Toward A Socialist Paradise: Venezuela Governor To Seize Airport


After eight years of Hugo Chávez, kidnappers and thieves prowl Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar International Airport: I learned about that the hard way. Expect more of the same as the state expropriates a nearby privately owned airport (Photo: Simon Bolivar terminal)

See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

For years, airline passengers disembarking at Venezuela’s main airport faced an unsettling experience: Simon Bolivar International Airport is a model of inefficiency. It's what you could expect from most state-owned and Venezuelan managed enterprises. Passengers going to the taxi stand might get picked up by a pirate taxi – the driver having bribed or snuck his way past apathetic security personnel. Many travelers paid several times the going rate for the 30-minute trip to Caracas. Today, after eight years of Hugo Chávez’s “revolutionary” government, the airport is more disorganized than ever. And it’s dangerous. Four years ago, I found out just how dangerous.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the latest news from Venezuela’s emerging socialist paradise: A state governor allied with President Chávez has ordered the expropriation of a private airport in Charallave on the outskirts of Caracas. The reason, according to Miranda Gov. Diosdado Cabello, is to “substantially improve the use of the airport” by siphoning off air traffic from Simon Bolivar airport in nearby Maiquetia.

Some 500 shareholders were surprised by the announcement, airport manager Henry Vazquez told the Associated Press. And no wonder: The airport already was controlled by government officials and soldiers. Obviously, there are really only two reasons for the take-over: Power and control. Socialism has nothing to do with it.

The move comes as Chávez has vowed to nationalize “strategic sectors” – including private firms in which U.S. companies have stakes in telecommunications, electricity, and the oil industry.

The take-over announcement comes days after a remarkable news conference in Caracas given by Luis Miquilena, 87, who guided Chávez to his first landslide election win. A long-time leftist, Miquilena left Chávez’s cabinet five years ago, and at the news conference he savaged El Presidente. Miquilena thus joined a long list of former Chávez allies who parted company with the autocratic populist after seeing what he was all about. A similar pattern occurred in Cuba as Chávez mentor Fidel Castro showed his true colors, following his democratic “revolution” some 50 years ago.

"This is a government with a hypocritical authoritarianism that tries to sell the world certain democratic appearances," Miquilena said at a daily newspaper, El Nacional, which has been critical of Chávez’s government. "The government is not abiding by any rule. It has all the characteristics of a dictatorial government."

As Miquilena nears the end of his life, it is ironic and sad that he must now bear witness to Venezuela’s slide into what has all the appearances of a dictatorship, albeit for its democratic trappings. He had held his tongue until now. As a young man, Miquilena saw Venezuela emerge from the dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez into a democracy. By some accounts, he was tortured by that dictator’s secret police.

Miquilena’s comments came days before Chávez was expected to be ruling by “decree.” And once that happens, don’t expect the nation’s airports to hum with efficiency.

Kidnapped

Four years ago, I learned just how bad things had gotten at Simon Bolivar International Airport when I disembarked from a KLM flight from Amsterdam. Having been through the airport many times before, when living in Venezuela, I figured I could differentiate between the good guys and bad guys.

I was wrong.

Getting into a taxi, my driver tossed my bag into the back seat, and I slide in right next to it. Suddenly, two other guys opened the doors on either side and got in. I heard the snap of automatic door locks.

Immediately, I knew what was happening. Frantically, I pulled at the door knobs.

“Calm down, calm down,” said the small wiry man who had pretended to be a taxi driver – right down to the official badge.

Helplessly, I looked out the window as we slowly drove off: The gringo traveler and his three Venezuelan companions in a taxi. Thirty feet away, two apathetic National Guardsmen were engaged in small talk.

The guy in the right-font seat opened the glove compartment. I heard the sickening sound of a semi-automatic being cocked. I knew enough about this sort of thing to know that your chances of survival go down significantly once you’re kidnapped.

I was calm, yet seized with dread. I wondered if the last thing I’d ever see was the guy in the right-front seat turning around and firing a bullet into my chest. The three of them were in their 40s and 50s and looked quite ordinary.

One flipped through my U.S. passport and, seeing a residency stamp for Jamaica, somehow confused me for a Canadian. Maybe it was my lucky day.

“Jamaica is a sovereign country, right?” one said.

“Yes, I have a wife and two kids there,” I replied. It was a lie, calculated to make me seem more human to them. They looked like family men.

They were disappointed I didn’t have more cash – so I overstated the value of the Jamaican dollars I was carrying. That made them happy.

“We’re poor. That’s why we’re doing this,” one of them said. He professed solidarity with Hugo Chávez.

Thirty minutes later, they let me out in a working-class section of Caracas. They'd picked me clean, taking a few hundred dollars, a camera, and a cell phone. They gave me cab fare to get to my destination.

Later, I spoke over the phone with a security officer at the U.S. Embassy.

“I used to live here," I said. "So can I assume it's like it was a few years ago; that it would be a waste of time to report this to the police?”

“Yes, you can assume that.”

He added, “This has been happening a lot. I shouldn’t say this, but a few days ago I got an irate call from the head of security for one of the U.S. airlines flying here.

“One of their captains was kidnapped. It happened exactly like you described.”

KLM, for its part, was wise to this. My flight’s steward told me that KLM no longer let its crews stay overnight in Venezuela: too dangerous. They flew the plane to Curacao and then returned the next day for passengers.

Violent crime has soared in Venezuela after eight years of Chávez. Typically, the sorts of folks who cheer on Chávez are the types who claim that poverty and crime are related. In other words, when poverty goes down, so does crime.

