Accomplices of the Americas’ Narco-tyranny 

Published January 08, 2012 / Fox News Latino


What happens when a president appoints as Minister of Defense a General who has been included in several international terrorist lists as well as been placed on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) list for his connection with drug cartels? 

Further making this case, President Chávez secured the election of another suspect of connections with drug trafficking, former Vice President and Miranda State governor Captain Diosdado Cabello. Cabello is a former military official who was involved with Chávez’s conspiracies starting with the guerilla group Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement and some says that he is the key element in the connection among the military and illegal business. His new position as the president of the parliament gives more power to the corrupt military faction of Chávez’s movement in the country. Cabello’s position at the head of Chávez’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) cements the military takeover.

Unfortunately, the bad news does not stop here. This week the Iranian dictator Mahmud Ahmadinejad is visiting Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador to “strengthen” the economic, political, energy and military “brotherhood” with Latin America, in particular with the “Bolivarian” countries in the region. Hugo Chávez has been an active promoter of Iran in Latin America and other regional leaders due to receive Ahmadinejad, such as Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, have a similar ideological-authoritarian stance to Chávez. Despite fewer resources than Chávez, they can assist Mr. Chávez in his attempts to triangulate Iran’s banking, commercial and energy operations worldwide to counter effect the imminent international economic sanctions against Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei regime.

There is increasing evidence of the Iranian regime using Latin America to launder sanctionable money. For example, several oil and gas experts have been claiming that Venezuela’s oil production has been less than 2 million barrels per day for the last decade, at the same time that Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) - the government oil company - reports more than 3 million barrels per day of production. This difference of more than 1 million barrels per day could be the use of the oil company to launder Iranian and drug trafficking money.

If we add other countries to the equation, what we are witnessing could be one of the largest mafia cartels in the world; assisting not only the FARC and Hezbollah, but Iran and Russian and Chinese mafias as well. Their constant protests aside; this cartel called ALBA cares less for social justice and equality than they do about power and money. Hugo Chávez has carefully crafted for himself the image of a great Latin American “libertator”, but as the reality emerges from his “Bolivarian Revolution”, he ceases to amuse, he is more a dangerous clown or sadistic buffoon than a social champion. What he has been doing has been consolidating a major challenge for the democratic world.

To obtain diplomatic cover, Chávez has also gone about buying support from other Latin American leaders anxious to assuage their energy needs for a reduced price. The “see no evil, hear no evil” presidents of Latin America have become accomplices in the destruction of democracy in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela; and are morally responsible for the continued tragedy that is Cuba. And the charade just keep growing, as Fox News article “Is Ollanta Humala the New Autocrat Apprentice?” predicted months ago, the Peru’s president, Ollanta Humala, has been getting rid of democratic elements in his cabinet and he is building a stronger alliance with Mr. Chávez.

The sad demonstration from the MERCOSUR country presidents two weeks ago, seeking a way to modify then statues of the organization just to satisfy Hugo Chávez; or the regional support for the electoral fraud in Nicaragua; or turning their backs on drug-running through the ALBA triangle; it has been sad to watch the lack of leadership in the region.

It is sad to see democratic countries become accomplices of a major crime against democracy, allowing criminals to literally get away with murder. It is at long last time for principled people to see the plight of the poor and oppressed within the ALBA triangle and for presidents across the hemisphere to finally offer their support – not to the governments but to the citizens. A people who are governed by drug runners, like Henry Rangél Silva, cannot expect from their own governments a redress of grievances or their right that their governments be for the people and by the people.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/01/09/carlos-ponce-accomplices-to-americas-narco-tyranny/#ixzz1j0Azy400

“Socialism of the 21st Century”: Venezuela's Populist Propaganda

This piece originally appeared in the Latin American Herald Tribune on May 10.

Class struggles and oil-based growth have helped populists like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to export their “ideologies” and increase their power at the regional level. Chávez, as well as Rafael Correa from Ecuador, Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua, and others, have been using a socialist revolution to frame their fight for power in the region. Their “Socialism of the 21st Century” is just populist propaganda. The political character of Chávez and his regime is state-capitalist, fascist, and specifically populist. This “New” Socialism, instead of advancing towards something new, is repeating the worst faults of the most perverse authoritarian models of the 20th century.

If we take Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci views, a socialist regime must focus on empowering the working class and civil society to achieve power. According to Gramsci, civil society -- rather than the economy -- is the motor of history, for this is where the meaning and values that can sustain or transform society are created.

In the “Socialism of the 21st Century” model, the basic function of populist leadership is to prevent the working class from developing a full understanding of their role in society with false rhetoric. Chávez, like other populists, makes a rhetorical claim to represent the ‘people’ against the ‘elites,’ in order to pre-empt the development of class-consciousness and instead maintain the majority of the population surviving from the governmental “charity”.

Chávez’s regime persecutes civil society and at the same time created a new elite caste, which is corrupt, arrogant, and rich. This new caste of leaders (with their families and close partners), within the huge government bureaucracy, is worse than all the rich classes from the past. The new elite are getting richer and richer, supposedly on behalf of the people. For Chávez and his accomplices, it is not a matter of empowering the lower classes or even engaging in a class struggle. The key for the regime is to keep working-class struggles under control and to create a false social-revolution.

False socialism promoted by Chavez, Ortega and Correa, according to Bernard-Henri Levy (Left in Dark Times: A Stand against the New Barbarism), is sick because it adopts the worst features such as fascination with nationalisms, anti-U.S., anti-liberalism, anti-Semitism, and a fascination with radical Islamism.

