Venezuela's President Chavez still commands strong support among poor

yahoo.com ^ | December 26, 2002 | STEPHEN IXER, AP

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, Venezuela - Gasoline pumps have almost dried up and staple food stocks in many places are dwindling, but President Hugo Chavez still commands broad support, especially among Venezuela's majority poor.

Chavez's foes launched a general strike on Dec. 2 to force him to resign or allow early elections, before a possible recall vote in August.

They are betting that strangling Venezuela's oil-dependent economy will motivate Venezuelans to demand his resignation or force a vote.

But millions of people, especially among Venezuela's poor and working class, insist they won't allow a return of the two-party system that Chavez displaced in 1999.

"He can't leave us. It would be terrible," says Beatriz Nunez, 51, a Caracas storekeeper who has ignored the strike led by organized labor, business leaders, civic groups and many private media.

Nunez was among those who elected Chavez to power by a landslide in 1998 and re-elected him in 2000. They still see the former paratrooper as their only hope for change in a country where vast oil riches have failed to reach the masses.

An estimated 80 percent of Venezuelan's 24 million people live in poverty. Chavez campaigned on a promise to eradicate a corrupt 40-year-old democratic system that rewarded loyalists and shortchanged the poor.

As he tries to do so, through land reform and other programs, his popularity has dropped, especially among the upper classes who revile him. Chronic political instability and poor management - Chavez has seen dozens of Cabinet changes - led Venezuela's economy to shrink 6 percent in the first nine months of 2002. Inflation reached 30 percent and unemployment 17 percent. Half the work force is in the informal sector.

Outside many districts of Caracas, crowds still clutch portraits of Chavez, wear imitations of his trademark red beret and regularly gather at his public appearances. Many plead with him personally to solve their economic problems. Others are content just to see or touch him.

"They know he is their last hope. It's Chavez or a return to the old politics, which were 40 years of failure," says Guillermo Garcia Ponce, a leading ideologue of Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution."

Few among the opposition are reaching out to these people. Moreover, Chavez has won strong loyalty pledges from top military brass in recent weeks, though he did purge dozens of officers after a brief April coup.

Chavez's approval rating stands at about 30 percent, according to a November poll by private pollster Datanalisis. Among the poor shanty towns ringing Caracas, his popularity is as high as 45 percent. Few polls are conducted in the countryside, where public works programs abound.

Chavez has introduced social development programs, but results have been mixed. The high-profile Plan Bolivar 2000 ended in failure and a flurry of accusations of misspent money.

Plan Bolivar 2000 employed soldiers and civilians across Venezuela to build roads, administer healthcare and repair schools for the poor. The project bombed after its coordinator, an army general, was dismissed amid corruption allegations.

Other projects have been more successful.

"People's banks" give credit priority to rural farmers and small enterprises traditionally excluded from the commercial banking system. Roaming people's pharmacies and medical clinics offer cut-rate prices or free services. Hundreds of patients have been flown free of charge to Cuba for medical treatment. The government has sponsored several "community" radio stations where residents have a say in their communities.

Chavez became a popular hero after leading a failed military coup in 1992. Imprisoned for two years, he began an alternative political movement, named MBR-200, which pledged to do away with the political status quo. He recruited former guerrilla leaders and a swath of politicians from left and center to style his project.

Chavez's most radical support is organized in hundreds of so-called Bolivarian Circles - neighborhood groups coordinated by the government that perform grass roots social projects. Critics call them a civilian militia, alleging they instigate violent attacks against the political opposition.

But most Chavez supporters are far from radical, unified by a desire to change the country and willing to patiently wait for results.

"Chavez talks sense," said William Di Pietro, 44, an unemployed computer technician. "He's a change from the past but there's still a long way to go. This thing could take decades."

Chavez knows that and repeatedly tells his followers - every Sunday, on his "Hello President" TV and radio talk show - that change takes time.

