The Devil's Excrement

After truly disconnecting from the world for three weeks I am back and I can not say ready to blog on Venezuela yet, my mind is still somewhere else. My vacation was a blast, has a fantastic time including the coincidence of a lifetime in finding that the first week of my vacation was shared with my thesis advisor, one of my favorite people in the world. This made the vacation three times better.

Thanks to Jorge for his work and contributions as well as the other contributors to this pages during my absence. A blog is a very personal thing and is hard to fill for others and is a responsibility I dumped on Jorge without mercy. Thanks again! The software acted up in my absence and is still doing it; I have no clue as to what the problem is. This excellent post on race differences in Venezuela by Jorge, for example, shows up in the Venezuela section, but fails to appear in the home page for reasons that completely mystify me.

As to events in my absence it seems to be more of the same. The Government refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for its errors. From 1958 to 1998 when Chavez assumed power, Presidents were in charge for five years and then their administrations became the “Gobierno Anterior” (Previous Government) which was blamed for everything. Well, Chavez has been in power for seven, thus, he has become the “Gobierno Anterior”, but his Government continues to blame things on previous Governments, such as the horrendous murder of the three engineering students by hooded policemen raiding a barrio. Besides murdering the students the cops tried to hide evidence, remove the corpses and in general cover up what they had done. But it is all the fault of the previous Government because this was “usual practice” by previous Governments. In fact, the murder rate in barrios is up three fold since Chavez took over and the death of acquaintances is so common that just days before the murder of the three students a fellow local blogger reported the death of a coworker killed simply so that they could steal his briefcase.

And in the meantime, a new Penal code was approved, Sumate continues to be persecuted in this country which some still claim is a democracy and reporters are held by pro-Chavez’ hoodlums in a clear intimidation attempt. And none of these things used to happen during any of the previous Governments which were not very good, but certainly were more democratic than this one. If not, look at all of the tricks being pulled by the Electoral Board.

So my friends I am back, but except for being a bit more relaxed, things have changed little over here and I have little hope that they will in the near future. But I will continue recording the acts of this outlaw Government. It is the least I can do. 

The judge reached a decision: SUMATE directive will go to trial (see also here),
but they will not be in jail during the trial. According to Alejandro
Plaz, the judge accepted all the evidence presented by the goverment
and rejected almost all the evidence presented by SUMATE. In
particular, some of the recommendations made by the Supreme Court in
their November decision were not taken into account. Maria Corina
Machado said that this is a form of intimidation to prevent SUMATE from
keeping their campaign of education to have clean elections in
Venezuela.

I agree with her. The goverment will do whatever it can to intimidate SUMATE, which is currently the only effective opposition movement in Venezuela.

SUMATE, BTW is just asking what in any democratic country is taken for granted. It can be enumerated in five points:

1.- A reliable electoral registry
2.- Overall audits
3.- Secret vote
4.- Manual counting
5.- Effective observers

So, if you are in Venezuela, show that you care about your five fingers.

Jorge Arena.

[Before leaving, Miguel prepared this excellent post. Enjoy]
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While the phrase “To sow the oil” is quite famous in Venezuela,
it was not until this week that I first read Arturo Uslar Pietri’s famous 1936 original
article in which he first used that phrase. You can find that article here in Spanish.
I thought it was worth translating to make it available in English too. I will
translate a second article from 1961 by Uslar himself about the subject, when
time allows it. While some of the terminology is certainly old fashioned, it is
impressive how the basic concepts outlined in the article remain true even in
the globailized world of today. To me this article shows the intellect and
clarity of thinking of one of Venezuela’s
most famous writers. While the first oil discovery in Venezuela
was in 1914, it was not until the mid 1920’s that oil was discovered in amounts
large enough for it to become our Devils’ Excrement.

To sow the oil by
Arturo Uslar Pietri in Ahora

When one considers with some care the economic and financial
panorama of Venezuela, the notion of the large role that the destructive
economy plays in the production of our wealth gives us some anguish, that is,
that one which consumes without concern about how to reconstructy the existing
amounts of matter and energy. In other words, the destructive economy is that
one which sacrifices the future in favor of the present, the one which taking
things into the realm of fable writers, it is more like the cicada than like
the ants.

