Ignoring the editorial slant, interesting background on context of Hugo vs Juan Carlos from Time/CNN

[1932]

But behind the royal reprimand, much of the international media missed what may have set Chávez off in the first place. Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a socialist and Chávez ally — insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it — hence his tirade against Aznar and other free-market "fascists." At that point Zapatero chided Chávez, reminding him that Aznar himself "was democratically elected by the Spanish people." Chávez kept trying to interrupt — summit organizers even turned off his microphone — at which point the King said what was on most summiteers' minds, if the general applause he got was any indication.

...

The chavistas rightly argue that the distribution of capitalism's fruits has been grossly unequal in Latin America — which is a large reason why leftists like Chávez have been swept into power in recent years. But the region needs that investment nonetheless — and even leftists like Zapatero sound impatient with the region's mediocre performance.

In that sense, it seems appropriate that King Juan Carlos — head of a nation with major investments in Latin America — got snippy at the Ibero-American Summit. The annual gathering was started in 1991 by then Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who at the time was trying to convince the U.S. to sign a free-trade agreement, as a way to make Mexico and Latin America look like global players. Latin leaders still use if for that purpose — but this time the Spaniards may have been less willing to play along. Their frustrations with Latin America, and those of the rest of the developed world, were reflected just before the summit last week in a report by the Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development. The OECD called the region's economic showing "sub-optimal," and said even its best performers continue "losing ground to their Asian competitors."



Spain was telling Venezuela and Latin America that attracting foreign capital (ie, allowing Spanish companies to make a profit off Latin American development) is the solution to their problems. Chavez believes that Latin America tried that experiment and it failed. Time Magazine is clearly on the side of western multinational corps in this argument. You be the judge of whether this is issue is worthy of Chavez's outrage. You be the judge of whether a European king patronizing an elected president from the developing world couldn't be more poetically symbolic of the problems developing countries face in their relationships with the west. You be the judge of whether more foreign investment from the west is the solution to the problems of the developing world.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1682967,00.html

[DCKit]

1. Nah, I think Chavez's eyes are wide open.

That's why he kicked out the World Bank and IMF.

He's crude, but he is "of the people" until he proves otherwise.

On edit: K&R for an excellent point of view on a very controversial issue.

[Peace Patriot]

2. You and Time (...gulp) are right to focus on economics re this little dustup.

There were obviously undercurrents at that meeting, and a lot of possibilities as to the sorest of them, that may not be related to the apparent subject matter--which, as I understand it, was Chavez's accusation that Spain's previous government (headed by Bush toady, Aznar) knew about and supported the violent rightwing military coup, in 2002, against the Venezuelan Constitution (they suspended it) and the elected government, headed by Chavez. Chavez says the Spanish ambassador visited the coup leaders, even as Chavez was whisked away by his kidnappers, and approved their actions. Later, at a press conference, Chavez asked how that could happen without Anzar's, and also King Juan Carlos's, okay.

Chavez seemed pretty focused on the coup, and these accusations. And you've got to wonder why he brought it up. Why would he want to get Spain all huffy about their "honor" (which is what happened--and I think is why the King spoke so rudely). It's kind of funny, the current socialist government defending that little fascist worm, Aznar. But Zapatero/Juan Carlos' view, I think, was more that Spain was being accused. On the surface, the whole thing is a wonderment. It's the first I'd heard of the Spanish ambassador's visit to the coupsters. I don't read Spanish very well, so maybe it's well-known in South America, but not by me. But it seemed rather startling. And if Chavez has known this all along, why wasn't there a dustup about it before this?

Why, indeed? Judi Lynn alerted me to a report on ANOTHER rightwing coup plot in Venezuela--a current one. The report has a lot credible detail.* The rightwing in Venezuela could get right with their God, and spend their time serving food to the poor and other charitable works, and then maybe some day people would vote for them. But they're not a very smart group of people--and their advisers--the Bush Junta--prefer blunt force as their foreign policy. Thus, there are a lot of rightwing plots in Venezuela. They seem to occur and get exposed regularly, and they all follow these lines: create civil chaos, get it on corporate TV, bring in disgruntled fascist elements in the military and set up some kind of cobbled together rightwing dictatorship that, like Musharaff, will keep promising to hold elections (while they throw leftists out of airplanes, and chainsaw union organizers and throw their body parts into mass graves).

These "Keystone Kop" Koupsters fail, time and again, in their various schemes, but that is not to say that they can't succeed, or at least cause a lot of trouble. The Bush Junta has a lot of motivation to topple Venezuelan democracy, and the rich elite in Venezuela evidently failed catechism in Catholic school ("love thy neighbor," "the meek shall inherit the earth," etc.). They don't want to share. They want the whole cake.

