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AFP REPORTER IN VENEZUELA
CHAVEZ HELPING THE POOR; PLUTOCRATS THREATENED
By Chris Bollyn
Venezuelans are living in a time of revolution, the Bolivarian Revolution, which is headed by their elected leader, President Hugo Chavez. As the “revolutionary democracy” of Chavez changes the way Venezuelans live and think, most citizens have strong opinions about the government and are quite willing to share them.
While the controlled press in the United States generally portrays Chavez in the worst possible light, it is the opinions of Venezuelans that matter most, as the American intellectual Noam Chomsky said recently about the Bolivarian Revolution:
“The interesting question is not what I think about it or George Bush thinks about it. The question is, what do Venezuelans think about it?
“On that, we have evidence,” Chomsky said. “Despite extreme hostility from the media, from the business classes and from the United States, Chavez has won election and referendum one after the other by heavy majority.”
Chavez, who is an avowed fan of Chomsky, said that U.S. public opinion is the “super power” that can “save the world” during an interview in New York City on Sept. 19, 2005.
“The U.S. people have a major responsibility in the world. I think that we’re going to save the world,” Chavez said. “And I hope that you take part in this struggle in the same way we are doing today.”
Venezuelan taxi drivers provide a good barometer of public opinion. They are average working people who have invested in a business venture, read newspapers on a daily basis, and are in close contact with the public.
Like many Venezuelans, Esteban, a middle-aged taxi driver from Punta Piedras, has a positive opinion about Chavez, and explained the fundamental difference between the previous leaders of Venezuela and Chavez.
“The former presidents, the millionaires, all kept the poor at a distance, but Chavez has embraced the poor,” Esteban said, gesturing with his arm to show how Chavez has brought the poor closer to him.
Moises Naim, the Venezuelan minister of trade and industry in the early 1990s, who became wealthy under a previous administration and now lives in the United States, is editor-in-chief of the Washington-based magazine Foreign Policy. Naim’s magazine, which is readily available in Venezuela, recently published a very critical piece on Chavez yet agrees that the revolutionary president is like “a bona fide Robin Hood” for the majority of the people—the poor.
“Chavez has addressed the spiritual and material needs of Venezuela’s poor, which in 2004 accounted for 60 percent of the country’s households,” Javier Corrales wrote in a recent cover story for Foreign Policy.
That Venezuela has many poor is the first impression one receives during the trip from the airport near La Guaira on the coast to the capital city of Caracas. Since the main bridge linking the airport with the capital was impassable, travelers had to take a four-hour trip on a 
HELPING THE POOR
During the slow stop-and-go trip one passes through miles and miles of impoverished, poorly-built clay-brick neighborhoods on the steep slopes of the mountain which seem to have popped up without any planning or infrastructure.
This provides a visual testimony of the “virtually nonfunctioning society” of Venezuela, which veteran Latin American correspondent Hugh O’Shaughnessy described in a recent report as a seriously neglected society that Chavez is trying to improve and reform.
“Only now under President Chavez . . . has medicine started to become something of a reality for the poverty-stricken majority in the rich but deeply divided—virtually nonfunctioning—society,” O’Shaughnessy wrote.
This reporter saw first-hand how one of Venezuela’s new medical clinics, which had been opened under Chavez, operated when my son stepped on a poisonous fish and was in serious pain. After two local fishermen had provided first aid, we were told to visit the local clinic a few miles away.
It was the very modern Clinica Bolivariana Popular of El Espinal where the taxi took us. Without any waiting time or paperwork , my son was treated in a quick and professional manner by a young Venezuelan doctor who spoke fluent English. Only as we left, were we asked to provide the name of the patient. The medical care was entirely free.
In Venezuela there are two types of medical care available: private and public. The private hospitals are very expensive while the public care is free. Two Cuban-born doctors who came to Venezuela in 1996, one of whom works in a public hospital, said that the public hospitals were not as well equipped as the private ones.
Now members of the upper class, the doctors said they viewed Venezuela’s future under Chavez with some trepidation. The Bolivarian Revolution is central planning under Chavez, they said. Yet, while they have friends and colleagues in Houston and Miami, these doctors have chosen to raise their family in Venezuela.
A shop owner told of how Chavez had brought “control” to the business community of Venezuela for the first time. In a country where receipts are often not even available, Chavez has brought some sense of accountability.
Prior to 2003 there was little control of business transactions and no sales tax, he said. Since then, Chavez has gradually instituted a sense of accountability and a sales tax. The Chavez government, he said, has also raised taxes on wealth and luxury items, such as on second homes and cars.
When asked about Chavez, an artist and entrepreneur who supports the Bolivarian Revolution pulled from his pocket a small and well-thumbed book which turned out to be the constitution of Venezuela. He pointed out the article, completely highlighted, which dealt with the prohibition of monopolies and the right of individuals to do business.
Since Chavez came to power in 1998, education in Venezuela has been offered without cost. In previous administrations, parents were obliged to pay to get their children into school, even at the elementary school level.
Today, Venezuelans can attend school, from kindergarten through university, without cost. During a visit to a local school in La Asuncion during a weekend, one could see a great deal of extra-curricular grassroots
activity. Citizen participation is a basis of the Bolivarian Revolution.
“Here we have been trying the democratic model,” Chavez announced in a recent speech. “It is the revolutionary democracy. But it is not only a representative democracy. It is a participatory democracy and beyond that it is a full and meaningful democracy.”
(Issue #10/11, March 6 & 13, 2006)
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