Yet Chávez claims to have reduced poverty – and still crime is soaring. The more likely factors that explain the crime explosion are the same ones found at the international airport – epic levels of inefficiency, corruption, and mismanagement. Travelers heading to Venezuela would be well-advised to look at the State Department's hair-raising report on security there.

Regarding the main airport, here’s an excerpt:

“Maiquetia Airport, the international airport serving Caracas, is dangerous and corruption is rampant. Concerns include personal property theft, muggings, and “express kidnappings” in which individuals are taken to make purchases or to withdraw as much money as possible from ATMs, often at gunpoint. The Embassy has received multiple, credible reports that individuals with what appear to be official uniforms or other credentials are involved in facilitating or perpetrating these crimes.”

Once Chávez’s goons get their hands on the Charallave airport, you can expect more of the same: That’s how authoritarian socialism works.

Getting Along With Thugs

Why Hugo Chávez’s Apologists Think The Way They Do

President Hugo Chávez recently declared that authoritarian “21st Century socialism” is coming to Venezuela, and in a matter of days he's expected to be ruling by "decree." Yet some Americans shrug it all off; they view the anti-American autocrat in the best possible light. Chávez's apologists include members of Congress, journalists and seemingly well-informed voters. Why do they still refuse to take Chávez seriously?

“First of all, if you learn a simple trick, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
– Atticus Finch, courageous and principled lawyer in the 1960 Harper Lee novel, "To Kill A Mockingbird"

By David Paulin

President Hugo Chávez is set to spend 18 months ruling by “decree” as he steers Venezuela toward his vision of authoritarian “21st Century socialism.” Obedient legislators are expected to grant the anti-American autocrat the sweeping powers he declared he wanted during swearing-in-ceremonies on Jan. 10th for his second six-year term. No matter that such executive powers have traditionally been granted only to address national emergencies – none of which presently exist in Venezuela. However, Chávez gets what he wants from a legislature packed with fawning supporters – thanks to a rewritten constitution that enabled him to consolidate his power not long after taking office in early 1999.

Since then, Chávez has provoked outcry from human rights groups and regional bodies for his authoritarian rule and numerous rights abuses – including election irregularities and the intimidation of opposition groups and the news media. Yet Chávez still has plenty of apologists. Some are rabid cheerleaders, members of the international left; they gladly countenance anti-American dictators who rule in the name of the people. Chávez , however, also has more than a few apologists who seem perfectly respectable – members of Congress, the State Department, the mainstream media, and seemingly intelligent voters. Though not hard-line leftists, they invariably put Chávez in the best light. Some explain away his abuses – noting he was democratically elected. And some are not merely apologists; they’re enablers.

In a way, these apologists are more problematic than left-wing extremists. They have helped to legitimize Chávez from the start – even as his radicalism became increasingly evident during his first year in office. Now they’re ignoring the clearest evidence yet that Chávez is indeed an emerging dictator – intent on taking Venezuela toward an authoritarian socialist state.

Why do they always give Venezuela’s elected autocrat the benefit of the doubt, insisting his actions are unlikely to match his radical rhetoric? To apologists like Sen. Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, it’s because Chávez was democratically elected and thus deserves the same respect that’s accorded leaders of healthy liberal democracies. Washington’s poor relations with Chávez – he and others suggest – is really the fault of only one man: President George Bush. Some of these apologists and enablers continually underestimate Chávez's potential for real harm and mischief. They’re guilty of a mistake made by many well-intentioned people, mostly liberal Democrats, when dealing with thugs. They naively project their own rational behavior onto them, falsely assuming that thugs act as logically and reasonably as they do. They continue to do this with Chávez , even as things in Venezuela go from bad to worse.

Chávez, speaking on national television two days before being sworn-in, made it clear that Venezuela will head toward authoritarian socialism. Calling Christ the “greatest socialist in history,” he declared, “Fatherland! Socialism or death, I swear it!” Never before has Chávez spoken so concretely about where Venezuela was going – though he in fact was making himself clear, in so many words and deeds, early into his first term. One example of that was the rewritten constitution that Chávez pushed through Congress months after taking office. Adopted in 1999, it enabled him to easily consolidate his power, thereby eliminating the normal give-and-take associated with a healthy democracy.

Chávez is Bluffing?

Chávez, besides declaring his intention to “rule by decree,” also pledged to nationalize key industries and eliminate presidential term limits. He wants to substitute "communal boards" for competing centers of powers such as mayors and municipalities – an alarming announcement that has been under reported in the mainstream media, but not at the venerable Venezuelan blog, The Devil’s Excrement. In addition, Chávez has vowed to eliminate whatever autonomy the Central Bank has left, providing him easy access to billions of petro-dollars to spend in whatever way he sees fit.

Predictably, Venezuela’s financial markets and currency went into a nose dive; and the region’s markets were rattled too. Yet days later, in a discussion on a Yahoo! Message Board, one seemingly intelligent investor said Chávez was probably “bluffing” in respect to nationalizing telecommunications firm Compania Anonima Nacional Telefones De Venezuela. It’s Venezuela’s biggest publicly traded company, known by Spanish acronym CANTV.

Why should Chávez bluff about nationalizing CANTV? It would be illogical to do so, argued the investor. CANTV, after all, was a basket case as a state-owned and Venezuelan-managed company.

“Chávez himself knows how crappy phone service was before (CANTV) was privatized,” he explained, “and he cannot take the risk of nationalizing (CANTV) and seeing phone service get that bad again.” He was referring to a post published here, “Telephones for the Classes – Socialism for the Masses.” It described CANTV’s dysfunctional state before Dallas-based GTE Corp. acquired a 40 percent stake of CANTV in 1991 and turned the company around; it’s now part of Verizon Communications Inc.

