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03-10-2007, 13:39 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Visit by Bush Fires Up Latins’ Debate Over Socialism
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Visit by Bush Fires Up Latins’ Debate Over Socialism
By JIM RUTENBERG and LARRY ROHTER
Published: March 9, 2007
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, March 8 — President Bush has portrayed his trip to Latin America this week as a “We Care” tour aimed at dispelling perceptions that he has neglected his southern neighbors.
But fresh graffiti on streets here in São Paulo, where he landed Thursday night for his first stop, calls him a murderer. The smattering of protests and the placement of military vehicles around the city, South America’s largest, also present an alternate interpretation of his visit: as a clash between the open capitalism that Mr. Bush espouses and the socialist approach pushed by leftist leaders who have grown in power and popularity.
And as the administration prepares to use the president’s five-nation tour to highlight a new ethanol development deal with Brazil, the most efficient producer of the fuel, and American health care and education programs elsewhere, much of the tour attention is focusing on what may best be called “the Rumble on the River.”
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mr. Bush’s chief nemesis in the region, will be leading a protest against him in Buenos Aires, as Mr. Bush arrives Friday in Montevideo, Uruguay, across Rio de la Plata from Argentina. “Our planes will almost cross paths,” Mr. Chávez said this week, though he denied any intention to sabotage Mr. Bush’s visit.
In interviews with Latin American reporters this week, Mr. Bush played down Mr. Chávez’s planned rally, telling one group on Tuesday: “I go a lot of places and there are street rallies. And my attitude is, I love freedom and the right for people to express themselves.”
Whether inadvertently or not, though, Mr. Bush irritated Mr. Chávez with a speech on Monday in Washington, in which he said Simón Bolivar, the hero of South America’s independence struggle and Mr. Chávez’s idol, “belongs to all of us who love liberty.” This brought a sharp and sarcastic rejoinder from Mr. Chávez the next day.
But in spite of administration attempts to minimize the shadow cast on the visit by Mr. Chávez — who has pushed an aggressively anti-American agenda throughout the region — the tour itself seems at least in part geared to counter his influence. Mr. Chávez has built that influence in part by showering poor communities with money for housing and health care and by freely dispensing oil at cut-rate prices.
Mr. Bush’s new agreement with Brazil to increase ethanol production in the region represents a way to cut back on the influence that Mr. Chávez’s oil supply gives him, while encouraging employment and economic development. And before arriving here, Mr. Bush announced a number of programs to help the poor in the region, whom he referred to, in Spanish, as “workers and peasants.”
He promised hundreds of millions of dollars to help families buy homes and said he would dispatch a Navy hospital ship to the region to provide free health services.
In his interviews this week, Mr. Bush has repeated that the United States’ aid to the region has doubled during his tenure, to about $1.6 billion annually. “When you total all up the money that is spent, because of the generosity of our taxpayers, that’s $8.5 billion to programs that promote social justice,” including education and health, he told reporters on Tuesday.
But the view from here could scarcely be more different.
In an editorial headlined “Uncle Scrooge’s Paltry Package,” the conservative daily newspaper O Estado de São Paulo noted Wednesday that Mr. Bush’s offering amounted to “the equivalent of five days’ cost of the war in Iraq, and a drop of water compared with the ocean of petrodollars in which Chávezism is navigating at full speed, from Argentina to Nicaragua.”
Some of Mr. Bush’s aides said they were worried that perceptions that the United States had neglected its southern neighbors, and frustration in lower classes that had not reaped the benefits of free trade, were helping to fuel leftist movements.
Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, said, “Something we have not done well enough is getting out the full scope of the president’s message.”
Mr. Bush told reporters that he hoped to counter Mr. Chávez’s message by espousing the benefits of free trade.
Asked by a reporter about Mr. Chávez’s “so-called alternative development model” calling for nationalization of industry, Mr. Bush said: “I strongly believe that government-run industry is inefficient and will lead to more poverty. I believe if the state tries to run the economy, it will enhance poverty and reduce opportunity.”
He added, “So the United States brings a message of open markets and open government to the region.”
But even Mr. Bush’s Brazilian hosts seemed divided in their reaction to that message. Although President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be meeting with Mr. Bush on Friday to sign the ethanol accord and is scheduled to visit him at Camp David on March 31, the leftist Workers’ Party he leads has chosen to support and take part in the anti-Bush demonstrations.
