Farewell Hugo Chavez

In Caracas yesterday the people came onto the streets in their thousands to celebrate the life of their fallen leader. A small minority celebrated his death. I'm sure Senor Chavez might have shrugged at that and perhaps said, hey, you can't please all of the people all of the time. Elsewhere in the New World there must also have been many sighs of relief. The Americans hated him because he stood up to them in a way highly unusual for the relatively weak states of Latin America. But Venezuela is oil rich, and Chavez used that wealth to enrich the people through massive health, education and welfare programmes. Worst of all for the yanks was that he won democratic election after election, which proves a point made by some wag, namely that America disapproves of any country that has too little, or indeed too much, democracy.

They disapproved so much of Chaves, indeed, that the Big Dubya sent a three man hit squad to rub him out. Obvoiously they failed miserably. Call it the "Cletus" effect.

Throughout the 20th century the US made it plain they despised (or perhaps envied?) the British Empire and worked hard to undermine it. Yet all the while they were creating their own empire in Latin America, installing puppet dictators who would be paid off to toe the American party line. Remember the famous remark made by an American secretary of state about the brutal fascist dictator of Nicaragua, President Somosa:
"Sure he's a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch"
Unfortunately, Chavez wasn't anyone's son of a bitch, which is one reason the Americans couldn't stand him. Another factor may have been his habit of making friends with various betes noir of the West, like Castro, Gaddafi and Assad, though we shouldn't forget that the last two on that list were also best buddies with the West until it all went to poo in one way or another. We're a capricious bunch, we in the enlightened West...