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Saturday's
Lagniappe
Cuckoos
of Latin America Unite
(An
opportunity for U.S. positive involvement)
Reuters
Left
to right : Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega & Hugo Chavez
By
Gustavo Coronel
The
message carved on Karl Marx's tombstone: "WORKERS OF ALL
LANDS UNITE" has suffered significant transformations in
the last 150 years. From being the closing sentence of Das Kapital,
some of the new versions of this rallying cry now refers to
the latest graduating class of Latin American basket cases.
In Managua, together for the inauguration of Daniel Ortega,
presidents Chávez of Venezuela and Morales of Bolivia,
were overflowing with frenzy, each trying to outdo the other
in their insults against democratic governments and in their
use of political slogans that carry the strong smell of moth-balls.
Morales
shouted: "Death to the U.S!" adding: "I don't
mean death in a physical sense since we will not invade the
U.S. … yet." Chávez agreed, while shouting
"Fatherland, Socialism or death," and added: "We
will not invade the U.S. yet but either we kill the empire or
the empire will kill us." Ortega's lieutenant Tomas Borge
"surprised" the audience by postulating Evo Morales
for the Nobel Peace Prize.
While his
Nobel Prize candidacy was aired Morales was busy promoting a
blockade of Cochabamba that has already caused at least one
death, dozens of wounded and thousands of dollars in material
losses to Bolivian citizens and constitutes an act of state
terrorism. The "peaceful" president is trying to impose
his will on the Bolivian people by establishing a simple majority
voting system in the National Assembly that would allow him
to abolish all Bolivian democratic institutions, just what Chávez
did in Venezuela in 1999. Contrary to what happened in Venezuela,
the Bolivian people have stood firm against these pretensions.
Five Bolivian provinces, including prosperous Santa Cruz and
Tarija, have declared their intentions of not recognizing an
Assembly working under that system. If Cochabamba also joins
this movement, as it seems probable, Morales would essentially
be reduced to ruling less than half of the country. The "peaceful"
Morales decreed last year the state control of the hydrocarbons
industry in a violent manner, raiding the offices of the foreign
companies with the army and putting some of their managers in
prison for short periods of time. This "peaceful"
man calls for the death to his enemies every time he speaks
in public next to Chávez, since he tries very hard to
be "more papist than the Pope."
Chávez,
says the Managua newspaper El Nuevo Diario (January 11, 2007),
arrived in Nicaragua "with the pockets full of dollars
and converted Ortega's inauguration ceremony into a Chávez
festival." He announced the construction of a 100,000 barrel
per day refinery in Nicaragua (a stupid and populist idea, since
there is a refinery of similar size already planned for Panama
by Mexico that would take care of the product requirements for
the entire region). He said that Nicaragua only receives US$400
million in foreign aid but that he would give Ortega $600 million.
He also said that he would condone Nicaragua's $39 million debt
to Venezuela, a personal decision that constitutes an act of
robbery against Venezuelans because that money belongs to them
and not to Mr. Chávez. When Venezuela was a democracy,
President Carlos Andres Perez was impeached and removed from
office accused of mismanaging $10 million of Venezuelan "secret"
funds, money that went to Nicaragua for the protection of President
Violeta Chamorro. Today Chávez gives $630 million away
to Ortega and no officer of the Venezuelan regime dares to protest.
This is the difference between democracy and dictatorship and
between honesty and corruption.
Ortega was
put in office with the help of convicted thief and former president
Arnoldo Aleman. Now that he is again in power, Ortega's record
as guerrilla leader, pedophile and thief will be erased. Although
he stole the house of banker Jaime Morales (see "El hombre
que perdonó a Daniel Ortega," by Jorge Ramos Avalos,
Univision Online, January 11, 2007), this man now says that
he has "forgiven" him. There seems to be a good reason:
Morales is Ortega's selection for vice-president and will likely
recoup his loss in no time.
The cuckoos
are already in power in several Latin American countries. Although
they are still living in an era of caudillos, macho and egocentric
attitudes, the disasters they cause to the peoples of their
countries are very much real and present. What is the reason
for their success? Very simple. The masses that have put them
in power have nothing to lose. They feel that they share some
of the political power they have handed to these men. Their
admirers see every act of defiance the cuckoos make against
the traditionally powerful countries, against the rich, the
middle class and the white, as acts of vindication, as part
of a process of getting even. Many of them receive handouts,
subsidies, free food or free education that makes them feel,
at least on a day to day basis, that they are better off. This
feeling is real and powerful and explains the political success
of the cuckoos. Morales looks and talks like the Bolivian ancestral
poor. Chávez looks and talks like millions of Venezuelans
who have been historical losers. More than a political reason,
there is both a physical and a cultural anthropological reason
for their success. This success will have to spend itself before
a more rational type of leadership replaces the cuckoos. At
this moment logical reasoning can only make very modest inroads
in the minds of much of the Latin American people.
