We hopefully soon will get rid off. Kevin Grier at Marginal Revolution on why Hugo Chavez was the result of poor governance:
In a kind of a weird back-door way, I also support Hugo Chavez. Or put another way, and going a little Hegelian, as Tyler likes to say, I think Chavez is an historical necessity, and a richly deserved one at that.
Venezuela has relatively high levels of income inequality (a gini coefficient in 2000 of around .44 compared to .36 for the US according to the UN) from a relatively low base and was run by a corrupt elite class who swallowed up oil wealth while the economic standing of the country plummeted. In 1957, Venezuela’s GDP per capita was 51% of the US, in 2003 it stood at 18.5% of the US. Existing institutions had no credibility with a very large portion of the population and simply could not continue to exist as they had.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m NOT endorsing Hugo. Do I think that Chavez and his policies are going to serve the long term economic interests of Venezuela? NO. Do I think Chavez is a charming guy? NO. Would I be sad if Chavez lost power? NO. If George Bush and Chavez were in a burning building and I could only save one would it be Chavez? NO.
I am just saying that Venezuela was run into the ground by its ruling class and Chavez is the (I hope only temporary) result of their short sighted, poor governance.
The same goes for Evo Morales of Bolivia. Interesting thoughts, and probably true for most of Latin America as well. But that’s no reason not to critizise Chavez for his increasingly dictatorial pretensions.
If we deserve Chavez or not, I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to fall to the poor solution that turns a historical debt into a cruel punishment. For start, those previous years of democracy weren’t that bad as many try to picture them now; they had good policys and terrible ones but since like these days the only balance you can make its to blame all the past. The crisis mainly started in the 80´s, and Chavez obviously found the conditions that helped him to rise to power but the crisis could had a different end. Theres policy’s, school reforms, laws, projections of the previous “poor governance” that Chavez simply ignore. If we don’t manage to think different as the president does, and find an objective balance of the past, we will be only following his game.
PS: Sorry about the grammar and spelling mistakes you might find on the lines above. As Celia Cruz used to say “my english is not very good looking”
Hello Julia,
Thank you for your comments. I agree that Chavez certainly isn’t helping with reforms in any way, and it will always be a matter of debate how much historical “necessity” there is in anything.
I know Bolivia a lot better than Venezuela, and here people seem just way too focused on the past. I think some of the aymara Indians would tell you that Evo Morales is as much a product of 1492 as of e.g. the military governments of the 70’es or the policies of Goni (which I think they underrate terribly; Goni brought fiscal stability which in my opinion is absolutely necessary to make any progress for the poor). In fact we had a <a href=”http://www.punditokraterne.dk/populistisk-politik—latin-american-style-post96461″ rel=”nofollow”>similar disucssion</a> (in Danish) on another blog: Why do people always seem to learn from some of the bad results of the Washington Consensus, but never from the bad results of collectivism in Latin America?
By the way: I think your English is excellent. But I’m not a native speaker, as you can probably tell 😉