The party warned on its Web site that Mr. Bush “shouldn’t count on Brazil for imperialist actions in the region.” One essay called him “the big boss of international terrorism,” while another declared that Mr. Bush was “persona non grata” in Brazil.
“The United States in general and the Bush government in particular are brutally violent,” wrote Valter Pomar, the party’s secretary for international relations. “We will only be free of this threat when the North American people constitute a government on the left.”
At an evening rush-hour protest in the central business district here, several thousand activists wore stickers showing Mr. Bush with a Hitler-style mustache and a swastika next to his head and the words “Fora Bush,” or “Bush Out.”
With the police standing by in riot gear, antiwar protesters mixed with unionists and environmentalists, who are concerned that harvesting ethanol from sugar could hurt the Amazon. A sea of signs read “Adolf Bush” or “Quit Playing With the Environment.”
Later, the Brazilian news media reported that police officers used tear gas and batons on protesters who were throwing rocks and struggling with the officers, sending hundreds of demonstrators running through the streets of São Paulo. There were no major injuries reported.
Jim Rutenberg reported from São Paulo, and Larry Rohter from Buenos Aires.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/wo...ld&oref=slogin
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Latin America was the US' backyard.
However, the US has taken Latin America for granted and this is the result. To play the 'We Care' Card so late in the day of Bush's Presidency does not cut ice, it appears, with the Latin Americans.
A hospital ship and an aid package that is not matching the arch rival Chavez' munificence, especially when the US is seen to be a superpower with money bags, again does not appear to have impressed the Latin Americans.
It is indeed an unfortunately commentary that areas where the US hegemony was the byword is slowly slipping out of its grip, if not already slipped out.
If poor countries are to be kept on the side of the US, the US will have to moderate its open support of Latin American bug business, which is taken to be exploiters of the poor or else more countries will go the Chavez way and whatever clout the US has in its backyard will vanish forever.
The problem of the Bush Administration is that it has been single agenda focussed i.e. Iraq and thus has lost its focus on the need of the US to nuture its spheres of influence.
The next President has a real onerous task at hand!
He sure will be a busy man building bridges that have been burnt!
__________________
"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
HAKUNA MATATA
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03-10-2007, 13:48 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Who is Chavez
A resume of who is Chavez and why he is becoming an icon.
Take it for what it is worth.
Could it be the time to read between the lines.
The poor of South America are being empowered and they have to be taken on board before the US loses whatever influence it has in Latin America.
Quote:
Who is Chavez?
Essays | Current Events
Hugo Chavez President Hugo Chaver and the Rise of Black Indian Power
by William Loren Katz
In early December, 2006 Hugo Chavez won a landslide election as President of Venezuela with more than 61% of the vote, exceeding previous vote totals, and carrying all 23 of Venezuela states. His victory surpasses popular U.S. Presidents. Not only has he won high office twice before, but in 2004 he defeated a recall election by a whopping 59%. And during his Presidency his embattled regime has foiled efforts to overthrow him through strikes and armed conspiracies — which he claims were orchestrated by the U.S. State Department. At home the landslide victory has driven his foes from hate to accommodation "Chavez is not a dictator," said Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the opposition paper TalCual, and a key advisor to Manuel Rosales, the losing candidate. "But he's not a Thomas Jefferson either," Petkoff hastily added. [New York Times, December 5, 2006, A3.]
"Chavez is getting stronger as an unintended consequence of war and globalization," said Harvard Professor of Latin American history Kenneth Maxwell. In the last five weeks candidates leaning more to President Chavez and Fidel Castro than President Bush were elected to head the governments of Brazil, Ecuador, and Nicaragua; and before that Chavez favorite Nestor Kirchner, twice jailed by the military dictatorship, was elected in Argentina. The political thinking of Chavez — thanks to NAFTA, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan — is gaining adherents. Earlier this year Juan Evo Morales Ayma was elected Bolivia's first indigenous President, so the role of people of color also is rising in the Americas.
