Home > Correction: Venezuela’s Chavez Fuels A Class War

Correction: Venezuela’s Chavez Fuels A Class War

by Open-Publishing - Friday 9 September 2005
19 comments

Governments USA South/Latin America

I attempted to post this as a response to “Venezuela’s Chavez Avoids Class War”, but my response did not post. I hope that this posting is published.

Dear Professor Pareja:

While your commentary, “Venezuela’s Chavez Avoids Class War”, attempts to portray the virtues of Venezuela’s current government, it oversimplifies the nice-looking trees at the danger of ignoring the forest. I will first respond to your specific examples, and then I will attempt to frame the big picture appropriately.

Historically, Venezuela has avoided the policy of taxing income, and this policy might seem odd to most US Citizens. Consider however that Venezuela’s oil, natural gas, iron, and copper industries are all “nationalized”, and that this policy has existed for more than 35 years. This is Venezuela’s trade-off. Government, and not the private sector, owns the land resources, and most of government’s revenue is generated by taxes and profits from those resources. What if the US Government owned Exxon-Mobile, Alcoa, and the like? Would it also need income taxes? Further consider oil at a 60.00 per barrel average with no sign of retreat. Just how much revenue does Venezuela’s government need?

While I agree that all governments need revenue to operate effectively, I believe that Venezuela’s government is flush with cash. Furthermore, the government has become less accountable and open and more centralized, a perfect recipe for pocket lining. In short, a new policy on income tax is Chavez’ way of cementing his populist support. This kind of Robin Hood takes from the rich and gives to the poor, but he keeps his cut. And make no doubt about it: his cut is substantial. The poor majority, with little or no income, has nothing to lose and everything to gain from income tax laws. Vengeance has no place in an open society.

I do not disagree with your second point about household servants. The only thing I would add is that any thoughtful and kind upper middle class family should consider paying even more. Both sides of society are responsible for the class difference that is so apparent in Venezuela, and the upper class is now reaping the harvest that it has sown over the past 50 years.

Chavez’ “Barrio Adentro” program is the perfect example of a poorly executed and badly managed good idea.

A vocation to public service exists today in the US, and many serve in poor communities. US policy, instead of importing foreign-educated health care workers, encourages domestic health-care workers to practice in those underserved communities. Many of these young doctors and nurses practice in Gallup, New Mexico. Another example is Teach for America, which accepts only a small fraction of the thousands of top-notch recent college graduates who apply to teach school in underserved US communities.

Compare Venezuela. Offer a recent graduate in Venezuela a job providing medical services or educating the poor and that graduate will probably reject the offer. Public service is shunned because confidence in public institutions has eroded to an historic low. Add the current government’s polarizing rhetoric and the response to such a call should be obvious. I propose that Chavez could have done more to encourage Venezuela’s college graduates to participate in Barrio Adentro. Chavez may have chosen not to because he may have preferred Cubans, who have a history of complying with whatever government asks of them, over similarly educated Venezuelans, who are not as compliant and are largely from the upper middle class. Exclusion has no place in an open society.

The “revolutionary” angle of Barrio Adentro, and of other similar programs in Venezuela is not addressed. There are currently more than 30,000 Cuban doctors, teachers, and “physical education trainers” in Venezuela. For most Cubans, a job in Venezuela is an opportunity for an improved lifestyle, and no doubt Castro and Chavez influence the factors used to select those who will participate. I propose that this selection process favors Cubans who are willing to extol the virtues of centralized government. And there is plenty of anecdotal evidence showing that a poor Venezuelan gets a civics lesson along with a physical upon visiting a Barrio Adentro doctor.

As for the vocational schools, they are a poorly managed extension of the revolution. Imagine a vocational school where students learn Linux instead of Windows, and where they learn “constitutional law.” Better yet, go to Venezuela and witness it for yourself. I propose that Venezuela’s government has an internal policy of excluding what works well when it is “capitalist”, and that it has a further policy spoon-feeding its own version of law to the poor who simply need more basic education before attempting to digest such a topic.

The streets, parks, and buildings of Caracas are some of the dirtiest and most dangerous that I have ever seen. Ten years ago they were bad, and now they are much worse. Chavez may have many workers on payroll, but the proof is in the pudding. That many workers receive a paycheck without working would be abnormal in the US. Not so in Venezuela. I propose that Venezuela’s current government, with its record revenue, has been most corrupt and least effective in attempting to provide these basic services.

