BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND NOWHERELAND

By Eduardo Galeano Reprint | | Print |

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CARACAS, Aug 1 2004 (IPS) - A strange dictator this Hugo Chavez — both suicidal and masochistic. He created a constitution that allows the people to throw him out and then risked this very outcome in the first recall referendum in the history of Venezuela, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and novelist and author of \’\’The Open Veins of Latin America\’\’ and \’\’Memories of Fire\’\’ He was not punished, Galeano writes in this article. Indeed, it was the eighth election Chavez had won in five years. Obedient to his own constitution, Chavez accepted the referendum, which was called for by the opposition, and placed his fate in the hands of the people: \’\’You decide.\’\’ Until now, presidents interrupted their terms of office only in the event of death, a putsch, an uprising, or a parliamentary decision. The referendum introduced a novel form of direct democracy. It was an extraordinary event: How many presidents, anywhere in the world, would dream of doing what Chavez did? And how many would continue to be president after doing so?

A strange dictator this Hugo Chavez — both suicidal and masochistic. He created a constitution that allows the people to throw him out and then risked this very outcome in the first recall referendum in the history of Venezuela.

He was not punished. Indeed, it was the eighth election Chavez won in five years, and with a level of transparency that Bush could only dream of. Obedient to his own constitution, Chavez accepted the referendum, which was called for by the opposition, and placed his fate in the hands of the people: ”You decide.”

*** Until now, presidents interrupted their terms of office only in the event of death, a putsch, an uprising, or a parliamentary decision. The referendum introduced a novel form of direct democracy. It was an extraordinary event: How many presidents, anywhere in the world, would dream of doing what Chavez did? And how many would continue to be president after doing so?

This tyrant invented by the major media, this fearsome demon, just administered a powerful infusion of much-needed nutriments to democracy, which in Latin America, and not only in Latin America, is sickly and enervated.

One month earlier, Carlos Andres Perez, that angel of God, a democrat revered by the major media, proclaimed to the four winds there would be a coup d’etat. He evenly and clearly stated that the only possible path for Venezuela was ”the path of violence”; he scorned the referendum because ”it isn’t a part of Latin American idiosyncrasy”. Latin American idiosyncrasy — in other words, our precious heritage: the deaf-mute populace.

***

Until a few years ago, Venezuelans went to the beach when elections were held. Voting was not, and is not, obligatory. But the country veered from total apathy to total enthusiasm. The torrent of voters, enormous lines of people waiting, on their feet, in the sun, for hours and hours — they simply overwhelmed all the structures set up for voting. The democratic flood also made it difficult to implement the latest technologies for avoiding fraud, in this country where the dead have the bad habit of voting and where some among the living vote several times in each election, perhaps because of Parkinson’s disease.

*** ”There is no freedom of expression here!” the televisions, radios, and newspaper headlines blared with complete freedom of expression. Chavez did not silence a single mouth that spewed lies and insults day after day. The chemical warfare destined to foul public opinion was waged with complete impunity. The only television channel closed in Venezuela, channel 8, was the victim not of Chavez but of those who usurped his presidency for a few days in the fleeting coup of April 2002.

And when Chavez returned from prison and took back his presidency before throngs and throngs of people, the Venezuelan media did not report it. All day long the private TV channels showed only Tom and Jerry. This exemplary television deserved the prize the King of Spain awards for the best news coverage. The king financed a film made of those turbulent days of April. It was pure deceit. It showed violent Chavez supporters opening fire on an innocent demonstration of unarmed members the opposition. It was later conclusively proved that the demonstration never took place, but that apparently was not deemed a significant enough detail: the prize was not revoked.

***

Until yesterday, in Saudi Venezuela, that petroleum paradise, official census figures showed that there were 1.5 million illiterate and 5 million Venezuelans without official documents and thus without civil rights. These and many other invisible people are not willing to return to Nowhereland, the country where No-ones live. They won their country, which had been so foreign to them. This referendum has proved, once again, that they will stay there. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)