From a specially prepared classroom at Miraflores Palace, the former paratrooper and schoolteacher's son lectured teen-age and adult students from an impoverished Caracas neighborhood on the importance of reading and writing.
"Reading helps us to interpret the world," the populist president said, before taking a roll-call of his students, writing words on the blackboard for them to read, and drilling them in punctuation and spelling.
Infuriating midday television viewers across the South American nation, his government interrupted all normal television and radio programming for more than two hours to broadcast the presidential literacy class live.
Venezuela's telecommunications laws allow the president to do this at his discretion. But critics of Chavez, who accuse him of ruling like a dictator, say he frequently abuses this right to make marathon propaganda broadcasts.
The class was organized to promote a government campaign to eradicate illiteracy in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. The campaign was launched two months ago with textbooks, videos and educators provided by Cuba's Communist government.
These are extreme signs of a country in chaos, without law, without government, in anomie (social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values). But there are many others. Every day private land is invaded, urban buildings occupied by organized groups, companies taken over by workers with the backing of members of the armed force or government officers. This is taking place in broad daylight, under the very noses of the institutions which should protect the citizen, but are watching in silence. No reader can truly measure the magnitude of the crime being committed in Venezuela today unless s/he were here. Since many are not, here I am telling them.
When I was a kid, I watched old western movies in which, sometimes, the "sheriff" of a town was a criminal in disguise ... just maneuvering to "take over" the town. I have the perception that a similar situation applies to Venezuela today. There is a group in government, disguised as democrats, trying to take over the country in the name of a revolution based on dead ideologies. They have many of the country's institutions under their control and exercise a rule of terror to "persuade" those who dissent from their views.
Today even the most basic civic rights are threatened with extinction. I have mentioned before how some 500 hours of compulsory TV and radio hookups have been imposed on us by a megalomaniac President, so that he can tell us about his daughter's turtle, about his new grandson or about his childhood in Barinas ... or, he can extol the virtues of Fidel Castro, or the need to eliminate the rich. The matters of real national interest ... the economic and social problems which are overwhelming us are never dealt with. These hookups are a tool of social exclusion, as the man uses them to breed hate among the members of our society.
No institution in Venezuela stands up and challenges this parade of inanities. As impunity becomes total, the President becomes more and more violent and starts threatening all dissenters with armed responses. Like a train jumping tracks the violent President has become an object of destruction.
The only obstacle between this runaway object of destruction and the intended target: Venezuelan society, is a referendum. Only a civilized vote by the Venezuelan population stands in the way to total destruction.***