He's called the years 2000-2010 a "decade of silver" for Venezuelans. The years 2011-2021 - when the 48-year-old Chavez, despite efforts to oust him, envisions hanging up his gloves - promise a "decade of gold."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bolivarian Circles: Neighborhood watchdog groups stay loyal to Chavez***'This is a social movement from the ground up. We've never seen anything like it,'' Blanco said of the mass mobilization of working-class Venezuelans on behalf of Chavez. The former army paratrooper, who won the presidency in the 1998 election, has won the hearts of many of Venezuela's 24 million people through his fiery speeches railing against the excesses of the country's elite.

In part to cement support among his working-class constituents, Chavez created the watchdog groups and named them after the country's most beloved native son, Latin American independence leader Simon Bolivar. The Bolivarian Circles are modeled after Cuba's Committee for the Defense of the Revolution and serve as liaisons between the neighborhoods and the government as well as fomenting key support for Chavez.***

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A child waves a Venezuelan flag as he sits on his father's shoulders during a pray time held by foes of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at Christmas eve in Caracas, December 24, 2002. Thousands of Venezuelans spent Christmas Eve on Tuesday waiting in long lines outside gas stations as an opposition strike against President Hugo Chavez dampened the festive spirit and kept a chokehold on oil supplies. REUTERS/Jorge Silva - Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

Cuban President Fidel Castro speaks during Elian Gonzalez (lower L) ninth birthday
party in Cardenas, east of Havana, December 6, 2002. REUTERS/Rafael Perez - Fidel Castro - Cuba

U.S actor Sean Penn walks under a portrait of President Saddam Hussein during a news conference in Baghdad, December 15,2002. Penn made a personal peace appeal in Baghdad as U.N. weapons inspectors undertook return visits to several suspect sites.(Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Delighting in the Dictator*** In the late 1970s the American writer Sally Quinn returned from Cuba having found it an Isle of Eros. Said she of the country that then housed thousands of political prisoners in dirty cells and torture chambers, "an attitude of sexuality is as pervasive in Cuba as the presence of Fidel Castro. You can feel sex in the atmosphere." Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern bounced around the Cuban countryside with Fidel in a jeep and survived to tell of it. Said he of a man who even then was sending arms and soldiers around the world to support Communist terror and oppose American policy, Fidel is "soft-spoken, shy, sensitive, sometimes witty….I frankly, liked him." And Senator Lowell Weicker, the Republican ever on the prowl for a presidential nomination, launched this line certain to illuminate his presidential qualifications. "Castro's been known to snow people but he didn't snow me," Weicker asseverated. He spoke of Fidel's "enormous intellect and idealism" -- yes, idealism! He questioned why the United States did not take Fidel's side, the side of progress.***

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Inspired by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Cuba's Fidel Castro, military strongman Chavez is turning oil-rich Venezuela into a populist, anti-U.S. dictatorship, say U.S. intelligence sources. They tell Insight that Chavez is providing a safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) narcoguerrillas, an 18,000-man insurgency that began decades ago as an offshoot of the local Communist Party and still clings to Marxist-Leninist ideology.

U.S. policy during the Clinton administration provided Colombia, a country twice as large as France, with the means to combat drug producers and traffickers but deliberately restricted the use of U.S.-supplied military equipment to prevent Bogotá from effectively fighting the FARC. A U.S.-brokered "peace" process helped give the FARC a protected sanctuary the size of Switzerland in the heart of the country. Now, Colombia faces the prospect of disintegration as the cocaine- and heroin-financed FARC gains military ground.

Economic hard times and the difficult transitions from populist welfare-state regimes to market-based systems are creating hardship and malaise across much of Latin America, including Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) member Ecuador and industrial powerhouses Argentina and Brazil. Far-left politicians now run the Western Hemisphere's most populous cities: Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil. Masked Zapatista gunmen spouting Marxist rhetoric gained political legitimacy last year in Mexico, entering into negotiations with the government and even dictating terms in the name of an oppressed Indian minority in the southern part of the country. Across Mexico, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos, a swaggering figure in a black ski mask who smokes a pipe, enjoys a cult following of sorts. Tourists even can buy chic Marcos postcards at airport gift shops.

