Hugo Chavez: what the media are saying

Left Foot Forward looks at the media's reaction to the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Left Foot Forward looks at the media’s reaction to the death of Hugo Chavez

The death of Hugo Chavez is “a body blow for the poor and the oppressed, throughout Latin America and the wider world”, writes George Galloway in today’s Independent.

Meanwhile, fellow Independent Voices writer Owen Jones has penned an article claiming that Hugo Chavez “demonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity”.

The BBC reports that Hugo Chavez has left the Venezuelan economy in a muddle. “So every Venezuelan now has a more equal slice of the cake. The trouble is, that cake has not been getting much bigger.”

“In the ranking of dictators, Hugo Chávez is in the welterweight class,” writes David Pryce-Jones in the Spectator.

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has given “free rein to fears that Cuba will plunge into an economic abyss again if Caracas halts its subsidies estimated at well above the massive aid that the Soviet Union once provided to Havana”, reports the Miami Herald.

According to the editorial of the same paper, Hugo Chávez leaves behind “a country in far worse condition than it was when he became president, its future clouded by rivals for succession in a constitutional crisis of his Bolivarian party’s making and an economy in chaos”.

“Hugo Chávez strikes me as a familiar type of Latin American caudillo whose career would probably end in tears – his own or other people’s,” writes Michael White in the Guardian.

“With the death of Hugo Chavez, Cuba also lost the longed for great political leader after the slow public demise of Fidel Castro,” reports Isaac Risco in Cuba’s Havana Times.

State-run Islamic Republic of Iran News Network TV said Chavez was “a stubborn enemy of American imperialism in Latin America.”

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz says that Chavez’s foreign policy was “one big provocation”.

Earlier today we looked at the mixed legacy Chavez leaves behind.

33 Responses to “Hugo Chavez: what the media are saying”

  1. Newsbot9

    Ah yes, making excuses for Griffin now? There’s a reason he keeps losing lawsuits. So, no, not “claims”…

  2. Newsbot9

    So you thought you’d come be a bigot. That’s nice.

  3. Newsbot9

    Of course you oppose democracy. And keep screaming at anyone who doesn’t immediately adopt the position of starving the poor!

    There’s plenty to criticise without your fantasies.

  4. Mick

    No, the Left make excuses for themselves. And Griffin didn’t actually go to jail did he, much unlike Chris Huhne could be set to, or Lord Rennard or other PC maniacs who could be quite at home on this board.

  5. Mick

    Chavez stood in staged elections, but that’s democracy enough for anarchists like you.

    The only way a mutualist could win an election on his own would be if he was the only one in it.

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