Venezuela looks to S.American leaders as toll hits 20

[freshwest]

28. Observing that they did not have sufficient governmental infrastructure or regulation - and it can

be easily understood as their change of course thorugh Chavez is not as established as longer standing governments like the USA, is not support for RW dictatorship. It is merely a statement of unfortunate facts on the ground there.

It is an obstacle that will be hard to overcome, and not their fault. This nation was barely in one piece less than a century after it was created, and even with a civil war, the practice of black slavery was not entirely rooted out by any means.

The new style of governance in VZ has not had that long to establish itself. Not that the USA was not attacked by a stronger military force in less than a quarter century after the Constitution was ratified. And Americans had the advantage of holding the land and were able to repell invasion.

In a country as old as VZ, it's hard to establish a working socialist system since the oligarchs are entrenched and have generations of supporters from a different class than that which Chavez was keen to lift up by socialist practice.

In a loose analogy, I'd say it could be constued to be like the situation of AA's here, who were held down and robbed all the way back to the very beginning and still are three centuries later. That is why the oligarchs are so hard to beat, they hold the land and those who are in need of change are up against a system that sees them as the outliers.

That is what the problem is, not the words of people on DU one way or the other. The suffering that is going on may end the experiment that Hugo began, or it may be able to find a compromise with the oligarchs to continue at a slower pace, until all can see the advantages of it.

I don't think civil war is the answer as the world appears to be going through an extremely regressive era. We don't like it and don't want it, but it is out there. The cards are stacked against the world's poor and vulnerable but some progress is being made.

Only the people of VZ will pay the cost for this, not us here, no matter how much it grieves us. For their sake, I hope both sides compromise and not have any further street battles. The longer this goes on, the greater the chance that the government will fall and whatever progress was made will be lost. We can't ignore those students who are not the enemy, they are the future. I'm hoping the call for a summit of SA leaders will bring this to a peaceful solution.