Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on Barinas Venezuela the 28th of July 1954. He was the second of six brothers and his education was in charge of his grandmother. He studied in a military school and entered to the army of Venezuela on 1971. Chávez became interested in politics and founded in 1982 a new party, called “Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200” in Venezuela.
On 1992 the economy of his country was having serious problems and Chavez tried a coup but he failed and was imprisoned. Later that same year his party members tried a second coup failing again. Chavez was in prison for two years when the new president Rafael Caldera absolved him. Then in 1997 Hugo Chavez launched his party as “Movimiento de la Quinta Republica” and he definitely ended his labour as a soldier to become a politician. And in 1998 there was a great political disorder in Venezuela and Chavez ran a presidential campaign and was elected.
Hugo Chávez rose power in 1998, as a social democrat. But soon he turned to be a fierce socialist who wanted to rule his country in his own way, in a very populist and arrogant way. With a strong character, he started a social revolution allover Venezuela. He modified the constitution as he wished, for example for being re-elected as long as he wanted. His 1st period was 1999 – 2001, the 2nd 2001 - 2007, the 3rd 2007 - 2013, and he was elected for a 4th period starting in 2013, but he could not swear, because he was dying and then died. It is also known that his regime was very corrupt.
He got control over many companies and also over the media, so he showed his country and the world only what he wanted. He had his own TV program. And newspapers publications were also manipulated.
He had been adored by the poorer people of his country, because he had a populist government that invested lots of money in giving them better housing, health, education, work opportunities, and principally made them feel loved and supported by their President. But had also been very criticized by the higher classes of Venezuela, due how he treated them and expropriated in many cases their belongings.
Around the world as the Venezuelan president, he established close relations with some countries in Latin America, the ones that share somehow his ideas, as Bolivia, Argentina, Cuba, Nicaragua or Ecuador. And from the rest of the world, Chavez related very well only with China and Iran. This is because he was against liberalism and democracies. With the country he had a terrible relation was the U.S.A.; he used to blame Busch for many problems happening around the world and he even referred to him as the devil. He had many controversial reactions with some personalities; for example, he said he did not believe that the Pope was Jesus representative in the Land. And he felt no shame in shouting or blaming anyone he wanted.
In 2011 he was found to have cancer and went to Cuba to be treated and operated. Initially he proclaimed he was in the good way of healing, but things went wrong for him. He could not heal and died on March the 5th, 2013. Before his death he named Nicolas Maduro as his preferred successor.
Sebastian Figari
Controversial take of interim post by Nicolás Maduro
Is this politically and legally correct? It seems not to be actually legal or correct, because the constitution itself is the voice and the biggest law of the country and it`s over any persons position. Hugo Chavez could say anything he wanted, and could have had all the support he wanted, but the law may be the law, and what is stated in Constitution might had been followed. A clash between law and what had been established arbitrarily had occurred. But Chavez power was so strong, and the support he had in his Venezuelan followers is so immense, that finally he achieved his will to be fulfilled.
Tito Vasquez
The opposition leader Henrique Capriles to challenge Nicolas Maduro
In Venezuela there’s not only the political party of Maduro called “Socialista Unido de Venezuela” there is also a quite strong opposition that wrestles to end with Chavez’s political ideologies and implant a totally different government, a real democracy with changes and a predominating capitalism.
This opposition is led by “Henrique Capriles”, a Venezuelan politician graduated in laws in the Catholic University of Caracas and a self-proclaimed democrat. For these 2013´s elections, he had declared he’s resentment and opposition against Chavez and Maduro’s regime. He had proclaimed things as “The currency of Venezuela’s money had reduced a lot, and that’s another of the reds (communists) lie that swear this will never happen.” He had also showed his differences with the actual revolutionary ideas by saying “I believe this country can improve a lot and I’m going to change it”.
The certain thing is that Capriles chances of winning are very low as the last year he lost against Chavez in supposedly “fixed” elections by only getting 45% of the votes. His rival, Nicolas Maduro, has all the support of Chavez force and there is a huge part of Venezuelan that loved and admired Chavez that wants his dream to be continued. Despite a doubt exists about transparency in elections, as in previous cases under Chavez regime. So Maduro may have more chances to be elected?
Capriles has also denounced planned ambushes against he’s health led by Maduro’s party and the only thing we can say about this is that actually Capriles has almost everything against him. Would he be able to fight and achieve his aim of getting to power and changing Venezuela?
