Reply #115: Chavez's remark in context..

[larry_walker]

.. makes a lot more sense and is a lot less inflammatory than it's being taken in this discussion.

I was at the Teatro Karl Marx in Havana on Friday for Chavez' speech, along with 40 other Americans who were in Havana for the anti-FTAA conference.

Chavez' remarks about the American people needing to liberate their government were preceded (as best I can recall, given 4 hours of simultaneously translated Spanish) by remarks about the undemocratic manner in which trade agreements are pushed through the US Congress. He pointed to the fast-track arrangement that prohibits amendments, to the Republican leadership's fondness to late night and short-notice votes, to the American media's failure to expose the public to any details of these agreements' effects on workers (US or Latin American). He (rightfully, in my opinion) said that America has a lot of nerve claiming to be the paragon of democracy when the people and their representatives are denied any meaning deabte or voice in the content of these agreements.

Taken in context, his remarks were no more inflamatory than the bumper stickers I see on the streets of my home town: "Regime Change Begins at Home".

I would also like to add that the US press does not seem to have paid any attention to what I felt was the most significant thing Chevez said on Friday. Based on the mediocre simutaneous translation, he said approximately: "What we in Venezuala call Bolivarianism, others may call Socialism, but perhaps most accurately should be called Christianity."

Chavez made a nnumber of references to his upbringing as a Christian and his belief in the teachings of Christ, with special reference to the quote "A camel can pass though the eye of a needle easier than a rich man can enter the kindogm of heaven."

Some may dismiss this as propagandistic grandstanding, but after 5 hours of sitting ten rows back from the man, I came away with an unexpectedly strong impression that Hugo Chavez is genuine in his profession of Christian concern for the poorest and the weakest among us...
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