So-o-o-o, if this latest coup plot is real, and Chavez suspects that South America's former colonial master, Spain, for all its socialism, is collusive in some way (and Spain could have economic motives), what better way to out their collusion--and head it off--than by bringing up this past thing about the ambassador, all of a sudden, in a public forum? Chavez is a pretty shrewd fellow. I doubt he would say such a thing without a good reason. Could Spain's general desire to invest in South America, make a profit from it, and sweeten the deal with development and aid--and this getting under Chavez's skin, who wants independence--have prompted such an accusation? It doesn't seem to be sufficient motivation. It seems more likely that something really pissed him off.

Also, the talks they were all attending were about social "cohesion" in Latin America--a topic title that Chavez argued with, as insufficiently revolutionary. He prefers social "transformation." This has to do with rich/poor divide, and also with racial divides. It is no small matter that people with decidedly brown faces are getting elected as presidents in these countries, at long last. The Spanish imposed the rule of white Europeans, and left behind a bitter legacy of racial (and related class) prejudice that is still at work. Possibly Chavez meant to inject a bit of reality into talks that were too cozy about "cohesion," and targeted the former colonizer--as if to say, you can't have social "cohesian" between rich and poor, when the rich do nefarious deeds like this (collude with a fascist coup). Chavez, in every other way, has promoted cooperation among countries, and the peaceful settlement of differences. He himself was extraordinarily mild in his reaction to the coup attempt, and went out of his way not to punish people. He is currently undertaking peace negotiations in the long bitter civil war in Colombia. He encourages and initiates all manner of cooperative projects. So why would he bring this note of discord to a Latin American summit on social "cohesion"? I don't think he would do it for some general purpose, or to make a debating point. It was too pointed.

There really is a lot going on here--including the vast social justice and democracy movement in South America, of which Chavez is just one leader. Two key goals of the Bolivarian Revolution--which is centered in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, and allied with other leftist governments, in Brazil, Uruguay, Nicaragua and (to some extent) Chile--are Latin American self-determination and regional cooperation (toward a South American Common Market). They have battered the World Bank/IMF (EU investors--and rich Spaniards?) and nearly driven them out of the region. They have many practical projects--the Bank of the South, infrastructure (pipelines, bridges), ALBA (leftist trade group), Mercosur (center-left trade group), and other ambitious goals such as forming a new OAS without the United States. And all of this must be really aggravating to the EU financial elite (including Spain's). Europe ALSO exploits Latin America--it's not just U.S. global corporate predators. And it may well be that the socialist Spanish government is being hypocritical, and does not really want to see real, equitable, socialist democracy, and independence, in its former colonies. Would they go so far as to back a coup? Would Juan Carlos? I don't know. If the socialist leaders in Spain are anything like our Democrats--who have supported the Bush Junta--possibly they would. I don't know them well enough to read the entrails. Clearly, Chavez is suspicious of them. And Juan Carlos' behavior--bursting with anger, storming out of the room--points to possible guilty knowledge of something.

Then there's OPEC (of which Venezuela is a member), and the price of oil, the falling dollar, and OPEC's plan to diversify its currency (move to a "basket" of currencies--the Euro, the Swiss frank, and some others, with the US dollar downgraded). This may well be connected to US warmongering. There may even be a strategy--not just by OPEC, but by a consortium of countries including Russia and China--to punish the US for what it has done to Iraq, and to stop the Bush Junta from attacking Iran. And South American leftist leaders and their many supporters may still be angry at Spain for supporting the Iraq war, even though Spain has changed governments. It is curious that Chavez would hark back to an event that happened four years ago (the coup attempt)--and that the rightwing Spanish government might have been collusive in--given the overall forward-looking, progressive outlook of the Bolivarian Revolution, and given that Spain has rejected that Spanish government. Could it be that the current Spanish government is being duplicitous on the Iran issue--and in some way aiding and abetting the Bushites? THAT could be reason to rub their noses in past sins.

As the U.S. is pushed out of South America, as a dominant force, Spain's ruling class may wish to move into the "power vacuum"--and one could certainly see Juan Carlos as being a leader of that. In fact, he's already quite involved in dispute-settling in South America. He's the mediator between Argentina and Brazil over a contentious environmental/mining situation on their border. And he may be involved in the Bolivia/Chile talks about Bolivia's access to the sea (taken from them in war over 100 years ago, and still a bitter issue). Chavez and Juan Carlos could be seen (or see themselves) as rivals for power--Juan Carlos representing old Europe and both its noble values and its financial sharks, and Chavez representing the raw new power of the revolutionary poor, finally taking their place on the world stage. It is no accident who this revolution is named for--the hero Simon Bolivar who threw Spain out of the western hemisphere.