Accordingly, the investor rated CANTV a “strong buy.”

No doubt, the investor foolishly assumed that Chávez is guided by the same rational impulses that animate his decisions. Or perhaps he read an article in The Washington Post by Juan Forero, “Chávez Would Abolish Presidential Term Limit.” Incredibly, it failed to even mention Chávez's intention to rule by decree. And while it ticked off an ominous list of Chávez's abuses, it nevertheless conjectured that Chávez's “apparent goal” is not Cuba-style socialism. Why? It’s because Chávez says so, or as Forero wrote: “Chávez stresses that Venezuela will remain a democracy, and analysts do not believe his government will embark on a wholesale expropriation of companies, as Castro’s government set out to do soon after taking power in 1959.” It’s puzzling that Forero soft-pedals Chávez's slippery slide into elected autocracy. A long-time Venezuela hand, he reported from Caracas for The New York Times before recently joining The Washington Post.

Writing at the Cato Institute's blog, David Boaz ripped into Forero’s problematic reporting. Chávez had clearly “eliminated any remaining doubt about his plans to rule as a socialist dictator," he wrote. "Yet some journalists still can’t bring themselves to speak truth about power.”

The Chávez threat also was downplayed in a problematic Miami Herald article, “Venezuela reels from Chávez ’s hard left turn to the left.” Written by freelancer Phil Gunson and staff writer Steven Dudley, it also soft-pedaled Chávez's theat, quoting an unconcerned Venezuela "analyst” named Mark Weisbrot of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic Policy and Research. “I think this is going to change slowly,” Weisbrot was quoted as saying. “What, maybe, makes it sound radical is that Chávez is calling it socialism and using leftist rhetoric.” Oddly, no mention was made of Weisbrot’s less-than-neutral background: He’s a long-time leftist and among the most influential and well-connected international cheerleaders of Chávez's government. By some accounts, he's served as a Chávez advisor. Venezuelan opposition groups have been monitoring his activities for years.

Chávez's apologists are of course animated by individual nuances. For some it’s all about their self-interests, which are fed by Chávez's largesse or the political capital they believe supporting him provides. Many apologists with purer motives are guilty of a common mistake – projecting their own values and hopes onto the authoritarian leader. In doing so, they fail to understand that Chávez inhabits a world with a different set of rules and logic. In Chávez's world, elected leaders do make irrational decisions that fail to serve the interests of voters. They get away with this because of a lack of transparency and accountability in their dysfunctional political systems. Their motivations for their irrational conduct are primitive: hate, pride, envy, revenge, greed, power, vanity – or some combination of these vices.

These vices also may be wrapped up with political ideology. There’s plenty to suggest that this is what drives Chávez ’s vague “Bolivarian” ideology. After all, its two animating features are polar opposites: excessive levels of self-esteem that are warring against a monumental inferiority complex. And inside this inferiority complex, there’s a gapping and puzzling contradiction: Venezuela is rich in natural resources – yet for decades it’s suffered monumental levels of poverty, corruption, and crime. How could this be? Unable to accept individual or collective responsibility for such dysfunction, Chávez and Venezuelans like him blame others.

Chávez ’s Irrational World

As part of this blame game, Chávez is perfectly content with irrational conduct – even if it means hurting Venezuela’s poor majority, whose interest he claims to champion. The possibility never occurs to him that a state-owned CANTV will again offer absolutely miserable phone service. He’s confident that his political appointees, probably military officers, will run CANTV efficiently. And if they fail, it’s not a major concern. Power, control, and excessive pride are what drive Chávez – along with his belief that he’s on a divine mission. Accordingly, business firms either operate according to Chávez's whims or they risk being nationalized.

Early into his first term, Chávez demonstrated his propensity to act irrationally – against the interests of poor Venezuelans. It’s worth noting some examples. But first consider a story that a physician told me, a number of years ago, about an incident in an American hospital. It demonstrates a certain type of mindset that provokes irrational and irresponsible conduct.

A pair of veteran surgeons, a married couple, was operating on a patient. At a critical moment, they got into a nasty argument about how to proceed; it so absorbed their attention that they let the patient’s vital signs deteriorate. Why? It’s likely that pride, anger, and marital dysfunction played a role in an incident that hurt them professionally and endangered their patient’s life.

Chávez has engaged in similar types of irresponsible and irrational conduct. Consider what happened in December, 1999 when Venezuela suffered a massive mudslide disaster. One of Latin America’s worst natural catastrophes, it killed tens of thousands of people, left untold numbers homeless, and buried roads and villages. At the time, I was a Caracas-based foreign correspondent, writing for a number of American news outlets.

Within days, a U.S. Navy ship was headed toward Venezuela, carrying hundreds of military engineers and heavy equipment; a top Venezuelan military official had signed off on the operation. But the vainglorious Chávez unexpectedly rejected the U.S aid, blurting out during a news conference that American military personnel were not welcome on Venezuelan soil! Curiously, U.S. Army helicopters already were conducting search-and-rescue operations. Ordinary Venezuelans were grateful. Yet Chávez officials endeavored to play down the U.S. relief efforts – though they eagerly pointed out the aid being provided by other countries. Thanks to Venezuela’s inept clean-up effort, coastal areas remained a mess for months after the disaster. They may still be that way.

Responding to Chávez's snub, Clinton-era Ambassador to Venezuela John Maisto looked uncomfortable when news cameras surrounded him. He shrugged off the insult. The avuncular and intelligent career diplomat had promoted a soft-line approach toward Chávez – viewing him as the late-blooming democratic reformer he initially claimed to be. It's likely Maisto also projected his own decency onto Chávez , believing people really can change. Certainly, Chávez had lots of changing to do. Just six years before his election win, Chávez , then an Army lieutenant colonel, orchestrated a bloody and disorganized military coup. Venezuelans overwhelmingly rejected the violence, even though most were unhappy with their president, Carlos Andrés Pérez.