Public transportation and low-income education and housing projects are responsible social policy, and shame on Venezuelans “of means” who reject them because only poor people will use them or because they raise the cost of labor. Again, this demonstrates divisiveness that exists in today’s Venezuelan society. And while the poverty on one end of the spectrum tends toward the financial, the poverty on the other tends toward the moral. Two wrongs do not however make a right. And I propose that government would treat a Venezuelan who wears a red beret when turning in his housing loan application much differently from a Venezuelan who writes an article like this one.

Saying that complete freedom to speak out against the government exists in Venezuela is a little like saying that complete freedom exists to say anything in US broadcast media. People do it all the time, but occasionally they get “caught”. One difference is that thugs ransack a Venezuelan radio station for expressing undesirable political speech, while right-wingers simply fine a US radio station for getting too raunchy. Another difference is that even though thugs may ransack, the Venezuelan media has the courage to continue expressing the undesirable speech.

After tallying the good and bad, I propose that Chavez is bad for Venezuela, and here are a few more reasons that are not addressed:

· Property is taken without due process or just compensation;
· The liberty to invest abroad does not exist;
· The liberty to travel abroad is severely limited; and
· The right to vote is an onerous burden.

Separation of powers, governmental accountability, and public confidence in governmental institutions are virtually non-existent in Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela. And his irresponsible shoot-from-the-hip rhetoric has soiled the Office of the Presidency of Venezuela, an office that Venezuelans elected him tend but not to appropriate as his own.

Unlike other Latin American countries, Venezuela is blessed with an abundance of natural, human, and environmental resources, and there can be no acceptable reason why Venezuela should be unstable. However, with every day that Chavez continues along the path of centralized power and strong-armed nationalism, the trees in Venezuela begin to look more and more like a jungle.

The author is a Venezuelan American US-educated lawyer in New York City who travels often to Venezuela and who reads the Venezuelan press every day. He is a registered independent, and he served as lead attorney for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. His father and five uncles live in Venezuela, and all voted for Chavez in 1998. Only one uncle continues to support Venezuela’s governmental policies. During the August ‘04 referendum, all waited for more than 10 hours to vote. Last month, the author’s father waited in line for two days and nights to apply for a Venezuelan passport.

For more on life and politics in Venezuela, watch “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and “Secuestro Express”.

Forum posts

  • Mr. Juan Jaramillo does not know what he is talking about. Numerous visitors to his and other countries have a different vision. What so bad if poor people learn about laws and Linux operation system instead of windows is used.
    And how many dirty and dangerous streets exists in the USA or in Europe?

    • If I were given the task of quickly and efficiently training as many people as possible to compete for jobs in a global economy, I would certainly teach them Windows-based computer skills instead of Linux. That is what the Chinese and Indians have done. Be realistic. What are we all using?

      As for constitutional law knowledge, knowing a little of it is like knowing a little about surgery. You may have an idea of how to make the incision, but you may very well end up dead patient.

    • better linux than nothing.

      in a real democracy the law should not be that difficult.

      if we are equal everything should be simple, we should have the same punishment
      when we kill or we steal: OJ and Martha love american complicated laws.
      if we are equal we should pay the same taxes: Enron, Haliburton and all big corporations
      love complicated laws.

      I hope Venezuelans know better.

  • The U.S.A. should nationalize the essential industries here too. Oil is an essential commodity and as such impacts everyone’s lives form the rich to the poor. It impacts the rich by making them richer and the poor by making them poorer. It is crimminal for a government to allow monopolies to gouge and rob their citizens of their very basic needs. Energy should be a human right not a luxury, like air and water, and food. It is corrupt and evil for corporations to hold humans hostage by price fixing these essential needs and the governments should see to it that these commodities are cheap and available to all of their citizens. This is the least any government should provide to its people. What do we need government for unless it is to see to it that our lives are whole and we have what is necessary for our well being.

    During the world wars, the U.S. government nationalized essential industries, railroads, etc., and now that we are at war (as usual) the government should once again nationalize oil, etc., for the good of the people and the nation.

    It is working for Venezuela, despite the phony criticisms put forth by those with their own agenda. I am sure it would work wonders for the U.S.A., now especially when our government fucked up so badly and now they expect us all to pick up the tab for their screw ups. People here need to mount a revolution, these pig capitalists profit from every disaster and evil deed. We need to rein them in and punish them and their corporate power base by demanding their heads. They have the guns, but we have the numbers. We all know our government is nothing but corrupt, it is up to us to acknowledge it and do something about it. We need to kick these scumbags to the curb and take back our country.

  • I would like to thank President Chavez for sending 1 million gallons of gasoline to the U.S. to help the victims of the recent hurricane. His generocity stands in stark contrast to the privately owned oil refineries that have taken advantage of the catastrophe to increase their profits by raising the price of gasoline.

