Most Americans don't understand Latin America. Why bother? It's just a confusing jumble of left-wing... no, right-wing... oh whatever! Google the news for Guatemala or Uruguay and you get political corruption stories or soccer scores.
Venezuela contains everything you need to know about Latin America. It was a peaceful, stable democracy where the rich oligarchs crapped all over the poor while calling it "capitalism" and "democracy." This paved the way for Colonel Hugo Chavez to knock over the government and declare a revolution of the people. He was jailed for his efforts, but won election to the presidency six years later because the rich and powerful didn't take his candidacy seriously enough to get a corrupt judge to block it.
Well, ten years later, the poor are still poor, and the right-wing oligarchs have been replaced by the left-wing oligarchs. Vanessa Neumann reports from Caracas that the Chavez effect is wearing thin.
Reminds me of that line from the song by The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."Meanwhile the Chavistas, as the president's fans are known, buy so many Hummers that the vehicles have their own assembly plant in Venezuela.
Petro-money has seen sales of Rolexes rise sevenfold and clubs like Sawu, where the new elite pour Johnnie Walker Blue - that elixir of the ultra rich - into their Coca-Colas, flourish.
The fact that the institutions of privilege have merely changed hands increasingly angers ordinary people who were promised everything and have been given very little.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
2 comments:
That's an embarrassing oversimplification of many years of history.
Also, your conclusion was that communism is as good as capitalism in that part of the world. I don't even know if you are aware of what your typing on these posts anymore.
As you have pointed out so many times, this is not a scholarly site. I write about things and post links to what I am writing about.
When a small group hijacks a country for its own purposes, it doesn't matter what the ideology is. They can call it capitalism or socialism, but it's really just about lining the pockets of the powerful (whoever they happen to be at the time)
So, Mr Latin American Expert, please set things straight for us, based on your years of experience in that region.
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