Once in office, some dismissed Chávez ’s emerging anti-Americanism as populist rhetoric, nothing worth fretting about. “Watch what Chávez does, not what he says,” Maisto advised. The so-called “Maisto Doctrine” summed up Clinton-era wishful thinking about Chávez, according to Paul Crespo, a military attaché in Caracas during Maisto’s tenure. This attitude continued well into the Bush administration.

Ultimately, the “Maisto Doctrine” was animated by the same naivety that animated the investor’s “strong buy” recommendation: Chávez would act rationally. Venezuela and U.S. trade was so interconnected, after all, that Chávez would be constrained and not act against Venezuela’s own interest. On top of that, Venezuela’s new oil minister, Alí Rodríguez, declared unequivocally that contracts with American companies would be honored.

Who was Alí Rodríguez? A lawyer and former leftist Congressman with an intellectual demeanor, his background was similar to other top Chávez officials. He fought passionately as a young man in a failed 1960's Cuba-backed insurgency against Venezuela’s democratic government. Venezuela, at the time, was an economically stable and considered a democratic beacon in Latin America. The insurgency never attracted popular support.

What can you expect from men like Rodríguez? A well-educated and perceptive Venezuelan lawyer once told me something that proved prescient: “Men who are extremely rigid in their beliefs in their mid-20s are unlikely to modify them much as they grow older.” It was a generalization, of course. But this refined Venezuelan intellectual was an impeccably good judge of character and knew his country well. He frowned and quickly shook his head when making this observation, uttering his words with such certainty that I’ve always remembered them.

Ultimately, these comments provided a far better indication than the “Maisto doctrine” of where Chávez and fellow true believers were taking Venezuela. Defying all logic, Chávez early into his first term closed ranks with Cuba, sought alliances with Middle Eastern dictators, and expressed solidarity with imprisoned Venezuela-born terrorist “Carlos the Jackal.” In addition, he expressed veiled sympathy for Colombia’s Marxist narco-guerillas; it's likely he also started to clandestinely provide them material support. The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans reject this type of foreign policy; most admire America and covet U.S. tourist visas. It was not until Chávez denounced the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as a "slaughter of innocents" that the Bush administration undertook a belated post-9/11 reassessment of Chavez and soft-line "Maisto Doctorine" that astute observers had harshly criticized.

Eight years ago, voters of all socio-economic backgrounds gave Chávez a landslide election victory. They were fed up with irresponsible political parties and corruption, and they clearly wanted to come together as a country. It wasn’t Chávez ’s plan. Against all reason, he exacerbated class conflicts and fanned the flames of anti-Americanism, antagonizing the Clinton and Bush administrations whenever he could. So much for the claim that it’s all President Bush’s fault.

Embracing the Irrational

The most spectacular example of Chávez ’s irrational conduct concerns Venezuela’s oil industry. During his first election campaign, he’d pledged to put oil wealth to work for poor Venezuelans, disingenuously claiming that previous governments had failed to do so. But by most accounts, Chávez has done nothing substantive to help Venezuela’s poor. Instead, the vainglorious president has given away the patrimony of Venezuela’s poor by providing sweetheart oil deals to oil customers in Latin America and the Caribbean. By doing his, Chávez hopes to give Venezuela, and himself, regional influence. A special deal was made with Cuba: It gets oil en exchange for doctors and athletic trainers. Like his ailing friend and mentor, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chávez sees himself as a player on the world stage; this obviously is more glamorous than attending to nettlesome issues such as dirty streets, runway crime, and deplorable public services.

As an international player, Chávez has pushed his irrational conduct to new heights by providing discounted home-heating oil to low-income Americans and Europens. Anyone who has seen Venezuela’s depressing hillside slums could only characterize this in one way – a case of taking from the poor to give to the rich. But to Chávez ’s apologists and enablers in the U.S. Congress – all Democrats – such ethical nitpicking is of no concern. Among the apologists: Rep. Bill Delahunt of Mass., Sen. Lincoln Chafee of R.I., and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida. All have played along with Chávez ’s “social revolution.” They’ve facilitated the distribution of Venezuela’s discounted heating oil to their constituents, and they’ve taken junkets to Venezuela. Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat, also has praised Chávez for the discounted Venezuela heating oil that’s been provided to Harlem residents.

Chávez, defying logic, also has attempted to steer oil sales away from his natural market, America. These sales generate the most returns on investment, but China is being eyed as a replacement customer. While such a switch would mean less petro-dollars for fighting Venezuela’s poverty, it would nevertheless feed Chávez ’s image of himself as being the leader of an anti-American alliance. That alliance includes Islamic thugs such as Iran’s wacky president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Recently, Ahmadinejad got red carpet treatment in Caracas, while making a swing through the region to beat the anti-American drum. Ironically, America would suffer little if Chávez sold his oil elsewhere; the realities of global oil markets would see to that.

As to CANTV, you might say that the threat of nationalization relates to unfinished business in the minds of Chávez and hard-line leftists. It was privatized over the vigorous objections of leftists in Congress. They lost that debate. Now these true believers hold all the levers of powers. For them, lost pride and honor drives the desire to return CANTV to state hands or, alternatively, to intimidate its owners into operating in abject submission to Chávez's every whim.

One big plus about nationalization is that it would give Chávez the power to control information. In fact, controlling information was clearly on his mind – though in a somewhat different context – when speaking in Bolivia recently. Chávez claimed CANTV was engaged in spying in behalf of the crafty Americans – though, as usual, he failed to substantiate these incredible charges.

