The first option is an anathema to us, every bit as much as it should also be an anathema to each and every one who cares about Venezuela and its people's future.
The second option is difficult inasmuch as we are simply human beings of bones, flesh and blood who, whether we be driven by idealism or erudite ambition for emancipation, must face facts which are often complicated to give utterance to or which may be rejected out of hand by those who are unwilling to accept the major truths of our collective times and existences.
For us, the writers and editors of VHeadline Venezuela, there is an added frustration of more than a decade of negation. Rather stupidly we have been labeled 'escualido' by one section and 'chavista' by another despite our very openly declared editorial policy that we should act always in support of Venezuela's democracy, constitutionality and the rule of law. By definition this openly implies that we lend our support to all and any proper and democratic efforts by the constitutionally elected President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and his appointed government, but that under the conventional rules of democracy we and all those associated with VHeadline should have the democratic and constitutional freedom to speak and write about matters which are of particular concern.
President Chavez Frias has himself said that he encourages critique with the obvious codicil that it should not be convenient rhetoric disguised as attacks on the proper democratic process of governance which itself is going through a process of regeneration after more than half a century of corrupt abuse, indolence and individual enrichment.
The situation for Venezuela today is not helped any by the excessively financed manipulations of President Hugo Chavez' detractors (those who are openly in the political opposition and the Quislings within Venezuela's corridors of power). Nor is the situation helped any by the United States' and Spain's quest for the reestablishment of quasi-colonialism under which South America's peoples have already suffered centuries of abuse since Christopher Columbus led his invasion force ashore on Venezuela's eastern coastline.
It is understandable perhaps that, having rid itself of Spanish and USA neo-colonialism, having deliberately shown the exit door to the exploitive likes of Exxon Mobil and others, that Venezuelan ears may well be closed and antipathies engendered towards the remaining few foreigners who have learned to love both Venezuela and the Venezuelan people and who wish to see the country become a very much better place in which future generations may learn to accept conventional freedoms as their birthright rather than something, today, that they have to fight tooth and nail to demand of those who via the ballot box are temporarily in charge of their collective destinies.
President Chavez will be the first to admit that he will not live for ever ... and like previous presidents he will grow old and fade into the pages of history either in his own bed or with his boots on at the hands of an assassin's bullet or plastic explosive. Meanwhile, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias is and will remain the democratically elected President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela until such times as the democratic will of the emancipated people of Venezuela decides otherwise.
The dilemma therefore imposed by our two initial options is qualified under a democratic governance as crystal clear.
- We/VHeadline can not and will not support the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution as uncritical yes-men (or women).
To do otherwise would itself be a negation of the democracy we hold so dear.
But to continue to put ourselves collectively on the line as writers and editors of VHeadline Venezuela in support of Venezuela's revolutionary and sovereign democratic development, we need to get away from some of the sillier xenophobic Venezuelan thought-meisters who would have everyone believe that a CIA operative lurks beneath every bed, that each foreign accent in a crowd of well-wishers is an infiltrated US State Department psych-ops warrior who must be eliminated at every cost.
Our contention is -- as we have witnessed ourselves now on countless occasions -- that, while danger flags should most assuredly be put around USA, Spanish and other efforts to infiltrate and distort Venezuela's reality, it is Quislings within the Venezuelan administration itself that are an even greater clear and present danger to Venezuela's future.
What to do? There is essentially NOTHING that we as foreigners can do to help eliminate the Quislings and the infiltrators other than to highlight the blatant fact of their presence and the damage they are doing to Venezuela's present and its future.
Heart-rending as it may be, we at VHeadline can only stand on the sidelines and, as observers, watch how the cancer takes hold and how it eventually will extinguish the light and the life and the very breath of everything that is good about Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution.
May God will that it need not be so...
Roy S. Carson
editor/publisher
VHeadline Venezuela
roy.s.carson@gmail.com
http://vheadlinevenezuelanews.blogspot.com
http://vheadlinevenezuelaenespanol.blogspot.com/
The worst thing that happened to my idealism about the revolution, was working inside it. And the ministry I worked for wasn't even in such bad shape, but many crappy things happened to people who worked hard for that institution, from rumor spreading, mass firing, pseudo political persecution, the works. It was very disappointing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, working with XXXXXXXXXXX was a huge blow to my idealism, especially about foreign journalists - those kind of people can seriously kiss my Venezuelan ass, coming here and being treated as royalty by my people and this government, to then do a piss poor job of portraying the recall referendum and basically mock us as some sort of zoo attraction. Ah, and how did they get access to Chavez? By siding with the plethora of foreign leeches out there that both you and I know about, who, in my humble opinion, only come to these countries to "pescar en rio revuelto", get money by being a mouthpiece for the government and don't actually point out the flaws that will affect people like me, my family, my neighbors and my people in general ... which just shows that they could give a rat's ass about Venezuela.
I read your letter, and it's very well thought out and whatnot, but it has no place in this country's current debate. Did you actually buy into that whole "3 Rs" crap? That's not going on here, especially when you got radical yes-men (as you say) like Pimentel or Mario Silva (the latter who sometimes makes good points, but last night was just a raving madman, paranoid of his shadow) running big parts of the show and holding important seats of power. 3 Rs my ass, man.
