[Marxism] Chávez Is New Icon Of Radical Chic (WSJ)

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PAGE ONE

Chávez Is New Icon
Of Radical Chic
Venezuelan Populist Inspires
Groups of U.S. Supporters;
To Do: 'Boogie for Bolívar'
By BOB DAVIS
June 16, 2006; Page A1

BOSTON -- Hugo Chávez, the fiery president of Venezuela, has called
President Bush a "donkey," a "coward," a "drunkard," and, most
famously, "Mr. Danger." Such statements win him few friends in
Washington, but they recently brought together a dozen ardent
supporters here.

Over a cramped conference table in a Chinatown loft, the group,
including several engineers, a student, a nurse and couple of
full-time activists, met to plot their next move. They'd helped lead
a pro-Chávez demonstration in Washington just a few weeks earlier.
And a pro-Chávez movie night seemed old hat.

Jorge Marin, a Boston engineer, had a different idea: a birthday
party for Mr. Chávez's idol, Simón Bolívar, who helped liberate South
America from Spanish rule. They quickly started planning a "Boogie
for Bolívar" party, complete with a birthday cake, on July 24, when
"the Liberator" would have turned 223. Two young women also pushed
for a dance band.

To a slice of the American left, Mr. Chávez has become a
revolutionary hero nearly on a par with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
The 51-year-old Venezuelan president has used his nation's oil riches
to prop up Mr. Castro's regime and improve the education and health
care of Venezuela's poor. His dream is to spread the Venezuelan brand
of socialism across Latin America.

Human-rights groups and the Bush administration warn that he is also
dangerously centralizing power, emasculating Venezuela's judiciary
and threatening press freedoms. Chavistas wave off those complaints
as the ravings of the anti-Chávez U.S. media.

"My political belief is that the U.S. is a horrendous empire that
needs to end," says Jake Irwin, a Chávez supporter at Evergreen State
College in Olympia, Wash., which is pretty much what Mr. Chávez
argues. Every time Mr. Chávez clashes with Mr. Bush -- most recently
over the Venezuelan's torpedoing of a U.S. effort to create a
hemispheric free-trade agreement -- his stock rises with the amalgam
of college students, antiglobalization protesters and graying allies
of Central American rebels.

For 54-year-old Chuck Kaufman, national co-coordinator of the
Nicaragua Network, Mr. Chávez is also a business opportunity. The
network, run out of a converted grocery store near a housing project
in Washington, was formed in 1979 to support the leftist Sandinista
rebels, who toppled a U.S.-allied strongman. But after voters ousted
the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan network eventually slashed its staff
to three from 13. Now, Mr. Kaufman sees a new market in Mr. Chávez.
The bearded former advertising rep for a model-airplane magazine
recently helped create the Venezuela Support Network, which he
figures will energize backers, and may help him land a big-time
donor: Venezuela's government-owned U.S. refiner, Citgo Petroleum
Corp. "No luck so far," he says. Citgo says it only backs requests
"in line with corporate programs."

Other Chávez supporters have formed support groups known as
Bolivarian Circles. (Mr. Chávez is so taken with Bolívar's efforts to
create a united South America that he renamed his country "The
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.") In Venezuela, the circles are
neighborhood associations that run local health clinics and literacy
classes. They have a darker side, too: helping the government
identify opponents, who are then denied remedial education and other
government services, according to a study by Brigham Young University
scholars Kirk Hawkins and David Hansen.

The 20 or so U.S. Bolivarian Circles, which each have one or two
dozen members, view themselves as advocates for the Chávez regime.
New York, San Diego and Boston have Bolivarian Circles; South Florida
has three -- one each in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and a third at
Florida International University in Miami-Dade County. So do places
far from a Latin beat, including Cincinnati and Salem, Ore. The
insignia of the Oregon Bolivarian circle is a bust of Bolívar in
front of Mount Hood.

There is a long history of Americans embracing Latin American
revolutionaries, dating at least to Nicaraguan rebel Augusto Sandino,
who battled U.S. Marines in the 1920s. Others include Mr. Castro and
his comrade Che, and the man known as Subcomandante Marcos, who led a
short-lived rebellion in the Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994. All
were symbols of defiance romanticized by intellectuals of the day.

Fifty-three-year-old Gunnar Gundersen says he formed the Oregon
Bolivarian Circle in 2002, after becoming outraged at a failed coup
attempt against Mr. Chávez. On annual trips to Venezuela with his
Venezuela-born wife, Xiomara, Mr. Gundersen was impressed by Mr.
Chávez's efforts to improve health care and education for the poor.
He couldn't understand why the U.S. press didn't see it his way, so
he and a dozen like-minded Oregonians began to sponsor pro-Chávez
movies, college lectures and rallies.

His activities landed him an appearance on Mr. Chávez's Sunday
television show, "Aló Presidente," in 2004. Mr. Gundersen, who often
wears red knit shirts -- red being the color of the Chávez revolution
-- read an English translation of a stanza of one of Mr. Chávez's
favorite songs. Then he handed the Venezuelan leader a copy of the
Oregon circle's nonprofit registration, which Mr. Gundersen claimed
meant the Oregon circle was "recognized by the state of Oregon."
Clearly touched, Mr. Chávez called him a "brother" and said to the
audience, "Look how far this is going in the world."

Now, Mr. Gundersen, whose day job is managing a study-abroad program
for Japanese college students in Oregon, figures he spends several
thousand dollars a year crisscrossing the U.S. for pro-Chávez events.
These included a March "National Solidarity Conference" in
Washington, where the several hundred delegates chanted the Chávez
rally cry, "Oh, ah. Chávez no se va!" (Roughly: "Oh, no. Chávez won't
go!")

The Philadelphia circle has produced three pro-Chávez videos,
including one about oil workers who helped keep the state-owned oil
company operating despite an anti-Chávez strike. The Fort Lauderdale
circle bought 35 wheelchairs for Venezuelan hospitals and, in return,
the Venezuelan government sent 200 Spanish-language versions of "Don
Quixote" for Broward County libraries. A Fort Lauderdale circle
member, Ali Gutiérrez, broke into a Spanish love song as the books
were handed over.

The circles aren't funded by the Venezuelan government, but they help
the country's lobbying efforts by presenting a sympathetic face of
the Chávez regime and helping organize tours of the country. Moisés
Naím, a pre-Chávez Venezuelan trade minister who is now editor of
Foreign Policy magazine, believes the circle members "are shamelessly
exploited by the regime." But Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's
ambassador to the U.S., says the groups operate on their own and
"help us counteract the campaign that there isn't freedom of
expression in Venezuela."

The circles applauded this past winter when Citgo says it provided
about 40 million gallons of low-cost home heating oil to 181,000
households in the Northeast. So did True Majority, an Internet-based
advocacy group founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's fame, which
sent emails to its 500,000 members urging them to purchase Citgo
gasoline -- a "buy-cott," as activists call it.


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