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*(Report on coup plot: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=user&saz=inbox&ssaz=show_mesg&m_id=2519975)

[malaise]

3. Great post

The wealthiest 10% of Venezuelans control 36.5% of income. They are very angry that they no longer control as much as their friends in Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. They hate Chavez. They hate their own poor and they all have links to Spain. Chavez is no fool.

Fugg all monarchs.

[leftchick]

4. that link does not work

is the post removed? Excellent summery PP! :)

[Peace Patriot]

6. Sorry about the link. I posted the wrong one. Here's the right one...

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=76783

[1932]

5. A kick so that...

...this economic/political approach can float near the top of GD alongside the, um, psychological/theological and pro-royalist approaches to this story.

[fascisthunter]

7. Thank You (nt)

[Peace Patriot]

8. Good point, 1932! It is utterly dismaying how our corporate news monopolies

force these issues into a "celebrity" entertainment mold, and play the role of the Roman emperor at the games--"thumbs up" to this guy, "thumbs down" to that guy. They revel in this power, and use it to distract people--most particularly north Americans--while they and their corporate brethren loot us all blind, north and south, turn our kids into cannon fodder for their corporate resources wars, or slave labor for their rancid products, rip up our constitutions, destroy all decency, brutalize and uglify the world, and kill the planet.

What's really important is John Edwards' hairdo, Hillary's gaffe, or Hugo Chavez speaking out of turn and the king of Spain sticking up for the polite sons-of-bitches of this world and telling him to "shut up." (Poor Juan Carlos! Really. Was ever there a worse blunder in white/brown, colonizer/colonized relations!) But all of it is so meaningless, so trivial, such stupidity, and, as to the motives of the corporate news monopolies, such a cruel game.

Cruel. Yup, that's the right word. You know what this calls to mind? 2004. An electronic voting system fast-tracked into place, during the 2002 to 2004, period, with extremely insecure and insider riggable voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--and not one word about this from the "fourth estate" (nor a breath of objection from our own party leaders). They let the people get excited about throwing the Bushite bums out, and raise lots of money, matching the fascist money machine dollar for dollar (much of it pouring into their own pockets for TV campaign ads), and register lots of voters--indeed, blow the Bushites away in new voter registration, nearly 60/40--and let us get our hearts all hopeful that U.S. democracy still works, all the while knowing how riggable the machines are, and letting it go all the way to election night, with Kerry winning their own exit polls--THEN they doctor the exit polls, that night, to force them to fit the results of Diebold/ES&S's 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, keeping the most hated leaders in American history in power.

Gee, what did we do wrong? --the crushed grass roots movement asked itself. Was it the 'swift-boating,' the 'flip-flopping,' the 'scream'? Was it the 'candidate,' the 'message,' the silly "terrorist" alerts, Cheney's "invisible" get out the vote campaign "in the churches"? We raised the money. We had the votes. How did we 'lose'?

Never thinking that the "trade secret" vote counting results were fed through an AP computer to the networks, that the exit polls were conformed to that result, and it was all a cruel, cruel game--a long drawn-out shadow play of democracy that we had been dragged through.

I was one of the suckers. I wired $100 to the DNC that night on their promise to "count all the votes." Little did I know, at that point, that there were no votes TO count, in many states; that the system had virtually no auditing; that these voting machines were manufactured in sweatshops in the Philippines, and designed to fail, by corporations with intimate ties to the Bush Junta; that nobody--not even our secretaries of state--had the right to review their secret code; and that Christopher Dodd, Terry McAuliffe and the DLC were IN on it, from the beginning. And that the purpose was continuing the war, and war profiteering on a scale never before seen in history.

Cruel, it was. And still is. John Edwards' hairdo. Hillary's gaffe. Lies, distractions. And a vicious campaign to turn a REAL president, Hugo Chavez, into a "dictator," and a REAL democracy, Venezuela, where they have REAL elections, into a droplet in the "news" about "violent protests" (brought to you by the Bush-purged CIA). Our people, and Venezuelans, Bolivians, Ecuadorans and other exploited populations, have much in common, with the brutal methods used against them starting to be visible in our own land. They are way ahead of us in recognizing the signs and effectively organizing against fascism. The election of so many leftist (majorityist) leaders--Hugo Chavez is one of many--is just one evidence of how far ahead of us they are. But our common ground is cut out from under us by the utter trivialization of the "news" and its relentless, 24/7 message that we are powerless to change anything.

A big part of that message is that you and I are too dumb to understand the economic and political implications of REAL democracy in South America. Another is that it has nothing to do with us.