if you´re not from Venezuela...

Good Things Happening in Venezuela April 04, 2005
By Michael Parenti

Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered
the great class divide that besets that country. On my connecting flight
from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an attractive,
exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, I was right.

Our conversation moved along famously until we got to the political
struggle going on in Venezuela. "Chavez," she hissed, "is terrible,
terrible." He is "a liar"; he "fools the people" and is "ruining the
country." She herself owns an upscale women's fashion company with
links to prominent firms in the United States.

When I asked how Chavez has hurt her business, she said, "Not at all."
But many other businesses, she quickly added, have been irreparably damaged
as has the whole economy. She went on denouncing Chavez in sweeping terms,
warning me of the national disaster to come if this demon continued to=20
have his way.

Other critics I encountered in Venezuela shared this same mode of
attack: weak on specifics but strong in venom, voiced with all the ferocity of those who fear that their birthrights (that is, their class advantages) are under siege because others below them on the social ladder are getting a slightly larger slice of the pie.

In Venezuela over 80 percent live below the poverty level. Before
Chavez,most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children
neverwent to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The
neoliberal market "adjustments" of the 1980s and 1990s only made things
worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods.

Successive administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and
nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation. Far from ruining the country, here are some
of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:

- A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the
landless poor has been instituted. Just this month (March 2005) a large landed
estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers
for farming purposes.

- Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a
dramatic increase in grade school enrollment.

- The government has set up a marine conservation program, and is
taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples.

- Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers.

- Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry - 80 percent
of which is still publicly owned---have been halted, and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration.

- Chavez kicked out the U.S. military advisors and prohibited
overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia.

- "Bolivarian Circles" have been organized throughout the nation,
neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at the community
level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and
other public services.

- The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair
streets and neglected drainage and water systems in poor neighborhoods.

Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez's
home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, two of
whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were
there on a one-year program.

The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not
have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, but
care was severely rationed by the private market, that is, by one's ability
to pay. Dental care was distributed like any other commodity, not to
everyone who needed it but only to those who could afford it.

When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people
seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of the
Chavezgovernment availed themselves of the free service, temporarily puttingaside their political aversions.

Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from Cuba.
Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to work in
the free clinics.

Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently
opposed to the free-clinic program, seeing it as a Cuban communist
campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians' earnings. That low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first time
in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much
weight among the more "professionally minded" practitioners.

I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that
are located around the country, mostly in low income areas. These modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce
and fruits at well below the market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.

Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlemen and madestaples more affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run by
women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose function
is to provide low-income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.

There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was
started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory and a T-shirt
factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has put about
a thousand people to work. The workers seem enthusiastic and hopeful.

Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker0
cooperatives. Or perhaps it's not surprising, given the near monopoly
that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy
media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five television
stations and all the major newspapers.

The man most responsible for Venezuela's revolutionary developments,
Hugo Chavez, has been accorded the usual ad hominem treatment in the U.S.
newsmedia. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle (12 September 2004) described him as "Venezuela's pugnacious president." An earlier
Chronicle report (30 November 2001) quotes a political opponent who calls Chavez
"a psychopath, a terribly aggressive guy."

The London Financial Times (12 January 2002) sees him as "increasingly
autocratic" and presiding over something called a "rogue democracy."

In the Nation (6 May 2002), Marc Cooper---one of those Cold War
liberals who nowadays regularly defends the U.S. empire - writes that the democratically-elected Chavez speaks "often as a thug," who "flirts
with megalomania." Chavez's behavior, Cooper rattles on, "borders on theparanoiac," is "ham-fisted demagogy" acted out with an "increasinglyautocratic style." Like so many critics, Cooper downplays Chavez's accomplishments, and uses name-calling in place of informed analysis.

Other media mouthpieces have labeled Chavez "mercurial," "besieged," "heavy-handed," "incompetent," and "dictatorial," a "barracks populist," a"strongman," a "firebrand," and, above all, a "leftist." It is never explained what "leftist" means.

A leftist is someone who advocates a more equitable distribution of
social resources and human services, and who supports the kinds of programs
thatthe Chavez government is putting in place. (Likewise a rightist is
someonewho opposes such programs and seeks to advance the insatiable
privilegesof private capital and the wealthy few.)

The term "leftist" is frequently bandied about in the U.S. media but
seldom defined. The power of the label is in its remaining undefined,
allowing it to have an abstracted built-in demonizing impact which precludes rational examination of its political content.

The leftist Hugo Chavez whose public talks I attended on three
occasions proved to be an educated, articulate, remarkably well-informed and well-read individual. Of big heart, deep human feeling, and keen intellect, he manifests a sincere dedication to effecting some salutary changes for the great mass of his people, a man who in every aspect
seems worthy of the decent and peaceful democratic revolution he is leading.

Millions of his compatriots widely and correctly perceive him as being
theonly president who has ever paid attention to the nation's poorest
areas. No wonder he is the target of calumny and coup from the upper echelons
in his own country and from ruling circles up north.

Chavez charges that the United States government is plotting to assassinate him. I can believe it.

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Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights)
andThe Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press) which was nominated for
a Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, The Culture Struggle will be published by Seven Stories Press in the fall of 2005. For more information on Parenti, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.