To be heard at all, you either become Noticias24.com, a veritable cesspool of fascist, racist, machista, disgusting right-wing extremist thought - or you become a mouthpiece "light", where you get a chance to make a very constructive and softy criticism of the revolution... and even then, you may get labeled a traitor, or "un saltador de talanquera", like Baduel, Luis Tascón, Ismael Garcia (who I personally think sucks, especially siding with a disgrace for journalism such as Globovision) or Miguel Salazar, among others.
Resistance is futile, I'm telling you, ain't nobody going to listen to rational arguments in this polarized society. Chavistas don't accept it (they actually go down harder on friendly criticism than on opposition criticism), neither does the opposition - and you'll either get ignored or heavily discredited by both sides, thus ending up a pariah.
There are many foreigners, not only from the States, but from Canada, Argentina, Mexico, and many other nations, who are financed or supported in some way by the government, simply because they are mouthpieces - so when you say that "foreigners are seen as CIA operatives", that's not precisely true, because many a gringo is getting quite the "feria" from this government.
I say be pragmatic, come out of the closet as biased for chavismo, develop your project, and then if you gain credibility, you may try to conduct this type of criticism. There comes a time when one has to choose, either defend a common pro-Venezuela agenda alongside a bunch of oversensitive, paranoid, uncritical chavistas, or fade into obscurity by continuing to hold on to a utopian notion of "independence", and be unfairly called a "escualido". After seeing how people like Yuri Pimentel (a graduate in Philosophy), who accused VHeadline of being oppositionist and simply (according to what I heard anyway) seemed to want to undermine true independent media, get top positions such as president of VTV (after being rewarded before, as MINCI minister hand picked by Chavez himself in 2006) ... I gotta ask, why bother? Seriously. Many things from the revolution that continue to sort of work today, are still quite commendable, but I think that it has spread itself too thin, and the essence of what it was and what generated idealism in me is long gone. I honestly don't believe in it anymore, but if most of my people still believe it is the lesser evil, then I support democracy and our sovereign will to choose our destiny.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, nor the foreigners, nor those filling their pockets (whether opposition or faux chavista) truly care about this country - it is us, the "venezolanos de a pie" who have to work, study and live here every day, and have no golden parachute to escape the situation, who will be directly affected by our domestic policies, by the inefficiencies and by both the good and bad aspects of this "process".
In my view, Chavez' latest actions and policies seem more concerned with popularity at all costs by engaging in petty politiqueria (like 4th Republic assholes used to do) and pathetic crowd pleasing for purely political gain in order not to lose so much power in the upcoming elections, rather than bringing about the necessary painful economic and social reforms Venezuela is in dire need of applying.
I went back to Caracas last Summer for a visit. It was much changed from what we remember. The biggest shock was the street vendors that have completely taken over Francisco de Miranda between Plaza Venezuela and Chacaito. Instead of nice outdoor cafes and specialty shops, there are stalls selling everything from blue jeans to pirated music . . . and the whole area is filled with garbage and smells of urine. No one with money is shopping in the shops along that strip . . . they are shopping in more secure locations, like shopping centers. Even at that, they have had so many assaults in the parking garages of some of the shopping centers that the centers have instituted valet parking so that patrons do not have to go into the garage with their purchases to get their cars. Our friends say that they rarely go out at night, fearful of their personal safety. Regardless, restaurants are full and there are new cars on the streets. The traffic was absolutely terrible. At rush hour in the evening it is like a parking lot everywhere. I had forgotten how narrow and congested the streets were.
ReplyDeleteEither the revolutionaries get very serious and make this a real, socialist, internationalist revolution -- or Chávez gets undercut or even assassinated, and things really go off the rails.
ReplyDeleteIf it's been pointed out once, it's been said a million times: you cannot build "Socialism in One Country". Playing on nationalism is a dangerous dead-end, and Hugo Chávez should know that by now. He must know that playing Santa Claus every Sunday can only go so far; and that while seeing to people's basic material needs across the country is indeed a factor in building socialist unity and the material basis for it, this top-down largesse as much as smacks of simple, old-fashioned clientelism and populism as anything, the way he's going about it -- and however popularly the patronage is going over for the moment. But it didn't win him the Referendum, did it now? And worst of all: it maintains the bureaucratic deadwood, the fakers, the saboteurs, the chisellers and the gate-keepers in their positions of illegitimate, ill-gotten power.
There is NO alternative to handing over ALL power to the consejos and other cooperative social, political and economic undertakings of the organized working-class. And there is no alternative, either, to dispensing with the bourgeois model of state-to-state relations in a socialist revolution: all relations must flow across all international borders on a class-to-class basis instead, in recognition of the basic truth of the class-struggle nature of the international order. A lot of hard decisions have to be made in this revolution -- but it looks like the Fifth Column inside the "Chavista" bureaucracy are the first obstacle that has to be cleared out of the way. And why be pretty about it, eh..? Get RID of these saboteurs! Now!
All power to the Consejos.
If you dont want to seem like yes men who see a CIA conspiracy around every corner try to editing the articles you publish.
ReplyDeleteCase-in-point: Today's article entitled "Let us at least take up the issue of impartiality in today's new media and see for ourselves how so-impartiality can be manipulated"
Research and source your articles better and you would gain more credibility.
Nathan Gill
www.southernaffais.org
And then there's the other kind: the "smart" people who wouldn't stick their necks out to save their lives. Or anyone else's. You know: the ones for whom ridicule is the worst fate imaginable.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather have this honest stuff, frankly, than some smarmy crap written by a J-Sk00l grad-for-hire any day.
And it's www.southernaffairs.org", fella. Get your spelling right at least, when you're throwing stones at other people's glass houses.