    • The US treasury is paying for every gallon of that gasoline...

    • Let’s do some math and economics.

      Gasoline sells for about 35 cents per gallon in Venezuela (it is subsidized), and it sells for about $3.50 in the US.

      Let us assume that the US pays a reasonable amount for each gallon of gasoline that Venezuela delivers. I think $2.50 is a good estimate, but feel free to add or subtract a few cents.

      One million gallons of gasoline on the internal Venezuelan market is worth about $350,000. The same million gallons in today’s US market is worth about $3,500,000. The same million, if sold by Venezuela to the US for $2.50 per gallon, is worth $2,500,000, and it would yield a net profit of $2,150,000 for Venezuela, assuming that the US pays for incidental costs (delivery, insurance, etc).

      So... how is Chavez being so generous? When you need food and go grocery shopping do you thank the grocer for providing you with food, or does the grocer thank you for shopping at his store?

    • Even were Venezuela to receive nothing from the donation, as it should be, of 1 million barrels of oil (between 30% and 50% of one days production by Veneuelan oil fields) the publicity value has already been priceless to the Bolivarian revolution.

    • Please stop spreading lies. Venezuela does not have the right to give away oil for nothing or even for lower prices due to the OPEC regulations. That is why Venezuela is inventing other ways to help countries; for example by letting them pay for the petroleum with a loan that venezuela is giving them with ridiculously low interest of 1% or by exchanging it for other services and using the bartering system. Venezuela is not donating or exporting fuel to the US in order to benefit from anything. Venezuela had even before the Katrina catastrophy offered to sell very cheap heating fuel to the USA by essentially not making any profit through her Citgo corporation. This is generosity as long as Venezuela didn’t have to do such a thing.

      Concerning Linux vs Windows, the fact that you are "ALL" using windows doesn’t mean that this is better for the world or national economy and educational system. First of all, the fact that you are claiming that everyone is using windows is preposterous. Check what other capitalistic societies are doing right now: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/12/linux_share_grows_in_uk/ . Yes that is right. 26% of small and medium bussiness use linux in the UK. In high end servers this is more than 50%. Of course in your mind technical knowledge is being able to use a computer in order to operate a telephonist center in India. Fortunatelly, the vision in Venezuela is to stop being depended from software from a huge corporation that costs about 100 times more to maintain and buy than Linux, have an open source that will allow anyone to use it and improve it and finally to train its people with a largerly superior operating system that is used in most serious applications. Of course when somone is a fanatic they can find wrongdoing in anything.
      Please try to open your minds and only do constructive critisism.

    • Chavez was not elected to pilfer our resources and to become the heir of Castro and Che Guevara. He was elected to govern Venezuela, which he is not doing. It is only a matter of time until the poor realize how miserably they have been used for Chavez’s personal benefit and political gain, and when that they comes no G2 will save him.

    • Keep pretending that you are a Venezuelan...it is very amusing...the rest of us think it is too funny, next you will post that you have a son who was killed in Iraq, then you will be a black person for Bush, your bag of tricks is full...full of shit.

    • Do you know that for a fact Clownboy??? If so please post your sources, if you have none (which you do not because you are full of shit you troll) they get the fuck out of here you Bu$h anus sniffer.

    • thank you for that intellegent and informative reply

  • Funny, some of the same things have and are happening here under the Bushies!

  • I appreciate this site’s willingness to post an entire article to contradict Mr. Pareja’s piece, especially considering that the responose had indeed posted in the comments section. This is a true "open society"

    However, I can’t avoid pointing out two particularly silly assertions. Knocking a computer education program for teaching Linux has already been pointed out to be short-sighted, naive, tunnel-visioned, and inducive of dependency on a corporation which routinely overcharges for bad software. I can only further point that one of the thing’s Brazil’s President Lula is doing right (most Venezuelan Chavez haters point to Lula as a ’sensible leftist’ so this may hurt them) is to massively educate people on using computers, mostly with the cheaper, royalty free, and just-as-good Linux.

    Mr. Pareja’s article already highlighted the fact that the wealthier classes, when not accusing Chavez of being a filthy Fidel loving communist, attack his social programs and tax enforcement. Apparently Mr. Jaramillo does not see the irony of his confirming this view by stating "The poor majority, with little or no income, has nothing to lose and everything to gain from income tax laws. Vengeance has no place in an open society."

    So, in this strange view, taxing the wealthy, a perfectly legal and common-sensical action which does not come any where near to impoverishing them or altering their luxurious lifestyles, and greatly benefits the poor- Mr. Jaramillo first says that the governement doesn’t need more money, but if it didn’t or the money were not being used to help the poor, why would he assert that the latter gain everything?- is merely vengeance. Evidently he or those in Venezuela who share his views feel some kind of middle class guilt but are absolutely unwilling to purge it by contributing a small amount of money to the treasury.

