“Chavez is
routinely referred to as a ‘monkey’ in his
homeland’s oligarchic
media.”
From the
suites of Wall Street to San Francisco’s
counter-culture enclaves, both leftist and
rightist adherents of various narrow
“economics-only” worldviews insist that
Washington’s Chavez-phobia is all about oil, and
that race is secondary or diversionary. They fail
– or refuse – to acknowledge that race and class
are intertwined in both halves of the hemisphere,
although with different, local particularities.
The conquests, exterminations, and re-populations
of the Americas were race-based. Democracy and
true self-determination of the peoples of the
Americas cannot be achieved absent the awakening
of those who were – and largely remain – chained
by the legacy of history.
Hugo Chavez
is waking folks up. His discounting, sharing and
bartering of Venezuela’s most valuable natural
resource, oil, is but one part of a larger vision
of cooperation among peoples, that could serve as
a model to resist, combat and replace the Global
Rule-Of-Capital Order. Cuba, for example, has
little oil, but doctors aplenty. Capitalism is
incapable of fairly distributing medical services
or of maintaining any other edifice of
civilization that is not based on ever-escalating
rates of profit for the rulers – a formula for
vast suffering and eventual global collapse. In
return for discounted oil, Venezuela imports more
than 10,000 Cuban doctors to tend to the needs of
the poor Venezuelan majority. That’s functional
solidarity outside the dollar-dominated Order. The
quality of life of both nations is enhanced
through rational, voluntary exchange, rather than
the coercive, race-to-the bottom international
relationships of late-stage, armed-to-the-teeth
global capitalism.
Chavez’s
vision is not Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.
Rather, it is Change the World, So That We All Can
Prosper.
Solidarity
is a people-to-people enterprise. When governments
are not representative of their people, and/or
oppress minority populations, solidarity means
forging direct ties with the beleaguered people,
not their government. Such is the spirit in which
poor Americans, and especially African Americans,
should receive Venezuela’s discounted oil and
Chavez’s many other offers of people-to-people
assistance.
Chavez
presents African Americans with a fundamental
challenge: Are U.S. Blacks really a big enough,
wise enough people to assume their unique place in
the world as self-determiners, ready and eager to
act in their own interests with partners with whom
they share common goals – peace, a more equitable
distribution of wealth, racial equality – as well
as a parallel history of oppression at European
hands? Or will African Americans crawl into the
oppressor’s tent – a very cold place in which
Blacks are usually unwelcome, except when needed
in defense of Empire.
“Are U.S.
Blacks really a big enough, wise enough people to
assume their unique place in the world as
self-determiners, ready and eager to act in their
own interests with partners with whom they share
common goals?”
African
Americans are called upon to demonstrate in word
and deed that they are receptive to honest
overtures from others in the diaspora, without
first having to request permission from America’s
rulers. Some have failed the test, most sadly,
Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel (D).
“This is one country,
whether we're Democrat or Republicans,” said
Rangel, in a bizarre outburst after Chavez called
George Bush “the
Devil”
the at the United Nations, in September. “And to
come here, at the invitation of our people, and
insult the president of the United States, you
insult the flag; you insult the president; you
insult the country; and you insult my
constituents.”
In other
variations of his weird rant, Rangel spoke of
“my president” being so cruelly maligned –
a kind of twist on the old “Is we sick, boss?”
Black servant line. (“Is we insulted,
boss?”)
Later, Rangel
“clarified” his
remarks, reiterating his “extreme displeasure”
with Chavez’s “personal and disparaging”
characterization of Bush as Beelzebub. Chavez’s
demeaning public attack against [Bush] is viewed
by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans,
as an attack on all of
us.”
