Chavez Gets A (Slight) Grip On Reality

The Geek wrote a few days back that the Venezuelans were not accustomed to groveling under the jackboots of a dictatorship. Apparently, the local jefe got the message from domestic and foreign critics of his "intelligence reform" decree.

He allowed as how it was a less than perfect action and withdrew it. His sudden conversion from assertion to self-criticism came a day after the Catholic Church, a far from inconsiderable force in the country, condemned the decree.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j457tQvvjln9hcj8nNsfg27MuCYQD915LQ480

Cardnal Jorge Urosa spoke to journalists after Mass on Friday and characterised the new decree as an act which "restricts human rights consecrated in the Constitution." The next day Chavez reversed his course.

In a way which echoes Richard Nixon's comment during the Watergate debacle, Chavez said, "mistakes" were made in the decree. What a mensch! Such blazing candor!

Before the applause from various Venezuelan human rights groups for the president's having shown a modicum of realism had died away, the not overwhelmingly predictable Chavez engaged in a blinding piece of cynicism.

How so? You ask.

Chavez called upon the Colombian insurgent/narcotrafficking/criminal hostage taking group FARC to lay down their arms. (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/08/news/Venezuela-Colombia-Rebels.php)

In his regular weekly radio and television performance, Chavez reportedly said, "The guerrilla war is history. At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place."

What! Selling out his ideological soul mates in FARC? Tell me it ain't so!

It's so. Chavez did make the statement.

However, the jefe grande had a good reason. His guy got caught. In Columbia. With the goods.

It seems that one Manuel Agudo, an officer in the Venezuelan National Guard, was caught by Colombian authorities in a province near the Venezuelan border. He was accompanied by three other men, one Colombian and two Venezuelans. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that Manuel had 47,000 rounds of small arms ammunition suitable for use in FARC's weapon of choice, the AK-47. See a good, representative account in Reuters on-line, http://www.reuters.com/article/americasCrisis/idUSN07473021.

Quite unsurprisingly, the Venezuelan government denied that the man was a National Guard officer. http://colombiareports.com/2008/06/08/venezuela-denies-smuggler-is-national-guard/.

Knowing that the Colombian military and security agencies have been trained in the same methods of "intensified interrogation" as reportedly used by the US at Gitmo and elsewhere, the Chavez regime must have concluded that Manuel might make a few potentially embarrassing statements.

What better way to defuse any repercussions than a preemptive call upon FARC to give it up?

For a one-time paratrooper, Hugo Chavez isn't stupid. His regime is in enough doo-doo not to need an increase in tensions with his neighbor.

The oil rich country has been bouncing between (sort of) good news and (very real) bad news lately. In the first category is the widely publicised firing of some aging Otomat MKII missiles from both ships and aircraft during wargames. This Associated Press coverage is typical. See, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hUllwkXozGiiykgzP7t7JlL2y0NgD914STOG2.

While the wargames brought a well-deserved yawn from the US, neighboring countries such as Brazil again expressed varying degrees of concern or alarm over Venezuela's enormous (as in billions of dollars) of recent or scheduled weapons acquisitions. By any standard the Chavez regime's excursion onto the international (primarily Russian) arms market is far in excess of any legitimate defense need.

In the bad news department one finds the Venezuelan economy. Inflation continues to flirt with the hyper level--particularly in the critical category of food. Inflation is running at roughly thirty percent after having been at a mere twenty percent last year. At the same time the rate of real growth is slowing. For a decent short treatment see, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/International_Business/Despite_oil_wealth_Venezuela_inflation_rises/articleshow/3111726.cms

This is because of the oil boom. As has been the case before (this is why economists call it the "Dutch disease) a natural resource boom flows so much cash into an unprepared economy that real growth slows and inflation explodes.

Chavez's regime is struggling with the challenge. Much of the struggle such as price controls is simply wrong-headed and counterproductive in the long haul even though it is politically attractive in the short-term.

Faced with real, mounting problems domestically, Chavez has been taking the standard leftist authoritarian line--blaming all the problems on an "imperial power." The attempt to get the Venezuelan population to rally 'round the flag against the US threat' was invoked most recently in the failed intelligence reform decree. As has always been the case the use of a mythical external threat has its limits. Chavez ran up against them last week.

Reality has intruded upon Chavez's dreams of "Socialism For the 21st Century" in a small way. It has not yet beat him on the head enough. He hasn't abandoned his quest to become president for life or to be the new leftist leader of a united South America.

To end the dreams, reality will have to use a bigger stick. But, history shows that reality always has a larger club in the offing for those slow to heed the first tap of the stick.