AGAINST EMPIRE: FOR PEOPLE

POSTED BY: Howard
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 7, 2026 22:12
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HOWARD

Saturday, October 15, 2005 12:47 AM

Here is a brilliant article by Nokolas Kozloff
about Hugo Chavez.

October 14, 2005

A Real Racial Democracy?
Hugo Chávez and the Politics of Race
By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

As the war of words heats up between the Bush White House and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the firebrand South American leader has boldly sought to forge ties with poor communities of color in the United States. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Chávez provided relief assistance to the poverty stricken and largely African American victims of the disaster. The head of Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company, set up disaster relief centers in Louisiana and Texas in the wake of the hurricane and provided humanitarian to thousands of victims. Volunteers based at Citgo refineries in Lake Charles, Louisiana and Corpus Christi, Texas, provided medical care, food and water to approximately 5,000 people. In Houston, volunteers from Citgo headquarters provided similar assistance to 40,000 victims. What is more, Venezuela has provided hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in energy assistance to the United States. Chávez followed up his bold initiative by announcing that he would soon begin to ship heating and diesel oil at rock bottom prices to schools, nursing homes, hospitals and poor communities within the U.S. The Venezuelan president has also offered to provide free eye surgery for poor Americans suffering from certain eye conditions. The firebrand South American leader, who proclaimed the plan during a recent visit to New York, will begin his oil program through an October pilot project in Chicago. There, the Venezuelan government will target poor Mexican Americans for assistance.

In November, Chávez intends to expand the program to the South Bronx and Boston. Chávez has even offered to ship low cost gasoline to Native American tribal communities in the United States. "There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and I don't believe that reflects the American Way of Life. Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer," Chávez recently remarked during his weekly TV show. "We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons," he added. During his time in New York, Chávez toured the largely African American and Latino populated Bronx and was treated like a veritable rock star. Democratic Congress member Jose Serrano, who invited the Venezuelan president to the Bronx, remarked, "Chávez went to the poorest congressional district in the nation's richest city, and people on the street there just went crazy. A lot of people told me they were really mesmerized by him. He made quite an impression." Chávez's trip is reminiscent of similar moves by Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a figure who Chávez frankly admires. In a celebrated trip in 1960, Castro stayed at a cheap hotel in Harlem where he met with important political figures of the day such as Malcolm X.

Chávez's moves are sure to play well in the inner city. In light of the high price of oil this year, which has reached $70 a barrel, it is expected that the price of heating oil will skyrocket and become unaffordable to many poor people of color. By providing cheap oil to marginalized communities fed up with price gouging, Chávez shrewdly overshadows George Bush. The U.S. president, along with the Republican party, have long ignored the social needs of America's inner cities as evidenced by the botched hurricane relief operation in New Orleans. Unlike the U.S. government, which was hobbled by Hurricane Katrina and which had to redirect much of the winter's energy assistance program to hurricane victims, Chávez is ideally positioned to help poor communities of color. Venezuela owns 14,000 gas stations and eight refineries in the United States through Citgo, none of whose oil infrastructure was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Chávez has stated he will reserve 10% of the 800,000 barrels of Citgo oil and ship the petroleum directly to poor communities. Unnamed Venezuelan officials claimed that their country would not lose money through the deal, as the

GINOBIFFARONI

Saturday, October 15, 2005 3:21 PM

Very interesting read, thanks for that...

" as the idea was to "cut the middle man" out of the deal "

but middlemen don't really like to be cut out, do you suppose that is the real reason behind the hate directed at Chavez by Bush and others ?

Not really buying the human rights nonsense anymore with some of the tyrannts the US has and does support... perhaps it is all a matter of cutting them and theirs out of a piece of the action.

Don't think they give a shit

I'm with Signy and Rue

SIGNYM

Saturday, October 15, 2005 3:22 PM

This is a long complicated article. I appreciate the information, but I didn't exactly come away with a clear understanding of Hugo Chavez' approach to racism as applied against negroid people in his own country.

BTW- I'm sure there are many people who are not convinced of US involvement in the anti-Chavez turmoil. I'd like to add another piece of evidence to consider:

At the time of the anti-Chavez demonstrations in Venezuela, about a dozen demonstrators were killed. The first thought that many (including myself) had was that Chavez' security forces may have panicked and shot into essentially non-threatening demonstrations. My heart sank- I could imagine the crowd using these deaths to further inflame the situation, leading to even more deaths, running gun battles in the street, a complete clampdown on the nation, and complete alienation of the government.

But I saw a news clip that I can't possibly exaggerate made crystal clear that at least some of these deaths were caused by agent-provocatuers. It was a video of a group of deomstrators on a city streetcorner, approximately 50-70 ft away from the camera. The demonstrators themselves were just milling around, not even facing the camera for the most part, and in the foreground was a 35-ish year-old woman in a yellow T-shirt who was standing and watching the demonstration, w/ back to the camera. Keep in mind that she was well-separated from the demonstrators, and neither she nor the demonstrators were doing anything specially active.

She was shot in the head from behind. Deliberately killed.

Now clearly this was not the work of security forces because they had no interest in exacerbating the situation. I was stunned to see such blatant evidence, and can only conclude that someone was attempting to push the situation inot chaos.

Please don't think they give a shit.

