One Bolivia, No Room for Pando

Whether or not the CIA was responsible for the breakaway of the eastern provinces of Bolivia over the last few months, South American leaders meeting in Santiago on Monday, Sept. 15 agreed on one thing: there is no legitimacy in the call for autonomy in Bolivia's eastern provinces, and the mini-rebellion sparked by Pando Gov. Leopoldo Fernandez constituted a coup attempt. The leaders accepted President Evo Morales' claim that dozens of peasants were massacred under Fernandez's orders several days earlier. Bolivia had many good reasons for denouncing U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, a thug of the first order.

It's a sure bet the U.S. will claim that the UNASUR organization is falling under the sway of Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, which to a certain extent it is. But that's better than the Organization of American States being under the sway of the USA. Heck, Chavez claimed that last week's diplomatic flap was caused by a concrete CIA plan to assassinate him on Sept. 11, and maybe he was right (not that it legitimizes Chavez's decision to invite Russian bombers into his coutry, mind you). Morales also has a good point to make here. The rebellion of the eastern provinces should be brought to heel by Morales, with the help of UNASUR if necessary, and by any means necessary. And if some undocumented U.S. citizens get killed in the process, so much the better.

UPDATE, TUES. SEPT. 16, 3 pm - Nyah, nyah, nyah, Fernandez was arrested!

Putin Says He's Got a Mandate; Chavez Says "Mellow Out, Dudes"

Two questionable elections Dec. 2 reached opposite conclusions. Vladimir Putin claimed to no great surprise that a rigged electoral process had given him a "mandate" to do whatever the hell he wanted. Meanwhile, after losing a narrow squeaker on changing the constitution, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela did not blame the CIA and cancel the results, but accepted them with dignity. For now at least.

Is it fair to even lump these two events together? Yes, because of the process of mobilizing the grass roots. Putin's Russia remains capitalist, but he's been convinced for some time that the Russian people have a soft spot for authoritarianism and the personality cult - witness Stalin's continued popularity. Why waste time with messy democracy when Putin gets adorned on T-shirts whenever he cracks heads? The results say as much about Russian people not being very appreciative of democracy or multiculturalism (witness the crackdown on gays and foreigners) as it does about Putin's siloviki friends from the KGB and FSB.

Chavez knows he can mobilize similar forces, since the urban poor he relies on would rather be whipped up into violence than follow the nonviolent land-seizure methods of Bolivia and other Latin American countries. (It was funny to see some left-bloggers who were so anxious to see a Chavez victory, they gave us some "Dewey Defeats Truman" headlines Sunday night.) My gripe with Hugo all along has not been his Bolivarian economic models, but his demagogic tendencies and his intention to whip up violence. Maybe his response to his electoral loss indicates he's realizing the price he pays for being a provocative loudmouth. The first test will be to see if he can restrain Chavistas seeking revenge. The second test will be whether he avoids the temptation to slowly adopt centralized socialist models through what Matyas Rakosi of Hungary used to call "salami tactics" during the Cold War. Venezuela would do a lot better following the Evo Morales model of radical alternative economics.

Fuck the Chavistas!

I've tried to cut all kinds of slack for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, since he faced a ridiculous coup attempt in April 2002, and his Bolivarian economic alternatives for the southern cone really represent a good challenge to IMF/World Bank "Washington consensus." But I was always nervous about his military roots and demagogic tendencies, and the way he was mobilizing poorer citizens not just toward self-determination, but toward the "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution" Stalinist model perfected by Castro and others.
The response by anonymous gunmen Nov. 7 to peaceful university protests says it all. Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador, both have found ways to mobilize the poor without turning everything into provocative class warfare. Chavez has pushed the Venezuelan proletariat into thug methodologies. He's the perfect kind of guy for western capitalists to demonize, and given Venezuela's oil wealth, he's likely to be around for a while. But that doesn't mean he's the kind of person that any western progressive should admire. I'm utterly through with Hugo Chavez, and I won't give much credit to friends in the progressive community that still like him.

Deflating the Demagogues of Latin America

For 40 years, the bimonthly magazine NACLA Report on the Americas, published by North American Congress on Latin America, has hosted some of the most sober, fair, and eyes-wide-open pieces describing U.S. government and corporate plans for the nations to the south, and the citizen opposition movements for independent action. NACLA staff are not ideological about either side in this scrap, and sometimes have to face the wrath of True Believers from all sides of the political spectrum.

The May-June issue is doubly tasty. The main focal point is a series of articles describing the current anti-illegal-immigrant movement in this country. The wall chart depicting links from Lou Dobbs to Tom Tancredo to vigilante groups is alone worth the price of the issue.

Perhaps more important, the opinion-piece leaders in the opening pages deflate two radical demagogues who sorely need deflating: Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Ortega is taken to task for making the gutted-out Sandinista party almost a de-facto ally of the Catholic Church, due to a strict new anti-abortion position. Chavez's social programs are examined under a microscope, and rejected as being more a platform for a personality cult than a true move toward people power. NACLA will no doubt get plenty of subscription cancellations and nasty letters, which shows they're moving in the right direction. A toast to 40 years of NACLA, and to deflating all ideological heroes. An idol is only useful to paint fake moustaches on.