Venezuelans Bleed Under Socialist Oppression

Venezuelans Bleed Under Socialist Oppression
March 10, 2014 by David Paulin

Massive and bloody anti-government protests have been roiling Venezuela
for more than a month – provoked by an out-of-control murder rate, food
shortages, and myriad instances of inept governance. But that didn't
stop a rogues' gallery of Latin leftists, including Cuban President Raul
Castro, from turning up in Caracas to honor the late Hugo Chávez on the
first anniversary of the Venezuelan leader's death.

Security forces and pro-government militias have responded with a
vengeance against the protesters, leaving at least 21 dead and hundreds
injured. Most were students.

The tear gas, rubber bullets and Chavista thugs on motorcycles, however,
were out of sight and mind for Castro and fellow leftists, including
Bolivian President Evo Morales and his Nicaraguan counterpart Daniel
Ortega. Like Castro, they enjoyed Chávez's oil largess over the years.
Chávez had promoted himself as the savior of Venezuela's poor yet gave
away billions of dollars of their oil wealth as a way to expand his
influence and build alliances against the United States. The firebrand
socialist, famous for his colorful anti-American broadsides, died a year
ago of cancer, on March 5th, at age 58.

A couple of Hollywood heavy weights – director Oliver Stone and actor
Danny Glover – lent their celebrity to Wednesday's ceremonies that
included a military parade and civic events. Glover and Stone considered
Chávez a friend and ideological soulmate.

Chávez's hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro – a 51-year-old former
bus driver and union leader – led the ceremonies at "El Comandante's"
sacred tomb – situated in a former military museum in Caracas that had
served as the command center for a disorganized and bloody coup attempt
that Lt. Colonel Hugo Chávez led on February 4, 1992, against a
democratic government.

"Hugo Chávez was, without a doubt, the great leader who brought
democracy. Never in history has there been a leader who so authentically
loved the people of this country," Maduro told cheering Chávez
loyalists. The ceremony featured goose-steeping soldiers, columns of
tanks, and low-flying Russian Sukhoi jets.

A lavish spectacle, it came amid the economic and social chaos produced
by what Chávez called "21st Century Socialism," and the
bread-and-circuses populism is being deepened by Maduro in the oil-rich
yet impoverished South American nation. Venezuela has long been a prize
for Cuba, which sponsored leftist insurgences there in the 1960s. Now,
socialist Venezuela has come to look more and more like Cuba, where
basic goods also are scarce.

Ironically, Chávez had portrayed himself during his first presidential
campaign as a moderate seeking a "third way" between capitalism and
socialism. Claiming he'd traded the bullet for the ballet, he pledged to
reverse declining living standards and root out Venezuela's rampant
corruption. But months after his landslide election victory, he did an
about-face, praising Cuba's communism and forming a close friendship
with Fidel Castro. Soon he was forming anti-American alliances with
Middle Eastern strongmen such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's
Moammar Gadhafi. He nationalized large swaths of the economy in
Venezuela; or to be precise: the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Early
into his first term, Chávez insisted on the name change — inspired by
Venezulea's aristocratic independence hero Simón Bolivar — as he pushed
through a rewritten constitution in a Congress packed with his loyalists.

As for Venezuela's corruption, Chávez took it to new heights by allowing
for the emergence of a new social class; what a Venezuelan journalist
famously called the "Boliburguesía" — a portmanteau of the word's
Bolivarian and bourgeoisie. As has been reported often over the years,
in print and broadcast media, they became rich overnight thanks to
sweetheart contacts, cronyism, and corruption.

Glover, however, spoke only of Chávez as a man of the people to
enthusiastic applause from Chávez loyalists. "His memory lives with us
through the work that you do as citizens of this great nation," he said.

Stone didn't attend but in an interview with a local news outlet talked
wistfully of his departed friend Hugo. "I miss Chávez, miss his spirit
and presence," he said. Stone allowed his documentary film, "My Amigo
Hugo," to premier on Venezuela television. (The government required all
television stations, both state-owned and private, to broadcast it.)

