The StuSie

CHavEz Guevara?

There's a new sheriff in town, and he's got a pantload of oil instead of a six-shooter. Hugo Chavez is the proud 'President' of Venezuela, although one would be much more precise in describing him as a South American Socialist Icon than a president. He has made it his personal mission to link all South American countries under one anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-communist banner, making it no mystery that he wants to send Georgy crying for his mommy by depriving him of his favorite commodity: the bubblin' crude.
Mr. Chavez's newfound popularity certainly stems from his confident, matter-of-fact manner of speaking (just a guess...I don't understand a damn word he's saying), but perhaps more important is the fact that the price of oil has gone through the roof in the last few years, and Hugo is sitting on one of the largest caches of oil this side of the Euphrates. In fact, Venezuela provides over 15 percent of the U.S.'s massive oil needs in addition to being the main provider for Caribbean and other South American nations. Hugo knows that he's got a hell of a large carrot on a stick, and the U.S. is the donkey following it.
Now, in the past this relationship was well and good, because, as with almost all other governments in South America, Venezuela had a leader that more or less did whatever we said. That, and the overwhelming fact that a few years back oil wasn't the high-priced commodity it is now. Venezuela was a frighteningly poor country (and still is) and has few other exports aside from oil. Now we can see why their relationship to the U.S. was a necessity. A few natural disasters and a couple hundred million barrels of oil later, Venezuela has democratically elected Hugo Chavez, who now has the option of a dozen different oil consumers (e.g. China) who are more than willing to pay the same price as the US of A so they can have their fair share of the decadence.
This whole situation would be less than interesting if Chavez was a ruthless dictator who wiped out swaths of ethnic minorities in his country, because then we would simply march in, make a massive bastardized mess of their country and call it Freedom; but the reality is, he is preaching a familiar gospel to a particularly willing choir. Socialist thought has a long tradition in Latin and South America, and really only took a short nap while consecutive U.S. regimes either tacitly or elicitly controlled the political climate. Whether it was the 'drug war' in Columbia and Nicaragua or upheaval in Bolivia, American goevernments in the last 25 years have had their arms elbow deep in the bloody mess of politics south of Mexico, but the spirit of a certain Che Guevara never really died, and Hugo Chavez's fight against the West has been hailed by a huge majority of the populations of all of the countries in the region. In fact, his popularity soared even higher when he produced evidence that the U.S. was secretly planning to off him. Sounds a bit fishy, but who's gonna doubt him when we've done it a half dozen times before?
But that's not all: Hugo Chavez doesn't only consider socialist brothers like Fidel Castro to be his best friends. He is the David to the Goliath of global capitalism, and who better to represent the big, dumb, clumsy Goliath of the Bible than Dubya? In fighting this enemy, Chavez has also enlisted, among others, the help of the Iranians, who in their equal hatred of the Great Satan (a.k.a. Goliath, Dubya) have succeeded in becoming one of the most feared regimes in the world. So to sum up, we have an ardent anti-American Socialist Venezuelan controlling a good portion of the world's remaining oil reserves, allying himself with equally oil-rich and American-hating middle eastern regimes (one of which is potentially close to obtaining nuclear technology), and giving all kinds of ultimatums to boot...whew, that was a mouthful.
The best and the brightest in Washington can clearly observe these developments from their windowed offices, so they obviously are reacting accordingly, right? Hmm...well, I guess the script for the recent Conference of the Americas was completed before they got the memo on Chavez. The U.S. marched on down there, as it often does, and made a plethora of one-sided demands that would ease the American economy and further cripple the farmers and producers of South America. In essence, we politically hot karled them at precisely the wrong time. To be completely honest, I'm kinda scared of Chavez because he's pretty much a power-hungry zealot along the lines of a certain Stalin or Mugabe (another friend of Chavez), but I'm more scared at the reaction of the U.S. government. Everything that they've done in the last year and a half has appeared to be horribly misinformed and ill-advised, and when you combine this with the total embarassment of Bush's recent Asia trip, it looks like the plane has crashed into the mountain. I just hope the Big Lebowski finds me before the Germans cut my dick off.

posted by der Mistfink @ 04:32