"Look at Hugo Chavez Through a Latin American Lens"
by Alejandro Velasco
"Few would contest that Hugo Chávez had a penchant for fiery rhetoric. Less understood is the role that rhetoric played in turning Latin America from a region where the United States held unparalleled sway when he first took office in 1999, to one where leftist governments of varied stripes now assert unprecedented autonomy vis-à-vis their neighbor to the north.
When he died on March 5, many in the U.S. likely remembered Venezuela’s late president for proclaiming George W. Bush “the devil” during a speech at the United Nations in 2006. It was the kind of provocative statement that had long since earned Chávez a reputation as Washington’s chief antagonist in Latin America. In 2001 it was Chávez who blasted the U.S. for fighting “terror with more terror” in bombing Afghanistan; Chávez who took to referring to the U.S. as “the Empire” after the Bush administration endorsed a failed coup against him in 2002; Chávez who called Muammar Gaddafi “my brother” in 2004, four years before Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Tripoli thawed U.S. relations with the Libyan dictator.
It was easy to dismiss such antics as bluster. For all of Chávez’s rhetorical barbs, Venezuela remained deeply tied to his putative nemesis. Oil accounts for nearly 20 percent of Venezuela’s GDP and 95 percent of its exports, most of it sold to the United States. Since 1999 only once did shipments to the U.S. stop, during an opposition-led strike of the state oil company in early 2003. In response, Chávez fired over half of the company’s staff, replacing them with loyalists. Never again did oil from Chávez’s Venezuela cease flowing to the United States.
To be sure, as Venezuela remained tied to the U.S., the U.S. remained tied to its fourth largest supplier of oil. Yet the apparent contradiction between anti-U.S. firebrand and dutiful trade partner led some to distinguish, as did one former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, between what Chávez did and what Chávez said, especially in the early years of his presidency. Indeed, though he died a socialist revolutionary, it was only in 2005 that Chávez declared himself a socialist. Though he generously distributed oil and money to build regional alliances, it was only in 2004 that such alliances formally launched, and very limited in scope. And while direct social spending helped cement his popularity among Venezuela’s poor, it wasn’t until 2003 that most of those programs began to flow, and only tentatively at first."
http://hnn.us/articles/look-hugo-chavez-through-latin-american-lens
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