Governmental plan of Capriles, he offers Venezuela a democratic plan in which his mission statement is “That everyone progresses and no one gets behind, nobody should be less just for the circumstances in which they are born”. He looks after a commitment with all the people of the country offering them projects and actions for improving their economic opportunities. After that, the same government would attend to the people’s problem and would accept responsibilities for everyone to look forward for a better future working the whole country together as one. Capriles plan shows a lot of hard work and future great possibilities.
He is a young intelligent man and indeed he wants the best for his country. He wants to remove his country from communism, and surely will promote democracy and globalization for a better future, as for example is happening to Peru, Colombia and Chile during the last years.
Tito Vasquez
Analysis of the political and economic situation of Venezuela
Today Venezuela is still leaving under the revolutionary ideas of Hugo Chavez, with Nicolas Maduro as a temporarily president, until next 14th of April 2013 that new elections will occur. He is the man that Chavez stipulated should be his follower. He was supposed to be his Vice President during the 4th Presidency of Chavez; but this never happened because Chavez died before swearing. The thing is that this country is living out of the law, Diosdado Cabello, the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela was supposed to rule during this transition. But the power of Chavez extended even after his death. So Maduro, simply announced that he will govern until a new President is elected. And of course, he will be the candidate of Chavez revolutionary party. And it is probably that new elections will not be really transparent. And if he is elected, Hugo Chavez´s line of government will continue. The doubt is what will become of Mr. Chávez’s movement without him?
The social democracy Hugo Chavez preached his government was going to be, turned quickly into a camouflage dictatorship when he raised power. So politics in Venezuela suffered a radical change. And despite Chavez insisted his country lived a democracy, what most of the world see is that since 1999 when this revolutionary government started, Venezuela had been under an absolute authoritarianism of him and his party. Chavez had enormously politicized the military and it is known corruption was around him and his militaries. There were armed militias raiding the country that used to answer only to Chavez. It is said that he amassed a 2 billion dollars personal fortune, or maybe more during his presidency, how come? He got to change Constitution to be reelected three times; despite he died before starting his 4th period. And were elections really transparent? He had also nationalized and controlled almost all the media and press, so he informed what he wanted. Is this democracy?
A deep change happened with Venezuela´s society during Chavez presidency. Millions of poor people who used to feel marginalized and ignored, by today feel empowered. “Their president” offered them a real revolution and spent millions in improving their well-being. These people do not see beyond, they did not care if a corrupt dictatorship ruled them. They just felt happy and secure receiving without mattering if the country politics and economy were deeply suffering. And may be there is nothing to be said about them, these people felt improvements in their life´s, and this is good. To eradicate poorness around the world is a challenge for every government. And it may be true that poverty has reduced in Chavez years, that child malnutrition has reduced, or that pensions had raise, unemployment had decrease and that social spending had been directed to housing, to social security, health and education. But what´s wrong is the way Chavez did it; braking with democracy and with a tyranny centralized government power, that ruled with lies and corruption and expropriating almost every private business. His policies widened terrible society’s divisions. Violence had increased terribly, murdered has doubled in the last decade, Venezuela is actually a very dangerous country. There is shortness of food and basic products. And his proclaimed “socialism” was really a “communism”, and this kind of regime is terrible, it restricts people freedom and does not give a nation the opportunities to develop as globalize nations have.
And yet this revolutionary government insisted that Venezuela´s economy is solid and growing due Chavez social spending policies, showing positive results as a 5% GDP growth in 2012, or they insist inflation had been falling and that will keep dropping, and showed a cumulative inflation of only 4.4% for 2012. Presenting results of growth by 2012 and saying that almost all sectors have been growing significantly. What it is known is that this country is actually with Argentine the ones with most inflation in Latin America and Venezuela could be the second country with the higher inflation of the world. His currency the “Bolivar fuerte” has lost 2/3 of its value since 2008. Venezuela´s exports had passed from 77% oil to 96% oil today, and this extreme dependency in only one product is very risky for any country. How longer will Venezuela resist this situation?
Chavez domestic policies
Even it is known that Chavez was increasing his fortune through a corrupt government, he proclaimed that in his country there should not be “rich and poor”, he had the goal of resolving the economic inequality “wealth should be redistributed”. Mainly via land reform and social programs. He proclaimed the “Bolivarian Missions” meant to offer public services, such as food, healthcare and education; to reduce poverty and improve economic, cultural, and social conditions.
