Daring to Dream

Hugo Chavez is a polarizing figure, and from the perspective two young men who left Venezuela, he is either savior or destroyer of the nation. By Michael Burgevin

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March 21, 2009-- Thomas Milado does not allot much time for decadence. When he is not working in the office of a shoe company in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, Thomas keeps himself busy caring for his three younger sisters while his parents struggle to support their family. Relaxation is a luxury that this teenage Venezuelan immigrant cannot easily afford. But on Sunday mornings, with his parents and sisters at church, Thomas can finally take a breath, sit back, and crack open a textbook. “I don’t have time, usually, to just study. But on Sundays, I can take care of myself,” he explained during a conversation via Skype from an internet café near his home in the large valley city of Oaxaca. “Learning is how I can get ahead in this world.”

The Milado family moved to Oaxaca from the Venezuelan city of Valencia in 2007 so that his mother, who was born in Mexico City, could care for her ailing parents. Thomas was fifteen at the time. “I did not want to go, but here we are, and I suppose that I make the best of it,” says Thomas, a look of calm acceptance upon his face. Although his family cannot afford to continue paying for his education, Thomas dreams of one day attending university, possibly studying law at La Universidad Panamericana Facultad de Derecho in Mexico City. He hopes to spend his life assisting poor families like his own, and he is extremely grateful for the public education he received in Valencia. “I would not have had the opportunity to study science, or reading, if I had not grown up where I did. I would have missed out on so many opportunities!”

Thomas thanks one man for his educational experiences: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Until immigrating with his family, Thomas attended public school in Valencia. “I was taught to read and write, and I studied mathematics and history,” he explained with a smile on his face. His passion for learning is dwarfed only by his devotion to President Chávez. “In Venezuela, our President cares for those who cannot take care of themselves.” His father, Thomas explained, never had the same options, and now works as a factory laborer. “Chávez rebuilt the system for people like me,” he remarked. This is a topic that he could discuss for hours.

Eduardo Mills strongly disagrees. Like Thomas, Eduardo grew up in Valencia before leaving the country during his teenage years. That is where their similarities end. Eduardo attended private school in Venezuela until enrolling at Bard College in upstate New York, where he honed his dislike of President Chavez by studying politics. Eduardo exudes an aura of quick and assured intelligence, easily convincing you of his comfort with any given field. Having relocated to Canada after receiving his bachelor’s degree, Eduardo will return to graduate school in the fall to continue his study of international relations. One thing is certain: He will not be returning to Venezuela any time soon. “I don’t see much of a future there, things would have to radically change for a long time before I’d consider moving back,” he remarked sadly.

Eduardo’s family is undeniably wealthier than the Milados. His parents own a successful rubber mixing company in Valencia, which they inherited from Eduardo’s maternal grandfather. In recent years, he laments, the business has fallen upon hard times. Thanks to Chávez’s open trade relations with China, Venezuelan companies are no longer purchasing rubber products manufactured domestically, instead opting for cheap tires produced in Asian markets. Within a year, Eduardo’s father expects to be forced out of business altogether. “Chávez has generally destroyed the private industry in Venezuela,” explains Eduardo, forcing many domestic companies to shut down or nationalize.

Having never attended public school, Eduardo believes that Chávez only supports education to pacify and manipulate Venezuela’s poor. The national school system, he believes, has become an unscrupulous institution that the government utilizes to build support for the administration. “When you have kids forced to repeat ‘patria socialismo o muerte’ (country, socialism, or death), it makes it hard to believe that the quality of education is anything but brainwashing,” he noted during an interview from his apartment in Ottawa. Eduardo is clearly frustrated by such blatant corruption. “The government has definitely dumped money on schools and built more, but they are marred by questionable practices and content.”