    • If I am not Venezuelan, then neither is Hugo Chavez.

      At least five generations of the Jaramillo family have been born and bred in the farmlands of Tucupido, right down the road from Barbacoa, the village where Hugo Chavez was born.

      My grandfather, “Abuelo Pancho”, was a farmer (in those days farming was done with a burro and rastro) who worked very hard to provide for his wife and six sons. A statue of him, which commemorates his gift of land and his founding of the community, is in the middle of “Cuji Negro”, and that small community of peasants still lies just outside of Tucupido.

      My father and his brothers all spent time in prison during the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez. -They were members of various political groups that were attempting to overthrow the dictator. One uncle was severely tortured.

      As a child, I remember getting up at 5 am to milk cows with Abuelo Pancho at “La Travesia”, the hundred or so acres that have belonged to our family for more than four generations. I remember the taste of the arepitas dulce with queso rayado that we would buy on the way home. Once home, I would speak English only with my Anglo mother. The townsfolk called her “La Gringa” because she was the New Yorker who my father had met and married while he was studying medicine in Spain, and who gave up life in Manhattan to go live in Tucupido. –No joke, back then a Venezuelan peasant, if he worked hard enough, could put his son through medical school in Spain. And a New Yorker would be crazy enough to give up Manhattan for Tucupido!

      Like my grandfather and father, I too have worked hard. I waited tables to pay for college, and I translated for “the feds” at 26 Federal Plaza to pay for law school. Along the way I have become as American as apple pie, so long as you add some leche condensada to the filling.

      I am ammused at your disbelief of my "Venezuelan-ness". What makes me unique is that I am able to discuss what Tom Friedman writes AND what El Conde del Guacharo says. I still wear arpargatas as often as I can -the authentic ones with the suela de cuero. And when I go home, I come back with queso de mano hidden in cans of Leche la Campiña and with a couple of bottles of Caballito Frenao’.

      I still stick up for the truth whether in English or Spanish, so al pan pan y al vino vino.

      For the record:

      1. My first comment was delayed for two days before it was posted as a response to Professor Pareja’s article, and this is why I decided to post it at front and center. I am doing the same again so that all of you are sure to read it.

      2. I think Bush is a fool, and I am very concerned about the paths that both of my countries have taken.

      3. What I attempted to convey was that teaching Windows over Linux makes more sense if one is faced with the task of quickly preparing a group of people with limited skills for work in a global economy. Your comments fail to convince me otherwise.

      4. Here are two sources that contradict your bold (and ignorant) comment.

      The articles begin with this quote from Roger Noriega: "The government of Venezuela has agreed to send us gasoline; of course we are going to pay for it, so we appreciate the opportunity to pay for gasoline."

      http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2005/09/08/afx2214208.html

      http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050908/pl_afp/usweathercuba_050908190917

      5. All statements I make are true and verifiable, and I would be happy to prove them to you.

      I have earned my place to be here and my right to an opinion free from unfounded criticism. The least you could do is consider a sensible, young (-in fact, too young for sons in Iraq) man who has seen more people in more US states, foreign countries, and continents than most heads of states have seen. I know how the world lives.

    • I am not sure if understand you last paragraph, but I believe that taxes are appropriate only where necessary, and I trust government officials with the disbursement of my money only as far as I can throw them.

      (Sidebar to the poster of the comment about nationalizing US oil and other local resources: Bush and Cheney would be right with you on that one pal. Here is how it could go down: "Whut? You mean transfer Exxon to me and Dick? Uhh... Ok, I’ll take it.")

      Back to the big picture: The poor in Venezuela are hungry for vengeance, and Chavez is eager to deliver because doing so would eliminate his opposition while enhancing his own power and wealth. Too much power and money corrupt.

      Keep in mind, many of you may only recently be hearing about the virtues of Chavez. I have been following his accomplishments since the Caracazo of 1989, and I have given him the benefit of the doubt for quite some time. He is trouble.

    • Dicky the Screw and Georgie the Turd already have Exxon...they are oil men remember??? I meant that nationalizing the oil companies in the true sense of the word nationalize that the people of the U.S. would own all energy companies in the U.S. and as such ALL profits would go into the national coffers and used to pay for the improvements like refineries, etc. I certainly didn’t mean that the crooks in the Bush administration should have anything to do with it, they should both be impeached and prosecuted.

  • You are so right about this.

    Rose Agan