As Chávez acquires ever more power, expect things to go from bad to worse as Venezuela heads into “21st Century socialism.” Chávez's apologists and enablers may put him in the best light. They ignore a troublesome fact: One way or another, Chávez does what he says he’ll do. You can count on it.
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This Just In!

The Miami Herald Hears 'Alarm Bells' in Venezuela

Some sharp-eyed bloggers were puzzled over a Miami Herald article about Jan. 10th swearing-in ceremonies for Venezuela strongman Hugo Chávez: “Venezuela reels from Chávez's hard left turn to the left.” Written by long-time Caracas freelancer/stringer Phil Gunson and Herald staffer Steven Dudley, the first paragraph is what raised eyebrows:

• “Venezuelans are hearing alarm bells as their country moves strongly down a leftist path led by President Hugo Chávez , who promised ''socialism or death'' from the factories to the schoolyards when he was sworn in Wednesday to another six-year term.”

Venezuelans are just now hearing alarm bells? That's simply not true, and the article's authors have been around long enough to know that. In fact, the “alarm bells" have been going off since 1999 – and, to be sure, there were some journalists who took the trouble to report it.

On March 1, 1999, for instance, the Houston Chronicle beat The Herald to Venezuela's "alarm bell" story. A showcase piece with photos detailed wide-spread concerns over Venezuela's rewritten constitution, which Chávez had rammed through Congress. The article's author even used the same hackneyed "alarm bell" cliché as The Herald. The 975-word piece was titled: “Business leaders fear proposed constitution's economic impact; Venezuela abuzz over referendum.” Its first two paragraphs even sounded a lot like The Herald's intoduction:

• "President Hugo Chávez's "peaceful revolution" took a decided swing toward the hard-line left last week – prompting critics to say his blueprint for the future will be a step backward for the struggling country.

• "The alarm bells have been ringing since last Friday, when a powerful constitutional assembly – dominated by Chávez loyalists – presented him with their finished work."

Aside from the author's apparent inability to avoid clichés, give him some credit: He then went into much detail about how the proposed magna carta could easily open the way to the very abuses that have since occurred in Venezuela. It's interesting an 8-year-old article sounds so much like a fresh one – right down to a journalitic cliché. It’s a case of journalism, like history, repeating itself.

Incidentally, I wrote that article.

DP/The Big Carnival
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For sharp analysis on Venezuela and other issues, visit The American Thinker and Fausta’s blog. Blogs devoted exclusively to Venezuela that are a must-read include: Caracas Chronicles, The Devil’s Excrement, and Venezuela News And Views. They’re all listed on The Big Carnival’s blogroll.

• For a close look at the sweeping powers Chávez is expected to receive, see Teodoro Petkoff's "The Hidden Enabling Bill" at The Devil's Excrement.
  

• To understand why Hugo Chavez's poverty-reduction efforts are so problematic, read Francisco Rodríguez's recent articles in Foreign Policy and The Guardian.

• Don’t believe that Hugo Chávez was showing his true colors early into his first term? Then take a look at these Op-Ed articles published in 2001: The Miami Herald's "Dangerous Anti-Americanism Next Door" and the Los Angeles Times' "The Mouth that Roars is Testing U.S. Patience."

• For a report on how Venezuela's corruption has grown to epic levels under Chávez, see this report by Gustavo Colonel, “Corruption, Mismanagement, and Abuse of Power in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela."

• To understand why some decent people misunderstand thugs, you can spend a number of years living abroad, in some nasty places, to see how the world really works. Alternatively, you can spend a few evenings readings some gems of insight by a professor of medieval history at The Augean Stables. This article is a good introduction.

• Also, see earlier articles in The Big Carnival regarding Hugo Chávez and Venezuela:

• Hugo's Broken Promises

• In Perspective: Hugo's Anti-Americanism

• Hugo Strikes Out - for Now

Telephones for the Classes – Socialism for the Masses

Need to phone Venezuela? Forget about it if Hugo Gets His Way

("Chavez's New Statism," an expanded version of this post, may be found at FrontPage Magazine -- DP.)

By David Paulin

President Hugo Chavez, announcing his intention to pursue an authoritarian socialist model for Venezuela and to nationalize key companies, has sent his nation’s stock market and currency into a nasty tail spin.

"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it,” Chavez declared on Monday in a national television address.

This should have surprised no one who was paying attention to Chavez. He was announcing his radical intentions, loud and clear, as early as 1999 when he took office. Today, Chavez will be sworn into a third term that runs until 2013.

Specifically, Chavez vowed on Monday to nationalize Venezuela’s telecommunications company, unspecified electrical firms, and to reduce the Central Bank’s autonomy. Among other things, he also called for additional powers for himself so that he could rule by decree.

In respect to the nationalizations, the biggest prize would be Venezuela’s publicly traded telecommunications company, Compania Anonima Nacional Telefones De Venezuela (known by the Spanish acronym CANTV, pronounced "Can-Tee-V”).

Chavez said, “Let it be nationalized. The nation should recover its property of strategic sectors.”

Before 1991, to be sure, CANTV was a state-owned and managed phone company. It also was an international basket case: People calling across town had trouble getting a dial tone – much less a connection. Calling other cities was virtually impossible.

I lived in Caracas during these years, working as a Caracas-based foreign correspondent for several American daily newspapers. The story of what CANTV was – and what it became in the hands of can-do American managers – is a remarkable one. It’s also testimony to the power of markets to transform an economy – in terms of providing investment, transparency, and accountability.

