| Submit your comments on this article |
| Fifth Column |
| Fellow Travelers Descend on Poor Venezuela |
| 2004-02-02 |
| EFL ... The propaganda structure has been successful in recruiting well known and probably well meant U.S. artists like Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte and Ed Asner to promote the propaganda film "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and the U.S. speaking tour of Mrs. Nora Castaneda, the President of the "Bolivarian" Women’s Development Bank, among other events. It is surprising that they have not yet contacted Robert Redford but I am sure they soon will. This formidable structure also seems to incorporate, at little or no cost, dozens of women’s liberation, gay, anti-globalization, environmentalists and pacifist groups, all looking for the most diverse allies against the common enemy: the U.S. government. I think these groups have all the right in the world to express their social, political or sexual preferences but I grow very worried when they try, in their well meant ignorance, to export to Venezuela issues which are of very low priority and concern for us, and when they try to make of these issues political banners of the current Venezuelan government. In special, I am worried and surprised to see how the racial issue is being advanced by the Venezuelan government, in collusion with some of these groups, as one of the main reasons why the so called "bolivarian" revolution exists. Chávez initiated this strategy in his Sunday speeches, when he started claiming that his revolution was against the white oligarchs and that the opposition hated him because he had a "bemba" (gross lips). The President started to use this type of racial expressions to try to build a national mood in which white was bad and brown was good. This is an attitude which I would define as racist. Most people have grown used to think that racism is only practiced by whites against non-whites but, of course, it can also be practiced the other way around. In his speeches Chávez was not so much complaining about being excluded, as he was being exclusive. Whites, he kept telling us, do not belong here... One of the most recent moves in this direction was the invitation extended by Venezuelan Ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, to a Washington D.C. based organization called TransAfrica Forum to visit Venezuela to "see for themselves the situation of the Afro- Venezuelan people." In Venezuela we speak freely and without malice about blacks, whites and browns. I have never heard the expression "Afro-Venezuelan" being used in my country, except by pompous, newly graduated sociologists. At any rate, the delegation of TransAfrica visited our country for nine days, a high quality group including actor Danny Glover, Bill Fletcher and others... Howerever, most Venezuelans felt outraged when Bill Fletcher gave a speech in which he put Chávez and [Martin Luther] King in the same level, as heroes in the fight against racial discrimination. I am sure that decent people all over the world can see the difference between a racial integrator (King) and a racial disintegrator (Chávez). During his nine days visit the group was told, by almost everyone they met with, that there was not a racial problem in Venezuela. Yet, they came back home with the pre-conceived notion (or strategic objective) that the revolution of Chávez is a revolution in favor of the oppressed poor and black, against the whites. This is what they have been saying in the U.S. press, ignoring the fact that Chávez is rejected by 75% of the population and that this percentage includes 85% of brown Venezuelans. At this moment in time, the group of TransAfrica, together with the Global Women’s Strike is promoting the U.S. speaking tour of Mrs. Nora Castaneda, the President of the Women’s Development Bank in Venezuela, already mentioned above. Mrs. Castaneda is described in the invitation as a person of "African and indigenous descent," In the U.S. perhaps this means something, in the context of the existing racial war, but in Venezuela this is a laughable qualification since we are, almost all, of African and indigenous descent. In fact, the term is racist because it excludes an inevitable ingredient of our mix: the Spanish. TransAfrica has been mostly idle during the last three years. Their only activities of note since 1998 have been their visits to Cuba, Haiti and, now, Venezuela. They do not show much else in their Web site. If this all they are doing, there is a danger that they are ecoming a political tool and are abandoning their noble mission. That would be their problem and, frankly, I would not care less. It is only when they touch our lives in Venezuela that they become targets for our criticism. I offered to visit them at their headquarters in Washington D.C., in order to give them the other side of the story. I never received an answer. I would hate to think that men of the stature of Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover are already beyond the stage of being objective and into the stage of not desiring to be confused with facts. Bringing racial conflict into Venezuela, as an artificial political strategy, is a crime only equivalent to the bringing of smallpox to the Indians of the New World. The difference is that the smallpox came to us unwittingly but the racial issue is coming to us as part of a deadly, conscious, political strategy. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |