Film maker in Caracas speaks

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Firstly, let me present my 'credentials' before joining this discussion. I am Irish, I have a PhD in political economy and I am a former freelance documentary maker. I currently live in Venezuela, where I run a small business with my Venezuelan wife. I have been here this time round for about 3 years, although I've been visiting the country on and off for the last 15 years. During my time here I have been an active participant in that political process which many of its proponents like to consider a 'revolution', although I personally wouldn't use the word. I would consider myself an informed and critical supporter of the current Venezuelan government, insofar as I would support any government which seriously attempts to alleviate structural poverty, improve access to health care, recognise indigenous land rights, and promote gender equity, for example. President Hugo Chavez has made considerable headway in these areas, and I believe it behoves any critically-minded person to recognise such advances, just as it also is reasonable to draw attention to this government's errors and omissions. On balance, I would conclude that Chavez has done 'more good than harm', both within Venezuela and at an international level: most notably in his efforts to galvanise South American and Caribbean integration and foster autonomy from historic United States' efforts to assert the primacy of its own political and economic agenda over the best interests of the region's (non-elite) populations. This evaluation doesn't make me a fool, a fanatical communist nor a blind follower of an autocratic self-serving tyrant, as his critics like to portray Chavez. As I understand it, this really is the thrust of the article that stimulated this discussion, the fact that Chavez has the audacity to envisage and attempt to shape a Venezuela which freely determines its own political and economic allegiances in the interests of its own people. Chavez seems to provoke such vitriol in his opponents inside and outside Venezuela, especially in the States (I confess to being a Fox TV watcher!). What are they/you afraid of? A successful democratic socialist state: the "threat of a good example"?, as Oxfam once put it when discussing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, before they were ground into temporary submission in face of a US early-version 'Full Spectrum' onslaught. Yes, come to Venezuela, and stay for a while, and you will be dismayed by electricty black-outs, crime levels, the extent of the penetration of drugs into all socio-economic sectors, corruption, inefficiency, lack of forward planning, etc. Thank God rum is so cheap!!!! Believe me, it's much easier to do business (indeed, to live) in Western Europe. However, to accentuate the negative, and to deny the very real existence of the postive achievements of Chavez, would be to ignore the evidence that in social psychological, cultural and economic terms 'something' has happened in this country; and that the same 'something' is happening across much of Latin America. Call it 'Communism', '21st Century Socialism', 'Anti-imperialism' or 'Liberation Theology' ' or whatever you wish. In essence, those marginalised people (and they predominantly are indigenous/Afro-Latino/'Mulatto') who historically have been excluded from the body politic since the arrival of Columbus until recently, are now claiming their 'piece of the pie'. Like it or not. In the second half of the 20th century, US sponsored dictatorships (Brazil, Chile) or quasi-democracies (Venezuela) brutally kept a lid on the aspirations of the poor across South America. I believe that - short of a series of outright continent-wide, bloody and massively destructive conflicts between local elites and newly-empowered populations - the US will no longer be able to subjugate the South American poor by proxy without direct and enormous military involvement, not withstanding its success in Columbia, a massive recipient of US military aid. So what is the US agenda in South America? Destabilisation? Terrorising into submission national efforts - in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Equador - to establish a bona fide politically-, economically- and socially-equitable alternative to the US/European model of capitalist free-market representative democracy? Evidently. How far are they prepared to go to achieve these aims? Let's not kid ourselves, we all know the answer. It could get very, very messy in South America. Nevertheless, as a self-proclaimed Socialist it would be disingenuous at best and cowardly at worst not to stick it out down here in the Bolivarian Republic and continue critically to support the region's peoples as they seek to realise their own visions of the future, rather than have them imposed by the White House and Wall Street. So, in the face of US 'terrorism' against the 'South American Dream', one is compelled to remember the words of Bush II - "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists". In that case: "Viva Chavez!"