Hugo-nna Have a War

[RPGPundit]

It was a very casual mention by news standards, but telling in context.

Aparently, Hugo Chavez, socialist hero of the people in Venezuela, has just made an arms deal with Spain that is the biggest in either country's history.

Yup, apparently all those social programs and land reforms need 12 gunships and 9 troop transport planes to help "revolutionize".

Oh, and a hundred thousand Kalishnikov rifles.  Now that's a whole chunk o' Bolivarean goodness.

Certainly, its just a routine purchase.

Yes, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that his coca-growing buddy Evo Morales is ahead in the polls in the Bolivian race for president.

And it certainly shouldn't be interpreted as a warning to the U.S., which has recently installed a serious number of troops and arsenal in (what was) a secret military base in Bolivia's neighbour paraguay, that Venezuela would interfere militarily should Evo win the election but be taken out by a U.S. backed coup.

A quick lesson for the uninformed:  The United States is more antsy about Evo Morales than they have been about any latinamerican leader since.. well, since Hugo Chavez.  But before that, probably Salvador Allende (you know, the democratically elected Chilean president who was ousted and killed in a U.S. back coup by Pinochet).

Why so antsy? Three reasons.
First, Evo Morales job, when he's not a politician, is a grower of the coca plant.  The coca plant is a highly popular "medicine" in the Andean region, has been used for thousands of years, and is relatively benign in plant form.  The locals chew on the coca leaves for energy and to stave off hunger (basically it plays the same role in Andean culture that Yerba Mate plays in Uruguayan culture) and its a huge part of local culture.  Its mostly harmless.
Unfortunately, its also the plant that's used to make cocaine.
So the US has spent the last several decades engaging in a campaign of illegalization of the coca plant, "incentives" (some genuinely beneficial, others just forced) for coca farmers to grow other products, "re-education" (ie. the demonization of the unprocessed plant), and in more than a few occasions carpet-bombing the fucking jungle with chemical defoliants so that no plant life will ever grow there again.
In general, pretty despicable behaviour.

Second reason: Evo Morales is heavily socialist and anti-american, creating the standard fear that he's going to kick out all the US-owned businesses and re-nationalize all the natural resources.
Remember, kiddies, Bolivia is the country where until now heavily-corrupt US-stooge politicians sold off EVERYTHING to corporations, every last fucking natural resource that Bolivia had, with zero concern for the welfare of its citizens.
Think I'm exaggerating? Consider this: Bolivia sold off all its water rights to an American company called the Bechtel Group (currently doing a sterling job along with Halliburton in the "reconstruction", ie. pillaging, of Iraq).  The deal was so extreme that it dictated that all natural water in the country belonged to the Bechtel corporation, including the fucking rainwater.  Yes, kiddies, in Bolivia it was ILLEGAL for impoverished peasants to collect rainwater in buckets so as to avoid dying of thirst.
So there is some pretty powerful, and in this case justified, anti-american sentiment in Bolivia, and Evo is riding that like fucking Evil Knieval on a motorcycle.

But the third reason, and here's the kicker, is that Evo Morales is being supported in his bid, deny it as much as he likes, by Hugo Chavez.  And the U.S. sees this as Hugo's big bid to "spread the Bolivarean revolution"; in other words to being to create a sphere of influence in South America and become a regional superpower.

So it seems pretty plausible, given the American track record of how it deals with its "pesky little problems" in latinamerica, that Evo will end up with a bullet through the head and some fucking puppet installed to fan out the death squads and force everyone to love America, mom and apple pie.  You know, "liberate" them.  Standard operating procedure.

I'm not happy with this situation, not one fucking bit.

And the essential problem is this: They're all total fuckwits.

All of them.
Of course the American government and its corporate overlords are a gang of fuckwits.

But the real problem is that Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are also dirty slimy little fuckwits.
I don't really mind one whit that Evo Morales is a coca grower, or that he supports coca growing and opposes the US "war on drugs". That's all fine.
What I do mind is that he's let himself willingly mingle with the drug cartels and with Chavez to push forward his election chances.
And what I really get pissed off about is the way he underhandedly manipulates the poor in Bolivia, and goads them on with virulently racist sentiments (the vast majority of Bolivia's poor are indians, whereas the middle and upper classes are of mixed european-indian ancestry, and some of Evo's rants about "indian purity" sound like they could come right out of Mugabe or Milosevic's playbook), when he really doesn't give a fuck for them except in the sense of his own glorification.

Chavez is the same: his pandering to racial/class warfare is now extending to the point where Venezuelan landowners who've been there for generations are now faced with hordes of violent indian poor forcing them off their land, accusing them of being "foreign exploiters" as if joe rancher was fucking Halliburton, and Chavez's government not only doing nothing to stop them but goading them on for the glory of Bolivarean revolution.

I despise both politicians' nearly-fetishistic adoration of Fidel Castro, and their subsequent willingness to play fast and loose with the values of democracy.

These guys don't really give a shit about social justice. Their idolization of Castro pretty much proves the lie to that; like Castro, the whole mantle of populist revolution is really just a path to their own self-aggrandizement.  Chavez wants to be Bolivar for sure, but not Bolivar the hero, the liberator of nations, the champion of freedom; he wants to be  Bolivar the powerful "caudillo" (war-chief); he desperately wants to be important and legendary, and is willing to manipulate to do it.