Many who approve Chavez's policies and even applaud his confrontational approach to President Bush wince at his rash rhetoric and his description of Cuba's one-party system as a "revolutionary democracy." In his September address to United Nations General Assembly, the day after Bush spoke, Chavez famously said "the Devil came here yesterday" and "it smells of sulfur today." The U.S. media used his provocative metaphor to dismiss and bury his illuminating talk. The mildest criticism was that he had failed to show proper deference or common courtesy to his host country's titular head. Media sources did not acknowledge that Chavez won occasional applause, and some delegates even smiled or laughed at his anti-Bush jibes. Ecuador's Rafael Correa, who had earlier called Bush a "dimwit," said Chavez's comment was an "insult to the devil." But after he was elected President of Ecuador, Bush called Correa to congratulate him.
The mainstream media has consistently failed to mention Chavez's public assertions that through its CIA agents, secret funds, and connections to rich Venezuelans, the Bush administration has sponsored plots to have him removed from office, and these include assassination attempts. Chavez has chosen to deal with these threats with brash metaphors.
For its part the Bush administration has long reacted to Chavez with sputtering fury. Yet today the President of Venezuela sits more comfortably than ever atop a fourth of the world oil supplies — equal to that of Iraq. Venezuela supplies a fifth of US oil needs, and continues to be Chavez's leading customer.
The State Department has cast Chavez as a tyrant in the class of Saddam Hussein, or a Marxist, or a ferociously anti-American clone of Castro. Lately, the characterization has been downgraded to "populist" - intended as a sharp criticism. Actually, his "Bolivarian" revolution springs from multicultural grass roots that pre-date the foreign invasion of the Americas that began in 1492, centuries before Karl Marx, Castro, Hussein or populism.
Like four-fifths of Venezuelans today, Chavez was born of poor Black and Indian parents. Since the days of Columbus, descendants of the Spanish conquerors have claimed the privilege of governing Latin America. They have effectively barred Indigenous people from high office. Chavez stands as a direct challenge to white domination of South American governments.
Chavez is not only proud of his biracial legacy, but has been using oil revenues to help the poor of all colors improve their education and economic standing. He also has flatly rejected Bush administration efforts to isolate Cuba, counts Castro a friend, and has repeatedly accused the U.S. of meddling in his country, in Cuba and around the world. He has pointed to the history of interventions by the United State that began with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Latin Americans, particularly those of his economic and racial background, are increasingly walking to polling booths to register their view throughout Latin America.
Chavez rules a country where three percent of the population, mostly of white European descent, own 77% of the land. In recent decades millions of hungry peasants have drifted into Caracas and other cities, to live in barrios of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez wants to reverse poverty, provide jobs, provide education and health care, and redistribute vacant lands. He has begun to transfer fields from giant unused or abandoned haciendas to peasant hands, and though landlords have responded with alarm, he has promised further distributions.
Chavez's "21st century socialism" has repeatedly held out an olive branch to its capitalist foes, and keeps an open-market system. Though foreign oil companies continue to pull in large profits, he does insist corporations pay back taxes and higher royalties. Once they walked away with about 84% of Venezuela's oil profits, but he has demanded 30% of those profits. Banks and credit card companies report large increases in deposits and loans.
At this moment with oil prices booming — and accounting for 47% of government revenues and 80% of exports — everyone in the country is doing well, including his wealthy adversaries. The stock market has risen 130% this year, and the economy is soaring over 10%, the highest growth rate in the Americas. Chavez has stated, "All this stuff about Chavez and his hordes coming to sweep away the rich, it's a lie. We have no plan to hurt you. All your rights are guaranteed, you who have large properties or luxury farms or cars."
But the most dramatic beneficiaries of "21st century socialism" are the poor. Three million people have enrolled in one of the government's four free educational missions that offer [1] basic literacy, [2] primary school education, [3] high school equivalency and [4] university education. The number of households in poverty dropped from 42.8% in 1999 when Chavez came to office, to 33.9% in 2006. During the same period households that suffered extreme poverty dropped from 17.1% to 10.6%. The official unemployment figure had been more than cut in half, and the poorest 25% of people has seen their consumption rate more than double.
Chavez has brought education to almost a million children who never sat in a classroom. And with 10,000 Cuban doctors, sent by Fidel Castro, he has opened 11,000 medical clinics primarily in barrios. To Venezuelans President Chavez believes in pay back.
In 1998 and 2000 Chavez won the Presidency by majorities Republicans and Democrats here dream about. In 2002 he defeated a two-day coup attempt engineered by the local elite in alliance with the US, and in the recent recall vote, 90% of voters turned out to keep him in office. Chavez's strength rests with his poorest citizens. It is also evident that many of his constituents have mobilized behind a broader agenda than his, one stressing participatory democracy and elevating the status of women. At this point, President Chavez does not see this popular movement he unleashed as a threat, and may try to lead it.
