Reflections on the Work of President Chavez

[polly7]

By Bill Fletcher

Friday, March 15, 2013

A friend of mine said that when he heard the news of the death of President Chavez that it felt as if someone had hit him in the stomach. I could not have put it more concisely nor more honestly. While I knew that the likelihood of his recovering was very slight, I suppose that I engaged in a bit of magical thinking, hoping—more than anything else—that the man who survived a coup attempt and the constant hostility of US imperialism, could pull off a miracle.

One of the most important contributions of President Chavez and the Bolivarian process has been to help to put race on the table for discussions and action. Under President Chavez renewed attention has gone to the indigenous and the Afro-descendant populations. This attention, we should note, was not the result of President Chavez alone, but rather a combination of factors with the most important being the actual social movements of the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations of Venezuela. It is critically important to grasp that in Venezuela, including in many progressive and Left circles, there is adamant denial of race as a factor in Venezuela’s reality. The opposition to President Chavez, we should be clear, denies race altogether. In the Bolivarian movement the recognition of race and racism within Venezuelan society has been uneven. But with the combination of the social movements plus President Chavez’s support, race came to be openly discussed in Venezuela and actual steps were taken to address a very different form of white supremacy than the version with which we are familiar here in North America.

Chavez, the former leader of a coup attempt in 1992, made a strategic calculation that building a mass movement and challenging for power electorally was the path that needed to be undertaken. Though Chavez ultimately proclaimed his goal of “21st century socialism,” it is far from clear that this was his initial goal. In many respects, the opening stage of the transformative effort in Venezuela seemed to be more characteristic of a left populism. In either case, the electoral victories of Chavez, and particularly after the 2002 coup followed by the oil industry lock-out (a more subtle coup attempt), opened up a space for the expansion of the Bolivarian process, and this process was more than a traditional electoral win. What Chavez introduced, along with several allies in other parts of Latin America, was conducting class struggle within the context of the State as well as outside of the State (which, we should add, included winning over important sections of the Venezuelan military). This process of class struggle has not been aimed along the lines of traditional reform efforts but actually toward advancing a transformative effort, the sort that would—and will—inevitably challenge the capitalist state in its fundamentals.

I cannot end this commentary, however, without making a note regarding a comment that President Chavez offered about his own illness, a comment that seems to have been largely forgotten. Upon the discovery of the cancer, he apologized for not having taken sufficient care of himself. I was struck by this comment for two reasons. The first was the admission that he had not been on top of his health and that he was prepared to take responsibility for that.

http://www.zcommunications.org/reflections-on-the-work-of-president-chavez-by-bill-fletcher

[Catherina]

1. Excellent article. The part about race is very important

What really struck me at the time of the coup, however, was looking at the faces of the crowds on television. I looked at the crowds that supported Chavez and those who opposed him and at that moment so much of what was unfolding in Venezuela clicked for me. For, it was clear that Chavez had phenomenal support among the poorer and the darker parts of the Venezuelan population while the opposition looked like it could have walked in from Madrid.

You see this all throughout Latin America and the Carribean. It's very sad. It's as if the old colonists never left. And I write this as a descendant of those colonists. I hear the wailing in my family weekly. Those who had/have a ton of money can't speak with enough vitriol about Castro and Chavez for redistributing the wealth. Those who didn't/don't can't revere them enough.

What's even funnier is that the Haitian intellectuals in my family adore Chavez and Castro but hate Aristide. The Venezuelan members adore Castro, Aristide and hate Chavez. I told them that says a lot about them and of course they got angry but it was so blatant that their hatred is over losing their own positions of privilege and nothing else. The Venezuelans go on and on about how Chavez agitated the people, caused class war, class hate (lmfao) and the Haitians make the same complaints about Aristide, repeating the same US propaganda smears. It couldn't be more obvious. The elite can't stand it when the people don't "know their place".

Well yeah, you don't get to keep your privileged position "being first in line at the national trough". Get over it and get out there and produce instead of leeching off the people's labor and constantly looking for ways to profit from it.

[ocpagu]

2. The right wing in the continent...

... has this long tradition of denying the existence of racism and preaching the "racial democracy" myth.

It's important for them to justify this reality of extreme exclusion of the lower classes, as well as the fact that the huge majority in these classes are indigenous, blacks, mestizos, mulatto's, cafuzos, etc.

Indeed, this theory is popular, even among some left wingers. It dates back to 19th-century and was conceived under a very outdated mindset. They understand the high percentage of mixed population in these countries and the fact that the perceptible racial tension in the streets is not on the same level of segregation the Northern Hemisphere and the absence of government actions related to apartheid-systems in more recent history.

But they should have in mind that the mixing, especially in the 19th-century, was largely result of racial theories engaged in the "whitening" of the population, taking advantage of slave descendants, trying to overcome racism and such traumatizing recent memories of cruel, degrading exploitation.

While in Brazil in 1895, Spanish painter Modesto Brocos made this work:



It's title is "Redemption of Ham", alluding to the Biblical episode of the Curse of Ham.

"The relevant narrative occurs in the Book of Genesis and concerns Noah's drunkenness and the accompanying shameful act perpetrated by his son Ham the father of Canaan (Gen. 9:20–27). The controversies raised by this story regarding the nature of Ham's transgression, and the question of why Noah cursed Canaan when Ham had sinned, have been debated for over two thousand years. The story's original objective was to justify the subjection of the Canaanites to the Israelites, but in later centuries, the narrative was interpreted by some Jews, Christians and Muslims as a curse of, and an explanation for, black skin."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham

According to Alfredo Bosi, the popular belief that the descendents of Ham were the dark-skinned peoples of of some regions in Africa and tribes around the Palestinian territory was used for a long time by ideologies, upper classes and slave traders to justify slavery, because Ham's sim would be the founding event of a unchangeable situation and the divine punishment of an entire race.

Brocos' painting shows the black grandmother, around her mulatto daughter and her white son-in-law raising her hands to thank God for the birth of her phenotypically white grandson, who will not have to deal with the burden of slavery memories.

The poet Olavo Bilac made this comment on the painting: "See the Dawn-Child, how she smiles and shines, in the lap of the Mulatta - Dawn, daughter of the Flood, granddaughter of the Night. Ham has been redeemed! Noah's curse came to an end!".

So... what I mean is that the racial democracy myth ignores history, ignores the importance that the absurd racial theories of late 19th-century had on building the popular mindset, and most of all, ignores how this implicit racism of the current societies is, largely, a result of oppressive outdated theories. Chávez did well to bring discussion on the subject

Thank you for the article.