Reply #5: anti-Chavez people

[murdoch]

I worked on Wall Street with two Venezuelans. One was an idiot, and he was always complaining about Chavez. The other was OK - he didn't talk about Chavez.

When the coup happened, I went to the Venezuelan consulate in New York City the day of the coup with a sign that said "STOP THE COUP - RESTORE DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA". I didn't know a coup would happen so there was no way I could plan for a group to show up, although I posted that I was going to some local mailing lists. When I got there, there were two dozen anti-Chavez people, who were filmed by local Spanish language television news (who refused to speak to me, I can speak some Spanish). one thing that struck me is that the person who organized it must have known the coup was going to happen, there was no way all of that was organized in a few hours. The fellow who organized it was Venezuelan, and so were one or two others, but most of the two dozen or so people there were right-wing Colombians, or right-wingers from some other Latin American country. Since they thought they won, they were not that bothered by me raining on their parade.

In Venezuela, like most countries, 80% of the people are workers, skilled or unskilled. 20% or so are managers or professionals. The managerial/professional people, who are the ones who usually have the money to travel to the US, mostly dislike Chavez. The working class of Venezuela is mostly behind Chavez.

Chavez won his 1998 election with the largest percentage of voters in four decades. He came back from a right-wing military coup, which I can't remember ever happening ever in Latin America or elsewhere (can anyone else?). Chavez got 60% of the vote in the 2004 election, which Jimmy Carter observed and said was fair. I recall someone standing in line to vote in a working class, very pro-Chavez neighborhood was shot dead on election day in 2004, the only fatality of that election day was probably pro-Chavez.