The title, like the rest of the article, is phony, because it's not about Chávez's vision for Venezuela. In fact, the main thrust of the article is to observe Venezuela from the point of view of an opponent of Chávez's Bolivarian revolution.

Even most of the "opposition" referred to in the article is phony. The author frequently resorts to the old dishonest journalistic device of putting words into the mouths of either unnamed or imaginary critics of the government.

quote:

---

There was also a brief account of the progress being made in the oil sector by the state-owned corporation Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). He [Chávez] used figures previous PDVSA managers would no doubt dispute.

---

The author describes how one young woman from a poor barrio in Caracas is now working towards a college equivalency degree, thanks to an oil-revenue-financed community educational project, and quotes her as saying, "With Chávez I have a place where I belong. Before we, the poor, were nothing. Now we are recognized." The author then snidely goes on to refer to Chávez's "conquest of the poor," and resorts again to imaginary critics for an opportunity to inject her own point of view:

quote:

---

...his opposition at home and abroad would no doubt like to tell [the young woman] that the changes in her own life are the result of profligate squandering of oil money on short-term fixes for deep-rooted problems, that the president will be respectful and considerate of her needs and opinions onmly as long as those opinions favour him, and that Venezuela's leader is playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the world at large.

---

Another example of the "anonymous sources" technique:

quote:

---

In fact, his opponents told me repeatedly, Chávez has so many enemies that if it weren't for oil, he would no longer be in power.

---

quote:

---

The letter, written by the Venezuelan Program for Education and Action in Human Rights, PROVEA:

• Charges Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, and members of the US Congress with misrepresenting the human rights situation in Venezuela;
  
• Argues that US concerns about Venezuela stem more from ideological discrepancies rather than genuine human rights concerns; and
  
• Warns that a US misinformation campaign in itself threatens "Venezuela's human rights and right to sovereignty."

According to PROVEA, sovereignty is a fundamental right highlighted in the Organization of American States Charter and the United Nations Charter. Per the international organization charters, sovereignty is linked to a country's "right to democracy, to elect its own representatives, and to institutions that guarantee the expression of popular sovereignty," as well as international relations based on "respect and non-arbitrary intervention."

Given this context, PROVEA voiced its concern with "the tone, the frequency and the possible implications of comments made by high-level spokespeople" in the Bush administration.

---

I thought her New York Review article was reasonably fair.

They can be found here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18355

While she is critical of the uncritical adulation often characteristic of Chavez' opponents, she also sees the positive side of his policies:

quote:

---

in Petare that morning no one I met seemed to have any doubts —neither a young man in a storefront equipped by the government with five computer terminals, who was receiving free instruction on how to use the Internet and how to fill out on-line employment applications, nor the working women in a small office in that same compound, looking to place their children in one of the chavista child-care cooperatives run by housewives in every neighborhood.

And there was no mistaking the vigorous enthusiasm of a group of twenty or so elderly people in white T-shirts who could not be stopped from interrupting their morning calisthenics in a parking lot to explain how, later in the week, they would board a nearby bus for their weekly excursion—to-day to a park, some other time to the beach. "They even take our blood pressure now before we start to exercise!" one woman explained to enthusiastic nods.

Chávez's fractured opposition unanimously condemns the various barrio programs as populist asistencialismo— welfarism—and on one level they can be seen as something even worse than that: a greedy attempt by Chávez to replace the health, housing, and education ministries that are the legacy of the previous regime with his own programs, to his exclusive political benefit. But in Petare the several misiones —the name for the most lavishly financed national programs—can make such lofty criticisms seem heartless, or beside the point.

---

There's an interesting interview with her at Identity Theory, which includes this concise denunciation:

quote:

---

[Colombia] is a tragedy that is a direct consequence of yet another war by the United States—called the drug war, which rather than seeking to solve the problem seeks to stomp it down. The United States in this case has paid with no deaths, and Colombia has paid with maybe forty thousand deaths. It’s a ridiculous situation. It’s obscene and it’s a result of the United States’s extraordinary willingness to export its problems somewhere else.

---

In the New Yorker article, she's not very kind to anti-chavistas either:

quote:

---

Chavistas in the barrios answered the criticisms I proposed with a question: "Y ellos, ¿Qué hicieron?" ("And they, what did they do?") What did the people in the tall apartment buildings ever do for us? Why, in fact, did the elite now in exile from the halls of power rule in the waning decades of the last century with such careless disregard for the 45 percent or so of the population who earn barely enough to keep themselves fed and clothed, and for the approximately 20 percent— the statistic waxes and wanes according to the price of oil—who cannot lay their hands on enough money to consume the equivalent of 2,200 calories a day?

