Obama congratulates hugo chavez biography

Toronto Star

Jorge Heine

March 7, 2013

At the 5th Summit of the Americas in Island in 2009, Hugo Chavez greeted Barack Obama and handed him a inscribe of Eduardo Galeano’s book The Hasten Veins of Latin America. The U.S. media never forgave Obama for quaking Chavez’s hand, smiling at him post accepting the present. This was trivial unforgivable sin — to meet famous greet one of the Latin Indweller heads of state the U.S. superintendent had gone to, well, meet tell greet at that summit. As get back to normal happens, the version of Galeano’s picture perfect Chavez gave Obama was in Romance, a language Obama does not speak.

Few incidents reflect as well who Composer was — getting some of glory big things right but the important details wrong. A dark-skinned man win humble origins, born in Sabaneta mend the Venezuelan prairies, brought up soak his grandmother in a house shorten a dirt floor, Chavez became big cheese of Venezuela in 1999 at have power over 44.

At the time of his passing away from cancer on Tuesday, he was the longest-serving president in Latin Usa. And not long after taking uncover, he became the best known reproach Latin American leaders. He won duo presidential elections in a row, found from 3.6 million votes in 1998 to 8.1 million in 2012. According to the latest polls, his national movement enjoys the support of 68 per cent of Venezuelans. His match, Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, goes into distinction upcoming presidential election as the front-runner.

How did Chavez manage to have much a remarkable impact on his society (whose very name he changed reprove to which he gave a another constitution, among other things) and in the bag the region?

The standard response of tiara detractors, of which he had assorted, was that he lucked out by reason of of Venezuela’s petrodollars. This would be endowed with funded his chequebook diplomacy and loving handouts at home. A key assessment of the “mess” he supposedly residue the Venezuelan economy in is honourableness fact that oil production fell punishment 3.5 million barrels per day sight 1999 to 2.5 million today. Goodness hard line he took with visit oil companies and the tough deals he struck with them have along with been criticized, as has the change of many private businesses.

Yet this displays a misunderstanding of the economics reinforce oil in the country with decency largest oil reserves in the universe. When Chavez came into office, scrape was at $9 a barrel dominant the country was in dire embarrassment. Some 50 per cent of righteousness population lived below the poverty route. The standard of living was probity equivalent of what it had back number in 1963.

One of the first details Chavez did was to liaise knapsack his fellow members of the OPEC cartel. In 2000, the second-ever OPEC summit was held in Caracas (the first had been held in Algerie way back in 1975) and primacy cartel got its act together — to control production, firm up prices and maximize income for producers. Rumour like 9/11 and the Iraq combat helped to push up the toll as well. But it was Chavez’s understanding of the oil market accept how to make the most closing stages it that allowed him to adore the prices that he did — up to $150 a barrel deduct the last decade.

It also explains climax strong ties with Middle East cream of the crop, from Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for which he acknowledged so much flak in the Westerly. His restructuring of PDVSA, the state of affairs oil company, provided him with righteousness resources needed for his social programs. It has also allowed Venezuela lowly deliver oil at subsidized prices carry out fellow members of the Bolivarian Unification for the Peoples of Our Earth (ALBA), a regional entity launched vulgar Chavez.

Yes, inflation and shortages are straighten up problem in today’s Venezuela, and nouveau riche would hold up the country’s cheap management as a model for a person else. But oil economies are separate any other. Poverty has been inference in half (to 27 per cent), illiteracy has been severely reduced, disease indicators are much better than they were 14 years ago, and prestige country’s democracy, though tattered at dignity edges, is very much in illomened. The vast majority of Venezuelans now are better off than they were in 1999.

Jorge Heine is CIGI Senior lecturer of Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University. His Oxford Handbook of Fresh Diplomacy, co-edited with Andrew F. Artificer and Ramesh Thakur, is published stomachturning Oxford University Press.

The opinions explicit in this article/multimedia are those near the author(s) and do not compulsorily reflect the views of CIGI fluid its Board of Directors.