PressEthic

It’s all well and good that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is “bucking free-market planning.” But what about bucking Venezuelans?

Western lefties tend to lionize Chavez. They think he’s populist socialism in action: a man of the people redistributing the wealth of the few to the dispossessed many; a man who’s not afraid to stand up to what most call "Western Imperialism;" a man subject to large-scale political schemes involving US conspirators, as seen in the 2003 documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

At least that’s what I experienced when I was there for a few months earlier this year. The only Chavistas I met were Europeans. Venezuelans (from all economic backgrounds) tended to have a more nuanced perspective.

To an extent, the lefties are right (no pun intended). Chavez articulated frustrations about the Bush Administration when few were willing to. He’s also done quite a bit to make good with the Venezuelan economy. The latter is confirmed by a glowing NY Times review of Chavez’s economic policy of late:

The populist government is reorganizing the country's colossal oil industry, taking a bigger share from private multinationals. Planners are reorganizing the banking system, placing stringent restrictions on lending while creating state banks. Venezuela is also developing a state-to-state barter system to trade items as varied as cattle, oil and cement as far away as Argentina and as near as Cuba, its closest ally…Many of the president's grandest plans are put into practice at the year-old Ministry for the Popular Economy. Planners there have already created 6,840 cooperatives that employ 210,000 people nationwide, many producing for the state…The state is also founding a mining company, an iron and steel company, a tractor factory and a state computer company, which Mr. Chávez says will produce "Bolivarian computers" in honor of his guiding light, the 19th-century independence hero Simón Bolívar. The government has even spoken about acquiring nuclear technology from Brazil and Argentina - emphasizing that it would be for peaceful purposes, like energy production or medical care.

That’s great. But there are a couple of key points glossed over by the Times’ assessment.

During my time there, I met a woman who told me that, following the 2004 referendum during which she and her sister voted against Chavez, they were blacklisted (they voted for him the first time around, in 1998). This, she said, meant they were cut off from government jobs, loans and other services. Prior to the referendum, the woman’s sister had applied for a loan to open a veterinary clinic; afterwards, she said, a worker she knew at the Central Bank of Venezuela told her the loan was no longer available. She then told her why. At first, I was skeptical. That's a weighty claim with far-reaching consequences. I didn’t have the time or the language skills to investigate, but I’ve since come across enough references to the blacklist’s existence that it warrants at least a hint of skepticism from the Times.

A blog from the American Democracy Project (which gives a pretty even-handed take on Chavista rule), for example, quotes a port worker who claims pretty much the same thing as the woman I met. “He would like to serve in the legal branch of the ministry of tourism, but there is the matter of the referendum he signed opposing the new constitution. The ‘No’ signatures have become a blacklist for government jobs.”

A Mother Jones interview with Latin American Correspondent Richard Gott mentions it as well: “Certain of his reform laws, in particular one regulating the media and another reshuffling the judiciary, have drawn protests from international rights groups. And yes, there's the matter of la lista, the list of signatures submitted in 2004 to demand a referendum on Chavez's recall, which, so signatories claim, now functions as a black list, deployed by the Chavez government to deny them jobs and services.”

There’s even a supposed smoking gun posted here. Were this true, of course, that would mean that a huge cross-section of Venezuelan society is unable to participate in the country’s flowering economy in a pretty fundamental way.

Another point glossed by the Times is Venezuela’s lifeless tourist economy. Granted, the article’s central thrust is to emphasize Chavez’s development of an economic model that's fairly independent of foreign investors. I fully support this. But to forget entirely about tourists—which is what Chavez seems to have done—is plain stupid. Growth in the tourist sector would be, to an extent, free money, because it’s not as if Venezuela doesn’t have an infrastructure already set up for tourists; it does. It’s the crime that keeps people away. That armed robberies are a regular occurance at the Caracas Airport is absurd (see the State Department’s guidelines here and an assortment of Lonely Planet posts here; I didn't have any problems at the airport, but I know a 60 year old man who was beaten, robbed and left for dead on a highway by airport thugs posing as cabbies). That pirates are understood to be a potent threat to cruisers along the country’s northeast coast is equally ridiculous. A small investment in preventative measures would go a long, long way. The port worker, however, probably gave the best analysis:

“Chavez is killing us,” they contend in unison. “Do know the last time we had a ship with visitors in port? It was last April, the last time the Semester at Sea Explorer arrived. Not one ship between your visits.” A few ships reach as far as Margarita Island in the winter months, bringing a few North Americans, often Canadians, to enjoy the sun and surf, and the margaritas. But very few every step onto the mainland— too much political unrest, too much crime, too uncertain. “Venezuela has so much to see, we should be a tourist paradise,” says one, a remarkably knowledgeable amateur birder. “The birds, the rain and cloud forest, Angel Falls, the great canyons and rich culture, it’s all here but no one comes.” He goes on, “Now I hear that Chavez wants to begin ideology classes in the schools, his ideology. If that happens, I won’t stay and put my daughter through it. I’m a person of the left, but for me that has always meant being a free-thinker, not following a party line.” Where will he go? Maybe to the US. Yes, he would miss the people and the birds and his job as a guide. “I want to show you the beauty of this land, but I don’t want to show you the land of Chavez.”