Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Good for Chavez, good for Jamaica

From what I can tell, via news sources, personal sources who either know Venezuela well or are in Venezuela (or both, of course), it's still unclear whether Chavez is good for Venezuela and the region. I've discovered three basic things:

1. The US appears to want to use Colombia next door to VZ as a power tool to continue chopping away at the Chavez government -- this according to a Colombian contact. Pat Robertson's threat was just stupidity from a stupid man. But there is indeed a reality to the American desire to overthrow Chavez, mainly because, a la Cold War ideology, the guy's a socialist and he's influential among the lower classes especially throughout Latin American. He looks increasingly like a replacement for the aging Fidel as a leader in the region against American domination. The US doesn't like this at all. Plus, Chavez has a clever knack for getting the American administration's goat (his offer of oil for poor Americans, his offer of Katrina relief help (which the US declined), his insistence on extraditing Cuban terrorists from Florida who had blown up a commerical plane killing something like 170 people, thus exposing American hypocrisy in dealing with terrorists). So, there's a multi-faceted powerplay and Chavez is simply a smarter man than Bush.

2. Chavez has developed pro-poor policies that are both popular and, in many cases, very successful. He has also instituted some serious environmental reform. Unlike Bush administration enviro reforms (where reading between the lines means giving Bush cronies their way on the environment -- i.e., develop it all), Chavez's have been truly conservation-oriented and, it appears, from the view that the natural environment is a national heritage rather than private property to disposed of as oil companies, miners, and loggers see fit. Further, he has included indigenous peoples in deliberations over environmental protections, thus integrating the real problem of conjoining livelihoods on fragile lands with conservation of those lands.

3. Apparently, in practice, according to one Venezuelan source, the rich still get richer and the poor poorer, while the middle class hangs onto its position. So, the pragmatic outcome does not yet appear to follow the rhetoric and newly instituted policies. Maybe Chavez is indeed a demagogue, but institutional reform also takes time in order to see concrete results, whether they're viewed as positive or negative results.

4. Chavez's idea of democracy is one combined with a more benign form of socialism. He is an innovator and experimentalist, from what I can tell. If we look to the Scandinavian countries, we can see this has great benefits for the population as a whole. Norway and Sweden, with high taxes (thus scaring off a priori any rational discussion of that kind of social reform on the part of Americans), both have a very high quality of life (best in the world), good health plans and social services, healthy environments, good employment rates, an innovative private sector and a creative culture, and lots of rather good-looking people. I may be entirely wrong -- Chavez could turn out to be a demagogue -- but it seems to me at present that his model runs more towards a Latinized Scandinavian version than the American keep-the-poor-poor democratic-capitalistic plan. Of course, Latin America has terrible poverty, so the road is uphill most of the way. American poor only come to the American public consciousness when disasters like Katrina happen. And the rightwingers in the US are already claiming that they were too "stupid" to leave the path of the hurricane. That's how the US treats its poor under conservative and even much "liberal" government.

5. Chavez is playing great regional geopolitics. Much better than Bush, who pretty much everyone now detests for being a lying and using schmuck who'll happily and ignorantly stab a friend in the back (Vincente Fox, Tony Blair, even Ken Lay, etc.). Bush doesn't understand a thing about the world or alliances beyond cronyism; never did. Remember, he didn't know who the president of Pakistan was during the debates. We have elementary school debates where the kids can do better than that. On the subject of cronyism -- the old-timey criticism of corrupt latin American and African nations -- the Bush administration has done its best to make us even more "Third World." The recent Katrina management firings or resignations or more-time-with-the-families-isms are just one more example of a five-year history of cronyism, abuse of power, and mismanagement of national funds and human lives. Chavez comes nowhere near Bush in this regard.

6. Chavez is worth watching. Not only for administration-type concerns about the growth of socialism. Get over that, Cold Warrior dinosaurs. Our world, pragmatically-speaking, needs some innovate experiments combining elements of democracy, socialism, new environmental and development thinking, and innovative corporate practices. They exist out there. I meet folks doing interesting work in these areas every week. Some have even spent time discussing their ideas in VZ.

7. I've been graciously invited to Venezuela this fall as John Dewey Chair in Democracy Studies. This has been set up as a genuine dialogue on innovative ideas for democratic reforms that tackle other kinds of problems which many established democratic countries allow to languish as if having elections means you've achieved the end-state of democracy. I'll hold seminars, give a series of lectures, and part of these will be to other university faculty and students, others are open to the public. I'm told the public is highly engaged in discussing new ideas. I'm excited about this trip for both what I hope I can share and for what I'll learn. The very fact that it's the "John Dewey Chair" is exciting in itself. Dewey was perhaps America's greatest democratic theorist (apart from maybe Jefferson and a handful of others -- I'd even include Walt Whitman in that small group), and Dewey was the great pragmatist experimentalist in terms of the democratic idea itself, democratic reform and techniques, education and social reform, political philosophy more generally, and then, of course, his critiques of standing, moribund epistemological theories, metaphysics, logic, and religion. One of the greatest of American thinkers. And nearly completely forgotten by our political leaders because they live in the dead-zone of a nominally "democratic" status quo Dewey abhorred as ultimately the downfall of a dynamic democracy.

8. VZ is an oil-rich state that has tried to find discover new ways to redistribute the wealth of a natural resource and national heritage. The US, led by this administration, has seen oil executives's salaries grow exponentially while American citizens pay more and more for oil-based products, most immediately gas prices. The political rhetoric is then "dependence on foreign oil." Yes, that's a problem. But it's code language for more drilling in the US, and not for making the next step beyond a petroleum-dependent economy and country. Only a few have made any efforts in that direction, British Petroleum leading the way.

Below is some recent news from the pan-Caribbean oil distribution plan Chavez is organizing. Note one thing in particular -- the concern from the US is a loss of influence in the region.Note one other thing -- these arepiss-poor countries dependent largely on being American tourist playgrounds. Jamaica has seen its agricultural industry collapse in the name of free trade with the US. Its economy has largely dissolved into tourism and selling ganja to American Spring-Breakers acting like idiots in a country that's not their own. Chavez is offering something longer-lasting. If he gains further influence, so be it. But if it helps these countries out of their static economic, debt-laden positions, so much the better. And isn't that what the American-style globalization-liberalization global plan was supposed to yield anyway?
KINGSTON, Jamaica -- With oil prices near record highs and a U.S.-backed free-trade pact for the Western Hemisphere on hold, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is offering cash-strapped Caribbean countries affordable fuel, debt relief and anti-poverty funding.

Thirteen countries have signed on to Chavez's PetroCaribe initiative, which some leaders say is an attempt by the Venezuelan populist to boost his influence in a region where his nemesis, the United States, has long been the main trading partner.

Of the 14 active member states of the Caribbean Community, or Caricom, only Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have declined to participate. Other leaders from throughout the region, who gathered in the Jamaican resort of Montego Bay last week to inaugurate the new energy trading project, said their participation was based purely on economic self-interest.

"One way or another, we're going to be part of it because it affords benefits that cannot be found anywhere else," said Phillip Paulwell, Jamaica's minister of commerce, science and technology and the newly appointed vice president of PetroCaribe's administrative council. "This is a good deal for the economy and for the country."

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