Chavez also announced a series of foreign programs to provide inexpensive oil to impoverished American populations. He first focused on small Caribbean and Caricom countries, and the larger Antillas such as Cuba, Jamaica, and Dominican Republic. Then he expanded the plan to bring affordable [a 40% discount] heating oil to the U.S poor through his Citgo oil company in conjunction with Joseph Kennedy's Citizens Energy. In 2006 Citgo and Citizens Energy will have delivered 100 millions of gallons of oil to more than 400,000 households, doubling last year's effort. The south Bronx and 163 Native American groups, mostly in Alaska, will benefit. But Chavez's discount plan, and particularly his offer of humanitarian relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, drew sharp denunciations from the Bush administration charging his efforts were publicity stunts. Over the centuries South Americans have endured a crop of caudillos, or military dictators. Many began sounding a radical note only to be overthrown by the CIA or other foreign forces. Some remained in power by shifting their policies after visiting the American ambassador's residence in Caracas.
This former paratrooper seems to spring from a time when Africans and Indians armed and united to fight the first European invasion. For inspiration Chavez can reach back to the misty dawn of the foreign landings when heroic Black and African men and women rose to battle invading armies and their Christian missionaries. In 1819 Simon Bolivar, also of African and Indian lineage and the Founding Father of South America's Revolution, became the first elected President of Venezuela. Vicente Guerrero, an illiterate Black Indian guerilla General during the Mexican Revolution, took his army into the Sierra Madre mountains where he trained them to wrest their country from Spain's colonialism - and also taught himself to read and write. Mexico's ruling white elite mocked his lack of education and called him a "triple-blooded outsider." But in 1829 after Guerrero came down from his mountain refuge, he became President of Mexico, the first Black Indian head of state. Guerrero wrote Mexico's constitution, emancipated its slaves, ended racial discrimination and abolished the death penalty. His foes in Venezuela also consider Chavez a racial outsider, but the faces of millions of his supporters refute the charge, and his message continues to triumph at the polls. He seems to relish his role as Latin America's chief antagonist to the Bush administration. Many believe he instills courage and provides cover for Latin American leaders who have the audacity to challenge the giant to the north.
Time will tell if Chavez's programs and supporters can protect him from the machinations of his wealthy Venezuelan foes and their powerful U.S. allies. Ordinary Venezuelans have initiated their own revolution, and though at this point it undergirds Chavez's political and economic strength, it may take new directions.
Hugo Chavez and his people, historically poor and oppressed, are attempting to write an exciting chapter in the heroic record crafted originally by millions of unknown African and Indian people in the Americas, and continued by Simon Bolivar and Vicente Guerrero.
© 2007 William Loren Katz
Black Indians/Black West: The Meaning of Hugo Chavez
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Last edited by Ray; 03-10-2007 at 13:55 PM..
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03-10-2007, 13:55 PM
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#3 (permalink)
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Banished
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Chavez has noble and admirable intentions and I admire him for his efforts to improve the lives of the poor indigenous people of his country. Unfortunately, history has demonstrated that the intensive state-controlled economic model and mass Nationalisation of Industry does not work. Already Government spending has led to an inflation rate of over 20%.
At least he has the balls to shove two fingers up at the worlds biggest war criminal.
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03-10-2007, 14:10 PM
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#4 (permalink)
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World's biggest war criminal?
You seem to be a real angry man!
Which country are you from?
Could it not be that the US is pursuing her national interest as would any other country?
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03-10-2007, 14:53 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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Senior Contributor
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The U.S. has screwed up politically so many times in central/ south America that it will take a huge and longstanding effort to resume a decent relationship. Much of their hate towards the U.S. is well founded, although envy also comes into play.
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03-10-2007, 15:03 PM
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#6 (permalink)
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Bonehead,
Americans claim that others are envious of them.
I seriously wonder if you really believe it to be so, or you all use it as a crutch and envelop yourself in a feel good feeling.
What is there to be envious?
We know where we stand and we know how the US has come about to be what it is.
It is a pipedream for us to believe we can achieve the standards of the US given our current economy.
Therefore, do you really think we are such children as to believe we should be where the US is, given our current economy and living standards?
