Hugo Chavez’s legacy: the good, the bad and the ugly

The deceased Venezuelan leader leaves behind a mixed legacy. If his enemies are to be believed, Hugo Chavez was a tyrannical caudillo who terrorised his people at home and propped up dictatorships abroad. For his devotees, Chavez represented a push back against American domination and neo-liberalism. The truth is more complicated.

The deceased Venezuelan leader leaves behind a mixed legacy.

If his enemies are to be believed, Hugo Chavez was a tyrannical caudillo who terrorised his people at home and propped up dictatorships abroad. For his devotees, Chavez represented a push back against American domination and neo-liberalism.

The truth is more complicated.

The good

Under Chavez’s rule, wealth was redistributed and the living standards of the country’s poorest were raised to an extent previously unknown. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) found that from 2002 to 2010, poverty in Venezuela was reduced by 20.8 percent, dropping from 48.6 percent to 27.8 percent, while extreme poverty decreased from 22.2 percent to 10.7 percent.

Chavez also made impressive inroads in terms of closing the gap between Venezuela’s rich and poor. According to the ECLAC report, Venezuela has Latin America’s lowest Gini coefficient at 0.394. The closer the Gini coefficient is to zero, the closer a country is to total socio-economic equality.

The bad

Hugo Chavez has in the past drawn strong criticism from human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – organisations which can hardly be dismissed as agents of neo-liberalism.

In its 2011 annual report, Amnesty described Venezuela as a country where “those critical of the government were prosecuted on politically motivated charges in what appeared to be an attempt to silence them”.

Human Rights Watch said the “accumulation of power in Venezuela” under Chavez had allowed the government “to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society”.

The ugly

Under Chavez Venezuela forged some pretty unsavory alliances – including the Castro dictatorship in Cuba and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Chavez was also an opponent of the Arab Spring, supporting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi until the end and siding with Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Cuba is the country which has more than any other felt the direct influence of Hugo Chavez. By providing the regime of Fidel and later Raul Castro with subsidised oil at a rate of roughly 105,000 cut-rate barrels a day – about half of Cuba’s energy needs for petroleum – Chavez ensures that the Castro dictatorship retains its grip on power.

As the Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez has written: “It was precisely the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 that was the key element to the walking back of reforms”.

35 Responses to “Hugo Chavez’s legacy: the good, the bad and the ugly”

  1. Futile Democracy

    Tax-as-theft is the most ridiculous notion to come from the Libertarian right, amidst a plethora of ridiculous notions.
    Your first problem, is trying to suggest that wealth is individual. It isn’t. Somewhere along the line, you or your parents or grandparents, used public roads to transport goods, or a publicly funded railway, your property is protected by publicly funded policing and fire protection, your employees have been educated using tax money, which helps produce an educated, curious, thinking, productive work force, they have help when they’re sick, they also have fire and police protection, in order for them to conduct their life; and working for your business, in peace. A business exists and thrives on a framework, and that framework is paid for via taxation and it benefits everyone. It is the fee you pay for being a part of a society that offers you protection, education, and funds infrastructure for you to be able to amass wealth.
    Secondly, land that a business builds its HQ on, or its factory on, or its office block on….. is not yours by natural right. Nor are the resources that a business fences off to produce goods privately. You want those resources and that land? Rent it. Via tax.
    Tax is not theft. It has a benefit, and it has a reason for being. Wealth is not individual.

  2. jsullivan

    Well given the country only became an autocracy in response to repeated attempts by the US to reassert the control over the country, and that the country is a oasis of high living standards in one of the most impoverished and invaded regions regions of the world, that Cuba doesn’t have a full democracy isn’t something that bothers me terribly. Also, you write like a posh wanker.

  3. Matthew Blott

    Well I went to a comprehensive and grew up on a council estate. I am now a pretty successful middle class professional but I don’t think that gives me toff status – unless you are some chippy class obsessed fuckwit who thinks anyone in the top tax bracket is posh. And if I write like a wanker you are just some trolling cunt who gets a stiffie abusing people online while hiding behind the convenient cloak of anonymity.

  4. Ken Lucas

    ROFLMAO!!! Man, what a comeback Matthew. I swear you Brits have a wonderful way with words!!

  5. Matthew Blott

    Thanks man 🙂

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