Inept Management

Poorly managed as a state-owned company, CANTV was rife with do-nothing political patronage jobs and corrupt unions that got what they wanted. In short, it was what you’d expect in a nation with a statist economy that, according to corruption-watchdog Transparency International, was among the world’s most corrupt.

Venezuela had a population of about 20 million people at the time – yet only 1.6 million of them had telephones. It wasn’t for lack of money. Rather, the money-losing state phone company took years to hook up phone lines – unless you had political connections, bribed the right officials or purchased a stolen line.

The state phone company, according to some accounts, took out advertisements asking its customers not to use the phones too much.

Like many Third World countries, Venezuela realized it needed a modern telecommunications system to develop its oil-producing economy. After a highly politicized congressional debate, it privatized CANTV. A GTE Corp.-led consortium won a bidding process and acquired 40 percent of CANTV for $1.9 billion. The government retained 49 percent, and workers kept the remaining 11 percent. (Dallas-based GTE Corp. merged in March 2000 with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications.)

Consider some of what the privatized CANTV accomplished:

From 1992 to 1994, it invested more than $1.1 billion to upgrade and expand Venezuela's phone system – more than was spent during the 20 years preceding privatization.

Led by American managers, CANTV's 22,000 employees installed more than 863,000 phone lines by 1994 – 4 1/2 times as many as were installed during the two years preceding privatization.

More than 460,000 customers were added, three times more than CANTV connected during the two years before privatization.

Bottom line: By 1994, callers almost always got a dial tone. And they usually got a connection.

“The telecommunications system here was very poorly designed and maintained, with 40-to 50-year-old technology,” CANTV's 40-year-old president Bruce Haddad, a 19-year GTE veteran, told me during an interview in July, 1994.

Haddad had his share of problems. He was spoofed on a Venezuela comedy program, had annual reports tossed at him during an annual meeting, and was called a “gringo” and “foreigner.”

At one point, an arrest warrant that seemed politically motivated was issued against him. He was charged with complicity in a natural gas pipeline explosion, caused by a CANTV sub-contractor, which incinerated more than 50 motorists on a major highway. After lying low for a while, Haddad eventually turned himself in and was exonerated.

He and fellow GTE Corp. managers kept the company moving ahead through two bloody coup attempts (one led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez); draconian currency exchange controls, a 100 percent currency devaluation, 70 percent interest rates, and annual inflation of up to 100 percent.

Haddad and fellow GTE Corp. senior executive Douglas Mullen shocked Venezuelan workers by mingling freely with them at functions designed to build esprit de corps – something most status-conscious Venezuelan managers would never do.

It will be interesting to see how CANTV fares once it’s controlled again by Venezuelan managers: state employees of a government that, by all accounts, is involved in record levels of corruption.

Haddad, incidentally, never made it back to the states to settle down with his wife, Dorothy. They died when their corporate jet smashed into the side of a volcano near Guatemala City, Guatemala at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 19, 1997. They were racing the clock to get to Dallas, where the couple was supposed to catch an airliner to China. Haddad was going there as part of his new position, senior vice president of international operations. Both were 43 years old. They had been high school sweethearts.

Author’s note: This was derived in part from articles I wrote for The Dallas Morning News while based in Caracas.

For additional analysis visit The American Thinker and The Devil's Excrement.

Also see these earlier posts in The Big Carnival:

Hugo’s Broken Promises

In Perspective: Hugo’s Anti-Americanism

Hugo Strikes Out – for Now

Getting Along with Thugs: Why Hugo Chávez’s Apologists Think The Way They Do

CULTURE WARS

Visitors to a Texas Library Learn about Admirable ‘Traditional Values’ of Marriage and Community...IN AFRICA!

...An occasional report from the “People’s Republic of Austin” (Photo of Elizabeth Kahura)

UPDATE: See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

Ann Coulter delivered a speech in hip and liberal Austin, Texas last year and nearly provoked a riot. The catcalls and boos that left-wing University of Texas students hurled at her hit a pitch when one student posed a vulgar question, intended to attack the conservative columnist's concepts of marriage and traditional values.

“Let him go” chanted supportive students at LBJ Library Auditorium, after nearby campus police quickly arrested the 19-year-old man.

Curiously, no such protests erupted during an event on traditional values a little over one week ago at a city library. Why? Perhaps it’s because the values being discussed were not American – conservative or otherwise.

No, this event focused on traditional African values – or as a library news release explained: the “traditional African values of family, community, responsibility, commerce, and self-improvement.” That, at least, is the virtuous picture of Africa that Elizabeth Kahura, a native of Kenya and professional “storyteller,” would have you believe. She spoke during an event associated with Kwanzaa week – the controversial African-American holiday which ended a little over one week ago.

In one sense, Kahura is the perfect cheerleader for the Africa-oriented Kwanzaa, which is taken very seriously in Austin.

Sixteen years after arriving in America, Kahura makes a career out of idealizing her native Africa – all while keeping both feet firmly planted in multicultural America. Her mission is to “enlighten the world on the true meaning of Africa,” as one Austin Public Library news release puts it.

Kahura, who settled in Texas, has spent ten-plus years playing up Africa’s virtues. At libraries, schools, and day care centers, she utilizes colorful presentations to show off African clothing, music, and dance. She was a big hit last year among grade-school kids in nearby Bastrop: They got to “dress up like an African King and Queen to demonstrate African Village life.”

In Austin, Kwanzaa gets plenty of serious coverage from the politically correct daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman. No matter that conservatives of all colors have long derided Kwanzaa as racial hucksterism with Marxist and racially charged overtones.

Nearly 40 years ago, Kwanzaa was dreamed up in California by Ronald Everett, an African-American who was an adherent of various black extremist groups and causes. In the early 70s, he served jail time for the false imprisonment and torture of two women who had been his followers. Completing his sentence, he reinvented himself. Today he’s Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor of black studies at California State University in Long Beach.

