Petroleum and progress

In early 1999, I was in Havana, Cuba.

On television one night was a news story summarising a speech by Hugo Chávez Frías, Venezuela's new incoming President, who was visiting the island.

Based on what I heard, I was not impressed and my Cuban friend thought him rather humorous - and not in a comradely spirit.

Chávez seemed too rhetorical and eager to talk up his commitments to the poor. Compared to Fidel Castro, a master of the Spanish language known for demandingly long speeches, Chávez - it seemed - had much to learn about the art of rhetoric.

Throughout Latin America, little was know about him beyond his leading a progressive-nationalist section of the military in a failed coup back in 1992.

By late 1999 a clearer picture was emerging. Chávez challenged the notion that Venezuela should sell its oil to the US at low rates, and petitioned others in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase theirs.

The average price (calculated annually) went from US$12.28 in 1998 to US$17.47 in 1999, which Gregory Wilpert - an analyst of the Chávez administration - describes as "one of the largest non-war related increases of the past decade".

Washington, naturally, was far from happy about this expression of liberty - as any student of history might expect.

During the first half of the 20th century, the US owned close to 100 per cent of Venezuela's petroleum and mining industries, and support for dictators like Vicente Gómez and General Pérez Jiménez underpinned those holdings.

When Venezuela came under democratic rule, nationalising its oil in 1976, almost every government engaged in shameful corruption, human rights abuses against critics, and sold the country's oil at bargain prices - particularly to the US for which Venezuela is its fourth largest supplier.

Chávez's administration, although far from perfect, nor immune from problems of corruption, has attempted to address Venezuela's huge inequalities, its relationship with the US, and forge unity among Latin American countries.

Regrettably, many of these developments go unreported in the media.

Chávez's over-the-top rhetoric all too often makes the news in the English-speaking world, with the "antics" of the Venezuelan President serving as an effective distraction. We hear about Chávez when he "insults" the Mexican ex-President Vicente Fox, calling him "imperialism's puppy". We were expected to cheer the King of Spain when he asked Chávez to "shut up" at an Ibero-America summit last year in Chile. And when, in 2006 at the United Nations, Chávez called George W. Bush "The Devil", the international press went into a frenzy.

Generally, Chávez's statements are tongue in cheek, a colourful trademark which has won over millions of Venezuelans.

While this may work at the national level and in some parts of Latin America, on the world stage, Chávez's imprudence all too often plays into his opponents' hands.

Recently, Venezuela's Communications Minister Andrés Izarra wrote to the Washington Post, questioning the paper's coverage of the Chávez administration:

President Chávez has been referred to in Washington Post editorials and OpEds during the past year as a "strongman", "crude populist", "autocrat", "clownish", "increasingly erratic", "despot" and "dictator" on eight separate occasions and his government has been referred to seven times as a "dictatorship", a "repressive regime" or a form of "authoritarianism".

Such claims are not only false, but they are also extremely dangerous.

The US government has used such classifications to justify wars, military interventions, coup d'états and other regime change techniques over the past several decades.

A brief review of US papers like the Washington Post or the New York Times will amply confirm Izarra's point.

When Chávez was briefly ousted on April 11, 2002 by a US-backed coup, the Financial Times headline read simply "End of Autocratic Regime".

Richard Lapper wrote: "The undignified end of Mr Chávez's three-year autocratic regime marked the climax of a rebellion of the armed forces in the space of four hours."

With the exception of journalists like Australia's Bentley Dean, who in October 2002 filed two excellent reports on the April coup for SBS's Dateline program, most media outlets failed to address Chávez's restoration to power within 48 hours by tens of thousands of ordinary Venezuelans plus the military.

While it may seem easy to dismiss Chávez from a distance, a visit to Venezuela quickly shows why he has won election after election - under the eager scrutiny of international monitors.

Throughout 2005, I studied the policies of the Caracas administration, particularly in Health and Education. It was an unavoidable conclusion that prior to the Chávez government the prospects for most Venezuelans in these areas were utterly appalling.

With only 300 public hospitals in the entire country, most Venezuelans, according to one expert, had two options: either stand in line "for days at public hospitals in the hope of receiving attention", or pay Bs35,000 (US$18) to visit a private clinic.

Those who did manage to get into a public hospital, had to bring their own bed sheets, gauze, surgical gloves, aspirins and food.

Now, there are more than 20,000 Cuban doctors and nurses working in newly built clinics, with hundreds of child care centres and schools under construction.

When Chávez's record on these issues has come under attack, the response has been swift and well-documented (PDF 184KB).

Throughout Latin America, Chávez's politics have gained Venezuela much support resulting in strong alliances with Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Cuba.

These countries, with Uruguay, have jointly launched regional projects such as TeleSur - a television network which aims to counter US cultural hegemony - and the Union of South American Nations (UnaSur), intended as the equivalent of the European Union.

Many of these projects are unprecedented in Latin America. They have their problems, but are making progress - thus clashing with Washington's traditional relationship with the region. And since the US cannot simply replace a supplier of oil like Venezuela overnight, Caracas, for now, does have much room to manoeuvre.

On January 18, 2005, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, before the Senate of Foreign Relations Committee, described Chávez as a "negative force in the region", that ought to be "exposed", and insisted he be informed his "behaviour is really not acceptable".

Move beyond the sound bytes and Chávez's overly rhetorical style, and it's clear where Condoleezza Rice is really coming from. Based on the history of US-Venezuelan relations, if Chávez truly were a dictator, then Washington would have no trouble doing business with him.