(NBC) Chavez Takes London
- From: "angelagrace" <cryinthesun@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 May 2006 21:49:37 -0700
The contrast between George Boosh taking it on the road and Chavez
speaking abroad could not be more stark.
Angela
http://www.counterpunch.com/oshaughnessy05202006.html
A Discourse of Third World Hope
Chavez Takes London
By HUGH O'SHAUGHNESSY
Relentlessly Chávez continued, hour after hour on Sunday afternoon,
May 14, in the drab auditorium of Camden Town Hall in London, the
Spanish words tumbling out like some verbal tsunami or chaotic
linguistic volcano. Socialism; Fidel; the Bolivarian Revolution; Evo
Morales; democracy; more money spent on Venezuelan schools; don't dare
invade Iran or you'll get the price of oil rising to $100 a barrel;
human rights; Richard Gott; globalization; hope; capitalism; Jesus
Christ; George Boosh; the ultimate selfishness of one person trying to
drive a car in a traffic jam when he could get to his destination more
quickly on foot.
On the platform a score of MPs and activists maneuvered their chairs so
as to be seen to be close to the newly arrived star. After two hours of
non-stop oratory the President of Venezuela, constitutionally elected,
friend of the poor, still popular with his voters and the most powerful
politician in South America, took breath. He paused and reminded Ken
Livingstone, Mayor of London and chairman of the meeting, that Ken had
promised him all the time he wanted. Said Ken genially, "I was thinking
you were only half way through".
The ideas continued to pour out from Chávez once more. Hope; Ken
Livingstone, mi amigo; Viva Haïti; more money spent on Venezuelan
health care; you're wasting money burning all this oil; Viva la Mujer;
the reverendísimo Pat Robertson and his call for my assassination;
cheap Venezuela fuel for England's poor; Benedict XVI; Long live
Mother's Day - Mamma, I love you; George Bernard Shaw and the great
Irish nation; Israel; Iraq, the Vietnam of the 21st century; US
terrorism: the Europeans should exert a much more calming influence on
the United States..
Some of us had been in our seats since three o'clock and now the hands
of the clock nearing eight as Mayor Livingston thanked the speaker. The
atmosphere, even after more than three hours of solid speechifying was
still electric, Chávez's words drowned by the cheering of the
audience, many of them the sort of young people who would never be seen
at a political rally in Central London listening to a British
politician. Then he pressed the flesh of young and old who showed no
desire to let him go, pausing to have his picture taken with Auntie Flo
or a baby grandson.
In the body of the hall the yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flags were
waved alongside banners and slogans on poles - "You'll never walk
along", "Greetings from Poland", "Welcome, Chávez, to London". Then
the Latin Americans resumed their chorusing. Delighted to have one of
their very own politicians making such a hit in the British capital,
they belted out: "Oooh, Aaah, Chavez no se va", "Oooh, Aaah, Chavez no
se va", "Oooh, Aaah, Chavez no se va", again and again and again.
Chávez, we were being told, was not going to be moved.
We spilled out onto the pavement and Chávez and his escort roared off
back to the Savoy Hotel.
London hadn't seen such a demonstration of popular participation in
politics for years and years. Certainly no British political leader of
the very few who dare to stand at a public hustings, could hold a
candle to him for conviction, breadth of vision or power of delivery.
The impact of his words seemed to lose little if anything for having to
be routed for many of his listeners through a very efficient system of
simultaneous translation on the little wirelesses provided for all who
didn't understand Spanish. In these days when New Labor, Conservative
and Liberal Democrat fight shy of a public meeting which might allow
their champions to be shamed by an imprudent reply to a question from a
voter, the meeting was a tonic and a delightful relief after all these
years of silent, secret, rancorous, thin-lipped rivalry between Blair
and Brown.
How enjoyable to escape from the careful political tacking carried on
year in and year out by parties dancing around each other in a
bloodless political dance devoid of passion and ideology. Whatever
one's political views, it was a shot in the arm to hear a political
leader having no difficulty in condemning capitalism and condemning the
United States government in terms which no European politician would
ever dare to use in public. And in recommending "socialism of the
twenty-first century" as part of green platform of care for the
environment and of husbanding the earth's resources for the benefit of
future generations.