Why would such corruption be tolerated? Eduardo believes that Venezuela’s poor, who have been beaten into submission by years of ill-treatment, are happy for any governmental support they can get. “Many Venezuelans have nothing. Political freedom, economic freedom, or freedom of speech and press really isn’t high on their list of priorities, so it’s quite easy to sway them with empty promises.” Eduardo is adamant that this does not excuse the ways in which Chávez has ruined social institutions such as public schools. He believes that the president must be held accountable for misusing public trust and destroying the domestic economy, with no exception.

Chávez spent six hours last weekend addressing his citizens on Aló Presidente, a televised broadcast in which the President narrates the events of the past week. The country tunes in every Sunday for both the update and the show. Fiery, verbose, and passionate, Chávez’s performances seem to emulate Mexican Telenovelas in their impassioned and dramatic style. Citizens loyal to Chávez take great pride in Aló Presidente, trusting that he will discuss everything worth knowing, both domestically and abroad. If it wasn’t on the program, it doesn’t really matter. Many have accredited Chávez’s popular support to the program, in which he heatedly whips his allies into a state of frenzy during what could easily be a hybrid of FDR’s fireside chats and an episode of The O’Reilly Factor. Peter Beaumont of The Guardian, in a piece on Aló Presidente’s popularity, recalled a moment he witnessed in a Caracas restaurant during a broadcast of the show. A man at the bar looked up from his drink and shouted proudly, “That’s my president, that is.”

Always a popular topic of discussion on the program are his ‘Misiónes Bolivarianas’ (Bolivarian Missions), the social programs he has developed to provide food, shelter, and, as Thomas is quick to point out, education to lower-class Venezuelans. The debate around Chávez’s public education program is just one example of the many controversies surrounding the Venezuelan President. A well-known figure to the global media, this self-proclaimed “man of the people” rose to power with promises of political change. The son of two impoverished schoolteachers, Chávez has made the most of his ‘everyman’ role, ostensibly protecting poor Venezuelans from the threat of capitalist imperialism of countries such as the United States.

During the late 1990s, Latin America faced an era of economic hardship due to the negative shocks created by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. The weakened economy made room for leftist leaders such as Chávez to sweep into power on populist platforms of reforming political corruption, explained Dr. Robert Kaufman, Professor of Political Studies at Rutgers University. “The electorates were voting for change, and that’s what they got,” said Kaufman recently at a lecture held at New York University.

In his “battle for the little man,” the Venezuelan President has long fought against powerful leaders of the world’s globalized status quo, famously referring to President Bush as “the devil” during an address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2006. Chávez’s suspicions of Bush and the United States metastasized into hatred after the U.S. government tacitly supported an attempted coup d'état against the Venezuelan President in 2002. Although the military coup lasted only 47 hours, the Bush administration immediately recognized the new government’s legitimacy, even though the overthrow clearly violated Venezuela’s constitution. Still, in one of the ironies that has always dogged relations between Latin America and the giant to the North, State Department statistics show the United States remains Venezuela’s most important trading partner, and the most important customer for its most important commodity: Oil.

But the dislike flows in both directions, and a significant portion of Venezuelans, too, regard Chávez’ own actions as anti-constitutional. For instance, Chávez has amended the constitution several times, increasing and centralizing presidential authority and nationalizing industry in a way that upsets people like Eduardo Mills. “He truly oversees all aspects of the government, he is more or less in complete control of the system,” stated Dr. Kaufman during his lecture.

The Misiónes Bolivarianas are a central aspect of Chávez’s socialist platform.  The Venezuelan government spends an estimated 12.8 percent of national GDP on the programs, a figure which will be much harder to maintain now that oil prices have collapsed. The missions cover issues such as social justice and welfare, anti-poverty protection, and public education. With a style and flair which made no concession to humility, Chávez christened the program in memory of the South American hero Simón Bolívar, drawing illustrative comparisons between himself and the 19^th century revolutionary who famously championed the cause of unity and freedom from foreign domination in Latin America. The comparison infuriates Eduardo. “It is actually quite offensive to me and to those who oppose him, how he's hijacked the figure (of Bolivar). Now talking about Bolivar gets you branded as a nationalist. I think he was much more interested in true democracy and openness than Chávez is.”