Some of his social programs include for example:
Price controls in at least 400 basic foods (causing food shortages and obsessive keeping). Producers were forced to produce at a loss.
Also a chain of state-owned grocery stores was created to sell at lower prices.
Micro-credit programs and banks were created for helping the poor to start their own small businesses. Chavez promoted start-up credit and technical training to create worker-owned “cooperatives”, (many cooperatives function wrongly or were fraudulently formed to gain access to public funds).
Communal Councils were created to determine how government funds would be used in their local area. Communal banks were founded too, and had received hundreds of millions in government funding to be used for local micro-loans and for community social projects.
Agriculture and land reform policies started, promoting local agricultural production and reducing agricultural imports. Many large farms were nationalized. Lots of fruitful farmlands decayed after expropriation and food production dropped. A "Law of the Land" stated big landholdings to be illegal, and gave them to farmer families who needed land to work. The occupation of idle private lands by landless peasants was allowed. But this reorganization does not necessarily improved food production because many farmers were damaged by the price controls for their products. In 2008, the government had to give financial aid to small farmers who were in problem. Besides technical assistance and education was provided to them.
“Urban Land Committees” were created to develop “land titling” in urban areas. In 2002 a decree, “allowed local committees to apply to a government office for the local residents to gain property title for national land that was informally occupied for a long time”. Thousands of titles had been assigned.
“Great Housing Mission program” created to build for the poor and for the country and to stimulate construction that is considered the 2nd motor of the economy after oil.
Nationalizations / expropriations had been an important part of the policy of wealth redistribution and to reduce influence of multinational corporations. For example big extensions of land (for social purposes) and many apartments of those who had more than one living place were expropriated. Many industries and companies were also expropriated or nationalized, as the largest telephone companies and electric utilities or to the principal steel company (Argentine-controlled SIdor) and a food plant (owned by US Cargill) or Banco de Venezuela, automotive industries, cement industry, warehouses, hotels, supermarkets, insurance companies, coffee plants, mines or TV channels as Globovision. (Some compensation was paid in specific situations).
But the best for Chávez was the country’s oil reserves, Venezuela is a major producer of oil and it´s economy practically depends on it. For his socialist dream he got control over the national oil company in 2003. He nationalized petroleum companies (PDVSA, was the most important). Billions of dollars from oil had been used to support his political populist projects.
New taxes were introduced, especially on non-priority and luxury goods. Nation's tax weight may go mostly to the wealthy, inflation must be controlled. Also to avoid capital flight, and keep the stability of the Venezuelan currency, the “bolivar”, strict currency controls were established in 2003. Since the currency controls, there was a series of devaluations. February 2013 suffered the seventh devaluation since Chavez took power, something negative for Venezuela´s economy.
International policies were focused in reducing the influence of foreign capitalists in Venezuela and to try to increase autonomy from U.S. and European governments by rising control over local oil production and promoting economic and political integration with Latin American nations. One of his goals was to create “The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas”, a regional trade & political bloc that would replace the “Free Alliance for the Americas”. Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic joined Venezuela in this “ALBA”. Venezuela offered cheaper oil to the members in exchange of other trading’s. Chavez described ALBA as "a flexible model for the integration of Latin America that places social concerns in the forefront." and encourages "socially-oriented" forms of trade instead of those "strictly based on the logic of deregulated profit maximization". He also proposed a regional currency called the “Sucre”, to be used in commercial exchanges between the ALBA members, to improve stability of regional markets and to replace the U$ and decrease U.S. control of the economies of Latin America nations. Bancosur was also created for this group.
Chavez also had a very close relation with government of People´s Republic of China. China became Venezuela’s 2nd largest trade partner, and Venezuela China's biggest investment destination in Latin America.
Despite the bad relation that he had with U.S. government, oil trade had been occurring between them. The idea is to reduce this dependency in the future.
And of course, how Cuba was almost tied to Chavez government is the most remarkable international relationship. Now that he is dead, Cuba may take every action to preserve the economic relationship with Venezuela that had been giving petroleum, almost free as an exchange mainly for medical care. There were also many Cubans working for companies of Chavez´s government.
Alonso Padilla
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