In Central America, where the Reagan Doctrine stopped Soviet expansionism in the 1980s, the extreme left is working within the political system to take power. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the former communist guerrilla army in El Salvador that tried to shoot its way into power and murdered U.S. servicemen in the process, is now the second-strongest political force in the country. It controls the capital city and dominating the national Legislature, and is favored to oust the ruling conservative party. Next door in Nicaragua, polls show former Sandinista comandante Daniel Ortega with a plurality of popular support for the November presidential elections. - It's Cool Again to Be Communist

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*****American celebrities who trot to Cuba almost never see the country in which Cubans have to live; they see a Potemkin Cuba, set up for visitors and off-limits to Cubans. Outright leftists from America have always journeyed to Havana, to use and be used: Robert Redford and Ed Asner, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee (two congresswomen from California). Other pilgrims, however, are less malicious than they are trendy and naïve: Leonardo DiCaprio, Woody Harrelson, an assortment of pop musicians. A few years ago, the fashion models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss had an audience with Castro. Campbell hailed the dictator as "a source of inspiration to the world." Castro complimented the ladies on their "spirituality." Jack Nicholson, too, had a high time in Cuba. He drank choice rum, smoke choice cigars, and buddied for three hours with Castro, afterward pronouncing Cuba "a paradise."

Such behavior may seem merely ridiculous, but it is not without its effect on dissidents. Valladares confirms the obvious: that it demoralizes them terribly. "It demoralizes not only the resistance inside Cuba, but all of us who have struggled for many years while we wait for the solidarity of those who believe in democracy." He may wait for that solidarity a long time. The likes of Naomi Campbell and Jack Nicholson, sadly, have far more influence on Americans than Armando Valladares ever could. - Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba?

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*** Perhaps surprisingly, part of the extensive pro-Castro support network in the U.S. is the National Council of Churches (NCC). This "religious" group has a long history of pro-Castro activities. Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, the editorial director of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco and author of From Mainline to Sidelines: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches, says about the NCC for wanting to send Elián back to Cuba, "This should come as no surprise since the NCC does not represent American Protestants and has long served as a lobby for the Marxist dictatorship of Fidel Castro."

Billingsley, explains that the NCC remained silent about Castro's crimes from its beginning in 1959. In 1968 the NCC issued their first statement about Cuba urging the U. S. to recognize the Castro regime. This despite the fact that one of the first casualties of Castro's revolution was organized religion. Billingsley says that in 1977, a year before his election as NCC president, Methodist bishop James Armstrong "led a delegation of American church officials to Cuba, where they supported the regime's repression." After this first NCC official delegation visit to Cuba, they declared to be "challenged and inspired by Cuba and flatly denied that the Cuban regime persecuted Christians."

However, in 1977 Amnesty International stated that Cuba had "the longest-term political prisoners to be found anywhere in the world." He points out that "In 1980, the NCC published a book claiming that "Cubans are the only Latin Americans who have broken with dependent capitalism and its accompanying dehumanization of the common people." According to former imprisoned poet Armando Valladares, "Cuban officials used pro-Castro statements of American clergy to torment prisoners. That was worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger. Incomprehensibly to us, while we waited for the embrace of solidarity from our brothers in Christ, those who were embraced were our tormentors." - Who The Real Ogres Are

Lloyd Lewan, dean of the University of Pittsburg's Semester at Sea round-the-world educational cruise, raises Cuban President Fidel Castro arm in thanks. Cuban President Fidel Castro met with more than 700 American college students December 6, 2002. Castro spoke to the students for three hours. REUTERS/Rafael Perez

[JohnHuang2]

Venezuela's President Chavez still commands strong support among poor

Gee, AP headlines like that remind me of when we were told how 'morally wrong' Reagan's "contra war" was because....

Nicaraqua's President Daniel Ortega still commands strong support among poor

Two landslide election defeats for the Sandinistas later and...hmmmmm...wonder why we don't hear about how "popular" communism was with Nicaraqua's poor? ;^)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yes, it highlights the fact the Left enjoys their stranglehold on news outlets aka propaganda mills - and in that I include publication, education and religion.

[JohnHuang2]

Exactly, and they have the audicity to gripe about Rush, FOXNEWS and the Washington Times -- three outlets distinquished only because of the rarity of conservatism in the media.

