic collapse despite islands of prosperity. Informal market takes a good load of working arms, despite incentives to further years of study, many people come out of school being able to read but NOT to understand what they read, not to mention a general lack of care with our own surroundings (throwing trash down pluvial water-drainage system, connecting sewage to pluvial water system - not all cities own proper sewage systems and many throw everything in natura down riverbeds and the ocean.
the favelas are a complete social disaster, coming from since colonial times after the liberation of slaves and the substitution of negro workforce for european and jaopanese immigrants (thus solving europes adn japan’s momentary problems with their ate the time oversided and ‘undesired’ population (In a way, Europe had an agrarian redistribution by getting rid of many of their poor agricultural people by simply letting them go away… sounds easy to do…)
I expect brasil to in general fare better than many places, but I have no hopes as to the final ending. maybe the only reason why we won’t suffer much is because we never got to a high level anyway, so the fall will be ’softer’ somehow…
Comment by Denise Silveira — 23 June 2007 @ 8:36 PM
Another thing that may prove problematic about Chavez is that he’s chasing out the oil companies that run the oil fields and putting his political yes-men in charge of petroleum extraction. That may not bode well for the country’s ability to export oil.
Comment by venuspluto67 — 24 June 2007 @ 1:35 AM
How can you call a democratically elected president (Hugo Chavez ) who received over 62% of the vote in the 2007 election that was observed and certified by the Carter Center, the EU and the OAS be a dictator? He has been elected 5 times in Venezuela by an overwhelming majority. I was an observer for the election and if this country even adopted half of the security measures they practice in Venezuelan elections we
would not still be wondering how Bush ended up in office. The article on Venezuela was good but please drop the US propaganda calling him a dictator.
Comment by coslercs@gmail.com — 19 July 2007 @ 11:01 AM
You can have a democratically-elected dictator. Dictators dictate. That’s why we call them that. And Chavez has been dismantling all the checks and balances that might stop him from dictating. He rules by decree, also known as, dictating. He is the one dictating; he is the dictator. I don’t understand how so many people can have so much trouble with this. You can be a good dictator or a bad dictator; you can be democratically elected, or appointed by the legislature, or sieze power in a coup, but none of these things are what make you a dictator. If you rule by decree (a.k.a., “dictate”) then you are a dictator. Chavez rules by decree. He is a dictator. This isn’t propaganda, that’s just calling a spade a spade. He was a democratically elected dictator, and he appears to be a pretty good dictator, too. But he rules by decree. That makes him, by definition, a dictator. If that word comes with some ugly connotations, then that’s just some baggage you’ll need to sort out, because the world isn’t so black and white.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 July 2007 @ 11:40 AM
Aw, c’mon. “Dictator” has got to be one of the top 10 synonyms of “evil” in American Discourse for the last 20 years. Are you [b]really[/b] that surprised by this? It truly has a great deal of unquestioned negative baggage. I mean, think of it like this: What answers do you think you would get if you started asking people on the street what separates US politics from politics in S America or E Europe, etc? A large number of variations of “freedom” or “democratic”, certainly. I think if you get “Rule of Law”, you’ll get it from a lawyer or a politician.
Comment by jhereg — 19 July 2007 @ 12:33 PM
Well, that’s because ruling by decree is inherently problematic. Even if the decrees are, “Everyone gets sugar cones at 3:15 on Sunday,” nobody likes to be told when and where to have sugar cones, or even that it must be sugar cones and not waffle cones.
But regardless of your initial emotional reaction, it shouldn’t take more than two seconds to consider the situation and realize that fact. Particularly if you’re typing up a response, it should occur to you at some point in typing about how he’s helped the poor or how he’s democratically elected that none of these things have anything whatsoever to do with whether or not he’s a dictator.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 July 2007 @ 3:44 PM
It’s not Hugo Chavez who is a dictator. He was elected in free and fair elections. Rather it is the U.S. appointed President Bush who is a dictator. Bush was not elected in the year 2000. Had all the votes in the state of Florida been counted Bush would have lost. Bush was appointed President by a right-wing U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. It is Bush who is illegitimate and a dictator. Since Bush was appointed, he has subverted the U.S. Constitution and tried to bully nations around the world in true dictatorial fashion.
Comment by Anonymous — 19 August 2007 @ 5:50 PM
I forgot that there’s only one dictator possible at a time. Not that I necessarily disagree about Bush, but bullying other countries and not being democratically elected has not the slightest thing to do with dictatorship. You’re a dictator because you dictate, not because of how you gain power or how you act towards other countries. Moreover, this notion that it has to be either/or, as if what Bush does has any bearing whatsoever on Chavez’s dictatorship, is simply asinine. I’m using the term “dictator” in the sense that it means something, not in the sense of vacuous double-talk that amounts to “that guy I don’t like.” That’s the kind of irresponsible, meaningless rhetoric that’s gotten us into so much of the current situation.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 August 2007 @ 6:32 PM