In effect, in a budget of effectively rental income of 180
million, the mining sector figures in with 58 million or almost one third of
the total income, without making estimates of the many other numerous indirect
and important contributions that can be equally attributed to the mining
sector. Public Venezuelan wealth lies currently, in more than one third, on the
destructive utilization of the oil fields underground, whose life is limited
not only for natural reasons, but the productivity of which depends on its
entirety of factors and wills which have nothing to do with the national
economy. This great proportion of wealth of destructive origin will grow
without any doubt the day that mining taxes are made more just and
remunerative, even to get close to the suicidal dream of some naive people that
see as the ideal of the Venezuelan finances, to be able to pay the totality of
the budget with only the mining income, which could be translated more simply
this way: to manage to make Venezuela an unproductive and idle country, an
immense parasite of oil, swimming in the momentary and corrupting moment and
devoted towards an imminent and inevitable catastrophe.

But it not only does the destructive character of our
economy reached this grave proportion, but it goes even further reaching a
tragic magnitude. The wealth of the ground among us does not only not increase,
but it tends to disappear, because agricultural production decays in quantity
and quality in an alarming manner. Our scant fruits for export have seen their
place in the international markets snatched by more active and capable
competitors. Our cattle industry degenerates and gets poorer with epizooties,
ticks and the lack of adequate crossbreeding. Lands get sterilized without
fertilization, people grow crops using antiquated methods, enormous forests are
destroyed without replacement, to be converted in firewood and vegetable coal. From
a recently published book we take this exemplary data: “In the Cuyuni region
more or less three thousand men are working who knock down, on average, nine
thousand trees a day, which totals 270 thosuand in seven months, including the
areas of the north, this totals one million and eight hundred and ninety
thousand. Multiplying this last sum by the number of years that the beefwood
tree was worked on, we would obtain an exorbitant amount of trees knocked down
and you will get an idea of how far gone the beefwood tree is”. These phrases
are a brutal epitaph for the beefwood tree, which, under different procedures, could
have been one of the biggest sources of wealth for Venezuela.

The lesson of this threatening scenario is simple: it is
urgent to solidly create in Venezuela
a reproductive and progressive economy. It is urgent to take advantage of the
transient wealth of the current destructive economy to create the healthy and
ample and coordinated bases of that future progressive economy, that will be
our true declaration of independence. It is necessary to get out the most
income from the mines to totally invest it in aid, facilities and stimulus to
agriculture, breeding and national industries. That, instead of oil being a
curse that will turn us into useless and parasite people, it would be the lucky circumstance
that will allow us, with its sudden wealth, to accelerate and strengthen the
productive evolution of the Venezuelan people under exceptional conditions.

The part that in our current budget is dedicated to this
true promotion and creation of wealth is still small and perhaps is no more
than a seventh of the total amount of expenses. It is necessary that these
outflows destined to create and guarantee the initial development of a
progressive economy reach at least up to the level of the mining income.

The only wise and saving economic policy that we should
practice is to transform the mining income in agricultural credit, stimulate
scientific and modern agriculture, importing stallions and pastures, repopulate
the forests, build the dams and canals necessary to regularize irrigation and
the defective water regime, mechanize and industrialize the rural areas, create
coops for certain crops and small owners for others.

This would be a true act of national construction, truly
making use of the national wealth and this must be the goal of all conscious
Venezuelans.

If we had to propose an insignia for our economic policy we
would launch the following, which seems to us summarizes in dramatic fashion
the need to invest the wealth produced by the destructive system of the mines,
and create reproductive agricultural and progressive wealth: to sow the oil.

Arturo Uslar Pietri. June 14^th. 1936

When I was young, I was fascinated by the
story of “Pedro y  el Lobo” (Peter’s Crying Wolf). I
found it was a terrible story, and yet, with the passing of time, I
have been
able to learn from it and to wisely put in practice the lesson
portrayed in the
story.Unfortunately, the Venezuelan President does not seem to have
learned
that lesson at all. Since he got into power, Chavez has systematically
stated that he is about to be killed, that there are people outside and
inside Venezuela plotting to take his life. He has even introduced a
very elegant term
to indicate the event of his assassination. He has called it a
“Magnicidio”.

My first
thought is on the term itself and why it is used.

