Personality considerations cannot explain 14 years of one political triumph after another. The real reasons for Chávez’s success went much deeper than such factors as charisma and clientelism.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) sells itself as “working to prevent conflict worldwide” but there is one country where their mission looks more like promoting rather than preventing conflict. Exhibit A is their report on Venezuela, released recently.
This recent opinion article in Venezuelan daily Ciudad CCS examines the private media’s treatment of opposition leader Henrique Capriles, which the author says is “unprecedented in the history of our country”.
Venezuelan political commentator Nicmer Evans analyses the first month of Nicolas Maduro’s presidency, arguing that despite the opposition challenge to his legitimacy Maduro is setting the country’s political agenda.
One prominent Venezuelan intellectual and activist’s perspective on the current political situation and tasks ahead, Denis argues that there is a larger opening now for the opposition to take power, and that the grassroots are talking of regrouping, and are at a “critical crossroads”.
The following petition, signed by over a dozen experts on Latin America and media including Noam Chomsky and Greg Grandin, was sent today to Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor for The New York Times.
By Steve Ellner - Latin American Perspectives, May 13th 2013
The democratic, peaceful road to socialism, which has been pursued by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and serves as an inspiration for much of the Latin American left, hardly represents a new approach.
Following last month's elections, the legacy of Hugo Chávez was raked over the coals one last time, but the same old stats on poverty, inflation, and crime miss the real story.
As a careful examination of the language and coverage of nearly four years of New York Times articles reveals, concern for freedom and democracy in Latin America has not been an honest concern for the liberal media institution.
Cannon writes, "All commentators with whom I had the pleasure to spar - I in the red corner, they in the blue - had three essential messages to transmit: beginning with the statement that Hugo Chávez was a tyrant - albeit - and said without the slightest irony - an elected one".
Speaking moments before last Tuesday’s brawl in Venezuela’s National Assembly, opposition legislator Maria Corina Machados’s own deputy representative, Ricardo Sánchez, warned of the right-wing’s ‘hidden agenda’.
By Steve Ellner- Latin American Perspectives, May 6th 2013
The rapid unfolding of change and radicalization, which have characterized the presidency of Hugo Chávez since its beginning in 1999, have impacted non-elite social groups in different ways, sometimes favoring one at the expense of another.
