Hugo Chavez: New World Rising

The great Bolivarian is gone – which means the U.S. will soon escalate its destabilization campaign against his country. “Washington hopes that Venezuelan socialism cannot survive without Chavez.” But the U.S. cannot roll back the movement that Chavez did so much to ignite, “the dark awakening in the barrios, favelas, rural villages and native highlands of the continent.”

“For 14 years, they have painted the Bolivarian Republic as illegitimate, dictatorial, primitive.”

The darker majorities of Latin America mourn the passing of the people’s champion, President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the man whom the racist white Venezuelan elite called ese mono – “that monkey.” Since 1998 – with a 48-hour break during the 2002, U.S.-sponsored coup – the four-fifths of Venezuela that is some variety of Indigenous-mestizo-mullato-African – like Chavez – has known power for the first time since the conquistadors of Western Europe launched their 500-year war against the rest of planet Earth.

South America’s emergence as the most promising zone of resistance to U.S. imperial savagery is inseparable from the dark awakening in the barrios, favelas, rural villages and native highlands of the continent. Chavez’s triumph, and that of the Aymara-descended Bolivian president, Evo Morales [10], in 2005, are the most dramatic expressions of what has been called the “Latin Spring” – a reclamation of national patrimony that is, by historical necessity, socialist. As a result, a large majority of South Americans now live under relatively progressive governments.

said Chavez [11] – a circumstance of birth and pride that made the whites of affluent east Caracas neighborhoods like Altamira spitting mad, hysterical in their hatred. The racial-political color line has long been plain to see in the complexions of pro- and anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela.

“The ‘Latin Spring’ is, by historical necessity, socialist.”

In assessing Chavez’s “legacy,” the global bourgeois media cite the “divisions” that plague Venezuelan society and, in the words of Business Week, an economy in “shambles.” But, Chavez and his comrades would have been abject failures – and been tossed from office – had they not drawn lines between the oppressed majority and the privileged exploiters. Division is good and necessary. Consequently, the economy has succeeded in reducing the proportion of households in poverty from 44 percent in 1998 to 27 percent in 2011. Chavez has served the people.

“The racial-political color line has long been plain to see in the complexions of pro- and anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela.”

New York, Miami and Washington [13] – presumably, to get his marching orders.Washington hopes that Venezuelan socialism cannot survive without Chavez. In their state of desperate decay, the imperialists are willing to throw whole regions of the world into chaos rather than be eclipsed by new alignments of trade and international relations. Venezuelans have every reason to expect a renewed U.S. campaign of destabilization, in the wake of their leader’s passing.

Chavez tried to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt. On election night, 2008, at a rally in Caracas, Chavez spoke this way [14] of the president-elect:

“We are not asking him to be a revolutionary, to be a socialist – no. We just want the black man who is about to be the U.S. president to have enough stature for the times the world is living through.

But the Black man in the White House is smelling like sulphur [15], just like his predecessor.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [16].

 

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