Really? Only if one feels in need of
an exorcism every time the president becomes
possessed by otherworldly forces, as regularly
occurs. (“Is we haunted, boss?”) The congressman
acknowledged that his own
constituents were slated to become major
recipients of Chavez’s discount oil deliveries –
but it was a backhanded
thank-you:
“Venezuela's
generosity to the poor, however, should not be
interpreted as license to attack President
Bush. Those who take issue with Bush
Administration policies have no right to attack
him personally. It was not helpful when
President Bush referred to certain nations as an
‘axis of evil.’ Neither is it helpful for a
head of state to use the sacred halls of the
United Nations to insult President
Bush.”
Although
Rangel’s rant is three-month-old news, it remains
one of the baldest, most pitiful recent examples
of contradiction in the behavior of a
supposedly progressive African American
politician. Rangel’s irate expression of
solidarity with Bush – the most virulently
anti-Black president since Woodrow Wilson
segregated the federal bureaucracy in 1913 –
clashes violently with the president’s own total
lack of solidarity with African Americans.
Nevertheless, Rangel maintains that an insult to
Bush is “an attack on all of us.” ( Tonto’s
rejoinder, “What you mean we, White Man?” comes to
mind.)
“Rep.
Rangel maintains that an insult to Bush is ‘an
attack on all of
us.’”
Nonplussed, Chavez traveled to
Harlem’s Mount Olivet Baptist Church. "They told
me that I should be careful after I called [Bush]
the devil — and I think he is the devil — because
he might kill me,” Chavez told the overflow
crowd
in Rangel’s own district. Bush has
been trying to dispose of Chavez at least since
the U.S.-inspired April, 2002 coup attempt, yet
murderous designs on the part of “his” president
mean less to Rangel than perceived insults “to us
all” from the crinkly-haired brown Latino bearing
gifts, Hugo
Chavez.
Rangel’s
misplaced solidarity can be partially explained by
comments from “his” House Minority Leader, Nancy
Pelosi, the purported progressive from San
Francisco. Chavez, she said, “is an everyday thug”
who “demeaned himself and he demeaned
Venezuela.”
So maybe,
Rangel was really expressing solidarity with
Democratic leadership – the people who will
elevate him to chairman of the powerful Ways and
Means Committee, next month. Will he then find
“ways and means” to reciprocate for Venezuela’s
good deeds in Harlem? Such as cutting off all
funds to Washington’s destabilization campaign
against Chavez’s democratically elected
government?
Which Side Are You
On?
Rangel may have been especially
uncomfortable with Chavez’s unabashed expressions
of racial solidarity with the African diaspora
over the years. Better to denounce the visiting
head of state than to be suspected of divided
“loyalties.” Or maybe he’s just confused. If so,
the congressman has lots of company among those
Blacks who suspect that Latinos feign solidarity
with African Americans for narrow political
advantage. But Chavez’s racial awareness is
homegrown, the product of his own society. As
author Richard Gott
(In the Shadow of the
Liberator:
Hugo Chavez and the transformation of Venezuela
[Verso]) observed in a visit to Caracas in 2002,
Chavez’s third year in
office:
“A mass of
humanity passes by, in perpetual movement. Some
are white or of mixed race, but the great majority
are dark skinned. Venezuela is poised
geographically between Brazil and the islands of
the Caribbean, and the children of slaves and
native Americans far outnumber those of the
European settlers. In one of the richest countries
in Latin America, they live in permanent and
absolute poverty. Many scratch a living as hawkers
in the valleys below.
“My
impression is that a rock-solid majority for
Chavez, based on class and race, remains intact.
For the first time in Venezuelan history, the
country's hidden majority – black, indigenous and
mestizo – have a president with whom they can
identify. Things may not have gone too well for
them in the past three years, and some sections of
the poor may have got even poorer. But they also
face overt racism from the country's ruling elite.
It is clear that Chavez is a president in whom
they still have faith, and whom they will defend.”
“A
rock-solid majority for Chavez, based on class and
race, remains
intact.”
As of this
month,
Chavez
and his allies have won ten free and fair
elections and referendums since coming to power in
1998 – far more than can be said of Bush or any
other American president with the possible
exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whose four
terms and multiple Democratic congresses were all
achieved when more than half of Blacks could not
vote). Chavez’s base is the 70 percent non-white
Venezuelan majority, a proportion that overlaps
with the lower classes of society. When Chavez
speaks of white racism, he knows what he’s talking
about.
