A somewhat hilarious AP article out today profiles Chávez’ efforts to arm and train some kind of civilian militia force. Frankly, it sounds like a rip-roaring good time: Take a few days off work (unless you weren’t doing anything anyway), play army with real guns, blow things up, etc.
I have family members who do this on weekends, and have at times participated. I can vouch for the entertainment value.
But Noticias24 has gotten its panties in a twist over the fact that the drill sergeants encourage their recruits to “kill those gringos!” This brings up an interesting question that several people have asked me in the last few weeks: Do Venezuelans hate Americans?
I’ve only traveled in Venezuela three times, so my experience is somewhat limited. But what I’ve seen is that while the president of Venezuela talks a lot of smack, Venezuelans still watch baseball and drive American cars and take shopping trips to Miami and sell most of their oil to the United States. They will not hesitate to give you a piece of their minds, but they will also buy you a wijky and invite you home to meet the family.
Probably their essential Caribbeanness has something to do with it.
But also, the thing is, to hate people from another culture, it helps to have been personally hurt by that culture in some way. All the macroeconomics, international politics, and military strategy that Chávez alludes to in his lengthy Sunday ramblings are perhaps outrageous, but abstractly so for your average Venezuelan.
In my experience, you’re much more likely to get hated on for your gringoness in Nicaragua or Mexico, where direct interaction with norteamericanos has often been distinctly unpleasant. In contrast, for many decades Venezuelans got employment, training, an improved standard of living, and some pretty decent-sized piles of oil cash from their contact with the gringos.
So if you want to see real gut-level gringo-hating in Venezuela, I think you’ll have to wait till US Marines are camped out in Miraflores and drawing mustaches on the Bolivar portraits. Until then, it’s just a game.
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3 Comments
Very good piece. I’m going to pick you up on this passage…..
“….In contrast, for many decades Venezuelans got employment, training, an improved standard of living, and some pretty decent-sized piles of oil cash from their contact with the gringos…..”
Because it sidesteps one of the main Chavismo issues, namely that the oil money never did get to the masses, just the top strata (the one that hold the MSM strings today) got the benefit. But that’s just me picking at nits. A good read indeed and I agree that non-directly intervened countries have (on the whole) a benign attitude towards gringos and EvilEmpire stuff.
Good point as far as the piles of oil cash, but there are a couple generations of engineers and professionals running around Zulia today who would otherwise be subsistence farmers/fishermen. My father-in-law, for example, has a Master’s degree in engineering from Stanford, paid for with oil money. Which I guess goes a long way toward explaining why Zulia has always been more wary of chavismo than Caracas has.
Interaction with the U.S. may have been beneficial for Venezuela’s bourgeois elite, but for the 65% of Venezuelans who live in the barrios and before Chavez came to office didn’t have access to clean water, electricity, medical care, or education, this U.S. dependency has been nothing but awful. Even so, these people have no hatred for Americans (other than, perhaps, George Bush and Dick Cheney). I spent my time in Venezuela being excitedly dragged from one event to another; the people were so excited to share with me their successes. “Please,” one woman said to me, “Tell them in your country that our president is not a dictator. We don’t want George Bush’s war here!” And for what it’s worth, Chavez is always clear in his speeches: He loves the American people. It is our imperialist, interventionist government he detests.
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