Political Affairs Magazine - The Latest Smear

For nearly a decade Hugo Chavez has helped Latin America begin to cast aside the chains of U.S. domination and reclaim the region's vast resources for the indigenous, the poor, and the working-class of Latin America who have for centuries bore the brunt of successive imperialist assaults on their homeland. Chavez, Morales, Ortega, Correa and the other leaders of Latin America's resurgent Left all maintain the support of large majorities in their respective nations, but have still drawn the ire of the American mainstream press, the White House and elites from opposition Democrats. Chavez is particular has been targeted by the Western media for his denunciation of American aggression in the global South and his move to reclaim his country's resources from foreign capital. There is little to no mainstream press coverages of the deepening institutions of participatory democracy in Venezuela, the expansive “mission” programs for the poor, which have for example made literate more than 1.5 Venezuelan adults, or of Chavez's work to free hostages held by FARC and provide generous aid to millions of disadvantaged people across the world. Instead, the thrice democratically elected Chavez is labeled as an unstable “tin-pot dictator” and lumped into the same category as despots in North Korea and Iran.