But, Eduardo asks, can the programs be sustained in the coming years? Although the Misiónes have satisfied Chávez’s supporters, concerns for the country’s economy have been rising. In 2006, The Economist predicted that Chávez’s unwillingness to stimulate private commercial development would lead to the collapse of Venezuela’s economy. This did not even begin to account for the overwhelming hardship the country could potentially face during the next few years due to the global financial crisis. Venezuela’s economy is completely dependent on the country’s oil production. Venezuela is the fourth largest supplier of crude oil and petroleum products to the United States. The oil sector accounts for roughly one quarter of the country’s GDP, or 93 percent of all exports. As the international price of oil has dropped, many experts such as Dr. Kaufman have suggested that the current financial crisis could spell disaster for Chávez’s leftist government.

Eduardo is unsurprised by Venezuela’s faltering economy. “In a nutshell, (Chávez) has incessantly attacked private industry by making it hard to do business, be it by currency controls, taxation, overbearing bureaucracy, expropriation, or excessive government intervention,” he explains. Funding corrupt social programs while forcing domestic companies out of business has destroyed the country’s industrial and financial prospects, believes Eduardo. The only surprise is that it took so long for the economy to begin its collapse.

Predictably, Thomas’s opinion differs dramatically from Eduardo’s. “President Chávez is focusing on the people. That is where he should be centering his attention,” Thomas proclaimed forcefully when questioned about economic difficulties in his home country. He presented his opinions so adamantly that they seemed almost militant. Chávez himself maintains that universal opportunity is the only way to advance Venezuelan society at large, even in such difficult times. “What matters is that he is still working for us, that is what’s important,” relates Thomas, unwilling to hear any negative comments in reference to his hero.

It is easy to understand Chávez’s appeal for teenagers such as Thomas who lack both financial security and opportunity. In a passionate address to a socialist conference in London, Chávez conjured up vivid images of the corrupt capitalist imperialism he sees as the heart of the United States. “If someone must be brought to the International Court of Justice, and convicted to life, this must be George W. Bush for genocide and murder,” he shouted to a cheering, frenetic crowd.

However, if Chávez’s domestic popularity depends so heavily upon his social programs, what will happen if the international financial crisis forces him to cut back on funding the Misiónes? Bloomberg News reported last week that Venezuela’s currency, the Bolivar, had shrunk to a 16 month low, falling 1.9 percent to 6.43 per dollar in unregulated trading, which could increase the national budget deficit to the equivalent of five percent of GDP. One aspect that terrifies investors, explained Bloomberg, is that the Venezuelan President maintains complete control over the national economy. People are afraid of what Chávez might do next.

Eduardo points to the financial crisis, questioning Chávez’s future if he can no longer funnel government resources into the social programs which pacify his supporters. “The programs are his tools of control,” he explains. Without them, the Venezuelan President runs the risk of losing his support base. Eduardo does agree with experts such as Dr. Kaufman that even though the economic crisis will most likely polarize Chávez’s supporters and opponents, the Venezuelan President will not be forced from power. “Chávez’s policies, like those of Perón, will end up creating a void between those who agree with his plan and those who don’t,” explained Dr. Kaufman. Even so, it is unlikely that he will be forced from office. “Without a doubt, he’ll be reelected in 2012,” agrees Eduardo.

For Thomas, there is no question. “He’ll fund the programs, don’t you worry,” he assured me steadily. His heartfelt trust in the man whom he still views as his president could either be interpreted as endearing or dangerous. If Eduardo is correct and corrupt indoctrination runs rampant in Venezuela’s school system, then Thomas’s undying devotion certainly validates such a claim. Or maybe, the issue is not indoctrination at all; just that Thomas dares to dream past his limited future at a shoe company. All he knows is that Chávez stands for one thing: Hope.