A Radical Remembered
A spokesperson for the Venezuelan government announced in a brief press conference March 6th, that, despite losing a protracted battle with cancer, President Hugo Chávez will continue to govern post mortem. Chávez confirmed via Twitter his intention to retain his post for the foreseeable future despite pressing questions about what his death might mean for his ability to carry out his presidential duties. He followed this up with a selfie from his slab in the Havana Mortuary of Cuba, tagging it “#vivachávez #RTporfavor.”
His office dismissed concerns over the president’s health and lifelessness saying, “President Chávez suffered only a brief lapse in vitality, and statements to the contrary are simply relentless imperialist propaganda from neoliberal hell-country America.”
Hugo Chávez was elected in 1999 on a platform of anti-American rhetoric and extreme leftist economic reform. He implemented this early in his first term through such radical measures as increasing trade with the United States, contracting with Halliburton, and employing the Third Way policies of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, whose revolutionary tendencies are well-documented.
In the fourteen years since Chávez was first elected, the size of the public sector in relation to the rest of the Venezuelan economy skyrocketed from one-third in 1999 to still one-third today. Chávez quickly became known throughout the geopolitical world for his steadfast commitment to the radical economic system he devised and referred to as “21st century socialism,” or, as it’s commonly known, capitalism.
Nonetheless, Chávez’s policies arguably improved the quality of life for most of his nation’s citizens. Venezuela’s expensive social programs allow it to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in South America, a fact totally unconnected to the massive oil revenues it gains from trade with bourgeois capitalist giants China and the United States. In his time as a living president, Chávez took a hardline stance on climate change and carbon emissions, capping Venezuelan oil exports to the United States at a scant 1 million barrels per day, or enough to heat 13,600 homes for a year.
The United States saw Chávez as a threat to civil rights and free trade, portraying him as a tyrant with little concern for the wellbeing of his own people or that of his Latin American neighbors. Indeed, in profound contrast to American domestic policy, Chávez’s totalitarian approach to issues like poverty, inequality, and health care deprived Venezuelan citizens of their inalienable right to die destitute and miserable.
Before his death, Chávez further broke with American policy on foreign relations in Latin America by entirely failing to depose democratically elected leaders in the region. However, much like the United States in Latin America, Chávez was fond of throwing his unwavering support behind leaders who abused human rights in the name of a shared ideology, like his friends Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.
The United States has also criticized Chávez’s fledgling space program, with a State Department spokesman quipping that Venezuela should expend its resources in a way that is “perhaps … more terrestrial than extraterrestrial,” ignoring the obvious economic benefits to be gained by establishing an interstellar communist regime. When Chávez proclaimed in 2009 that golf is a bourgeois sport and began shutting down several Venezuelan golf courses, the same U.S. spokesperson called Chávez’s suggestion “a mulligan” and accused him of being “out of bounds,” raising serious questions about the U.S. State Department’s commitment to the War on Puns.
Not to be outdone by his imperialist enemy, Hugo Chávez was also celebrated for his comical performances on the world stage. Some of his greatest successes came from good-natured and nuanced satire of his fellow leaders, such as asking the king of Spain “Why don’t you just shut up?” In recent years Chávez said that Barack Obama shares the same sulfurous stench as George W. Bush, that he wants to befriend Obama, that the US president is a clown, and that he would vote for Obama in the US elections if he could, revealing himself to also be an accomplished amateur philosopher well versed in the Hegelian dialectic.
It remains to be seen how Chávez’s style of leadership will be affected by his own death. Chávez’s Twitter announcement was met with confusion and dismay by some, but others say that he is simply following in the footsteps of Kim Jong-Il and Muammar Gaddafi, two deceased leaders who have similarly declared their intent to retain power after their deaths.