By: Daniel Nardini
I guess miracles do happen. The revolutionary socialist and former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez died of cancer last week. He has been succeeded by his Vice-president Nicolas Maduro, who must now try and govern a country that for all-due purposes Chavez has messed up. Rising from an attempted military coup in 1992, Chavez served time in prison only to be elected to the presidency of Venezuela in 1999. He governed the country with an iron fist, and crushed as well as imprisoned innocent political opponents. Chavez used Venezuela’s oil and natural gas as well as mineral wealth to win over and supply those countries friendly to his regime such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia.
However, he had left his own nation in dire economic straits. His policies has caused run-away inflation, and the poorer section of the population have to wait in long lines for such basic foods as rice, beans and flour. Chavez had largely shut down those TV and radio stations that opposed him, and he has been responsible for shutting down most of those newspapers who opposed him as well. To openly oppose Chavez would have guaranteed for the average Venezuelan being beaten up and killed in the streets. Those opponents who were openly against Chavez knew they were taking risks going against him. Chavez used his left, socialist “Bolivarian Revolution” to try and strengthen a leftist alliance with a number of other Latin American and Caribbean countries against the United States and its allies. This alliance, known as the Bolivarian Alliance for Our Peoples in the Americas (ALBA) was an economic, political, and to an extent a military alliance of all those leftist, anti-U.S. regimes who wanted to create and export a new Communist kind of system.
With Chavez’s death, there is now a gaping hole in ALBA. Those countries that have benefited from Chavez’s largess now have to be concerned. Will the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela survive without Chavez? I hope it will not. I hope that Venezuela will return to a democratic path, and that the Venezuelan people will be able to restore those institutions that had worked before Chavez gutted them. Namely, the judiciary and its congress. I hope that the Venezuelan people will be able to pass a constitution that truly enshrines the democratic traditions the nation had before Chavez—a free press, freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly, and have to chance to not live in fear for their political and religious opposition. But most of all, I hope that the Venezuelan people will be able to chuck the legacy of Hugo Chavez and Bolivarian Republic into the garbage can of history.
Chavez Gone
By: Daniel Nardini
However, he had left his own nation in dire economic straits. His policies has caused run-away inflation, and the poorer section of the population have to wait in long lines for such basic foods as rice, beans and flour. Chavez had largely shut down those TV and radio stations that opposed him, and he has been responsible for shutting down most of those newspapers who opposed him as well. To openly oppose Chavez would have guaranteed for the average Venezuelan being beaten up and killed in the streets. Those opponents who were openly against Chavez knew they were taking risks going against him. Chavez used his left, socialist “Bolivarian Revolution” to try and strengthen a leftist alliance with a number of other Latin American and Caribbean countries against the United States and its allies. This alliance, known as the Bolivarian Alliance for Our Peoples in the Americas (ALBA) was an economic, political, and to an extent a military alliance of all those leftist, anti-U.S. regimes who wanted to create and export a new Communist kind of system.
With Chavez’s death, there is now a gaping hole in ALBA. Those countries that have benefited from Chavez’s largess now have to be concerned. Will the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela survive without Chavez? I hope it will not. I hope that Venezuela will return to a democratic path, and that the Venezuelan people will be able to restore those institutions that had worked before Chavez gutted them. Namely, the judiciary and its congress. I hope that the Venezuelan people will be able to pass a constitution that truly enshrines the democratic traditions the nation had before Chavez—a free press, freedom of speech and freedom of peaceful assembly, and have to chance to not live in fear for their political and religious opposition. But most of all, I hope that the Venezuelan people will be able to chuck the legacy of Hugo Chavez and Bolivarian Republic into the garbage can of history.