Here's a small distillation:
The students with whom I talked about Arendt's praise in On Violence for the American and European student movements of the 1960s--and her staunch critique of the worship of economic solutions and of the violence that marred the movement--were very interested in her views on how a protest movement could become a movement for lasting change. I portrayed Arendt as an advocate of genuine power- creating participatory democracy, which she thought fostered a kind of immunity to violence and to the confusion of power and violence, and this struck a chord. The students go out to demonstrate in black T-shirts with white handprints front and back, and they paint their palms white so they can hold them up to the police and the military, signifying "don't attack us, we're not attacking you." (Chávez certainly gets this, as he has among his aides a professional semiologist!) I met a young woman, an art student making her political debut as a T-shirt designer, who told me, tearfully, that she is so "hurt in my heart" because Chávez says the students are spoiled rich white kids who are "puppets of imperialism." "What do I do? I do not want my parents to think I cannot act for myself! And we want the Chavistas to believe us, to unite with us--because we want to help them, too. We are all socialists."
4 comments:
"The students go out to demonstrate in black T-shirts with white handprints front and back, and they paint their palms white so they can hold them up to the police and the military, signifying "don't attack us, we're not attacking you."
Young-Bruehl would have done a better job if she had mentioned that, as a matter of fact, some of these students attacked the police and in one of the many violent actions before the "closing" of RCTV, an unarmed policeman ended up quadriplegic as a result of their actions. They were playing to the U.S. based media (which as you know well, would make a big story out of any situation that could be used to portray the Chávez administration negatively).
The picture of the students hands holding a sign with the words "Libertad" from the back of a police truck that was used to give them a ride to their homes from the National Assembly building (in order to minimize any confrontantion with the bunch of pissed-off Chavista youth after they refused to debate their issues in the National Assembly) is an example. It went around the World and was used for propraganda purposes. Its meaning to the (uninformed) outside viewer was clear: this paragons of freedom were being put in prison for daring to support Liberty by that evil commie Chávez.
I read the article. I think is garbage. As you rightly point out, its main drawback is that the writer didn't communcate directly with the Chavistas. By her own admission, she went to Venezuela invited by the opposition, only had contact with members of the opposition and doesn't even read Spanish. I wonder what kind of analysis somebody can come up with if they only take one side of an exceedingly complex situation into account. Omissions were abundant. She portrays the "student movement" as anti-Chávez while the truth is that most students in Venezuela are Chávez's supporters. The author might be an expert on (the overrated) Hannah Arendt. An expert on Venezuela she is not.
As you said before, the key is the youth of Venezuela, not the leaders, and it might seem refreshing to read an article that does not reduce everything that is going on in there to a whim of the President (as the mainstream press does whenever they perceive a leader as "Anti-American"). Unfortunately, the greater part of the Venezuelan youth (those who really don't care much about Hannah Arendt's take on democracy) are nowhere to be found in that picture.
Pepito
"The students go out to demonstrate in black T-shirts with white handprints front and back, and they paint their palms white so they can hold them up to the police and the military, signifying "don't attack us, we're not attacking you."
Young-Bruehl would have done a better job if she had mentioned that, as a matter of fact, some of these students attacked the police and in one of the many violent actions before the "closing" of RCTV, an unarmed policeman ended up quadriplegic as a result of their actions. They were playing to the U.S. based media (which as you know well, would make a big story out of any situation that could be used to portray the Chávez administration negatively).
The picture of the students hands holding a sign with the words "Libertad" from the back of a police truck that was used to give them a ride to their homes from the National Assembly building (in order to minimize any confrontantion with the bunch of pissed-off Chavista youth after they refused to debate their issues in the National Assembly) is an example. It went around the World and was used for propaganda purposes. Its meaning to the (uninformed) outside viewer was clear: this paragons of freedom were being put in prison for daring to support and rescue Liberty from that evil commie Chávez.
I read the article. I think it's garbage. As you rightly point out, its main drawback is that the writer didn't communcate directly with the Chavistas. By her own admission, she went to Venezuela invited by the opposition, only had contact with members of the opposition and doesn't even read Spanish. I wonder what kind of analysis somebody can come up with if they only take one side of an exceedingly complex situation into account. Omissions were abundant. She portrays the "student movement" as anti-Chávez while the truth is that most students in Venezuela are Chávez's supporters. The author might be an expert on (the overrated) Hannah Arendt. An expert on Venezuela she is not.
As you said before, the key is the youth of Venezuela, not the leaders, and it might seem refreshing to read an article that does not reduce everything that is going on in there to a whim of the President (as the mainstream press does whenever they perceive a leader as "Anti-American"). Unfortunately, the greater part of the Venezuelan youth (those who really don't care much about Hannah Arendt's take on democracy) are nowhere to be found in that picture.
Thanks, Pepito. As with everything in Venezuela, there are different stories to the same event. For any VZ observer who wants to understand VZ, suspending judgment becomes a necessary epistemic maneuver. Suspending trust and belief becomes wise. That can't be good over time.
One thing I do know with certainty is that several of my colleagues and friends in VZ, who had previously sided with Chavez, have shifted their political positions. He is slowly losing support from some of the smartest and most accomplished people that he had in his camp, and this won't be good in the end for the chavistas.
In one idealized version these youth are committed civil libertarians standing up for free speech.(we know all the arguments,'Ill support the right of the KKK to voice their views" vs "you don't have the right to yell fire in a theatre") We could even suppose the student understand what socialism is when she claims to be one.
Without being there though, my informed guess is she is a liberal bourgeois who believes in formal democracty but is not ready for true socialism or the societal tension that goes with it.A white hand is as meaningless as the Iraqi purple finger, a commodified symbol of naive politics.
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