When it comes to Venezuela, a foolproof method to get accurate news over the past 14 years would have simply been to reverse the mainstream media’s message about the late President Hugo Chávez. Unfortunately, on March 5, 2013 there was no reversing the wild cry taken up as the news was announced: Chávez had died.
Here in San Francisco, many passersby were bewildered by the large group of people holding a candlelit vigil in the bitter evening wind at the corner of 24th and Mission streets shortly after the announcement was made. But it stands to reason that they were not mourning the death of a brutal dictator, as CNN would have it. And the millions crowding the streets of Caracas, the grown men crying, the women sitting on stoops, their bodies slack with silent shock, those people cannot all be entrenched in a myth, as the New York Times has implied.
The untold story starts on Feb. 27 of 1989, the historic date of the “Caracazo.” Carlos Andres Pérez was president, and his implementation of the “free-market” reforms stipulated by the International Monetary Fund meant a removal of the gasoline subsidy, making prices rise more than 100 percent overnight. Riots broke out across Caracas. Pérez suspended the rights to individual liberty, public and private assembly, the inviolability of the home, and freedom of expression for a month. The National Guard, attempting to prevent people from raiding supermarkets, killed an estimated 2,000, who were thrown into mass graves.
Many soldiers refused to participate in this massacre. Chávez, a young lieutenant at the time, considered this day a turning point, a stepping-stone towards the failed 1992 military coup d’état, which landed him and his revolutionary companions in prison.
In 1994, president Rafael Caldera was forced to pardon him due to mass displays of support, upon which Chávez began to campaign for revolutionary change. His discourse made him an immensely popular candidate in the 1998 elections, which he won by a margin of 16.2 percent.
“When I first saw Chávez speak it was 1995,” recalled Benjamin Mast, Venezuelan citizen residing temporarily in San Francisco. “I was 13. It was my first time in the big city and I remember thinking, ‘He speaks like men from my town, not like these city men.’ But by the time he got to be president I’d say he was more well-read than any politician out there; he had a million quotes and references at the tip of his tongue. That, combined with his colorful, rural charisma made him an amazing orator.”
Chávez’s dream developed into a nightmare for U.S. government. He worked towards a society in which poverty is not seen as laziness, but as a reversible social condition based on a racist paradigm dating back to colonialism.
Chávez’ Bolivarianism means healthcare is a human right and that government is responsible for ensuring citizens have a roof over their heads, unfaltering access to nutrition, and the intellectual means by which to hold down a fulfilling job. It also means building a Latin America that is economically self-sufficient and united against the imperialism that has rigged its markets and used military force to put obsequious men in power that protect U.S. business interests.
Chávez’s view of democracy differed from that of the U.S.; he called for participation and a grassroots system of checks and balances, manifested in the “communal councils.”
“Democracy is not just turning up to vote every five or four years, it’s much more than that, it’s a way of life, it’s giving power to the people,” Chávez said.
In the past decade, Chávez had tremendous influence in a radical shift that encouraged Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Bolivia to elect leaders who more authentically represent their majorities. He was instrumental in helping create institutions such as the Bank of the South and the Union of South American Nations.
Former Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva wrote, “Of the many power brokers and political leaders I have met in my life, few have believed so much in the unity of our continent and its diverse peoples—indigenous Indians, descendants of Europeans and Africans, recent immigrants—as he [Chávez] did.”
Upon meeting President Obama for the first time, Chávez gave him Eduardo Galeano’s “The Open Veins of Latin America”—a book detailing the history of the plundering of the Americas, first by colonists then by U.S. corporations.
Obama later said of the exchange, “As hard as it is, one also has to talk to their enemies… and let me be clear: just because he handed me a copy of ‘Peter Pan’ does not mean that I’m going to read it.”
Perhaps if he had read it, he would have had a context in which to place Chávez’s fierce anti-imperialist sentiments. His condemnation of George W. Bush and Fox News was cheered by millions around Latin America, but dismissed here as the stuff of lunatics. His alliances with Middle Eastern nations and support for the Arab Spring, though often misrepresented, demonstrated the solidarity he promoted of oppressed peoples worldwide.
After learning of his death senior Palestinian official Nabil Sha’ath wrote, “Palestine says goodbye to a loyal friend who passionately defended our right to freedom and self-determination. [His death] caused a lot of sadness here in Palestine and in my heart.”
The United Nations acknowledged that with Chávez as president, government efforts dramatically reduced poverty, unemployment and illiteracy. Access to cultural activity was equally prioritized through popular cinemas and grants for art, dance, theater and musical productions. The 2006 World Social Forum put Caracas on the map as a cultural destination and hosted many international groups including Friends of PODER from San Francisco’s Mission District.
“Maybe it’s hard for people here to understand,” said Mast. “The biggest changes are ones that can’t be seen in statistical figures. It’s about a new dignity of those who had none. It has made them the protagonists of their own history.”