Chavez’s Deeds: He Was A Threat to America and His Own People

Hugo Chavez died on March 5^th, 2013 exactly 60 years after Josef Stalin.

The Mexican political scientist Fredo Arias wrote on Facebook, paraphrasing Karl Marx, that “history repeats itself twice; the first time as history and the second time as a farce.”

In Venezuela he helped destroy democracy and reduced it to mere referendums on his persona. He skipped parliamentary procedure and subjugated the judiciary, sometimes incarcerating judges whose verdicts did not fit his desires. He sent opponents to exile and  went after the media who criticized him.

He created para-military groups and chaos. He scorned the law and the constitution he helped create. He conducted extra-legal killings.  He placed the state above civil society and individual rights.  He intimidated entrepreneurs, sent many to exile and and enriched many of his cronies, whose only virtue was to be close to power. He bought the higher echelons of the military and purged others. He believed in the fusion “between people and the military” but to establish an authoritarian “elected” regime.

He gave the people gifts, care of the country’s gigantic oil-based national income. He placed people in black lists. He fired people from national companies based on their political views and destroyed countless families. Venezuela turned into a field of insecurity.

Chavez’ Bolivarian revolution has been not only a domestic affair of Venezuela. It has had an expansive wave.  Chavez actively promoted the revolution abroad, funding sympathetic candidates, and establishing relations with different group s across the continent. These groups included indigenous in the Andes, Argentinean Piqueteros, the Brazilian Landless Movement  and others. He also reached out to violent movements such as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Iranian proxy Hezbollah.  Chavez purchased weapons from Russia and handed them over to the FARC. He sent Venezuelans to be trained in Lebanon. He created international conferences that gathered various terrorist organizations from all over the world.  He extended a friendly hand to drug cartels and made Venezuela into a free zone for drug trafficking to North America and Europe.

He opened up to rogue countries such as Iran and tyrannies such as the Belarus , Syria, Saadam Hussein’s Iraq,  and Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya.  He was influenced by nefarious writers such as Norberto Ceresole, an ex- Argentinean  guerilla and a Holocaust denier.

Countries of the region such as Brazil and Argentina and the entire Organization of American States looked the other way while Chavez violated human rights. He and his allies Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua) blasted the OAS human rights commission. The entire left, extreme and moderate in the region admired Chavez and saw him as a key in the regional integration of the continent despite the fact that conservative governments in Latin America also supported regional integration.

The legacy of Chavez will remain because it has established an authoritarian structure in his own country and broad support abroad. The legacy of Chavism remains a challenge for the future of the region and a threat to American security.