I must admit with a bit of shame
that I did not quite know the meaning of the word “Magnicidio” until Chavez started using it. It was only then that I took the time to check the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy to
get the precise meaning of the term. Here is what I found:

According
to this definition “magnicidio” means the “violent death given
to a very important person due to his/her position or
power”.The term is vague, to say the
least. How does one define “a very
important person due to his position or power”? Secondly, I was puzzled
that the term
had not been widely used before in the Venezuelan Press to designate
the
assassination of someone important. I do not recall having read or
heard that term for the original news of the assassinations of John
(1963) and Robert (1968) Kennedy, Martin Luther King
(1968) ,Anwar El Sadat (1981), Indira Ghandi (1984), Olof Palme (1986),
Rajiv
Ghandi (1991), Yitzhak Rabin (1995) or Anna Lindh (2003), to mention
just a
few. I searched the archives of Venezuelan newspapers to know for sure
if the
killings of
those political figures were just tagged as “assassinations” by the
Venezuelan Press or if the word “magnicidio” was employed at the time.

Unfortunately, the on-line
archives do not go that further back. I was only able to get the original on-line news of the Anna
Lindh assassination. As you can see, there is no mentioning
of the word “Magnicidio” referring to her assassination. Of course, Chavistas may
argue that Anna Lindh was just the Swedish Foreign minister and had been only President of the
European Unionand candidate to succeed the Swedish Prime Minister…maybe she was not
important enough, not compared to Chavez, of
course…

So, if you have access to the original Venezuelan newspapers on the assassinations of any of
the above mentioned leaders, please let me know. I would really like to know the
exact term that was used when the news of those assassinations were printed.

My guess is that it was the
Chavistas themselves that dusted and tagged the old term and that the Venezuelan Press followed, falling
into their trap. According to the Chavistas, Chavez should not be considered
like your everyday leader. They have carefully been crafting an image of
Chavez that is closer to that of a Religious figure than a modern politician (see
“The Eternal Chavez”, that refers to
this
article of William Izarra, who is one of the
leading ideologists of the Chavista movement). Thus,
it is
not surprising that an assassination of Chavez should be more than a
normal political assassination. Then, the tagged terminology of
“Magnicidio”, carefully repeated over and over in Alo Presidente and
the other
official media outlets, has become a current term, specifically used to
designate the
assassination of a supreme leader: Chavez.

My second
thought refers to the number of times an eventual Magnicidio have been in the
news.

I was about to initiate a
research on that point when I found this
article by Elizabeth Fuentes. Luckily she had already carried
out the facts digging work. According to her article, the chronology and accounting
of the magnicidio story can be summarized as
follows:

1998. – The magnicidio was denounced eight
times.

1999. – There were six instances of
magnicidio callings.

2000. – The possibility of a magnicidio was
announced eight times again.

2001. – Five times was a magnicidio plot
denounced.

2002. – Only one case is
reported.

2003. – At least two cases were
announced.

2004. – This year too, at least two cases of
magnicidio were reported.

Ms. Fuentes stops her research
in 2004, but there have been already several reports of Magnicidio in 2005. I did a quick search on
El Universal archives
afew days ago and, starting on
January
1^st 2005, there had been 145
articles about a Chavez magnicidio! The latest, are the suspension of
the June 24 Independence parade due
to a supposed
complot to kill the president (see also here)
and the
amazing declarations of Fiscal Isaias Rodriguez indicating that Danilo
Anderson’s murder was nothing
more than a “trial” for the magnicidio (see here
and my comments here).

The question is why? Why does
Chavez need to constantly get out the news about yet another plot for his
assassination?

My feeling is, as usual, that
this is a strategy to divert the attention of the Venezuelan people. The government uses the
Magnicidio the same way it was believed that previous governments used some urban
legends like the UFO arrivals and the extra-terrestrials announcing of the opening
of the
AvilaMountain.
At that time, some people thought that those fantastic news were
circulated on purpose to divert
public opinion from political scandals or harsh economic conditions. In
previous governments those urban legends were heard once in a while,
whereas in the current government, the
Chavez magnicidio stories are constantly brought up like breaking news
by government
officials.

Of course, regardless of the
magic realism that Venezuelans are used to live, there has never been, in the history of
Venezuela,
such a circus-like political climate. Simply put it, Chavez is a
terrible
ruler, and he runs an extremely inefficient government, but he is a
great entertainer and he has a lot of money. He has the two ingredients used
by the Roman Emperors to remain
popular:

“Panem et
circenses”.

My last thought is on Chavez handling of the
news.

Regardless of whether the
Magnicidio attempts are real or not, Chavez handling of the news on that issue has been extremely irresponsible. A real leader, a true statesman puts the security of the state and of the people he is
governing before anything else. A leader is someone that would prevent a panic situation, or a situation that can
lead to bloodshed or civil war.