To its great good fortune, the members of the current opposition to Hugo Chávez do not have to answer these questions, because its leadership emerged only during the last five years, and comes largely from the ranks of businessmen and former businessmen who had virtually no earlier political involvement. But to the degree that they are nearly all members of the upper classes, they are deeply distrusted by the chavistas, who are overwhelmingly poor. Non-chavista politicians either lost the respect of the electorate during the meltdown of the old party system, in the years preceding the arrival of Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution, or are too young and inept to enjoy credibility. And many sullied forever their democratic credentials by showing unrestrained glee at the climax of a military coup that removed Chávez from power for forty-eight hours in April 2002. They hardly register as an alternative: it is widely agreed that the 59 percent of the vote which represents Chávez's largest victory at the polls so far means 41 percent of the electorate voted against him, but not really for anyone else.

---

But I do note that the focus of the NY Review of Books article is similar to that of the National Geographic: that is, it always is at pains to tell us what the opinions and prospects of the opposition are on every issue. It's as if we need constant reassurance that there are people in Venezuela who just can't wait to get rid of this Chávez guy and bring the country back into the orbit of US imperialism.

The National Geographic makes no attempt to hide its bias. As usual, their photo captions, written by editors in Washington, purport to present condensed "facts" about the subject that are not substantiated anywhere in the text of the article. In the article in question we have captions making such bald statements as:

• After seven years in office [Chavez's] measures to lift the poor have achieved only limited success, and his opponents seem paralyzed.
  
• More than half of Venezuelans live in poverty, and the number of poor has grown since Chavez took office in 1999.

Some four years ago, the poverty level was reported at 54%. That was largely due to the extreme economic disruption caused by the illegal coup against Chavez and the anti-government oil strike. But the economy has grown enormously in the last four years:

Venezuela's Bolivarian Movement

quote:

---

In the 28 years before Chavez was elected, Venezuelan per capita income fell 35%, the worst decline in the region and one of the worst in the world. Since the Chavez government took office in 1999, the decline has been halted and per capita income has been flat through early 2004. It likely has risen since then as a result of the significant economic growth since late 2003. Venezuela's National Institute of Statistics (INE) reported that in 2004 the economy grew by 17%. It then expanded by 7.5% and 11.1% respectively in the first two quarters of 2005 and about 10% in the third quarter. This was a major turnaround from the period preceding it that included the crippling oil strike of 2002-03 and the destabilizing effects of the short-lived coup deposing President Chavez for 2 days in April, 2002. During this period of growth, unemployment dropped from 14.5% in September 2004 to 11.1% one year later. Poverty levels also fell, and these data don't include the enormous benefits to the poor from Chavez's social policies that have significantly improved their lives and welfare.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
But I do note that the focus of the NY Review of Books article is similar to that of the National Geographic: that is, it always is at pains to tell us what the opinions and prospects of the opposition are on every issue. It's as if we need constant reassurance that there are people in Venezuela who just can't wait to get rid of this Chávez guy and bring the country back into the orbit of US imperialism.

---

I think that is maybe balanced journalism, quoting both sides on an issue. Clearly she's not an adoring fan of Hugo Chávez, but she doesn't seem to be very keen on the opposition either; and her various criticisms of US policy are pretty well known (remember El Mozote?). This, for example, surely cannot be very reassuring to Bushites (my emphasis):

quote:

---

Last spring, María Corina Machado was invited to the White House. A photograph appeared in the press of her posing smilingly next to George W. Bush, and caused an uproar in Caracas, not only among chavistas. But when I asked Plaz, who used to be the head for the Andean region and the Caribbean of McKinsey, the management consultant firm, about the visit, he was oddly oblivious to its political impact back home: among the extremely few things most members of the Latin American upper and lower classes have in common these days is a shared loathing and fear of Bush.

---

It deals in caricatures: the Chavistas' "radicalized" view of society is characterized as one "in which the rich are evil, the poor are sainted, and those who disagree with the president are enemies."

Left out of the article are any statistics on Chavez's current popularity ratings (which the same author admits in another NYRB article to be at 80 per cent); any mention of Chávez's offer and actual delivery of heating oil to the urban poor of the US; or any mention of the meddlesome role of the US in previous Venezuelan governments, in fomenting the 2002 coup against Chávez, in funding the main opposition parties and instructing them to boycott the last elections, and in trying to isolate Venezuela diplomatically and politically.

Guillermoprieto doesn't talk about the insults and death threats emanating from the US, but she does mention that Chávez once publicly called GW Bush a "jerk", suggesting that the only reason he can "get away with" this is the flow of oil into the US from Venezuela.

The author is careful, however, to mention - twice - that Chávez once tried to stage a coup against the hated Carlos Andrés Pérez regime; she informs us that he served two years in prison for the failed attempt, calling him a "hothead who had sought to destroy an elected government through force."

