The Students Solitude Enrique Krauze el Vie sosvenezuela.info/english/2014/03/16/the-students-solitude/ While Venezuela is moving towards a Dictatorship, in Latin America there is a support to the ‘Chavismo’ movement, from the left-wing thinkers supporting the diminishing but strangely alive prestige of the Cuban revolution. The majority of the students in Venezuela don’t have a memory of a regime different than the Chavista regime, yet they know they don’t want to grow old with it. Their democratic voices are being heard everywhere in Venezuela. They protest and march risking their lives. In 2007, they took the streets to protest the closure of RCTV, the oldest and one of the most beloved independent TV station in the country. At the end of that same year, they were the most prominent opposition force against the Chavista project of unifying Cuba and Venezuela. And they were successful in stopping it, at least at an “official” level. Their younger brothers and sisters have taken the torch now. In Venezuela, there are 2.4 million high school students and 400,000 university level students. The majority supports the opposition. Proof of that is seen in the most important public University in the country – Universidad Central de Venezuela – which has been choosing opposition leaders instead of Chavistas as their representatives for the past several years. These young people are not looking to take away the attention that the poor have received. They are instead, criticizing the economic ineptitude of the regime, particularly the outrageous covering of the corruption, which they hope will come out one day. They know that Hugo Chavez monopolized, one by one, every single public power (legislative, judicial, fiscal and electoral) and try covering with his multiple–hours speeches, the unprecedented level of spending more than 800,000 millions of dollars during his 15 year rule through the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. They know that Venezuela has the highest level of inflation in the continent and that the public debt has become so unmanageable that there is a chronic shortage of basic food groups, electricity, life-saving medications, cement and other basic raw materials. Most of this as a results of the massive expropriations of private enterprises and the brutal decrease of private investment. And sadly, they know too well the crime in their country, the highest in the continent and one of the highest in the World. These young people care deeply about these problems, but their biggest concern is the systematic and growing lack of freedom of expression, which prevents people from knowing and making their own opinions on the realities of the country. Chavez used to voice his achievements (some real, mostly imaginary) at any and every hour, especially during his Sunday TV shows called “Alo Presidente” (Hello, President). However, his successor (primitive, a bit crazy and full of fantasies) has decided to use direct repression for those that think different. The idea is to have one single truth, the ‘official’ (i.e. Government) truth. Since 2012, the Chavista government took over Globovision, the last independent TV station left in the country. Independent radio is also dying. And newspaper sales have been so limited that it has a few days to live. Venezuela, a sad reality, is moving towards a dictatorship, and in many aspects, it is already there. Venezuelan students count on the support of their parents, teachers and at least half of the population, who in 2013 voted against Maduro (and who, for the most part, don’t go out to the streets because they can be denounced by Chavistas neighbors in the slums). But in Latin America, the students are practically alone. It is surprising the amount of Twitter users (assumed young, most of them) that in Latin America have assumed the government view of attributing the conflicts to the “fascist, reactionaries, right-win, aligned with the Empire, in a dark complot, planning a coup d’état to destroy the government” attitude. Given the countless amount of YouTube videos that demonstrate the brutal, outrageous students’ abuses and numerous killings by the paramilitary groups (known as “Tupamaros” and “La Piedrita), formed during the Chavez reign, these left-wing users comment that the images have been “modified”. Paradoxically enough, Maduro has condemned the use of Twitter, calling it “imbecile machines” declaring himself a victim of a cyber-war. In Mexico, the left-wing press, with a lot of new young faces, support Maduro. In their view, Leopoldo Lopez is the instigator of the insurrection and not what he really is: an unarmed political leader; illegally put in jail based on false, constructed charges. The power of ideology in Venezuela is explainable: Millions of people still believe that Chavez’ social work was tangible, that he couldn’t do more for them because he died. Another important factor -the direct dependency of millions of Venezuelans on the public funds, consequence of the progressive weakness of real entrepreneur activities and private investment in the country. The alliance of Venezuelan oil-dependent countries have the same root. These ‘clients’ have an interest to believe in the Chavismo. But even then, how do you explain the popularity of the Chavista ideology or its variations in countries that do not belong to the same orbit? Even when the Cuban Revolution has lost its mystical aura, democracy and liberalism haven’t fully taken their place in Latin America. That is why the ideological blackmail of Cuba and Venezuela still works: nobody that kind of looks to be ‘right-wing’ in a continent still in love with the idea of revolution, where political idols haven’t been democrats such as Romulo Betancourt, but ‘saviors’ like Eva Peron, Che Guevara ,Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez, can compete. Octavio Paz pointed out the reason for this anachronism: after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ample sectors of the Latin American left-wing refuse to criticize the Cuban regime. And if they didn’t do it to Cuba, they are not going to do it with a derived version, being the Bolivarian Revolution. Given this lack of self-criticism; today in Mexico we live a paradox. The 1968 movement was a huge achievement for the students, as well as for those with left-win political ideas. Students were massacred by the Government of Diaz Ordaz and many important leaders were imprisoned. Today, many of those defend the repressive actions of the Venezuelan Government, which are comparable to those of Diaz Ordaz. Sadly, many left-wing political idealists have turned the backs to democracy. Support to Chavismo, is, at the end, derived from the diminishing but strangely alive prestige of the Cuban revolution. To stand against Cuba is to stand against the Empire (i.e. USA). That Cuba remains the Mecca of the Latin America’s ideology was proven when in the recent Celac (community of Latin American and the Caribbean States) meeting, on January 28 and 29; 2014, in Habana, almost no president was absent. Fidel was proclaimed the Political and Moral Guide of America. Ironically so, during this meeting, everyone signed an agreement to protect and respect human rights. It seems their signatures only have value on paper. But most important than the pure ideology is the cold, true materialistic interests. In this sense, Brazil’s position is as paradigmatic as cynical: the economic opportunities (especially in terms of tourism and energy), that would open after the death of the Castro brothers in Cuba are too important to now take an idealistic position, risking the stability of the island. And that stability requires maintaining the alliance between Venezuela and Cuba firm and alive. It is the only logical explanation as to how, Dilma Rousseff, who in her youth was a student tortured by the Brazilian militia, now supports a government whose police force ambushes and represses students peacefully protesting for their basic rights. This logic is foreign to the Venezuelan students. They value freedom tremendously because, unlike their counterparts in other countries in the area, they see it seriously threatened. They know that the World advances toward democracy. They are not considering the option of emigrating from Venezuela. But Latin America, its governments, its congresses, its intellectuals and even (and sadly so) its students, are ungrateful to Venezuela. The country that, by a great measure, liberated them all 200 years ago, today has to stand and fight alone for its freedom.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 03:09:36 +0000
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