Chávez courted, charmed and won the Town Hall audience with a
discourse of Third World hope. This discourse was delivered by a man
who could count on an immense strength of character, a figure who
personified the long-awaited challenge of Latin Americans to the
neo-liberal financial "orthodoxies" of the World Bank and the US and
European bankers. Venezuela's leader knows that Latin American voters
understand that free-market nostrums have brought nothing but
stagnation to their societies and the consolidation of societies where
fat cats rule and the poor rot. After a succession of "lost decades"
Latin America is patently that part of the world where inequality is
the worst and where until recently the United States felt it had a
right to meddle in the politics of its Western Hemisphere neighbors. He
realizes that policy which cuts across US political and economic
designs is not just an optional extra to be adopted or laid aside at
will. It is, he knows, the sine quo non for acceptance and popularity
among voters who have lost patience with Washington, the White House
and the US Congress and who dislike the activities of US military
everywhere from Colombia and Paraguay in the Western Hemisphere to
Baghdad, Fallujah, and Shannon in the Middle East and Europe.
On Monday Chávez turned his attention from the enthusiasts to the
opinion-formers and businessmen. A squad of journalists including those
from CNN and the US-based Associated Press news agency who were
generally hostile saw him arrive an hour or so late for a pre-lunch
press conference in Livingstone's beautiful modern City Hall beside the
Thames, overlooking the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. He answered
some questions of the journalists' questions and ignored others. After
lunch of Welsh lamb and white wine on the top floor it was on to
Churchill Room at the Houses of Parliament, then to the gilded
seventeenth-century grandeur of the Banqueting House in Whitehall from
whose central window Charles I stepped onto the scaffold on that cold
January day in 1649.
After strong rumors along his staff that he finally wouldn't bother
with the massed businessmen and bankers waiting there, he finally
arrived, again wildly late, and did little to rein in his love of Latin
oratory. The promised lecture gave way to a blizzard of statistics
about the economy, the finances and spending on welfare, health and
education, followed by a details of the huge spending projects which
Venezuela, basking in the hot sun of its new oil wealth, was planning:
a pipeline for natural gas across South America from Venezuela to
Argentina, soaring bridges across the mighty River Orinoco, four new
underground railways, enormous petrochemical schemes and on and on. As
the clock ticked towards ten o'clock some of the audience grew restive
and tiptoed out. Nevertheless a big majority stayed to hear his appeal
for Britain, which had done so much two hundred years ago to free
Venezuela from Spanish rule, to return to invest in the country's
twenty-first century. He was adamant that he did want foreign investors
as partners, of course, and not owners. As he left they stood to
applaud the humbly-born son of modest schoolteachers of mixed race who
raised him and his four siblings in a palm-thatched house on the
savannah and who set him out on the military career. He rose to
lieutenant-colonel of paratroopers and was elected to the presidency in
1998 while still in his forties. The hostility shown to him by US
government and business was undetectable and he had various quiet
meetings with big British companies keen to become partners in his
ambitious South American plans.
Somehow we found time to talk tete-a-tete. He grew up with strong
notions of Ireland. The stockily-built young man whose features are
evidence of the Amerindian blood in his veins went to school in the
town of Barinas at the Liceo O'Leary. This was named after the young
Corkman Daniel Florence O'Leary who went to London to join the cavalry
being recruited to aid the Venezuelans in their war of independence
against Spain. Wounded in battle, O'Leary became the principal
aide-de-camp to Simon Bolivar, the commander of the Venezuelan
insurgents and national hero. O'Leary was promoted to brigadier-general
before he was thirty. After Bolivar's death in 1830, exiled and
repudiated by those whom he had lead to victory over Spain, the
Irishman and his Venezuelan wife settled in Colombia, finding time for
two return visits to Cork and a call on Daniel O'Connell.
"I want to go to Ireland very soon, the sooner the better", he said.
"There are a lot of people in Ireland who share our ideas."
Then his presidential plane took him off to North Africa where he could
thank the Algerian and Libyan governments whose cash, he told me, had
supported him in the dark days of 2002 when he briefly faced a group of
US-backed plotters who seized and imprisoned him briefly. He left many
behind in London who were well pleased with his visit, notably Ken
Livingstone who has done himself on end of good with the big Latin
American population of London and who has plans for a big Latin
American festival in September. Meanwhile a few hundred business people
in London boardrooms are dreaming of big new contracts.
And many British politicians must be wondering how a South American
leader who dares to set aside sound-bites and addresses audiences for
hours in a language which is not their own can arouse such enthusiasm.
It can't just be the oil. The man's vision must have something to do
with it.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy has has vast experience in reporting from Latin
America for such newspapers as The Guardian, The Financial Times and
The Observer. He was a friend of Salvador Allende and a prescient
herald of Pinochet's ultimate arrest. Among other books he has
published Pinochet and the Politics of Torture. He can be reached at:
alliston1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.
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