Of course, on the other hand you have the U.S. government, which doesn't even seem to care about looking like the good guy anywhere outside of its own borders anymore. They know that ship has sailed, and now they are just blatantly the evil empire, propping up corrupt toadie politicians in the region that are, sadly, far worse than Chavez or Morales and often even worse than Castro.
That's the king-fuck slam to the nuts in all this: Chavez and Morales are total shitheads, but they're still the lesser of two evils.  Despite American claims to the contrary, it has been pretty well demonstrated that while Chavez has a clear contempt for the democratic process except when it suits him, he has thus far won all his democratic contests fairly and without tampering.  He doesn't need to rig elections because he genuinely hoodwinks the masses of poor into voting for him.
On the other hand, the United State has, in virtually EVERY case of intervention in latinamerica, destroyed and suppressed democracy in favour of totalitarianism.

And there's no doubt that Chavez is corrupt, and that Morales will be corrupt should he win; but the American-backed politicians in Venezuela and Bolivia and everywhere else in latinamerica are MORE corrupt, steal more money, and do more harm to their nations than Chavez has to Venezuela or Morales is likely to in Bolivia.

So basically, you're fucked either way, and its thanks to a totally ass-backward US policy in latinamerica that asswipes like Chavez and Morales come out as the good guys, by strict virtue of context only.

Unfortunately, this latest turn is a no-win situation. If a Morales win leads to a US-backed coup, it will likely lead to a Venezuelan-backed counter-coup, and then possibly a war.
Even if that doesn't happen, there's a certain warmongering in the air, especially in Bolivia, which has some longstanding unresolved disputes with both Paraguay and Chile, that is more likely to lead to armed conflict with Morales at the helm backed by Chavez and all his pretty war toys courtesy of Spain.  Paraguay and Chile have cause to be nervous, they're two of the increasinly scantier right-wing US-supporting countries in the region (along with Columbia, another possible target for Chavez to try out his new toys).  But if any of those countries are messed with, you can bet the US will respond, and that's gonna be bad news for Venezuela and Bolivia.

And the whole fucking mess is bad news for latinamerican stability as a whole.

And the fucking mess is REALLY bad news for all the innocent poor that Chavez and Morales claim to champion, who one way or another are the ones likely to end up most hurt by all this.

RPGPundit Nov 29 2005

[KenHR]

Excellent summation of the whole mess happening in Latin America.  There's little coverage of what's going on there in the United States MSM; what little we see is often little more than fear-mongering.

Great post.

[RPGPundit]

Yea, well, I've been pretty stunned by CNN's coverage of the current elections in Venezuela as compared to how the rest of the world is reporting it.  The way they're reporting it on CNN they make it sound like the two candidates are neck-and-neck.  Wheras, in the real world, its going to almost certainly be a landslide for Chavez.  
I guess CNN has to alter the current view of the race so that they can make up vague insinuations of vote-tampering later.. like I said, part of the problem is that Chavez doesn't have to tamper with the vote.

Meanwhile, its just about the opposite over in Mexico, where they've been all but ignoring the massive social unrest that's going on with Calderon's inauguration.. its pretty amazing really. Especially when I think how this kind of biased reporting is shaping the entire american nation's perception of the latinamerican situation; and especially when I think that CNN is supposed to be the "left wing" news station...

RPGPundit

[fonkaygarry]

The shitstorm in Oaxaca and the badness yesterday are both things that the major news outlets are ignoring.

I can't fathom why.  This is important stuff, since we Americans will have to deal with the repercussions of South and Latin American crises just as much as those from Europe or Asia.

I mostly read blogs these days. :emot-geno:

[KenHR]

Yes, Mexico looks to become a scarier and scarier place.  And we will have to deal with everything going on south of the border sooner or later.  What a mess we've made of the world.

Our chickens are coming to roost in our backyard.

I agree with fonkaygarry that blogs are the best place to go for news these days, despite the left/right slant.

[Dominus Nox]

So why is everything always america's fault?

[RPGPundit]

The point of this post, had you bothered to look, is that all camps involved in this clusterfuck are utter assholes.  There are no "good guys".  America's error, in this case, is consistently doing stuff that makes Hugo Chavez look good to a large chunk of latinamericans by comparison.

If they didn't do this, the "bolivarean revolution" would end up losing a lot of its thunder.

RPGPundit

[Dominus Nox]

Well, In see chavez just won re election.

I'm not too interested in south american politics, but I kind of liked it when hugo compared W to the devil. That's pretty much how I feel about him too. The bit about sulphur and the prayer pose were hilarious.

Bush really has been a figure of satanic evil to the portion of america that isn;t rich, I liked him being called on it.

[Werekoala]

Hyperbolize much? :rolleyes:

[JongWK]

Hyperbolize much? :rolleyes:

[Werekoala]

Heheeee!

[Zalmoxis]

The US policy of intervening in Latin America during the Cold War at least made some sense. It was a bad time but it was understandable. These days, it doesn't make much sense at all. The US has it's best successes when we lead by example and support freedom elsewhere. You cannot bomb people into peace and prosperity, at least you can't do it without the kind of massive movements such as in WWII. We need to be working with Latin America to make it a better place to live, and thus win friends. Our current strategy is failing.

[JongWK]

We need to be working with Latin America to make it a better place to live, and thus win friends. Our current strategy is failing.

Quoted for truth.