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03-10-2007, 15:31 PM
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#7 (permalink)
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Banished
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray
World's biggest war criminal?
You seem to be a real angry man!
Which country are you from?
Could it not be that the US is pursuing her national interest as would any other country?
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I'm from the UK.
What would you call a man who started a war of occupation on the back of a disgusting lie and who is directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, and indirectly responsible for the deaths of half a million more and who has reduced a stable ordered society to a state of anarchy in which daily life is a nightmare?
Germany thought it was pursuing its national interests in the 30's, does that make Nazi Germany ok? Pursuing ones national interest is not a justification for moral evil.
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03-10-2007, 16:00 PM
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#8 (permalink)
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Patron
Join Date: 08-25-06
Location: Chicago
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Being belligerent towards the United States is not good policy. It is stupid policy.
EDIT: IE, Chavez wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't beating his chest every couple minutes while talking about his latest discovery of an evil US plan to overthrow him...of which, there are none. As far as I know, we had nothing to do with that coup attempt, and the coup quite possibly failed because we didn't voice support.
__________________
"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck
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03-10-2007, 16:13 PM
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#10 (permalink)
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Global Moderator
Join Date: 11-10-04
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bateman
I'm from the UK.
What would you call a man who started a war of occupation on the back of a disgusting lie and who is directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, and indirectly responsible for the deaths of half a million more and who has reduced a stable ordered society to a state of anarchy in which daily life is a nightmare?
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I'd call him Saddam Hussein.
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03-10-2007, 16:40 PM
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#11 (permalink)
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Parihaka,
Since the Monroe Doctrine.
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03-10-2007, 17:02 PM
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#12 (permalink)
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Global Moderator
Join Date: 11-10-04
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray
Parihaka,
Since the Monroe Doctrine.
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Sorry, I misread you Ray, I thought you were suggesting that somehow America at one time had either control or good relations with South America, and couldn't for the life of me think when that might have been 
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03-10-2007, 17:45 PM
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#13 (permalink)
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Global Moderator
Join Date: 11-10-04
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Parihaka
Quote:
Originally Posted by bateman
I'm from the UK.
What would you call a man who started a war of occupation on the back of a disgusting lie and who is directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, and indirectly responsible for the deaths of half a million more and who has reduced a stable ordered society to a state of anarchy in which daily life is a nightmare?
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I'd call him Saddam Hussein. |
I'm guessing you're silence means that I got your starter for ten right? Otherwise I'd just have to assume you're here to troll, right?
Ah I see, you've already been banned for being a troll, for being ignorant, and for abusing members. Well there you go 
Last edited by Parihaka; 03-10-2007 at 18:16 PM..
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03-10-2007, 18:41 PM
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#14 (permalink)
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Senior Contributor
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray
Bonehead,
Americans claim that others are envious of them.
I seriously wonder if you really believe it to be so, or you all use it as a crutch and envelop yourself in a feel good feeling.
What is there to be envious?
We know where we stand and we know how the US has come about to be what it is.
It is a pipedream for us to believe we can achieve the standards of the US given our current economy.
Therefore, do you really think we are such children as to believe we should be where the US is, given our current economy and living standards?
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Off the top of my head, we have 20 million+ illegals in our country. Ask yourself why are they here and where did they come from.
From talking to people from other parts of the world, many are indeed envious,(Some have even risked death to get here) from our higher education system to our standard of living as a whole. Many people, upon seeing America first hand decide that it is easier to immigrate to America and continue experiencing the American way rather than going back home and forcing their own country to improve. Is everyone envious? No, but a good number are.
Even so Ray, the envy was a minor point. I know if some other country meddled in my affairs and treated me like I was a second class human, I would be more than a little pissed.
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03-12-2007, 02:25 AM
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#15 (permalink)
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Patron
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bateman
Chavez has noble and admirable intentions and I admire him for his efforts to improve the lives of the poor indigenous people of his country. Unfortunately, history has demonstrated that the intensive state-controlled economic model and mass Nationalisation of Industry does not work. Already Government spending has led to an inflation rate of over 20%.
At least he has the balls to shove two fingers up at the worlds biggest war criminal.
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Worlds biggest war criminal? Yes, bigger than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hilter, Tojo, Saddam, blah, blah, blah  ...
Last edited by Enzo Ferrari; 03-12-2007 at 02:27 AM..
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