Well, Chavez has done exactly the opposite. He
has systematically warned people in a very public way that he might be
killed soon.Moreover, he has incited the Venezuelan people to get out in the
streets in the event of his death. His behavior has
been so irresponsible that a few weeks ago Chavez
was
not seen in public for a whole weekend, which is very unusual. The
rumors started and there was already a group of angry Venezuelans
outside the Presidential Palace asking to see the President (see here).

This, of course, is the same
good old Chavez’s shameful and irresponsible strategy of putting Venezuelans against Venezuelans
(see
here). It seems that he is even determined that his legacy of hatred and
division persists after he is gone.

I pray that nothing happens to
him; I do not even want to imagine the terrible situation if it were
otherwise.

Jorge Arena.

I do not just want justice for the death of the three
engineering students. I do not just want the policemen that killed them in
jail. I do not want just the immediate police chiefs removed from their job, as
ordered yesterday by Justice and Interior Minister
Chacon.

What I want is the resignation of the ministers responsible
of the judiciary and military police that were in charge of that despicable “police
operative”. And I want a serious commitment of those individuals that would take charge that
this type of police operatives will not ever happen again in Venezuela.

So far, it seems that there were two groups: the DIM
(Division de Inteligencia Militar) and the CICPC (Cuerpo de Investigaciones
Cientificas Penales y Criminalisticas). They depend on the Ministry of Defense
and the Justice and Interior Ministry.

Yesterday, I was quite bothered by the reaction of my fellow
Venezuelans. Government officials claimed to be revolted and promised that those guilty of the crime will
be punished. The students’classmates asked
for justice. People that witnessed the killing talked about the “incompetence”
of the police. Deputies of the National
Assembly talked about initiating an investigation of the killings….

But nobody hinted that there was a higher responsibility in
this matter. A government has to answer
to its people for nurturing police units
within the State that are actually organized to disregard human rights and to kill and injure people as
they wish.

This is the unique responsibility of the Government. And
within the government, that responsibility lays on the Ministers responsible of
the Police units involved in the massacre.

Today, reading El Nacional, I had a blink of a hope. I
thought that at least someone understands what it means to live in a democracy!
Today there is just one sentence, that is usually written on the lower right
corner of El Nacional Opinion page. Today the sentence was a simple question:

“¿Seis jefes y ni un ministro?” (six chiefs and no Minister?).

Whoever wrote that question made my day. Because this is not
a simple matter of incompetence, not a matter of punishment, not just a matter
of justice.

This case goes beyond that.

This is a matter of fundamental human rights within what
should be a modern democratic state

Jorge Arena.

There are two news that I fail to understand. I am reading
then again and again in El Universal, El Nacional and Tal Cual and I cannot
believe this is happening.

First, there is the
killing, three days ago, of three engineering
students. The kids were coming from a Physics exam and were giving a lift to
a friend. Some members of the DIM (Direction of Military Intelligence) were
apparently doing a special operation to find the assassins of one of their
members. One of the DIM policemen had his face covered and carried a very large
gun. The kids, thinking that they were going to be robbed accelerated the car
and the masked guy and the other members of the operation ( a total of 26
policemen) went after them ending up beating and killing three male students and injuring three
girls. The kids were unarmed. What
revolts me, besides the absurdity of the killing, is the matter of fact
explanation given by the authorities. The excuse is that there was confusion
and that the masked policeman should not have worn a mask. It was a mistake. A
mistake!? A MISTAKE!? Even if the kids had been trained killers, what gives the
police the right to shut first? Where are the human rights established in the
Venezuelan Constitution? What type of democracy is one in which unarmed kids
are savagely beaten and killed by members of the Military Police?

Vicepresident
Jose Vicente Rangel, declared that he considered that the government
performance in this matter has been excellent, because it has been very quick
in taking the necessary measures to find and charge those responsible for the
massacre. That, Jose Vicente, is the
least you can do. Shame on you! How dare
you brag about the efficiency of your government! You should be ashamed to be
leading a government for which that type of “police operatives” is candidly
accepted. And yes, I want to see in six months how efficient were you after
all….

Which leads me to the second absurd news about an unsolved
crime that took place more than six months ago: the killing of Danilo Anderson.
At that time, the government also bragged about its efficiency. They were so
sure of themselves that even killed a “suspect” Antonio Lopez Castillo, a few
days after Anderson’s death and
found all types of weapons in the house of his parents. At the time, Interior
minister Jesse Chacon declared that they were pretty close to close the first
phase of the
case.