This situation
will fade away with the social, economic and political failure
of the cuckoos. These failures have not yet become apparent
for those in Latin America who never had anything and currently
enjoy living under populist regimes. But they are already painfully
apparent for those sectors of the Latin American population
that were well on their way to become part of modern societies,
those segments of the population that had acquired an education,
had a job, savings and owned a home. These self-starting citizens,
no longer dependent on the paternalistic state, are the true
victims of the emergence of the cuckoos since they are now forced
to live in a society where they are distrusted and excluded,
a society which is very different from the one they had prepared
themselves for. In this society the handout has replaced hard
work, political servility has replaced meritocracy, the moral
invertebrates have replaced men with principles. Values are
now upside down in political regimes where the good does not
always win and where concepts such as freedom and democracy
have become politically incorrect.
The solution
to the predominance of the cuckoos is conceptually simple but
complex to implement. It has to do with the transformation of
Latin American societies, from an aggregate of people fighting
for survival, into civic communities in which most individual
citizens contribute to the common good and strive for self-realization.
This is what the U.S. and many European countries have already
largely achieved and what several so-called third world countries
are well in the process of achieving. The fact that societies
largely made up of citizens already exist in countries such
as Spain, Italy, Portugal, Chile and Costa Rica, which consist
of Latin populations, means that achieving this condition is
not a genetic impossibility. Up to now, however, all efforts
oriented to the improvement of Latin America have emphasized
physical infrastructure, financial bailouts, industrial development,
health and formal education, all of which are important but
none of which are structurally significant. Little or nothing
has been done in the area of creating citizens and self-starters
in our countries. This would be a project requiring more creativity
than the mere brute force of money. When I hear Chávez
say that he is injecting one billion dollars in social programs
for the poor I shudder, because I know that 80% of that money
will end up in the wrong hands. When I hear the Inter-American
Development Bank say that total loans to Latin America have
increased 20% I shudder, because I know that the efficiency
level of those loans is low and some are designed to fill a
lending quota regardless of the quality of the projects or programs
they are financing. What seems to be the case is that both the
corrupt, authoritarian strategy of Chávez and the well
intentioned but highly bureaucratic world of the multilateral
lending institutions fail to address the fundamental weakness
of our societies and offer no structural solution to Latin America's
essential problem, the creation of a community of citizens.
The creation of Latin American civic communities, a beautiful
project for the U.S. to promote
There is
no international organization or country on Earth that could
promote such a project in a more powerful manner than the U.S.
The involvement of the United States in Latin America has declined
significantly in the last decades. As the U.S. has retreated
other forces, some good, some bad, have come into action. Today
the U.S. carries so little weight in Latin America that it can
count its allies with the fingers of one hand. The U.S. is still
feared but not admired. The shouts, threats and insults of the
demented Latin caudillos evoke more sympathy and support in
the region than the formal and colorless public statements of
U.S. bureaucrats, even within the U.S. itself, where some U.S.
political leaders have taken side with the cuckoos in order
to reinforce their displeasure with the current U.S. administration,
unfortunately contributing in this process to undermine democracy
in the hemisphere.
I have said
that this program would require more creativity than money.
The U.S. has spent in Iraq, so far, $360 billion. Even assuming
that this is money well spent (this is a discussion in which
I take no part), I would say that, in comparison, a program
for the creation of citizens in Latin America, starting with
two or three countries as pilot projects, would have a negligible
cost and would have an excellent chance of receiving the support
of the European Union and most of the Asian countries which
are currently emerging as modern societies. One thing seems
certain: this program would be far less expensive than the involvement
in Iraq. It would reassert the all-important role of the U.S.
as a guiding light for global democracy and social progress.
This program
should run through, at least, three presidential cycles before
it can be satisfactorily evaluated. It should resemble the U.S.
space program in its long-term outlook. Humankind cannot colonize
Mars in 10 years. Latin America cannot become a hemisphere of
citizens in ten or, even, twenty years. However, once we all
know that the hemisphere is walking resolutely and systematically
in that direction, the positive psychological impact on the
peoples of Latin America will be significant and the relevance
of the current Mahdi-like leaders and their flamboyant messages
of hate would start to evaporate.
Gustavo
Coronel
is a 28 years oil industry veteran, a member of the first board
of directors (1975-1979) of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA),
author of several books. At the present Coronel is Petroleumworld
associate editor and advisor on the opinion and editorial content
of Petroleumworld. Petroleumworld not necessarily share these
views.
