R.I.P. El Comandante Hugo Chavez

Hugo Chavez was a controversial and much maligned character. Yet in spite of all the attempts by domestic rightwing and wealthy enemies and supposedly freedom-loving "liberal" states like Obama's USA to derail him, President Chavez won election after election certificated as free and fair by foreign observers such as the Carter Institute. And unlike many who have risen to power in his own and other countries, he stuck to his policies of redistributing wealth from the immensely rich to the poor and dispossessed, with those in poverty falling from 70% of  the population to 23% during his terms of office. Tens of millions of ordinary Venezuelans have seen their lives transformed for the better by the socialist Bolivarian movement not only materially, but in terms of their dignity and political power.

He was the first of the new wave of left wing governments that have swept across Latin America, bringing democracy not only to the ballot box, but to the landless and the slums and factories as well - and that is why he was so hated, despised and assaulted by the rich and by the West. A champion of the people, a man of his word. He will be remembered and his legacy will live on.

Rest In Peace, El Comandante Hugo Chavez, 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013.




More on Chavez' Venezuela here from October 2012, article in The Independent Newspaper by Owen Jones:

If much of the Western media is to believed, I write this column from a country brutalised by an absurd tinpot caudillo, Hugo Chavez, who routinely jails any journalist or politician with the temerity to speak out against his tyranny.

According to Toby Young, Venezuela is ruled by a “Marxist tyrant” and a “Communist dictator”. Chavez’s defeated opponent in Sunday’s presidential elections, Henrique Capriles, was portrayed by contrast as an inspiring, dynamic democrat determined to end Venezuela’s failed socialist experiment and open the country to much-needed foreign investment.

The reality of Venezuela could not be more distant from the coverage...

Venezuela is a funny sort of “dictatorship”. The private media enjoys a 90 per cent audience share and routinely pump out vitriolic anti-Chavez propaganda, pro-opposition areas are plastered with billboards featuring Capriles’ smiling face, and jubilant anti-Chavez rallies are a regular event across the country.

Venezuelans went to the polls on Sunday for the 15th time since Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1999: all of those previous elections were judged as free by international observers, including ex-US President Jimmy Carter, who described the country’s election process as “the best in the world”. When Chavez lost a constitutional referendum in 2007, he accepted the result. Before his massive registration drives, many poor people could not vote. In stark contrast to most Western democracies, over 80 per cent of Venezuelans turned out to vote in Sunday’s presidential elections.

Full article here