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”
ann bennett
what a surprise to find anti left comments from mostly American supporting citizens ,lets not forget the billions of American dollars going to covert ops to destabilize latin America .
the idea of a left buidup in any country is abhorrent to the capitalists. Having visited cuba and equadore last year .what I found was a genuine love of their leaders ,and a very real improvement in living standards ,free education , good homes, food on the table ,health care that’s universal , that is what these so called dictators have given poor people, freedom is relative, if you can’t feed , clothe or shelter your family .we have no idea of real poverty, so back of , or at least try and be a bit more understanding of the struggle to wipe out capitalism and its self destruct and waste of human potential, and do read your history , there are valuable lessons to be gained from latin America .
Chimes RBE
How do arseholes like this get to know so much about places in which they have never lived?
Michael Noonan
All too predictably there have been claims by some politicians and journalists,
that the late Hugo Chavez was a tyrant and a demagogue, who led his nation
astray and who was a menace to democracy. Though it’s a strange tyrant, who won
a succession of free elections in his nation, and who has had literally
millions of tearful fellow countrymen and women file past his casket, when it
laid in state in a military academy in Caracas. Chavez was
demonised because of his principled radical politics and the threat he posed to
United States hegemony in Latin America. Chavez was elected through the
democratic process, he remained in power though the same means, and Venezuela remained a vigorous democracy through all his years in power. So to attack him for
abusing the very intuitions he used to exercise power, and which he left
functioning and intact, is so much hypocrisy. Indeed it’s just a plain lie.
Indeed the only recent threat to Venezuelan democracy was the botched coup, in
2002, organised by some disgruntled rightists, to topple Chavez, which was said
to have had American or even CIA backing, but which fell apart at the seams
when an outraged public realised what was happening, and what the actual agenda
was. During his years in power he used Venezuela’s oil wealth to create
educational opportunities, medical care, and welfare systems for the poor and
working class of Venezuela, that never existed in the previous history of that
nation. A nation which was ruled by tiny, wealthy elite, one would call them oligarchs
today, and where a huge gap existed between the superrich and the vast majority
of the people. He was indeed one of those rare, seminal politicians, who was a
game-changer; who ushered in sweeping reforms that will affect his nation, and
indeed neighbouring nations, in Latin America, for generations to come. Indeed
you could say of him that he put his country on the map, in geopolitical terms.
I doubt if many people had heard of, or at least taken cognizance of,
Venezuela, prior to his becoming the president. Indeed I doubt if few people,
outside that nation, had even heard of a Venezuelan leader or politician (with
the possible exception of Simon Bolivar himself) prior to Mr Chavez becoming
president. For that alone, even if one cared to discount his policies and
programmes, he has performed an immense service to his own nation and people.
He was a genuine socialist and man of the people, who has created a positive
and lasting legacy for his nation. (In dramatic contrast to the tepid milk and
water policies of Blair’s New Labour experiment, which was always more about
spin than substance; which has fizzled out in a fug of smoke, and which even
his own party has dismissed and rejected). His brave, radical policies – in
both domestic and foreign affairs; together with his genial, extrovert,
rumbustious personality – will make him an iconic figure in Venezuelan and
Latin American history.
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