The Hugo Problem

Hugo Chavez is trying to do away with presidential term limits. He is restricting freedom of the press and is friends with Fidel Castro and has close ties with Iran. He is building a Kalashnikov rifle factory in Venezuela.

All of these may be true about the controversial leader, but it seems that increasingly there is a perception within the US that he also poses a security threat to the United States and that average Americans should be afraid of him.

Chavez inspires polarized views. He is alternatively a despot, intent on attacking the US and threatening democracy throughout Latin America, and a heroic populist, bravely standing up to US hegemony.

But should we be afraid of him?

The fact that he is buying Kalashnikovs and building a rifle factory has rattled our government, but that particular rifle can fire about 330 feet. The closest American mainland between the shores of Venezuela and the US is about 1300 miles. Venezuela has no nuclear weapons or other weapons capable of reaching us. Most likely, he is not planning on marching up through Central America to invade Texas. Unless, as Chavez claims, the US plans to invade Venezuela, we have nothing to worry about from the Kalashnikovs.

But rifles aren’t the only thing our administration seems to be worried about. Venezuela also dropped out of participation in the World Bank and IMF after repaying all its loans early and has worked to establish the Bank of the South as a regional World Bank alternative. Chavez established ALBA, a trade agreement proposed as an alternative to the US’s FTAA. As part of it, Venezuela plans to supply 100 percent of the energy needs for ALBA member-nations, which include Haiti, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba. It’s a wildly generous offer, but he can afford to be. Not counting the Middle East, Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than any nation on earth except Canada. Chavez has also supplied oil to fund reduced-price oil programs for the poor in the United States, including Joe Kennedy’s Citizens Energy Corporation. Many New Englanders have had heat on cold winter nights, thanks to cheap Venezuelan oil, a la Chavez.

The US government’s fretting over Venezuela’s initiating the Bank of the South and the ALBA free trade agreement is simply a fear that Latin America will no longer turn to the United States for everything — from borrowing money with strings attached to being told what the price of corn will be that day.

Hugo Chavez may indeed be power-hungry and intent on ruling Venezuela to the end of his days. He may, like many with great power, turn corrupt and brutal and become the dictator he is already accused of being. Some fear he may become another Fidel Castro. We fail to remember that in the more than 40 years that Castro has been in power, Cuba has been a peaceful nation and has never once attacked us, even though they are only 90 miles away from our shores (but still out of Kalashnikov range). Only we have attacked them. Castro has governed over a poor populace that manages to feed and educate and provide medical care to all of its people; Chavez could do worse than follow in his footsteps.

Today, Chavez is a popular, democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation that has never in its history invaded, attacked, or otherwise hurt the United States. Chavez’s greatest crime is simply that he has the nerve to try to control his nation’s own wealth, its oil, and refuses to play by the rules the US has established for Latin America over the last 150 years. If that’s what our administration is afraid of, the self-determination of another democratic nation, we probably have bigger things to worry about, right here at home.