An information war is underway. Government censorship – including
twitter and Internet outages – have been another weapon the government
has used in its battle against the protesters whom Stone compared to
"the right-wing Cuban exiles in southern Florida." Later, he complained
that he'd been subjected to "verbal violence" over his support for the
Chávez and Maduro regimes.

Social media, for its part, has helped organize the protests and shown
the world the brutal handiwork of Venezuela's security forces. Twitter's
SOSVenezuela has buzzed with photos claiming to show Cuban troops and
military aircraft in Venezuela. Opposition protesters are convinced that
Cubans are participating in the repressive crack-down against students.
Over the years, Chávez invited many Cuban security agents and advisers
into the country to help solidify his socialist rule.

Bread and circuses populism has a long history in Venezuela, as does
statism and authoritarianism. But Chávez took these things to new
heights. Now after 11 years of Chávez, and one year of Maduro, who is
doubling down on Chávez's policies, Venezuela is sliding toward basket
case status. It has one of the world's worst murder rates. Shortages of
basic goods — including milk, medicines, and toilet paper – are common
due to currency exchange and price controls that have made it
unprofitable for business to import goods. And things are bound to get
worse after recent government edicts requiring retailers and businesses
to offer government-set "fair prices." "Good Morning, Communism!"
declared the respected newsletter VenEcomony after analyzing the impact
of Maduro's recent "economic war" against supposedly bourgeoisie
retailers and businessmen. Maduro has called the opposition "fascists"
and dupes of "Yankee imperialists."

Venezuela has become a polarized country divided into two ideological
camps, thanks mainly to class-warrior Chávez. And last month, opposition
leader Leopoldo López, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated politician and
former mayor, was sent to jail on trumped up charges, including murder
and inciting rioters, for having lent his support to the ongoing street
protests.

"HE WHO tires, loses": that was the slogan printed on a T-shirt worn by
López when he was arrested among a sea of supporters. To Maduro's
outrage, López had urged protesters to continue taking their grievances
to the streets with peaceful protests; it's the only option they have
left against an authoritarian government. Unarmed student demonstrators
have been using two valuable weapons: twitter (#SOSVenezuea) and
YouTube. Powerful videos like this have gone viral:



In last April's presidential election, Maduro prevailed over López by a
razor-thing 50.6 percent of the vote. Protesters rightly believe that
López ought to be leading the country in light of Chávez and Maduro's
demagoguery and populism on top of illegal campaign spending and threats
against state employees who supported opposition candidates.

Students come mainly from the middle-class and have been the backbone of
the nationwide protest movement. It started in early February in San
Cristóbal, a college town in the Andean mountains of 650,000, following
the sexual assault of a female student. Initially, the protests were
provoked by out-of-control crime. But as they spread to every major city
in Venezuela, students added additional grievances to their manifesto –
corruption, electrical blackouts, and other quality-of-life issues. Here
and there, there have been reports in social media of the protests
spreading to working-class areas that have been traditional Chávez
strongholds.

But the hope of pulling off a Ukrainian-style revolution seems remote.
The military is with Maduro, by all accounts. The students and other
protesters are a minority; and so far their rage has been vented mainly
against the symptoms of bread and circuses socialism – not against the
system itself; and that system is without a doubt corrupt. It revolves
in part around the popular belief, especially among the poor majority,
that Venezuelans ought to be rich and entitled by dint of their oil
wealth — an impossibility in Venezuela today. It's a sirens song – the
paradox of plenty, as some call it – that keeps free-market policies at
bay, keeps power concentrated in the hands of a few, and lends itself to
a mentality that blames others. In this culture, anti-Americanism
flourishes. Free-market policies and investor-friendly laws, on the
other hand, would create wealth – far more than could be pumped out of
the ground.

The prophetic warning of Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, a Venezuelan
intellectual who was instrumental in founding OPEC, is often cited and
worth quoting in respect to Venezuela's long decline and current crisis.
"Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see: oil will bring
us ruin… Oil is the Devil's excrement."

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