“We are all equal, Black,
white, Indian, Brown or mixed,” Chavez told a
visiting African
American delegation in January, 2006.
“We need to put the fight against racism at the
forefront of our struggle.”
The
delegation, organized by TransAfrica, responded to
Chavez’s solidarity, in kind. But how do
Afro-Venezuelan activists rate their
president?
In July, 2005,
SeeingBlack.com published an
interview with Jesus "Chucho" Garcia, a leader of
the 30-group Network of Afro-Venezuelan
Organizations. Diaspora correspondent Karen
Juanita Carrillo
wrote:
“The network
wants a reform of the constitution, so that it
recognizes the nation's multi-ethnicity and
respects Afro-Venezuelan rights; the creation of a
new census that categorizes and counts Venezuela's
Black population; the acknowledgement of
Afro-Venezuelan history in school curriculum; the
creation of a federal-level ministry to implement
the World Conference Against Racism's ‘Durban Plan
of Action’; the creation of a ministry to
implement UNESCO's Convention on Diversity; and
the creation of an Afro-Venezuelan Ministry, to
address the everyday lives of Blacks in the
country.”
Network
spokesman Garcia said his groups were engaged in
“constructive criticism” of Chavez’s government:
“We're not part of the government and we're not at
all part of the opposition to the Chávez
administration. We just think that with the
implementation of these six principles, we will
make the Bolívarian revolution
complete.”
We see that
the Venezuelan racial conversation is not solely
for export, but an extension of a peaceful
internal project in progress, only made possible
by Chavez’s 1998 election and subsequent
victories. This conversation has spread throughout
Latin America, shaking the foundations of de facto
white elite rule. It is a dialogue – plus deeds –
that African Americans must join, if they are to
fulfill their domestic and international
obligation as a civilizing force in the belly of
the superpower beast.
“What is
the nature of
Solidarity?”
We must be
serious about the nature of solidarity – who is
deserving of ours, and what that means in terms of
African American domestic political behavior. Rep.
Charles Rangel presented a terrible example of
egregious contempt for Chavez’s outstretched hand
of political and material solidarity. Others,
including folks on the Left, offer a bleached-out
geopolitical-economic paradigm that rejects the
international realities of race and history, thus
consigning African Americans to the status of
spectators or “yes” men for the foreign policies
of Republican or Democratic U.S. administrations.
What is the
nature of Solidarity? Obviously, it is a quality
of which US-based multinational corporations are
totally lacking, as they export millions of jobs
while importing lower wage and living standards.
In late 2005, thirteen U.S. Senators appealed to
every major U.S. oil company to offer heating fuel
discounts to the poor. Only Citgo – the
Houston-based, Venezuelan government owned firm –
responded positively.
The U.S. corporate media, a group of
interlocking cogs in a global corporate machine,
claims Chavez and Citgo are out to “embarrass”
President Bush – as if the White House can’t make
itself look uncaring and inhumane on its own.
Despite effective censorship, millions of African
Americans know that Hugo Chavez was among the
first foreign leaders to offer assistance to the
Katrina-ravaged Gulf states – much of which was
snarlingly refused by the Bush men. The Venezuelan
pledge of people-to-people friendship and true
solidarity is still extended. Mature African
Americans and progressives should accept these
overtures at face value,
“From
The Venezuelan Heart to U.S.
Hearths,”
as Citgo says.
The
world requires internal U.S. opposition to both
War Parties if it is to survive. However, Hugo
Chavez needs none of our assistance to keep
getting elected at home. With more than 60 percent
of the vote, Chavez addressed a huge crowd of supporters early
this month:
"It's another defeat for
the devil, who tries to dominate the world. Down
with imperialism! We need a new
world!"
BAR Executive Editor
Glen Ford can be reached at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
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