Hugo Chavez’s defeat may mean the beginning of the end for his regime, but certainly not for social reformism in Latin America. With its horrendous disparity in income distribution and its lack of basic social justice, Latin America sorely needs a clear-thinking left. What it doesn’t need is a demagogue flush in petro-dollars presenting his corrupt and inefficient regime as a revolutionary model for the rest to follow.
Despite its substantial flaws, however, Chavez’s regime still has an increasing source of support and strength. It is petrodollars, the political spinach for tyrants the world over. In practical terms, this means that in the end Chavez’s most reliable ally is neither Cuba nor Iran, but the United States.
That’s not an exaggeration, though it may sound like one. The U.S. and Chavez are like those dysfunctional couples that bitterly and openly detest each other, but can’t manage to live without the other, scratching each other’s eyes while sharing their income.
Last year Chavez sold about 29 billion dollars worth of oil to the U.S., roughly 50 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports. This year, with the price of oil hovering at about 100 dollars a barrel, he will sell around 37 billion dollars in oil to the U.S.
You might be tremendously inefficient in oil production, refinery or transport, but with those margins (remember that oil was about 10 dollars a barrel when Chavez became a President in 1999), you’ll still be a billionaire able and willing to indulge yourself both as a dictator and as a billionaire.
Even by his own standards, however, Chavez has been overindulging himself lately to the point of recklessness. Within the span of a few days, he managed to get into angry exchanges with the King of Spain and with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Even Chile’s President, Michelle Bachelet, a moderate leftist, expressed her disappointment after she naively asked him to advocate for lower oil prices. It was like asking a certain Transylvanian Count to begin a garlic-rich diet.
Yet, somehow, Chavez has managed to persuade a number of people, including some Latin American presidents, that maneuvering for expensive oil is, well, revolutionary. Extravagant billionaires, of course, do have a following, especially when currency flows are couched in convenient rhetoric.
In the end, reality tends to assert itself. Venezuela is rife with mismanagement and corruption. New groups, especially students, have taken protagonist roles within the opposition. They are enthusiastic and imaginative, yet they probably still have a long and strenuous road ahead.
Because for as long as the perverse symbiosis between the U.S. and Chavez goes on, and the Citgo stations continue to pump the billions of dollars that the tropical petrocrat will freely use to strengthen himself, the democratic opposition inside Venezuela will operate at a tremendous disadvantage. It will prevail in the end, but in the meantime Latin America will have to endure the acting outs of this red-bereted Orwellian character.
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