Way Down in Venezuela, Capital Won’t Let the People Go
Weekend Edition April 11-13, 2014
Can Maduro Avoid the Trap?
Way Down in Venezuela, Capital Won’t Let the People Go
by CHRIS GILBERT
It was shortly after Moses’s encounter with the Burning Bush that God promised to take the people of Israel to the land of milk and honey. God, who could be extremely cryptic in his explanations (“I am that I am”), did not beat around the bush – of the either burning or extinguished variety – when it came to capturing his audience. For that reason, he did not offer houris (which might lose their charm in a few weeks) or freedom and democracy (which can ring hollow on an empty stomach) but two simple use-values: milk and honey.
In this sense – and in very few others – God is like the Venezuelan opposition. Freedom, Dictatorship, Regime Change are just words after all. Milk, sugar, and flour are things, the reality or absence of which is quite palpable. The Venezuelan opposition knows that in certain moments it can appear to be a matter of supreme indifference whether a land is run by Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, or Jebusites as long as… it is flowing with milk and honey.
The Bible, or at least most of the Old Testament, was written by hungry people. In a well-fed society, a pomegranate might inspire thoughts a beloved’s rosy cheeks, but the Song of Songs presents just the opposite fantasy; the whole of the beloved’s body transports the lover to thinking about sheep, goats, fruit and, yes, milk and honey. Or again, the despicable Esau forgoes his birthright not for a lentil field or shares in a lentil business but for a plate of lentils. All of this, along with the handful of prophets who like Ezekiel actually chow down on their prophetic calling, points to the presence of hunger, not of the passing sort but of a gnawing and persistent kind: a people who can’t get food off their minds.
In the drama called Food on the Mind that is taking place now in Venezuela, Act II “The Peace Conference” began on February 27 with Lorenzo Mendoza entering from stage right. Mendoza, who descends from the oldest Venezuelan oligarchy and perhaps even Bolívar’s sister, knows how to speak to his people. His blue-blooded family has never really left the government, usually naming or occupying the position of Minister of Agriculture, except under Chávez. Mendoza is a seasoned player who knows his part well and is also aware that to cut through the apparent conflict and bring people out of their 14-year apostasy, moralizing jeremiads will accomplish very little. Instead he proposes something more concrete. Mendoza says: The economy is what we need to talk about, not politics.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/11/way-down-in-venezuela-capital-wont-let-the-people-go/