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CNN PRODUCER NOTE EWillies1961 told me, ‘I ran to do this report because I knew that Hugo Chavez would be demonized immediately. He would be made a caricature for his clownish antics. This man was a product of a system where a country swimming in oil had a massive underclass as the resources of the nation went to the very few. Hugo Chavez began the process to change that and was hated for that for if this “cancer” were to spread to all the nations that continue to allocate its natural resources for the few under the tenet of a manipulated market, the same could occur in their respective nations.’
– hhanks, CNN iReport producer
Hugo Chavez died today. May he rest in peace. He saved the lives of thousands of Venezuela’s poor. He provided healthcare to those that could not afford it. He did much of what Christians deemed the good book; the Holy Bible commands them to do. He sheltered the poor by building housing. He fed the hungry by attempting to build a strong social safety net that was never there. He provided seed for the poor to begin a path to self-sufficiency.
President Hugo Chavez was that Latin American guy, that ethnic guy that had the gall to break the back of the Venezuelan Plutocracy. Just like in the United States where every middle class and poor centric policy move by this American President is fought to the nail by the maintainers of the American Plutocracy, so was the Plight of Hugo Chavez, not only from the Venezuelan Plutocracy, but the world’s Plutocracy. It is for this reason that he only found refuge in the Cuban, Russian, & Iranian regimes; not for love of them but for strength in numbers.
Just as American major corporations have sit on billions of dollars instead of patriotically investing it in America in the attempt to cripple President Obama’s Presidency, so did the businesses in Venezuela as they attempted to paralyze the country economically.
My comprehensive blog is HERE.
UPDATE: I am compelled to add to the story. I received hate emails from Venezuelans in England and here in the United States as well as from Americans who simply think I am naïve. I knew they would come. I have a delete button and make good use of it.
That said, many of the Venezuelans over here and in England had the opportunity and resources to leave when they believed their way of life would change. I was listening to NPR this morning and a Venezuelan said paraphrased “Before Chavez Venezuela was a rich country. Everything was great”. I believe that is what she believed. However the vast majority of Venezuelans as well as Latin Americans all over this hemisphere are poor. I know first hand as I am from Latin America and I go back fairly often.
To those in the Plutocracy or in favor with the Plutocracy, those masses are invisible. They are just a cheap resource. It is that that created Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, and Dilma Vana Rousseff in Brazil (as well as Brazil’s previous president Luis Lula Da Silva).
The fundamental misunderstanding of what is occurring in Latin America could be a fatal flaw in America. The income/wealth disparity in America that continues especially with continued supply side policies and a tax system biased in favor of the rich (work income taxed at higher rate than investment income), makes what occurred in Venezuela possible in America. That is the fear the American Plutocracy has with President Obama. He is a likeable and charismatic figure. Will he make a populist switch? It is unlikely because inasmuch as populism is in his DNA, he rather a “soft landing”. It is in the interest of the Republicans and the Right Wing to start looking at the reality of a declining middle class. Humans behave in the same manner all over the world given similar circumstances.
The American corporate controlled media do not broadcast the big changes occurring by the masses throughout the region as they do not want it to be a catalyst here in the US. They attempt to demonize those overseas that are in fact fighting to share the spoils of the natural resources of these countries with their rightful owners, the citizens.
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