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Chavez Has Made A Mess Of Venezuela

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By NORMA CAMARO RENO Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 9, 2008

I read the article ("A Brown Man with A Mole," Commentary, May 4) by Joe O'Neill with a certain amount of surprise, trying to find what I know to be the truth about the government of Hugo Chavez.

I found a few valid points but many errors. I find it necessary to respond to O'Neill.

First, to clarify, I am not a member of the bar in Florida and do not practice law in the United States. I am an attorney legally qualified to practice law in Venezuela, a graduate of the University of Santa Maria of Venezuela, and I hold a master's degree in international law which I earned at Stetson Law School.

I helped organize the April 11 protest against President Chavez and also the protest against the ambassador of Venezuela at the University of South Florida on April 23.

My protest was against the grave social, economic and political crisis now developing in Venezuela and the powerful shift toward a totalitarian state of the extreme left. There is no doubt of the antidemocratic character of the Chavez government.

Democracy is manifested by separation of powers within government, the existence of the rule of law, respect for the institutions of government and equality and transparency in the distribution of public benefits. These do not exist in Venezuela today.

O'Neill states that he spent two weeks in Venezuela and, based on this profound experience, he understands how the government of Hugo Chavez functions, which he describes as a "hybrid" of a socialist revolution of the 21st century.

We see this government as nothing less than Marxist-Leninist communism wherein a solo leader acquires all power and perpetuates the system by maintaining his own power as long as possible and then handpicking his successors. Freedom of speech certainly does not exist. More than 50 media columnists have been jailed for expressing anti-Chavez opinions.

Chavez's government has created the grave economic crisis that now exists. Many basic foods cannot be found in the markets: milk, rice, chicken, cornmeal. Chavez's government states the shortages are the fault of the United States government, specifically the CIA.

The true cause of these shortages is that government-imposed price controls have made it impossible for farmers to produce these foods and make a living for their own families.

Chavez has expressed an intention to acquire nuclear technology, for "peaceful purposes" like Iran. He has been actively buying significant weapons, mostly old Russian materials including 100,000 Kalashnikov assault weapons, 24 warplanes and 53 helicopters, for a price of $3 billion. What a lot of hospitals, highways, water purification and sewage plants that amount of money could buy! And, most ridiculous of all, five diesel submarines for an additional $2 billion.

It is not true that there was essentially no middle class in Venezuela before Chavez. There was a significant middle class. Yes, there was, and is, an extremely wealthy upper class, possibly 1 percent or 2 percent of the population, not that different from the United States.

However, since Chavez came to power, the number of the poor has increased by 2.5 million. These are all former members of the middle class. This in a country with a population of a little more than 27 million people. More than 10 percent of the population has been reduced to poverty!

What does he do right? Not controlling crime. Every dictator in modern history has controlled crime. You have nothing to fear walking the streets in Cuba, Vietnam or China today, and you were perfectly safe in Hitler's Germany. In Venezuela, crime is totally out of control. "Express" kidnappings are a daily occurrence

Is his government effective in the production of its own wealth? No. Since Chavez came to power, the daily production of oil has dropped from 3.1 million barrels to 2.4 million. This is because he fired many qualified employees of Petroleos de Venezuela whom he perceived as anti-Chavez and replaced them with military personnel.

Chavez created an organization, Barrio Adentro, health clinics for the poor that functioned well for a time, staffed mostly by Cuban medical personnel who were given the title of "doctor" after about two years of medical training. The public hospitals were improved and things were better.

However, on my last trip to Venezuela, I found that the clinics and hospital services had deteriorated with lack of funding, lack of medicines, frequent power failures and loss of staffing, since many of the Cuban doctors have gone home.

Norma Camero Reno is a native of Venezuela and holds a master's degree in international law from Stetson.

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