Over the years, Kwanzaa has been variously described as an African-American alternative to Christmas or a focal point for African-American pride and community. According to one survey, however, it's celebrated by a mere 1.6 percent of Americans – or 13 percent of African-Americans.

At Kwanzaa events you see few if any white faces, yet Kahura insists, “Kwanzaa is not just an African-American concept. It can help anyone."

She went on, “It’s about teamwork, unity, and people walking together. It celebrates culture and it can link African-Americans to their roots and their mother language.”

Oh really? Kahura obviously needs to learn more about her adopted country: American culture has always embraced the civic-engagement aspects she touts. Indeed, America’s remarkable levels of civic-engagement were highlighted in Alexis De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” his seminal volume first published in 1835.

To be sure, a debate is underway about the status and possible decline of America’s levels of civic-engagement. Some experts say it remains healthy. Whatever the case, it’s doubtful Kwanzaa has contributed anything to America’s virtue of civic-engagement, as the holiday has morphed from its racist and militant origins into mainstream respectability. Today it’s utterly beyond criticism or probing questions by the mainstream media.

Multiculturalism Gone Berserk

How did this happen? Obviously, Kwanzaa’s ideologues rode the wave of multicultural and politically correct ideology that eventually infected the mainstream media. As a result, questions that ought to be asked are stifled. One example was a recent Kwanzaa puff piece from Cox News Service, owners of the American-Statesman, whose headline trumpeted: “Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.”

Completely missing was any mention of Dr. Maulana Karenga’s sleazy past; not a word about his criminal record and extremist associations, observed the NewsBusters blog. A provocative headline accompanied its incisive comments: “Cox News Honors Kwanzaa Creator, A Rapist and Torturer.”

As to Kahura, nobody has dared to publicly ask an obvious question about her: How can a Kenyan immigrant be so presumptuous as to settle in America and then make a veritable career out of lecturing Americans about traditional African values?

Let’s face it. The values she admires are mostly a product of her imagination. One reason Africa is a basket case, after all, is precisely because of its values.

Indeed, the idealized Africa Kahura extols would be unrecognizable even to the high-minded readers of America’s most liberal newspaper, The New York Times. Consider a Times article from May, 2005: “AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows’ ‘Cleansing’.”

It focused on a bizarre yet common practice in rural areas of Zambia and Kenya and “a number of nearby nations.” After a husband’s funeral, a ritual takes place: “sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives.”

Its purpose is “to break the bond” with the husband’s spirit, according to The Times. “Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life."

Did the school kids whom Kahura dressed up as African kings and queens learn anything about this? I have yet to attend one of Kahura’s lectures, to be sure, having only had the pleasure of reading about them and seeing her on television. Even so, I doubt she’s ever waxed poetic about the joys of sex with bereaved widows – whether they want it or not.

Kahura caught my attention two years ago, not long after I moved to Austin. Reading a news item about one of her upcoming presentations, I was dumbfounded by what seemed to be a case of multiculturalism gone berserk. I dashed off a protest letter to the America-Statesman: It wasn’t published.

I complained to my public library which was hosting her presentation. A library official responded that Kahura was a well-respected “educator” and much in demand for events such as Kwanzaa, Black History Month, or for various educational purposes.

Conservatives, incidentally, have an epithet for this town: “People’s Republic of Austin.”

Child Sexual Abuse

Presumably, Kahura’s presentations about her idealized Africa also skip over the pesky issue of child sexual abuse in Africa. The problem is persistent in Kahura’s native Kenya – not to mention in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, according to an article in The New York Times last December, "Sex Abuse of Girls Is Stubborn Scourge in Africa." Dr. Rachel Jewkes, a specialist on sexual violence with South Africa’s Medical Research Council, was quoted as saying: “The prevalence of child rape in South Africa goes from really, really high to astronomically high.”

Some traditional values, huh?

Presumably, Kahura also skipped over another traditional African value: promiscuous sex. Once again, the venerable New York Times dealt with this in an article, “AIDS in Africa: Experts Study Role of Promiscuous Sex in the Epidemic." It was published way back in 1990, about the time Kahura first left her idyllic Kenya and came to America.

That article, believe it or not, actually stated that sexually promiscuous behavior may have something to do with Africa’s legacy of colonialism!

Presumably, Kahura’s lectures also have overlooked another ritual based on traditional African values – “female circumcisions.” Last June, The New York Times dealt with this in a delicately titled article, "Genital Cutting Raises by 50% Likelihood Mothers or Their Newborns Will Die, Study Finds.”

It stated, “In a number of African cultures, genital mutilation is part of a coming-of-age ceremony, and defenders have contended that it is a cultural practice, like male circumcision among Jews, with few, if any, proven long-term health consequences.”

Incidentally, the term “genital cutting” is the euphemism preferred by multicultural types who consider the more graphic “female circumcision" (the removal of the clitoris) to be too negative and judgmental of cultures that practice this procedure.

Modern-day Slavery

Some African-Americans and Kwanzaa diehards may idealize Africa – and Kahura may cater to their fantasies. However, they can count their blessings for having grown up in America, not Africa. Consider the plight of many African children – the subject of a New York Times article last October, "Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old’s Eye."

African children sold into indentured servitude work up to 14 hours per day and “are part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets,” reported The Times.

“The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.”

Not very idyllic, huh?

Here’s a suggestion. The next time Kahura delivers a lecture on traditional African values, maybe the school or library or daycare center that’s hosting her can provide some counter-balance: Get a patriotic professor from the University of Texas to give a talk on American and Western values – with the aim of illustrating how those values have made us who we are.

