The best reason to dislike Hugo Chávez is not that he’s a Marxist or a tyrant or anti-American or any other such silliness of the likes you find in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. The best reason to dislike Hugo Chávez is that after 11 years, it’s safe to say he’s failed as a president.
A recent illustration of this is a report from an NGO indicating that murders have almost tripled in Venezuela since Chávez took office in 1998. That year, there were 4,550 murders; in 2009, there were 16,047, or about 53 for every 100,000 people, putting Venezuela in the top three most murder-prone countries in the world.
Crime is a complicated issue, and people are right to point out that crime and police corruption were a problem before Chávez came to power. But he had 11 years, the most amazing pile of cash in the history of the country, and total control of the legislature. A skilled leader and manager with those kinds of resources could have at least kept a lid on things.
Instead, according to the same report, the Chávez government has launched a total of 15 half-cocked anti-crime initiatives, none of which has accomplished anything. As a gruesome illustration of their failure, in only the last 15 days, 230 people were murdered in Caracas.
Other examples of Chávez’ mismanagement of the country and the enormous oil bonanza he was handed last decade abound: power outages, surging inflation, capital flight, poor access to water, a brain-drain, etc. All of these are debatable to some extent.
But you can’t argue away bodies, and they’re really piling up.
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5 Comments
Is it just in Venezuela?
what about Colombia Honduras Guatemala Mexico and others, for god’s sake there was a war in Sao Paulo few months ago.
it isn’t about Hugo
Drugs, drugs, drugs, and drugs. There’s no significant cartel presence in Venezuela, it’s just poor people killing each other in the barrios, one by one. And anyway, in the last decade or two, Bogota has gone from being the most dangerous city in the world to kind of nice, while Caracas has gone from being kind of nice to extremely dangerous, so there’s more going on than just “everything is getting violent.”
so you blame the government for the violence?
you know there’s more prisoners in the US than in China, there’s more crime, which means-using your method-that the chinese government is better and more successful than the government in the US!
When the murder rate triples during the time a leader of a political entity and his party hold near complete power over the legislature, the courts, and the local government – and they have tons and tons of cash as well – I think it’s fair to blame that leader and that party.
you don’t?
if I do then I am admitting that dictatorships are much better than democracies.
you should look at the map before you judge a government for insecurity, you should look at the social structure too.
what can governments do about security in the case of that region when you have a hub of a crime near you?
they sent troops in El Salvador to the streets and it didn’t work out, it’s even worse.
it’s really not objective nor realistic to blame Chavez for just 11 years in office, you can’t change society and a region in 11 years, blame him for other stuff but not for crime, coz simply it doesn’t work that way.