Venezuelans pour into streets to mourn Hugo Chavez

[Peace Patriot]

145. Yup, bottom up!

The UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean recently designated Venezuela "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution.

That just doesn't happen in a country ruled by the rich.

In the recent Gallup Well-being poll, Venezuelans rated their own country 5TH IN THE WORLD on their own sense of well-being and future prospects. 5th in the world!

That just doesn't happen in a country ruled by the rich.

The Chavez government has cut poverty by 50% and extreme poverty by over 70%, and has met ALL of its Millennium Goals (such as poverty reduction, access to education and health care)--an unusual achievement.

That just doesn't happen in a country ruled by the rich.

The facts and stats are overwhelming that the Chavez government championed the poor majority, and acted in their interest and in the interest of the society as a whole (--a society is not healthy with big rich/poor discrepancies and vast poverty), and had remarkable success, while also stimulating rather awesome economic growth rates and fending off coups, oil bosses' lockouts, the USAID funding recall election, CIA dirty tricks, intense Corporate/rightwing propaganda, destabilization efforts and God knows what all that was thrown at him and his government by the advocates of the rich getting richer and kicking the poor off the island.

That some oil execs or banksters or entrepreneurs have gotten rich while associating themselves with this political revolution, or that there might be corruption somewhere, is neither here nor there. Every government has problems and Chavez was NOT in control of everything and was NOT a dictator. But the abiding thrust of his policies and actions was to raise the poor out of poverty, to insure access to education, health care, good nutrition, good jobs, credit and everything, including political participation, from which the poor majority had been largely excluded. His government was remarkably successful in these and other respects, and will continue to be, under his VP Madura, because these policies are responsive to the will of the people. The people put Chavez in office to do exactly this--a "New Deal" for Venezuela--and Maduro will continue that "New Deal" or get thrown out of office--as Chavez would have been if HE had not fulfilled his promises.

And how did this happen? This is not an imposed government. This is not some group that came in and took over the government. This was a real democratic process, from the bottom up--starting with the revolt of the poor against "neo-liberalism" (more riches for the rich, austerity for the poor) and starting in hundreds of communities and grass roots groups over various issues of social justice, and building into a powerful movement to re-write the constitution and to elect NEW leaders--not of the old Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum parties--but entirely new leaders whose passions are real democracy and social justice. That Chavez succeeded in most of these new policies is evident not only from sources outside the country and the government (as well as within) but from the Venezuelan peoples' continual big support and re-elections of the Chavez government.

Your little graph does not contribute to this discussion. What does it mean? It's just a distraction. The Venezuelan people created and improved their own democracy to make it responsive to their will. Chavez did not create them. They created Chavez. And the benefits of real democracy have been plainly evident to Venezuelans every day of their lives over the last decade--in schools built, in new housing built, in their children going to college, in having community health centers down the street, in good wages, in pensions, in reduced infant mortality rates, in new community baseball fields, in their children playing classical music in hundreds of children's orchestras, in free instruments, in shoes to wear to school, in retraining opportunities, in loans for their small businesses, in grants for their local co-ops, in public participation in government decisions, in voter turnouts, and more--in hope based on tangible reality and genuine gains, all across society.

These things are WHY they have repeatedly voted for this government--a "why" question that will never be answered by the Corporate Press because they don't want us to know it! People don't get all of the above and more from the rich. They get austerity and deprivation from the rich and acute demoralization, as is happening here and in Europe, where the rich rule, and in U.S. dominated countries in Latin America (such as Honduras and Colombia) where the rich rule and where bloodbaths are occurring against the poor and their advocates.

Chavez wasn't perfect. His government wasn't/isn't perfect. Venezuela is not a Utopian paradise. But the lies and disinformation that exaggerate flaws in the government, or in the society, into widespread malfeasance, corruption and misrule by the Chavez government are egregious and very wrong. That is NOT the view of most Venezuelans, who know damn well what they have done, in creating a real democracy, in demanding a "New Deal," and in electing leaders who are responsive to their will.