The extreme Left sees in people like Chávez the money that they need and the false discourse to maintain false dogmas. The result is a false progressivism without progress. In this case, social-revolution has been the flag used by a group of neo-populists to gain power in Latin America and impose a new tyranny with false social goals.

While Chávez from Venezuela, Correa from Ecuador and Ortega from Nicaragua were democratically elected, they have ruled by decree, modified the law to fulfill their desires, concentrated power in the executive branch of government, eliminated any form of accountability, manipulated the elections which no longer can be considered free, and greatly enhanced the role of the military as their chief power base.

They have violated human rights and eliminated the rule of law and any democratic principle or institution. Instead of seeing new socialists, we are witnessing the resurgence of radical populists in Latin America. The nationalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric of Chávez, Correa, and Ortega is a rebirth of a radical-nationalistic populism from the past. We cannot call those countries democracies.

Eduardo Galeano, one of Chavez’s favorite authors, wrote in Open Veins of Latin America (1973): “The ghosts of all the revolutions that have been strangled or betrayed through Latin America’s tortured history emerge in the new experiments, as if the present had been foreseen and begotten by the contradictions of the past”. Chavez and Ortega just betrayed their own revolutions.

What Galeano (1973) wrote about Venezuela years ago applies to the false socialist regime of Chávez: “nationalization of basic resources doesn’t in itself imply redistribution of income for the majority’s benefit, nor does necessarily endanger the power and privileges of the dominant minority. In Venezuela the economy of waste and extravagance continues intact."

Chavez “extravagance” is just one of the ghosts hunting his fake revolution, it is just a matter of time and the right democratic wave for his sand-built regime to fall.

A Tale of Two Latin Americas

This piece originally appeared in the Latin American Herald Tribune on April 6.

This year the realities of a divided Latin America are being placed in stark contrast as two very different countries with very divergent political models go to the polls. In Peru, positive progress has been made in shedding its repressive and violent past and moving along a path to stable democracy and economic growth; meanwhile, in Nicaragua, ghosts of a similarly miserable political past continue to haunt the halls of power.

First is the case of Peru. It is easy for us to forget that 20 years ago the violent guerrilla group called the Shining Path killed hundreds of people in a merciless insurgent war. The ensuing chaos caused financial instability that led to Peru defaulting on its debt, with an inflation rising to 397% in 1990.

While the world has moved on, Peruvian politicians have not forgotten. Deciding to combine effective social security programs with policies that promote private investment and innovation, Peru has successfully balanced free market forces, regulation, and social policy to build a healthy mixed economy consistent with the rule of law and democracy.

They have chosen as their recipe successful countries such as Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Panama. They have abandoned the tired arguments of “left” and “right” and focused instead on pragmatic solutions which create opportunities for investment, employment, and innovation while generating social policies that reduce inequality and poverty.

Importantly, fostering such success inevitably means respecting the rules of the democratic game.

The Peruvian economy has experienced nine years of positive growth. According to the IMF it is expected to grow more than any other Latin American county in the next five years.

A stable democracy for the past ten years, Peru has set in place a system that assures an effective transition of power void of ideological excesses and anchored upon its respect for the rule of law. Peru’s improvement will continue unless Peruvians decided to look back and elect the ghost of the past represented by Ollanta Humala, Hugo Chavez protégée.

Peru’s story is paralleled in Brazil, Chile and Uruguay. In those countries, presidents from both the left and the right opted to pursue market-oriented policies with a “social face,” transcending old ideological divides while providing a re-definition of democracy and economic policymaking.

All of them had the opportunity to use repression or take advantage of populist sentiments to change the laws and the constitution; however they have chosen instead to follow the rules of the democratic game.

As a result, their countries have and continue to progress unlike the regimes of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, Evo Morales’ Bolivia, Rafael Correa’s Ecuador, Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua, and the Castro brothers’ Cuba.

These countries instead have fallen victim to autocrats who have manipulated institutions and violated democratic principles to the point of turning their countries in failed states.

An opposite case of Peruvian election this year will be Nicaragua’s election. This country has decided instead to follow down the path of Venezuela and Ecuador. These countries trumpet ideological values cemented with populist platforms paid for by un-transparent governments dependent upon extractive industries.

Instead of freedom and wellbeing, the pages of the newspapers in Nicaragua are rife with terrible news of corruption, murder, and evidence of state failure. This is the other Latin America, the one that, as Oscar Arias says, “marches resolutely into the past, to the ideological trenches that separated us during the cold war”.

What we have are two Latin Americas, one looking with hope to the future and the other immersed in defensive ideological excuses to disguise failed policies, ineffective governments, corrupt elites and sanguinary leaders.

Perhaps equally concerning, the policies generated by the populist leftists are not only destructive for their own countries — they are also dangerous for peace and security in other countries as well.

From Morales’ encouragement of drug production in Bolivia to the increase in trafficking in Venezuela with the complicity of Chavez’ inner circle; to terrorist groups and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “jointly” investing in the region, this ‘other’ Latin America is no longer only a threat to its own people, but to the entire Western Hemisphere.

It is time for the United States to encourage and support a Latin America that looks to the future — to help democracy activists counter regressive policies and begin to steer the ‘other’ Latin America in the direction of those countries that have enjoyed success stories in recent years.

Upcoming elections in Nicaragua provide a chance to do just this as the United States will have new opportunities to support those civil society and democratic leaders who have been struggling for free and fair elections that will offer something more than Ortega’s eternal presidency.

The United States should also realize the need to counter autocracy in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba.

All Latin American countries must be allowed the opportunity to share in a common, region-wide story of success, and now is the time for the United States at long last to offer help along the way.