HOWARD

Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:39 PM

Please see my other posted thread
NEW STATESMAN: HUGO CHAVEZ

http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=18&t=13678

HOWARD

Saturday, October 15, 2005 6:48 PM

Yes, during the days of the attempted coup
and the unrest it was very unclear what
was coming from who. Which in turn suggests
outside interference. At least in part.

EYETOOTH

Saturday, October 15, 2005 11:23 PM

Leftist. Horse. Shit.

Chavez is a clown, no matter what your beef with the "man" (Bush, the Venezualian establishment, whitey). Of course his clownishness makes him a fine proxy for the hopes and dreams of pinko poseurs like you folk, as do Che, Castro and (best/worst of all) "subcommandante" Marcos.

CHRISISALL

Sunday, October 16, 2005 1:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by eyetooth:
Leftist. Horse. Shit.

Chavez is a clown, no matter what your beef with the "man" (Bush, the Venezualian establishment, whitey). Of course his clownishness makes him a fine proxy for the hopes and dreams of pinko poseurs like you folk, as do Che, Castro and (best/worst of all) "subcommandante" Marcos.

Rightist. Dick. Wad.

Let's have more U.S. backed burning of tires placed on live people, the cutting off of women's breasts, and the mass graves no one will ever find. You probably don't even know what I'm referring to here, eyetooth, so I'll leave politics out of it for a moment, since reality is a little hard for you to accept or understand; you're being an idiot, pure and simple.

But you can change this with a little knowledge Chrisisall

EYETOOTH

Sunday, October 16, 2005 8:09 PM

Quote:
Let's have more U.S. backed burning of tires placed on live people, the cutting off of women's breasts, and the mass graves no one will ever find. You probably don't even know what I'm referring to here, eyetooth, so I'll leave politics out of it for a moment

Chile, asshole.

The point is that Chavez is bad news, perhaps potentially as bad as one of the caudillos you imagine I know nothing about. He's still bad news even if you don't like capitalism or the pervasive racism in Latin America.

And yet specifically because he's bad news - ie, he respects individual rights and checks on his power less and less as his rule goes on - he is praised for "getting things done" and "granting the right to food as well as [sic] a vote". Pinko sorts tend to think this rhetoric is great. Others see it as the signpost towards a police state.

(Moreover that article is one of the most meretricious slabs of knee-jerk mastrubation I've ever read; I imagine the author thinks that "colour" makes Al Sharpton a fine leader too.)

Quote:
since reality is a little hard for you to accept or understand; you're being an idiot, pure and simple.

Uh huh. What's your point, that in "reality" Chavez is better than the alternative? Maybe, if you see things in diametrics.

GINOBIFFARONI

Sunday, October 16, 2005 8:40 PM

Is Castro better than Bastia was ?

Was Khomeini better than the Shah...

or was the Shah better than Mossadeq ?

The way I see it, let Venezuela run Venezuela....

the same for Cuba, Iran, Russia, Chile, etc

It's a same you worry about the checks and balances of Chavez...

How many checks and balances were on Pinochet, or hey here is a cool list... even in the righty playing card format..

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

General Jorge Rafael Videla, President of ARGENTINA
Colonel Hugo Banzer, President of BOLIVIA
General Humberto Branco, President of BRAZIL
Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of BRUNEI
General Augusto Pinochet, President of CHILE
Fulgencio Batista, President of CUBA
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez, General of EL SALVADOR
Alfredo Cristiani, President of EL SALVADOR
Halie Selassie, Emperor of ETHIOPIA
General Sitiveni Rabuka, Commander, Armed Forces of FIJI
Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of GERMANY
George Papadopoulos, Prime Minister of GREECE
General Efrain Rios Mont, President of GUATEMALA
Vinicio Cerezo, President of GUATEMALA
François & Jean Claude Duvalier, Presidents-for-Life of HAITI
Roberto Suazo Cordova, President of HONDURAS
General Suharto, President of INDONESIA
Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, Shah of IRAN, King of Kings
General Samuel Doe, President of LIBERIA
Hussan II, King of MOROCCO
Anastasio Somoza, Sr. And Jr., Presidents of NICARAGUA
Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq, President of PAKISTAN
General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Defense forces, PANAMA
Alfredo Stroessner, President-for-Life of PARAGUAY
Ferdinand Marcos, President of the PHILIPPINES
Antonio De Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of PORTUGAL
Ian Smith, Prime Minister of RHODESIA
P. W. Botha, President of SOUTH AFRICA
Park Chung Hee, President of SOUTH KOREA
Ngo Dinh Diem, President of SOUTH VIET NAM
General Francisco Franco, President of SPAIN
Chiang Kai-Shek, President of TAIWAN
Turgut Ozal, Prime Minister of TURKEY
Mobutu Sese Seko, President of ZAIRE

Don't think they give a shit

I'm with Signy and Rue

EYETOOTH

Sunday, October 16, 2005 9:14 PM

The "let government X run country Y" argument is fine, but accountable governments are consistently nicer to their neighbours than the unaccountable sort; therefore it's logical to prefer the former in foreign states.

Now, did I say anything about someone like Pinochet being preferable to Chavez, or Alende? No.

This "he doesn't like Chavez, therefore he likes right wing thugs" response is old already.

Quote:
[List of non-communist tinpots]

Is that supposed to impress me?

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