Hugo Chavez Is Dead; Long Live Hugo Chavez!

I don't think people in this country give anything like the proper respect to Hugo Chavez. A great man! It was an amazing and impressive job he did fighting back against the 2002 coup attempt, and putting his opposition - a whole gang of insolent Dick Cheneys - into their proper place. The country is better off now, and ready to move forwards - if the Dick Cheneys of Venezuela can be restrained.

Viva Hugo Chavez!:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the charismatic socialist whose Bolivarian Revolution reduced poverty and galvanized anti-American sentiment across Latin America but left his nation deeply polarized and ever more dependent on oil dollars, died Tuesday in Caracas after a nearly two-year battle with cancer. He was 58.

...Chavez won the lower classes' support by redistributing the nation's vast oil wealth through welfare programs called missions, which set up medical clinics and schools, operated a chain of cut-rate grocery stores, and divvied up nationalized farms and ranches among cooperatives of the impoverished.

Daniel Hellinger, a political science professor at Webster University in St. Louis, said the welfare programs reduced Venezuela's poverty rate from close to 80% in the 1990s to about 20%, and wiped out illiteracy.

"To millions of poor Venezuelans excluded from meaningful participation in politics, Chavez offered hope for a new kind of democracy that would open doors of government to them," Hellinger said. "However much the system fell short of that aspiration, it was Chavez who gave voice to it."

...Chavez nationalized scores of energy, banking and telecommunications companies in addition to more than 1 million acres of farmland. That caused a steep decline in Venezuelan investment and productivity and made the nation ever more dependent on oil sales.

Despite the vast sums Venezuela collected over the last decade from its energy reserves, Chavez was forced to borrow more than $38 billion from the Chinese in the final years of his presidency to finance his domestic welfare and foreign aid programs. The loans are secured by future commitments to sell oil to Beijing.

"The poor have had more money to spend, but it's come at a great price," said Jeffrey Davidow, a former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. "The money should have been put to productive use in industry, housing or education. So, in the long run, it hasn't been of much help to Venezuelans."

...In April 2002, rebel military elements led by businessman Pedro Carmona launched a coup attempt against Chavez, who was held prisoner for two days. But loyal officers and legions of poor supporters outside the presidential palace turned the tide. Chavez later blamed the coup on support from President Bush, who seemed to tacitly welcome the uprising.

Within a year, the country was paralyzed by a series of strikes, including one by the state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela after Chavez fired the top management.

Since then, Chavez had led an increasingly polarized nation, using his oratorical skills to outmaneuver his often fragmented, sometimes hapless opposition. In 2004, he easily survived a recall referendum. Two years later he won a landslide reelection, with 63% of the vote.