Yesterday, Fiscal Isaias Rodriguez declared that the
Anderson killing was really a
“trial” to kill Hugo Chavez. That was really intended was the famous
“magnicidio” (once again!). According to
Rodriguez the plan was “ to kill the President of the Republic, but first, they
had to try with other important figures”. It seems that the list started with
Danilo Anderson, then the President of the TSJ, followed by the Minister of
Defense and finally Isaias Rodriguez himself, right before Chavez!

That is what I call an “intelligent plot”. Someone wants to
kill the President and the way to go is to “practice” first with the killing of
important political figures. First the means: Danilo Anderson was killed by a
bomb installed under the seat of his car. That, of course, is the best way to
program the killing of a paranoid president: just put the bomb under the seat
of his limousine! Piece of cake. Second the “practice” killing list: important
political figures are killed one after the other and what the President and the
people around him would order? To LOOSEN Presidential Security, of course!

Come on Isaias! Do you really believe that Venezuelans are
so dupe that they are going to buy that story?

Jorge Arena.

El Universal and the MINCI report that the Venezuelan Information Minister reiterated that he did not know about the arrival of Fidel Castro to Venezuela.

You know what? I believe him. And I find the whole situation very
revealing and rich in possibilities. Here is my speculation list:

1.- Castro was expected by Chavez, but Izarra was out of the loop.
2.- Castro was not expected by Chavez and decided to make the visit at the last minute.
3.- Izarra is lying.

3.-Let us start with nr. 3 and assume that Izarra is lying, that he
knew that Castro was coming and he felt the need to cover it up.
Why there was such a need? I think that he had no personal interest
whatsoever to lie knowning that the truth will be publically known so
soon afterwords. Why risk his reputation? So that is why I believe him.

2.-Now, let us analyze number 2. According to this possibility, it was
Castro that decided at the last minute that he would come, even though
the Venezuelan goverment was not expecting him. The question again is
why? We know for sure that the goverment was trying to present
the visit in a low-profile fashion. Could it be that the Chavistas have
realized lately that it was not a good idea to bring Castro to
Venezuela? In that case, why did Castro decide to come anyways?

1.-Finally, there is number one. According to this possibility,
Chavez and some high ranking goverment officials knew that Fidel was
coming but Izarra was not in that group. What would that
mean? First that Izarra was not in the high ranking clique
and second that someone in that group wanted Izarra to look like a
fool….

Of course, there is another simple posibility that I have not listed:
Sheer Chavista Incompetence! The communication channels were not
efficient and people were not advised of the visit when they should
have.

Jorge Arena

Despite the denial of Information Minister Andres Izarra this morning, and the statement of president Hugo Chavez in Alo presidente, Fidel Castro arrived to Puerto La Cruz this afternoon to participate in the Summit about Petrocaribe (see here).
It seems that the Ministry of Information (MINCI) [should we call it
Disinformation?] sent a note of apology to the press (see here).

Since the MINCI’s is one of my favorite sites, I quickly went to
see what they were reporting. Interesting, if you check the main page
before they change it (they love to do that!) you could see a very
large picture of Chavez with the president of the Dominican Republic.
Castro’s arrival picture is quite discreet. It is a small picture on
the left side, showing Chavez with a casual Fidel Castro….Funny that
Castro’s name is not mentioned in the picture. Castro is mentioned by
name only in the article linked from the picture.

What is going on, guys? Are you trying to cover-up/disguise/minimize Castro’s arrival?

BTW, this ghost blogger could not find any note of excuses for
Izarra’s false report in the MINCI pages. Please let me know if
you find one.

Jorge Arena.

Dos izquierdas
by Tulio Hernandez, El Nacional

Translated by Francisco Toro

Since 1969, when he published “Checoslovakia, socialism as a problem”,
Teodoro Petkoff’s thinking has never lost his ability to make
conservatives, both of the right and of the left, squirm. He manages the
trick because, in trying to extricate political thinking from the game
of binary simplification where both extremes would like to keep it
locked up, he lays bare the whole panoply of mannichean stereotypes with
which both sides try to justify their own intolerance.

The conservatism of the right, in its obsession to deny the possibility
that not all left-wing thinking is an undercover form of communism, a
cruzade against freedom and the market, does not realize that there are,
in effect, different ways of taking on concerns about equity, social
justice, and the rights of the excluded, which, in our times, are the
defining traits of that ever broadening and imprecise universe known as
“the left.”

