Interview with President Chavez

Interview with President Chavez (Part Two)
Sunday, Nov 23, 2003         *Print format 
<http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1060>*



/By: Ralph Niemeyer and Lucila Gallino/

*Part one of this interview can be found at: 
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1055*

/The verbal capacity is inherent in the culture of this people and the 
power of the word has reached a point of warfare through the media.  The 
credibility of the word in this country would appear to be in crisis.  
Perhaps this is a failure of the capacity  of the Government to transmit 
the process?/

I believe that this reflection can be applied to the whole world that is 
subject to the advance of telecommunications, to the force of the voice 
that has nothing to do with the reality that is so often disconnected 
from reality.  Many times there are perverse voices that deceive 
millions.  A little like what the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano 
says:  “Never have so few deceived so many.”

Here in Venezuela part of the battle has been in the media.  
Inevitably.  But this is not new.  For already more than a decade we 
have been subjected to an intensive communications bombardment, 
debilitating for any movement.  You say that credibility has been 
reduced.  This depends on how you see it, from the sectors of the upper 
classes I do not have much hope in their believing in me because they 
are poisoned.  Many suffer from a psychotic disassociation, that is, 
dissociation from reality, according to the psychologists.  What does 
concern us is that the serious part of the country, the objective part 
believes us.

Of course, the level of credibility in the word of the government is 
important. A short time ago, on a Sunday we called together all the high 
school graduates who had never found a place in the universities.  We 
had estimated 200,000 persons in the act.  Nevertheless, we had an 
avalanche of 500,000 persons up to 80 and 90 years of age who answered 
our call to learn to read and write.

/The Spanish writer, Antonio Gala, said once that the problem of man is 
not the flesh, or hell or the devil, but the banks.  Is it because of 
this that Venezuelans cannot end up by taking charge of their own 
problems?  To what point do you break with globalization?/

The banks …. Someone said that the bankers have no heart.  Above all in 
this world that is in the neoliberal phase of capitalism.  The banks 
block development with all these mechanisms of speculative bubbles that 
they have generated.

Here there was a crisis of the banks in 96 when thousands of Venezuelans 
lost their lifelong savings.  Thousands and millions of dollars were 
taken from the country.  Now the blame not only belongs to the banks, it 
also belongs to the governments, it is the lack of political will, lack 
of national consciousness, so that each one occupies his space, we have 
been reviewing that in our constitution, a new law of banks was 
approved, new instruments for the supervision of banks are being 
developed, nevertheless, we are far from having a bank sector that is 
conscious of the needs of the country.  But that is part of the battle.

Here there was an attempt from some banks to join a destabilizing 
movement.  I gave them an ultimatum.  “If you do not open the banks and 
pay the people, I am going to intervene the banks.”  Here they imposed a 
forced savings plan during the coup d´etat and sabotage.  And the people 
standing on line and they wouldn´t open the doors for them and the money 
was there, but they wouldn´t open the doors of the banks, or they didn´t 
deliver money.  But by their decision.  That did not meet an economic 
but rather a political rationale.  The attempt was to remove Chavez from 
the government, I gave them a period and told them:  they began to open 
and pay the people what they had to pay …  And here they are…

/It has been said that you have to be tamed.  Even after strong shocks 
that your government has received and comments such as those of former 
President Carlos Andrés Pérez who has said that he would call for a 
civic military action to take power.  Moreover, it is said that in one 
of the richest regions of Venezuela there would be movements to conform 
a separate Republic to divide the country.  How do you foresee the new 
move of the opposition to remove you from power?/

Look, we are speaking about the topic of scenarios. You have prepared 
quotes and references very well.  I do not speak about the dead, rather 
I want to speak about realities.   I refer to the political dead, to the 
moral dead, to unburied, putrefying bodies.

I prefer to quote Aristotle.  And I am beginning to read a good book by 
Noam Chomsky that is called “The Common Good.” Chomsky begins by 
speaking of Aristotle and his formula.  I am thinking and pondering over 
it, and comparing it with our time and our space.  Aristotle said that 
the problem of an enriched minority and an impoverished majority is 
contrary to and denies democracy, that if one wants a true democracy it 
would be necessary to solve the problem by formulating two solutions; 
either reduce poverty or reduce democracy.  In our case we have chosen 
to reduce poverty and increase democracy.

