Chavez – letter by Eusi Kwayana

Dear Editor,

The passing of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is an event calling for comment. In Guyana he was seen as an ally of the Guyana government and party in office. He tried to be an ally of Caribbean governments. I know that because this government has made itself offensive, people do not want to be heard singing the same song with it. But this is history.

Hugo Chavez combined in his person and the accidents of his birth the personalities of the indigenous peoples and of the enslaved Africans of the hemisphere.  Even if there were other strains in his being these were the ones he affirmed.  

One of his inspirations has been the Cuban revolution.  This did not prevent him from dipping inspiration from the epic of Simon Bolivar and he named the quality of development he tried to promote “Bolivarian socialism.”  Whatever we know or think of the content of his political praxis this was in the choice of name revolutionary, because he took it from the country’s history and not from elsewhere. He sought for a new path and warned against imperial capitalism and the Soviet type of state capitalism.

As my non-favourite columnist wrote early in his illness, the Caribbean owes a debt of gratitude to the Chavez policies, which have brought the region material benefits and reliefs and perhaps saved it from collapse. This is important information for those who are seriously concerned with life in the Caricom economy. Another ruler over resources who was willing to share with the Caribbean was the now fallen Gaddafi of Libya who offered the region’s smaller countries a development bank based in a smaller country and offered to buy all their bananas. The two were not of the same political breed, but both were on the negative list of the official USA, a list headed for over half a century by Castro of Cuba.  Scholars will in due course explain the deep reasoning of these listings. President Carter called the Venezuelan electoral process “the best in the world.”  The Venezuelan opposition disagreed.  In that context, the acting President of Venezuela has called President Ramotar “an extraordinary man of the Caribbean.”

This tribute did not surprise me as much as it surprised others.  Mr. Ramotar became Executive President with less than fifty per cent of the voters and took 100 percent of the ministerial posts.

I wish to record merely three pieces of information about the late President Chavez, to place him and his comrades in a special position historically among their peers.

One, he established a Women’s Development Bank and placed women in charge of it. Thanks to an invitation by Selma James of Global Women’s Strike I heard that Bank’s director. Ms Nora Castenada, an indigenous woman, speak in Los Angeles. The movement had concluded that access to money would make many of the declarations about women’s rights easier to realise.

Two, Chavez, unlike some others, had democratic credentials acceptable to the official international markers; this confounded his self -appointed enemies who wished a different situation to deal with. Even his most unpopular extending the term limits of a president finally won popular approval by the free vote of Venezuelans in a referendum. This does not rule out or ignore complaints by opposition parties with their own experience in a conflict situation, nor suggest that that there are no grievances.

Three, Chavez was perhaps the first later Venezuelan President to publicly and with sincerity pay tribute to the Haitian revolutionaries after Toussaint L’Overture for playing a decisive role in the liberation of the Hispanic dominated Americas. President Petion of Haiti made one condition in extending vital support:  that Bolivar should undertake to end slavery. Bolivar did so.   I once read a work in Spanish on the life of Bolivar and there was no mention of  Haiti or Petion. Chavez testified against that kind of history. Even columnists writing favourably of Chavez as a supporter of the oppressed forgot to mention that in 2010, he announced Venezuela/s cancelling of Haiti’s debt to Venezuela. He said, “In fact Haiti does not owe Venezuela. It is Venezuela who has a debt to Haiti.” They forgot to mention also his strong practical support for women’s financial independence.

With regard to Guyana, although Chavez had declared himself a hardliner on the border and territorial issue, the reduction of tension, in spite of incidents during his terms of office offered hope for the future.

The years to come will show whether the positive changes in Venezuela were mainly due to a new movement or to the presence of a strong leader. I hope that the positive changes endure and take root.

Yours respectfully,

eusi Kwayana