And the other conservatism, which has come to be known as the archaic or
religious left because it remains tied to the principles that gave rise
to the failed soviet, maoist and fidelista models, underestimates the
importance of the markets and of economics in general, and once it takes
power, sees all political dissent as a conspiracy and, therefore,
persecutes it and seizes democratic liberties in the name, ironically,
of the struggle for social justice and the cause of the oppressed.

So it’s not surprising that the publication of his latest book, Dos
Izquierdas (Two Lefts – edited by Alfadil) has already generated an
angry reaction from the historically anticommunist section of the
opposition, the new right, made up of activists who in their youth were
part of the far left, maoism and trotskyism, and who therefore have a
double reason to disagree – and even to throw a fit – faced with
Petkoff’s arguments.

What’s so perturbing about Petkoff’s postures? In the first place, his
determination never to subject himself to the nasty little game of “who
do you love more, your dad or your mom?” That is, his refusal to accept,
for instance, that in order to reject becoming a lackey of fidelista
communism one must become a lackey of Bush’s crusade against evil and,
instead of turning up in Havana to pay homage to the old Caribbean hack,
one must go to Washington like a meek little (neocolonialist) lamb to
ask indulgences of the belicose U.S. president.

Then there is Petkoff’s insistence in underlining realities that
fanatics – whose ideologies are built like fact-proof fortresses – would
rather not acknowledge. This is what happens, for instance, with his
interpretation of the growth of the lefts in Latin American – nine
governments so far – as a reaction of the urban and rural masses to the
failures of decades of developmentalist dictatorships and populist
and/or neoliberal governments which left the region with a legacy of
corruption, precarious economic growth and institutional degradation
that ended up making our societies among the most unjust and unequal on
the planet.

But, Petkoff warns, that which seen from afar looks as a single process
in fact isn’t. What has grown is two lefts that are radically different
in their understandings of democracy and power. One, which he calls
“primitive” or “bourbonic” (since, like that old dynasty, it neither
forgets nor learns), and another, the democratic and modern left, which
I would add is market-oriented. The first is, today, led by the
military-charismatic duo of Chavez and Castro, and counts as its
followers the sandinistas of the Ortega wing in Nicaragua, and the
FMLN’s communist wing led by Schafic Handal in El Salvador, as well as
Evo Morales’ MAS in Bolivia.

The second, though internally diverse, includes the social-democratic
Chile of Lagos as well as Lula’s Brasil and Kirchner’s Argentina, the
pluralist Frente Amplio in Uruguay, Jagdeo’s Guyana, Torrijos’ Panama
and the Dominican Republic of Leonel Fernandez.

According to Petkoff, the democratic left is defined by that which the
other left has failed to do: leave behind the infantile, voluntarist
postures of the left; internalize democratic values as basic components
of projects for social change; abandon its taste for strong-men,
personalism, militarism and messianic saviours, and choose a politics of
“feet planted firmly on the ground,” as a means of bringing about
forward-looking, sustainable and durable social change.

One of the most controversial, but at the same time most realistic,
arguments in Petkoff’s writing consists in pointing out that there is
just one factor today that brings together these two lefts: the foreign
policy of the United States, in particular with regards to Latin
America. These leftist governments, each in its own way, is trying to
build on new foundations – now that the cold war is over – its
relationship with the United States, and on that road, as we’ve seen in
the OAS, they will not remain indifferent vis-a-vis the pressure the
Northern Giant brings to bear on Chavez and Fidel.

The panorama in the hemisphere is changing quickly, and it is from that
perspective that we must think through what is happening in Venezuela.

Probably, it’s necessary to start to distinguih clearly between two
oppositions, which are as radically different as the two lefts.

One opposition, also bourbonic, bent on remembering without learning –
is set on increasing tension, on vanguardism, immediatism, coupsterisim
and US boosterism, classism, disinterest for the fate of the poor and
excluded, and the restoration of the ancien regime. The other opposition
rejects those values. Essentially democratic, forward-looking and
reformist, it should stress a discourse aimed at transforming the soiled
legacy of the AD-Copei past – which survives somehow through the
premature-aging of chavismo. To this opposition, the experience of Latin
America’s now empowered democratic left has much to offer.

It would seem that this is the only option able to stand against the
popular torrent of disenchantment against the past that Chavez and his
team have managed to capitalize upon.

1.-To improve my standing as a ghost blogger, I have asked some people
to contribute to the blog while Miguel is away. Hopefully, Miguel will
be so delighted that he will raise my salary when he comes back.
So today I will post the first contribution by Francisco Toro.

2.- There has been some problems with the comments section and with the
posting. It seems to be the system. I hope that it gets
back to normal soon.