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
There's nothing "balanced" about the National Geographic article.

---

I can't comment on the National Geographic article. I don't believe I've read National Geographic since I was 12, and in Perú you don't even find it in doctor's waiting rooms so I'm not likely to start now I believe you, though.

quote:

---

Guillermoprieto doesn't talk about the insults and death threats emanating from the US, but she does mention that Chávez once publicly called GW Bush a "jerk", suggesting that the only reason he can "get away with" this is the flow of oil into the US from Venezuela.

---

Don't you think that is true? It seems to me likely that a number of presidents -- not Perú's, sadly -- entertain negative views of Bush, but for whatever reason do not reveal them in public. Anyway, I cannot find that quote in the NYRB piece, although that one does say "Although the Bush administration appears to loathe Chávez and his pro-Castro policies, nearly 15 percent of the US oil supply comes from Venezuela" which is also true.

quote:

---

The author is careful, however, to mention - twice - that Chávez once tried to stage a coup against the hated Carlos Andrés Pérez regime; she informs us that he served two years in prison for the failed attempt, calling him a "hothead who had sought to destroy an elected government through force."

---

I can't find that quote in the NYRB articles, so I presume that it is the National Geographic one. Chávez did indeed serve two years in prison for the failed coup, so I don't see why that shouldn't be said. Chávez mentions it frequently; I believe it is part of his appeal.

quote:

---

This article was clearly written in order to validate the prejudices of the USian middle classes about Venezuela - prejudices that have been fed by lies and distortions in the US media that this article does nothing to correct.

---

I presume when you say "this article", you mean the National Geographic article, rather than the NYRB ones. I suppose that Nat Geo has a larger and more right-wing readership than NYRB, which I do read from time to time when I can get hold of a copy. (Donations welcome.)

So you're quite likely correct about that article. I still think she's a fine journalist, and I'm prepared to believe that NatGeo did a butcher job on her article.

Anyway, just for the record:

Elliot Abrams, just the sort of guy Bush would hire.

quote:

---

The Observer and other journals have alleged that Abrams planned the Venezuelan coup attempt of 2002 against Hugo Chávez. These publications claim that he and Otto Reich, interim Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere in the Bush administration, were not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it and discussed it in some detail, right down to its timing, and estimated an excellent chance of success.

---

I have no trouble believing that. But earlier, before he was indicted in the Iran-Contra affair:

quote:

---

In early 1982, when reports of the El Mozote massacre, thought to be the worst atrocity in modern Latin American history, began appearing in U.S. media, Abrams told a Senate committee that the reports of hundreds of deaths at El Mozote "were not credible," and that "it appears to be an incident that is at least being significantly misused, at the very best, by the guerrillas." ...Abrams implied that reports of a massacre were simply FMLN propaganda and denounced U.S. investigative reports of the massacre as misleading.

---

Since my little contact with the magazine has been scanning thrift store and library back issues mainly for their invariably-brilliant photography, I've missed any political bias, should it have been present.

As a government official, Abrams organized front groups to provide private and clandestine official support for the Nicaraguan Contras; served as the president of an ethics institute despite his own record of lying to Congress and managing illegal operations; rose to high positions in the National Security Council to oversee U.S. foreign policy in regions where he had no professional experience, only ideological positions; proved himself as a political intellectual in books and essays that explore the interface between orthodox Judaism, American culture, and political philosophy; and demonstrated his considerable talents in public diplomacy as a political art in the use of misinformation and propaganda to ensure public and policy support for foreign relations agendas that would otherwise be soundly rejected

Sounds all so familiar, he crawled out from his rock. I think the Elliot Abrams of this world despite the intellect have no idea that other people bleed when they die, it continues to amaze me how few of them have ever served their country in a real war and how their intellect would remain intact if they did, if, considering the number of American soldiers who come home with dameaged psyches is any judge.

It truly is a game as Herman Hesse said in Magister Ludi.

[ 25 March 2006: Message edited by: eau ]

[ 25 March 2006: Message edited by: eau ]

I don't know about that writer's New York Review article, but that stuff you quoted from the Nat'l Geographic is garbage.

I think we used to get it at one time and I recall an article about Sweden, supposedly the country was an inch away from the grave, collapsing under its overgrown welfare state. That was in the early 1990s. So much for that prognosis!

Then there was a sickening article about Vietnam. Disputing that Agent Orange has had any effect on the health of the Vietnamese people.

quote:

---

Originally posted by thwap:
I think we used to get it at one time and I recall an article about Sweden, supposedly the country was an inch away from the grave, collapsing under its overgrown welfare state. That was in the early 1990s. So much for that prognosis!

---