Noteworthy Venezuela op-ed piece

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Op-Ed, Jan. 7, 2002
Power to the Privileged
By AMY CHUA

A general strike in Venezuela, the fourth-largest exporter of oil to the 
United States, has contributed to a rise in oil prices in the last month. 
But the strike, which began on Dec. 2 and has resulted in a drastic decline 
in the country's oil production, was not initiated by left-wing labor 
unions, as many Americans may think. In fact, it was instigated by 
Venezuela's wealthy business elite.

Underlying this crisis lies a central paradox of globalization, and of 
United States foreign policy: the combination of laissez-faire capitalism 
and free elections can create political and economic instability.

Venezuela is only the most recent illustration. President Hugo Chavez was 
democratically elected in 1998 in a landslide victory, a result reconfirmed 
in a vote in 2000. Since taking office, however, Mr. Chavez has presided 
over an increasingly chaotic economy ? a chaos not always, though 
sometimes, of his own making. The strikes currently crippling Venezuela's 
economy, for example, are largely the work of business interests that are 
intensely opposed to Mr. Chavez because of his threats of nationalization 
and his attempts to seize control of the oil sector.

There is also an ethnic dimension to Venezuela's crisis. Along with roughly 
80 percent of Venezuela's population, Mr. Chavez is a "pardo" ? a term with 
both class and ethnic overtones that refers loosely to brown-skinned people 
of Amerindian or African ancestry. But Venezuela's economy has always been 
controlled by a tiny minority of cosmopolitan whites, or "mantuanos," the 
Venezuelan term for persons with European features and pretensions. Not 
surprisingly, foreign investors deal almost exclusively with members of the 
well-educated, English-speaking mantuano class.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/opinion/07CHUA.html

Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


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