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rightwing Colombian paramilitary sharpshooter is cleaning the rifle that he may be paid to use, to put a bullet in Hugo Chavez's forehead, or his back. That's how I see it. And, following that, torture, jail, leftists shoved out of airplanes, mass graves, beatings, brutality, poverty, silence for the poor and the just and the peaceful in Venezuela, possibly escalating to Bolivia and Ecuador. Another dark night in South America.
I feel very strongly that the good and principled and well-informed people of our country cannot sit by the sidelines while this happens again. I am with the people of Venezuela and their free and transparent choices, and THEIR revolution. It is theirs. And if Chavez doesn't serve them well, they will remove him. Thus far, they have given him overwhelming support, time and again. And if they feel that these constitutional amendments are not good for their country--perhaps go too far too fast, or whatever the conclusion of the majority is--they will rebuke him and tell him to slow down. And that will be good, too, in my opinion, so long as the elections are transparent (they are--very) and no other thing is coercing them (yet to be determined--Donald Rumsfeld's threats in the WaPo yesterday, and other threatened violence, retribution and chaos may be a factor in this one).
I do understand the need to protect one's psyche--living in an extremely unjust country, as we do--by taking a distant, bemused, objective (or so we think) viewpoint about the horrors that our government commits in our name. It is very, very, very difficult to face it, and it is not just one thing--Iraq--it is many; and it is not just now, it goes back decades; and it is not just brutality, torture and war, it is vast impoverishment, to make the rich richer here.
I cannot be this kind of objective about Latin America. I have been about Iraq--maybe because I don't have as big a heart connection to that society, whereas I do with Latin Americans. Or maybe it's because the atrocity in Iraq is so big, the mind can hardly take it in. Estimates of a half million to a million people slaughtered by the U.S. military in that country are probably accurate. It staggers the imagination, not because it is unprecedented, but because...I thought we'd gotten past that magnitude of naked aggression, as a society, and as a world. I'm not without feelings about it, but I have tried to be objective about what we can DO about it. For instance, I think our energies are better spent restoring transparent elections in the U.S., so that we regain the power, as a people, to prevent such horrors. Protesting to a deaf president and a deaf congress may be important as moral witness, and to hearten people, but it will not move our corrupt political officials, as long as we do not have the power to throw them out.
Or maybe it's because the deed is done in Iraq. We can't bring the dead back to life. Whereas, with Latin America, we at least still have the chance to prevent the carnage and horrors of the past from being repeated. Also, I am a Californian, and grew up in two cultures. Our towns and streets have Spanish names. Half our population is Latin American. I have Mexican-Americans as in-laws, and nieces and nephews. About Latin America, while I do think that our power as a people is an important issue--our power to create just policy--I feel so close to the matter, that I cannot sit back and look at the developing horror of Bushite policy as a political problem.
One other thing bumped me off the fence. I recently learned the magnitude of the carnage in Guatemala, in the 1980s, with Reagan's direct complicity. Two hundred thousands Mayan villagers slaughtered, on suspicion of being "leftists." Women and children skinned alive. Whole villages wiped out and incinerated. Parents and children forced to witness each other's torture and death. This was happening only one country away from me, in the 1980s, and I knew almost nothing about it--certainly not the scale of this horror. Did my ignorance and silence--and those of others like me--contribute to that colossal crime? I considered myself a leftist. It's true that the scale of it (and Reagan's complicity) has only recently been revealed, in a UN-sponsored 'truth and reconciliation' process. But was I not, as an American citizen, obliged to know what my government was doing--no matter the obstacles to information?
I MUST not sit on the fence this time. I must not sit back in blissful ignorance. I am determined to know what's going on, and determined to do everything I can to inform others. And the Bolivarian Revolution--Latin Americans pulling together, to create the political and economic strength to defend themselves--is a wondrous and unexpected development. It is not all dependent on Chavez, and will survive and move forward with or without him. Of that I am convinced. But our horrible corporate media is trying to make it all about him, as a surrogate for the vast poor brown population of the south that their paymasters want to continue exploiting and brutalizing. The poor need strong presidencies--in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (where this government structure fight is also being waged)--just as we needed a strong president here, when the Great Depression hit. Where would we have been, had FDR not asserted a whole lot of power, to get the situation under control and reversed?
I think Chavez is right to act with strength and to seek more power--just as Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador are doing. They need FDR-like powers to cope with the devastation that "neo-liberalism" has wrought on their countries. To call that "dictatorship" is robber baron propaganda. And there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Chavez has abused, or ever would abuse, the power he has, or the power these current amendments would give him.
So I am not neutral on Chavez. I think he has been slandered--and by very bad, greedy people, for very bad reasons. It has opened my eyes to how corporate media cabals work. I think the evidence is in--and I have searched far and wide for information. Every time I have investigated one of these "dictator" charges against Chavez, it has evaporated before the facts. They are all bullshit. They are disinformation.
In my view, sitting on the fence is not an option in this case--not for me. We need to spread the word on this--that we are being lied to and brainwashed again--and do whatever we can to prevent another U.S.-instigated tragedy in South America, that will shatter the lives and hopes of millions of people. I think that the Bolivarian Revolution will succeed, whatever the global corporate predators do, even Rumsfeld's dream of war in the Andes. But how much grief is going to inflicted on these poor people, before their independence and self-determination is achieved?
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