Yeah, I know. In my dreams.

From the author:
….Readers that got this far may be interested in an Op-Ed piece I wrote in July, 2005 regarding the uproar over Mexico’s allegedly racist postage stamps. The piece, “All the Colors of the Rainbow,” ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

All the Colors of the Rainbow

Mexico’s ‘Racist' Stamp

By David Paulin

Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and White House spokesperson Scott McClellan all agree that a Mexican postal stamp plays upon racist stereotypes. Their unqualified agreement – from across our racial and political divide – is probably shared by most Americans. Our condemnation, though, may say a lot more about our culture than about Mexico's alleged racial insensitivity.

Don't get me wrong. I’m also put off by the stamp of a beloved Mexican comic-book character that, to me, also resembles a racist Jim Crow-era caricature: a goofy black male with exaggerated features such as thick lips. But Mexicans like the stamp, and President Vicente Fox has defended it.

So are Mexicans lining up to buy the stamp racists? I have my doubts, in part because I recall all too well how complicated racial politics can be in other countries, including in Venezuela and Jamaica where I have lived and worked.

Like in much of Latin America, for instance, Venezuela’s racial politics is complicated by the fact that it’s hard to tell just who is black -- and who isn’t. The reason is that 80 percent of Venezuelans are mixed race or mestizo. You find all sorts of gradations of colors and facial features. I first realized I was out of the loop when I asked a white upper-class Venezuelan friend why his country lacked any prominent black politicians.

“What about Claudio Fermin?” he asked with incredulity, referring to the dark-complexioned politician in the Democratic Action party.

"He's black?"

"He's as black as can be," he assured me.

He was right, of course. No doubt if I'd met Claudio Fermin on a street in Detroit or Atlanta, I would have figured that, yes, he was black. But in Venezuela, racial distinctions seemed harder to make.

It was an epiphany

How an American like me perceived somebody abroad, in terms of their race, often had more to do with culture and class than with skin color or features. It also had a lot to do with how people perceived and defined themselves.

Not all Venezuelans, to be sure, felt the same way. My Venezuelan girlfriend and I once visited one of the country’s venerable fortune tellers, called brujas. We were so impressed with Fanny – she provided correct numbers for a 4-digit Florida lotto, among other things – that my girlfriend referred a friend to her.

Fanny wasn't pleased.

"Why are you sending blacks to my house? I don't deal with that kind of clientele!"

I was shocked. I hadn't given it much thought until then. But Fanny was black. At least that's how she struck my girlfriend and me (who I guess, incidentally, would qualify as mestizo).

Perhaps Fanny was perhaps using one criterion that some in Venezuela used to determine race: kinky hair.

In overwhelmingly black Jamaica, racial politics and classifications were a lot more complicated. One strange thing I quickly realized: After a few days, I didn't regard Jamaicans I met as being "black.” The reason is that most ordinary Jamaicans, unlike many black Americans, didn’t define themselves by their skin color. Instead, they regarded themselves as Jamaicans – no matter what country they were in. It’s an attitude that upsets some black Americans.

For Jamaicans, however, that attitude affects how they perceive themselves – and how others perceive them. One Jamaican friend related how he was visiting Miami and was in a car with several white friends and acquaintances. Somebody blurted “nigger” in a casual conversation. An embarrassing silence ensued for a few seconds – for my Jamaican friend is black – until somebody in the group quickly clarified: "Of course, we're not talking about you. You’re a Jamaican!”

“It was like water rolling off a duck,” recalled my friend.

Interestingly, such an easy going attitude seemed common among Jamaicans, except for members of the left-leaning elite: newspaper columnists, university professors, and politicians. Many of them viewed the world through a racial prism – an obsession that gives them a lot in common with many black Americans, and with many left-leaning whites.

Ordinary Jamaicans, to be sure, also could be extraordinarily complicated about race.

"P-F-W” was one expression they applied to light-complexioned and upper class Jamaicans who, they complained, tried to “Pass for White.” They joked about whether those P-F-Ws could pass for white in America.

My Jamaican girlfriend, who looked something like the beautiful actress Angela Bassett, once referred to a fellow employee as “the woman with very African features.” I was a bit surprised, for my girlfriend had some African features of her own: sensuous lips that were far more beautiful than what any thin-lipped white women could get from a plastic surgeon. I never learned at what point sensuous lips morph into “African” lips, although it was one of many instances I encountered of blacks making seemingly harmless distinctions or judgments among themselves, based on racial features.

Interestingly, my girlfriend’s beauty opened doors throughout the Caribbean, though not in Cuba. There she was interrogated every time she tried to enter a Havana tourist hotel she was visiting

“Well, you look just like a nice Cuban girl!” the hotel manager of Spanish descent told her sympathetically, after she had vented her outrage. It’s a common complaint – one that left-leaning Jamaican and black American elites, curiously, never complain about.

When retelling her story of being wrongly “profiled,” incidentally, my girlfriend displayed none of the venom and insecurity one often finds among members of minority groups in America, when relating similar incidents.

For my part, I was surprised a Cuban doorman didn't find my Jamaican girlfriend as captivating as I did. But what constitutes beauty or “blackness” can be complicated, I realized. The same can be said for racism. You’d think decent people would know it when they see it. But I’m not quite so sure anymore – except to know that today in America it’s overused more often than not due to our hypersensitivity about race. There’s also no doubting that our ideals are simply much higher than in other countries – though we never get as much credit for those ideals as for our failure to consistently reach them.

As to Mexico, I’m withholding judgment on whether the country has a serious “race problem.” Despite that ambivalence I won’t be buying any of those postage stamps.