Chavez needed to limit the supply of labor in order to drive up wages. A ruthless man, he apparently is on the same side as many who are posting here who want to limit the number of immgrants comong here to work.
They wanted to make what factory workers were making --- I don't think that Chicanos should have been considered so much lower than dirt that they were to be poverty stricken slaves. Now they've been replaced with Mexicans who are more used to working like slaves --- but I don't see how any of that is good for this country. A huge and growing population of desperate people, no raises because more can easily be imported.
We can easily become like Mexico with 10 servant-types for every elite and no other kind of people -- who needs any middle class employees if someone could be found somewhere in the world who'll work for dirt --- but there is a lot of instability in that kind of class set-up.
What made the USA so wealthy wasn't just because we had the best aristocrats but because we had a very large middle class -- not a servant society.
Chavez was a socialist.
There are two countries - one carefully limits immigration to that which provides the greatest collective benefit and strictly enforces its immigration laws. The other allows the wholesale importation of millions of dirt poor laborers, most from a politically unstable neighbor, with the effect of driving down wages & squeezing the middle class.
Which country is more at risk of eventual socialization?