[JohnHuang2]

distinquished=distinguished

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The Left believes themselves superior - entitled, through their gift of intellect, to shape the world. What a lot of nerve! Personally, I like "We'll report, you decide."

[JohnHuang2]

"We'll report, you decide."

Ah, yes, journalism -- what a concept!

G'nite, my friend, and have a nice day =^)

[snippy_about_it]

The left and their hero's, the blind leading the blind. Good post CW.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thank you snippy_about_it.

The left and their hero's, the blind leading the blind.

Well put.

[wideawake]

What? An AP item which praises a dictator and only quotes his supporters?

I just don't believe it.

[wideawake]

Hey, remember that neighborhood watch program in Germany back in the 30s called the Sturmabteilung?

Or that nifty neighborhood watch program the Chinese had during the Cultural Revolution?

Those Circulos Bolivaros must be just a great bunch of civic-minded citizens!

[Yardstick]

*bump*

At other websites that shall go unmentioned, the belief is that Chavez's failures so far are due mainly to CIA subterfuge.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Chavistas: Venezuelan street toughs: Helping "revolution" or crushing dissent?*** CARACAS, Venezuela - From her bed in a Caracas military hospital, the wiry, chain-smoking prisoner vowed to continue a hunger strike and risk becoming the first death in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "revolution." "Comandante" Lina Ron, who considers herself a modern version of "Tania," a woman who fought alongside Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, says she is a willing martyr for Chavez's cause. She was arrested after leading a violent pro-Chavez counter-protest against demonstrating university students.

Thousands follow her lead in Venezuela and they have increasingly quashed dissent, breaking up anti-government protests, intimidating journalists and alarming the president's critics. Chavez has angered Washington by expressing his admiration for Cuban President Fidel Castro and adopting policies seen as anti-business. Venezuela is a key oil supplier to the United States. "If I fail or die, the spirit of the revolution dies," Ron said. "But I'm not going to fail. I'd rather lose my life than my principles." Just what those principles are have sparked debate across the nation…………… Chavez has called Ron a political prisoner. "We salute Lina Ron, a female soldier who deserves the respect of all Venezuelans," he said recently. ***

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Cuban President Fidel Castro (R) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez after they placed a wreath at the memorial of independence hero Antonio Jose de Sucre, November 29, 2002. Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are in Ecuador to attend the inauguration ceremony of Ecuadorean artist Oswaldo Guayasamin's work 'La Capilla del hombre' (The Chapel of Man). Guayasamin, who was Castro's personal friend, had been working on his top piece, 'The Chapel of Man,' when he died on March 10, 1999. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo

Fidel, Saddam and Hugo --An improbable but growing friendship of three military revolutionaries***In a way, this bizarre trio represents the rebirth, a half century later, of the kind of nationalist populism spawned by General Juan Perón in Argentina and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam gained power through armed revolutions; Mr. Chávez, a paratroopers' lieutenant colonel, was democratically elected in 1998, after serving time for trying to overthrow the government in 1992.

Mr. Chávez is the most intriguing new leader to emerge in Latin America since Mr. Castro - and he is the lynchpin between Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two countries until Mr. Chávez appeared on the scene. This fall, Mr. Chávez became the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War, ostensibly to invite Mr. Saddam to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an in-your face gesture toward the United States.***

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Chavez's most radical support is organized in hundreds of so-called Bolivarian Circles - neighborhood groups coordinated by the government that perform grass roots social projects. Critics call them a civilian militia, alleging they instigate violent attacks against the political opposition."

Patterned after Castro's CDR--Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.

Basically, there is one designated snitch on every block in Cuba, whose function is to keep an eye on everything that goes on in the neighborhood, and report any "suspicious" activities to the G-2 (secret police).

[Eric in the Ozarks]

They have one in Cuba in every apartment building.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

*** Basically, there is one designated snitch on every block in Cuba, whose function is to keep an eye on everything that goes on in the neighborhood, and report any "suspicious" activities to the G-2 (secret police).***

I've also heard they get to keep "illegal" items. So there's profit in being a rat.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Bump!