Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society.

[reprehensor]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1773908,00.html

Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society.

Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him

John Pilger
Saturday May 13, 2006
The Guardian

I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform", "popular democracy", "equity", "social justice" and, yes, "freedom".

The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube, I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez, aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95. A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children. Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write; now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100% literacy.

This achievement is due to a national programme, called Mision Robinson, designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone a secondary school education, called a bachillerato. (The names Robinson and Ribas refer to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century.) Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar, "Bolivarian", or people's, universities have opened, introducing, as one parent told me, "treasures of the mind, history and music and art, we barely knew existed". Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the poor.

Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments preside over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it flown to Miami, together with the steepest descent into poverty ever known in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez was elected. "We didn't matter in a human sense," she said. "We lived and died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford. When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it."...

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[Missy M]

1. Very encouraging for the poor in Venezuela......

in this country when we help the poor they are vilified by some as lazy, welfare queens etc. When we try to make things equal with affirmative action it is called reverse discrimination. I will never understand why so many in this country are so against helping the poor. Chavez has my kudos.

[mntleo2]

2. Yet No "Lazy CEO Queens" In USA ...

The American elite think sitting by the pool while collecting dividends is "work" while raising children for the next war they refuse to fight in, is "doing nothing". The truth is that the only "welfare queens this country have are the lazy, greedy, selfish un-American rich who seem to think it is fine to send OTHER people's kids to a war they support in words while making the middle class and the poor pay for it in their wages as well as with their children.

The most important lesson Americans can take from VZ is that the poor came out and voted in HUGE numbers ~ almost 90% and their contribution to the voting pool extremely tipped the scales. For decades the only people who voted there were like us, around 30% of the eligible population (which means like us, the person who "wins" only got a little more than 15% of the votes possible). A "landslide is around 18% of the vote here! When the poor came out and voted in VZ as it would here, it makes a huge difference in the outcome.

If someone went to the barrios, the tenements, the Mcjob sites, we could have the same here. But most politicians are too elitist(and frankly stupid) to understand the vast population they ignore could be their ticket to victory, if they only took time to speak and relate to them, this action alone would encourage the poor to vote. 16% would melt into 40%. Now THAT would be a true landslide...

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

[Missy M]

5. I like your 2 cents. What you write is so true about the poor...

in this country not getting out to vote. They are only addressed in rhetoric by our politicians, they are never met with in vast numbers.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. "For the first time in its modern era, Venezuela has almost 100%

literacy."

Wow! If only you we could have Hugo govern us here in the UK.

For the past quarter century, the demonic far right have actively attacked the State education sytem, and illiteracy is very high. Perhaps akin to that of the poor in the "ragged schools" of the nineteenth century. Even in the universities, apparently, spelling is often of a stunningly low standard which has little or nothing to do with intelligence.

[leftchick]

4. Viva Chavez!

when the hell are Amerikans going to wake the hell up and realize we live in a corporate dictatorship! Venezuela has become a model socialist democracy! And yes, you can be both!