{"id":7164,"date":"2013-03-08T18:23:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T22:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=7164"},"modified":"2013-03-08T18:57:58","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T22:57:58","slug":"venezuela-adios-presidente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=7164","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela: Adi\u00f3s Presidente"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Clifton Ross
\nMarch 8th 2013 – Upside Down World<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\"Mourners<\/a>
Mourners pay their respects to Hugo Ch\u00e1vez (Efrain Gonzalez \/ Prensa Miraflores)<\/figcaption><\/figure>It may be difficult for North Americans to grasp the loss Venezuelans are feeling over the death of President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez since we have no comparable experience in our entire history. I called a friend in Venezuela today to check in with her and find out how she was doing the day after Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s death. She was obviously shaken. \u201cIt\u2019s a blow (golpe) and you feel it everywhere. After all, Ch\u00e1vez is a man we\u2019ve lived with for the past fourteen years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ch\u00e1vez, whatever one may think of him or how his legacy will be judged, was a warm, charismatic, down-to-earth, entertaining, larger-than-life figure, part politician, part entertainer. He was from the llano, the land of the cowboys and that was so much of his appeal. When he looked into the camera on his weekly, Alo Presidente, there was a sense of physical contact with him among viewers. I know my friend Juan seemed to feel Ch\u00e1vez was there with us on those Sunday mornings as he laughed with him and even hummed along when Ch\u00e1vez sang.
\n
\nIt was a Sunday ritual for Chavistas to gather around the television for what Juan called \u201cSunday School with the Comandante.\u201d \u201cCh\u00e1vez is a teacher, just like his mother. He\u2019s a great teacher.\u201d Alo Presidente was a traveling variety show, hosted by the president, where he would sing, tell stories and reminisce about his time in the military where he served as a paratrooper, between discourses on everything from Mao or Trotsky to the newest Mission, funded by oil revenue and aimed at raising up the poor of the country. He was often accompanied by politicians, writers, musicians, internationally renowned guests, workers from the local cooperative or members of the local community council. He would offer advice, give mini-lessons in nutrition, or tell jokes as he took viewers on a tour of some remarkable local community enterprise, always with an aim to instruct and edify his audience.<\/p>\n

His face was all over the country: on billboards, the front pages of newspapers, and on the walls of businesses and homes everywhere. Indeed, my friend was right when she said Venezuelans lived with Ch\u00e1vez for the fourteen years he presided over the country. It was impossible to avoid him, except in the upscale districts of the cities where the rich who hated him lived.<\/p>\n

From the outside he was portrayed as an authoritarian, described as a \u201cstrongman\u201d or a \u201cpopulist\u201d (even, completely inappropriately, a \u201cdictator\u201d) and associated with the stereotype of the Latin American \u201ccaudillo,\u201d and there was the slightest bit of truth to this. He was opinionated, even \u201cstubborn\u201d and had no patience for those who disagreed with him. He built a top-down military structure in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, but he also had a vision of radical democracy that he hoped would emerge in the consejos comunales (community councils) he encouraged. <\/p>\n

His humility, honesty and great sense of humor made up for his bluster, lack of diplomacy, and apparent arrogance. It may seem strange to attribute to Ch\u00e1vez the trait of \u201chumility\u201d but I never knew of another world leader who would appear on national television to admit he had been wrong in some previous appearance, apologize for an error, and correct himself publicly. <\/p>\n

The complex contradictions of his personality came from his humble origins in cowboy country, where independence is as much a virtue as community service, and they endeared him to the majority of Venezuelans. \u201cWe love Ch\u00e1vez because he thinks like us,\u201d said one campesino friend in M\u00e9rida. \u201cEverybody says we think like him. No, no. That\u2019s backwards. He thinks like us!\u201d<\/p>\n

His public manner was almost embarrassingly intimate. During his final appearance before Venezuelans on December 8, as he prepared to announce his return to Cuba for more treatment, he began by introducing his cabinet. After greeting his \u201cfriends,\u201d all the Venezuelans, he said \u201cyou know it\u2019s not my style to come to you on Saturday night, much less at this hour, at 9:30.\u201d Then, turning to Diosdado Cabello to his right, he continued,\u201d You remember that movie, Diosdado?\u201d Diosdado: \u201cWhich one?\u201d
\nChavez: \u201cSaturday Night…\u201d
\nDiosdado: \u201cSaturday Night Fever\u201d
\nChavez: \u201cYes. Fever for Saturday night. John Travolta. I danced the lambada. So did [Minister] Yadira [Cordova].
\n(Laughs)
\nChavez: \u201cWe danced the lambada. I recall that movie had a great impact…\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it continued. In a moment announcing what many already recognized to be a very grave situation, Ch\u00e1vez couldn\u2019t resist a reminiscence that was almost clownish, and what a brilliant stroke! Surely he knew his diagnosis wasn\u2019t favorable, but he lightened up even his final moments before the people he represented. This is the Ch\u00e1vez Venezuelans will remember: not some somber, unreal, elevated figure like John Kennedy or a spiritual, otherworldly Mahatma Gandhi, but a folksy sage, almost a buffoon, but a leader, always a soldier faithful to his cause, light-hearted even in the face of death, even as he led his people on a final mission.<\/p>\n

His legacy will be debated, discussed and argued endlessly in the years to come and the more insightful will recognize it to be mixed, complicated, problematic and contradictory, like Ch\u00e1vez himself. As I began to reflect on that legacy with my Venezuelan friend today, she stopped me. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be time to analyze and reflect on Chavez and those he\u2019s left in charge, but right now I don\u2019t think that\u2019s appropriate. Right now we just need to mourn.\u201d <\/p>\n

So as Venezuela mourns the passing of a great national, and international, leader, a teacher who educated a nation, one truth will be repeated countless times in some form or another: \u201cChavez is the people;\u201d \u201cwe are all Ch\u00e1vez.\u201d And it\u2019s true. After all, when you live with a man day after day for fourteen years, you will eventually even begin to look like him.<\/p>\n

Clifton Ross is co-editor with Marcy Rein of the forthcoming book, \u201cUntil the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements,\u201d due out in November with PM Press. He can be reached at clifross1(at)yahoo.com.<\/i><\/p>\n

Source: http:\/\/upsidedownworld.org<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Clifton Ross March 8th 2013 – Upside Down World It may be difficult for North Americans to grasp the loss Venezuelans are feeling over the death of President Hugo Ch\u00e1vez since we have no comparable experience in our entire history. I called a friend in Venezuela today to check in with her and find … Continue reading Venezuela: Adi\u00f3s Presidente<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5,117,320,109],"tags":[110],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-tt","category-international","category-latin-america","category-passed-on","category-venezuela","tag-hugo-chavez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7169,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}