Chavez wants coat of arms horse to look his leftist way

Miami Herald ^ | January 21, 2005 | PHIL GUNSON

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS - For firebrand President Hugo Chávez, the white horse on Venezuela's national coat of arms is galloping in the wrong direction -- to the right. So it will soon be changed to gallop in step with his politics -- to the left.

''It's a reactionary symbol,'' said Chávez, a populist who already changed the country's name from the Republic of Venezuela to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and launched this nation on what he calls a revolution toward ``21st Century socialism.''

A bill that modifies the shield was put at the top of the legislative agenda after Chávez mentioned the subject several times before Christmas. It received initial approval Tuesday, and with Chávez's supporters holding all 167 seats in the legislature -- the opposition boycotted the last elections, alleging the electoral deck was stacked against them -- its passage is virtually assured.

Chávez said it was his 7-year-old daughter, Rosinés, who first brought to his attention that the horse was galloping to the right but looking to the left. 'Rosinés said, `Daddy, why does that horse look backward?' '' Chávez said Nov. 20 on his Sunday radio and TV show, Hello President.

But it was Chávez who saw politics in the pose of the horse, which is supposed to symbolize liberty.

''Ideological codes are often sown in national symbols,'' Chávez added, noting that the horse was, ''not Venezuelan [but] imperial.'' Its rightward gallop and backward gaze, he added, was designed during the 1908-35 dictatorship of Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez, who ``sold out to U.S. imperialism.''

NOT AMUSED

A few days later humorist Laureano Márquez poked fun at the president's comments in a newspaper column titled ''Dear Rosinés'' suggesting that a more appropriate symbol might be ``a golden retriever with a stick in its mouth, sitting at its master's feet.'' Chávez was not amused. Without mentioning Márquez by name, he later alleged that the opposition media ''don't even respect children'' and called them ``beasts that swarm in the sewers.''

NEWSPAPER TARGETED

Two weeks later, the government's Council for the Protection of Children and Adolescents announced it was taking action against the newspaper, TalCual, for violating Rosinés' reputation and privacy. It ordered the paper to remove the article from its website, and could impose a fine and even order a temporary closure.

Another part of the bill changing the coat of arms would add an eighth star to the Venezuelan flag to represent the country's eastern Guayana region, the eighth of the original provinces that revolted against Spain in the 19th Century.

DIVIDED HISTORIANS

Historians are divided over the wisdom, relevance and historical justification for the change in the national symbols. A few support it while most are bemused or openly antagonistic.

Such proposals ''lack seriousness, given all the other things that need doing,'' said history professor Margarita López Maya.

But this is not the first such controversy in the seven years since Chávez first came to power.

The 1999 assembly that rewrote the constitution changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela after the president attacked its initial vote against changing it. Simón Bolívar, hero of the South America's independence struggle, is Chávez's avowed inspiration.

COLUMBUS NO MORE

More recently, the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the new world on Oct. 12 was renamed the Day of Indigenous Resistance. And the Education Ministry's official school calendar for 2005-06 lists Feb. 4 -- the anniversary of Chávez's failed military coup attempt in 1992 -- as the day of ``a rebellion that changed the destiny of the republic.''

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

I agree. He's pushing that entire country towards a disaster.