Visitors Seek a Taste of Revolution in Venezuela
Juan
Forero
The New York Times
21 de marzo de 2006
CARACAS, Venezuela — The actor
Danny Glover has come. Harry Belafonte has also been here. So has the antiwar
activist Cindy Sheehan, the prominent African-American writer Cornel West and Bolivia's new
president, Evo Morales. A student from an American university photographed
residents of a Caracas neighborhood during a visit to Venezuela, a new leftist
mecca. But
most visitors are like Cameron Durnsford, a 24-year-old student from Australia
who decided to study at a new government-financed university in Caracas. Mr.
Durnsford was, admittedly, put off some by the cult of celebrity around President
Hugo Chávez, which he says
"seems a little bit Maoist." But Venezuela's revolution, he quickly added,
was not to be missed. "You've got a nation and a leader trying to prove an
alternative to neo-liberalism and the policies that have ravaged Latin America
for 20 years," he said. "That's why people are coming here. There's a
sense that it's a moment in history." Mr. Chávez is decidedly unpopular
with the Bush administration, which he has branded a terrorist regime out to
get him. That antagonism, coupled with Mr. Chávez's huge oil-generated outlays
for social spending, is drawing a following from all over and turning Caracas
into the new leftist mecca. Evoking other cities transformed by revolutionary
leaders, like Managua, Nicaragua, in 1979, or Havana 20 years before that,
Caracas is attracting students and celebrities, academics and activists, grandmothers
and 1970's-era hippies — a new generation of Sandalistas, as some call them.
Some, including many Americans, have come to stay. But others come for a new
brand of revolutionary tourism organized by the government or by private
groups. Venezuela welcomes them all, but rolls out the red carpet for
high-profile visitors like Mr. Belafonte, the 79-year-old singer and activist.
In January, he led an American
delegation that included Mr. Glover, Mr. West and Dolores Huerta, the farm
workers' advocate. They met with Mr. Chávez, toured a neighborhood and visited
government-run programs promoted as a way to shift the country's oil wealth to
the poor. "We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full
solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution," Mr. Belafonte
told Mr. Chávez during the president's weekly television program. He called
President Bush, a constant target of Mr. Chávez's barbs, "the greatest
terrorist in the world." Then he shouted, "Viva la revolución!"
Other recent visitors have included the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Ollanta
Humala, a leading candidate in the election for president in Peru on April 9;
the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, and the Argentine Nobel laureate Adolfo
Pérez Esquivel. For less well-known Americans, the new vacation trail no longer
goes through the famed beaches of Margarita Island. Rather, groups like Global
Exchange, based in San Francisco, take visitors who pay $1,300 on a two-week
jaunt through the tumbledown barrios where support for Mr. Chávez is strongest.
The tours include visits to literacy
classes, cooperatives and government-financed media outlets. Visitors chat with
government ministers, see "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a
documentary favorable to Mr. Chávez, and meet with state oil company officials,
who explain how petrodollars are funneled to social programs. Among the speakers who have met with visitors
is Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who is dedicated to unearthing what she
claims is evidence of Washington's support for Venezuelan opposition groups,
something the Bush administration has denied.
Americans like Pat Morris, 62, from Chestnut Hill, Mass., who never had
a good impression of the Bush administration, are usually left speechless.
"I thought that our current government was lying and greedy, but I had no
idea of the long-term investment in destabilizing the country," she said,
tears in her eyes after hearing Ms. Golinger speak. Reva Batterman,
Not everyone is as enamored. Julio
Borges, an opposition politician, said that while Mr. Chávez certainly had
showered aid on the poor, he was also a strongman out to crush dissent. Instead of lionizing him, Mr. Borges said,
visitors should be aware of government ineptitude and growing abuses, like
attacks on the press, charges the government denies. "We always tell
people who come with this romantic idea of Venezuela that despite the changes
here, the people who carry out the transformation are the armed forces, that
Venezuelan democracy is basically a militarized one," he said. "You
have to have a profound concern about that. We want to take off the democratic
veil the government uses." Referring to American visitors, an American
diplomat in Caracas, who could not speak on the record because of embassy
rules, echoed the concerns, saying, "Come down here and get your
consciousness raised, absolutely." He added, "My only request of them
is that they try to get the other side of the story." "They're
frustrated with Bush, frustrated with not being listened to, frustrated with
Iraq," said Ms. Kurland, speaking in the Caracas house she shares with
several foreigners. "They don't trust Fox News. They don't trust the
mainstream news. They want to see with their own eyes what's happening
here."
She came to Venezuela thinking she
would stay just long enough to get a taste for Mr. Chávez's grandly titled
"Bolivarian revolution." A year later, she said, she has no plans to
leave anytime soon. She has taught English in government-financed classes for
the poor and talks about volunteering at a state-run microcredit bank for
women. She spends most of her time, though, leading tours for Americans who
flock here for a look at how Mr. Chávez is changing his country. There is a
precedent, of course: Fidel Castro's revolution, which
in its early years placed emphasis on "people to people" contacts
that enhanced support among vocal members of the American body politic, while
neutralizing opponents. Activists,
intellectuals and leftists have gravitated to other governments, from Allende's
Socialist Chile in the early 1970's to Sandinista-run Nicaragua in the 1980's,
which also declared ambitions to overturn the old order in their countries.
"Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Chile at one point became the mecca for
many leftists around the world," said Fernando Coronil, a University of Michigan
professor and the author of "The Magical State," a book about
Venezuela. "That has been capitalized upon by the governments of these
places, in eliciting foreign support but also as a way of focusing on certain
elements of foreign policy that have wide appeal, and not focusing on internal
problems."
Some of the people who have visited
Venezuela or have moved here acknowledge having some doubts. Chesa Boudin,