Cuban dictator Raul Castro looks upon what may have been the
best
friend the Castro regime ever had: Venezuela's former President Hugo
Chavez, thought to have died of cancer, is laying in state
in Caracas.
What Barack
Obama Should Be Told about Hugo Chavez (Ahora, Cuba)
Did Washington
have it out for former Venezuela President Hugo Chavez? And if so, why? For
Cuba's state-run Ahora, journalist Iroel
Sánchez writes that Chavez empowered the poor, uprooted oligarchic regimes
imposed by the United States, and derailed Washington's Free Trade plans for
the region - and the U.S. government hated him for it.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who walked every step of the revolutionary road with Venezuala President Hugo Chavez, looks down at his old friend once more, Mar. 8.
The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has stirred
profound expressions of profound pain in his nation. Leaders of many countries
and a wide array of ideological positions expressed shock to the fatal outcome
of Chávez’s long battle against his infirmity.
All Latin Americans had a marked admiration and respect
for the Bolivarian leader. Someone as far from sharing his ideas as Chilean
President Sebastián Pińera said: "No doubt we had our differences, but I
always appreciated the energy and commitment with which President Chávez fought
for his ideas. I want to say that he was a man deeply committed to the
integration of Latin America."
The press systematically lied about him, his work and his
country, and tried to use his health as a way of destabilizing Venezuela. It
didn't even have the decency, on the occasion of his death, to desist in offending
his memory, insulting his policies, and first and foremost, sowing division and
confusion between the Venezuelan people and their leaders.
Why?
To understand, it is enough to look back 14 years, when
on Feb. 2, 1999, Chávez was sworn in as Venezuela president. A people who were
disillusioned with traditional politicians, having been cheated a million
times, impoverished in a rich country, had elected him to change their fortunes.
Chávez altered the destinies of millions of Venezuelans, not with "populist"
policies, as the international press likes to say, but with a profound social
transformation. In the land of Bolívar, Chavez introduced universal access to essential
services, such as health care, education, food and housing - based on the "welfare
state" now is being dismantled across Europe.
The death of Hugo Chavez is announced in Caracus, Mar. 5. The
Venezuelan President's supporters were inconsolable.
The way he triumphed election after election, defeating an
alliance of media, the government of the United States and the national
oligarchy that had engorged itself on oil riches - now in the service of the
majority - shows that beyond all expectation, he empowered society. It will now
be very difficult to deprive Venezuela's poor of what he has shown belongs to
them.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
When he came to power, the United States was seducing Latin
American leaders with the Free Trade
Area of the Americas, a project of economic annexation that Chavez derailed
for good. Internationally, the Bolivarian leader turned Venezuela into the
engine of Latin American integration, which had been postponed for centuries.
Together with Fidel, he founded the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our
America (ALBA),
he was a instrumental to the creation of Community of Latin American and
Caribbean States (CELAC)
and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), as well as re-founding of
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). And at the Copenhagen
Summit on Climate Change, Chavez was critical to preventing the surrender
of Third World governments to the impositions of the North, which would have
been catastrophic to the future of humanity.
Chávez gave voice to the people in all international forums
in which he participated. Like Fidel, he turned what has always been promises
unfulfilled into rights for many in the world. It is for this that he is so
loved, and so hated. That is why the government of the United States has
done the unspeakable to topple him, as evidenced by documents recently released
by WikiLeaks.
"As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history,
the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic
principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights," said U.S.
President Barack Obama on the occasion of the death of the Venezuelan leader. This
ignores that Chavez began this "new chapter," when, on February 4,
1992, he revolted against the oligarchies that Washington imposed at the helm
of our countries. The commander-in-chief of drone murders, the maintainer of the
anti-democratic blockade of Cuba, the violator of the law who kept Bradley
Manning imprisoned without trial for years, should know that there is no
turning back history. In Latin America, largely because of actions taken by Hugo
Chávez, it no longer matters much what is said in Washington.
*Iroel Sánchez, an
engineer and journalist, works in the Office of Digitizing Cuban Society, and
is a former president of the Cuban Book Institute.
