Venezuela and Chavez: Another Perspective

[pharo420]

This dictator is bringing down his country and its people along with it. Everytime he is on television he has something nasty to say about the Ynited States and its leader. Its as though he is asking to be removed from office or to be overthrown. All i'm waiting on now is for his people to rebel and take back what belongs to them. Freedom and control of all its resources.

[rmnunez]

He's also (clearly) dedicated to using his country's oil wealth to lift Venezuela's huge underclass out of poverty.

Venezuela's underclass is not in disproportion to other similarly situated Latin American countries. There shouldn't be so many poor, but they aren't a "huge" group by local standards. Chavez is a populist and has used some resources to improve public services, but the patently politicised process alocating benefits is having a very socially deleterious effect.

(Do you see that happening to the west or east of Venezuela? No you don't.).

East of Venezuela is the Caribbean, Castro's Cuba has already depauperated the Island's assets in "uplifting" the poor, so I guess that doesn't count. West we find Bolivia, Colombia, Perú. Colombia is a united statian ally so I won't try and argue they are uplifting any impoverished, but the other two have charismatic populist leaders who sure have expressed the aim to help the poor (they lack the resources though). Elsewhere in Latin America we find the conservative PAN governments in Mexico put up more subsidized housing in the last 6 years than their quasi-socialist PRI predecessors had in over 7 decades. Social programs are generally inadequate, but a lot more can be blamed on lack of resources than on inequitable wealth distribution.

much of what fuels the Venezuelan and Bolivian leaders' causes is the disinherited majority of the population that are sick of being ruled by a corrupt elite of Europeans

The "disinherited" sound like those "dispossessed", often they are indigenous minorities with low levels of education, but in Latin America the ethnic or racial element is very different from what we see in the US. Anyone promoting the notion "corrupt European elites" are the source of any problem in Venezuela or elsewhere across Latin America is simply playing what the united statians would call "the race card".

Eighty percent of the people from Latin American countries have Spanish surnames, this is clear evidence there has been a high level of integration with the indigenous. All over the place we find small tribes who survive apart, most have adopted religion, diet and dress, some retain language and precolumbian art forms. These are disparate groups with plenty of differences amongst themselves which are located in remote and somewhat inaccesible places. Their poverty stems from these features more than on corrupt practices by any elites.