Venezuela

Hugo Chávez (Wikipedia article), president of Venezuela, who has managed to tick off the US government to the point of their supporting a failed coup d'etat against him for the sin of promising to help the poor who elected him. Go figure. Apparently the US's habit of interfering in Latin American politics, to the detriment of peoples' quality of life.

A television crew from Ireland (Radio Telifís Éireann) which happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez at the time (and which after the short coup was based in the presidential palace with members of both rival governments and their supporters) recorded images of the events that contradicted explanations given by anti-Chávez campaigners, by the opposition-controlled elements of the media, by the US State Department, and by President George W. Bush's official spokesman. The television crew released a documentary film called "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" detailing the events of the coup.

Chávez isn't perfect by any means, he isn't afraid of a tough political fight but he seems to really love Venezuelans and Venezuela and is fighting for the poor, something which hasn't hapened before there, despite them being in the overwhelming majority in a democratic nation.

Greg Palast wrote an interesting article on Venezuela: Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band: Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President which puts the opposition between the rich, white, priveleged elites in Venezuela and the poor, darker-skinned majority in stark, unapologetic terms and is a very good read as well.

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.