But here another problem is generated that Aristotle did not foresee in 
his time and it is the reaction of the privileged elite that is seeking 
a Pinochet, any tyrant to attack the rights of those majorities.

Here in Venezuela we have that:  a privileged minority that is opposed 
to a full project, a full participatory democracy where they also 
participated because that wealthy class participated in this debate, but 
they do not accept the democratic game, then later they invented the 
matter of the coup d´etat, because they are trying to cause 
institutional shocks.

/What happens with those intellectuals in Latin America, as is the case 
with Gabriel García Márquez, who some years earlier supported you and 
now seem to have changed their opinion.  What is the contribution that 
these Latin American intellectuals are making to your process?/

You would have to ask García Márquez.  I have a commitment with the Hugo 
Chávez that I am.  My commitment is to life.  There are all kinds of 
Latin American intellectuals.  There are many good writers who are 
illiterate; there is the case of a Peruvian called Vargas Llosa.  I 
learned to know and love his writing, his art;  I will never forget when 
I was a boy, 14 years old, and I read “La ciudad y los perros”.   Later, 
I did a little research on him.  I also read other books.   “La fiesta 
del Chivo” on the life of the Dominican dictator, Rafael Leonidas 
Trujillo.    Without a doubt, he is an eminent writer, but he is an 
illiterate, in that he is unable to read the reality of his people, he 
even changed his Peruvian nationality for the Spanish nationality.  I 
was reading a few minutes ago that there was a meeting in Madrid led by 
him, where he created a foundation against Chávez and against Lula.  The 
Spanish foreign ministry attended the ceremony.  This indicates a little 
how things are going in Madrid ….

There are all types of intellectuals.  There is a group that was even 
part of the left, but that could not understand the world.  In respect 
to the right to think and say what one thinks.  But I follow Bolívar who 
said:  “Before the claims of those who believe that they are wise, I 
prefer the advice of the people.”  The people indeed are wise.

/When does this passion for history, this enthusiasm for reading that 
you take as a sport arise?/

Reading has always been a constant in my life. Through culture, study, 
we began to see the truth.  Study and above all reading freed us from 
darkness.  This is the thesis of Pablo Freire: “The importance of the 
act of reading”, it is an act of self-improvement.  Yes, you obtain the 
edge of the freeing sword through reading.

I discovered the truth of the history of Bolívar one night when I was on 
duty as a soldier.  We were never told that Bolívar was thrown out of 
Venezuela.  I remember that I read a letter from Bolívar that says 
something like:  “I am waiting for a moment of despair to finish with 
this life that is my disgrace”.  Then I began to ask.  Who treated him 
here so badly?  Is it that those who opposed him wanted to take away 
properties, empty him spiritually?  I asked:  “But why the liberator?”  
Who expelled him?  Were they the Spaniards?  Hadn´t they already gone?  
It was General Páez.  I admired Páez for a long time, and I continue to 
admire his persona and his value as an almost invincible warrior.  Later 
he defeated the people.  At the end he lost his moral posture and what 
Mao Tse Tung said came about:  “At the end the war terminates in the 
favor of the side that has a moral position”.  In that period, they were 
against Bolivar eliminating slavery, distributing land, giving education 
to blacks.  Starting from my studies of Bolivar, I began to become free 
and become a rebel.  “I rebel and then I exist”, as Camus says.

For this reason in our plan of Government a liberating process comes in 
this last stage, in this most recent period, which we call Misión 
Robinson.  This is a program to read and write based on one carried out 
in Cuba that produced excellent results and is for those who did not 
have the possibility to become literate.

We realized that we had a debt to the people and that is how the library 
also arose and now we are publishing several million books more.  We 
have libraries in the classrooms.  The most important is Misión 
Robinson, I believe that many are sharpening the sword of light.

/What is your relationship with President Fidel Castro.  Is he something 
like a brother, a friend? What role does Fidel have in your life?/

Fidel has always been an example.  I was a soldier and always read him, 
about his life, his speeches.  I remember that one night I was on duty 
with other cadets and we looked for a channel to hear music and suddenly 
from Havana I hear Castro´s speech.   This was the period of the coup 
against Allende.  I´ll never forget a phrase of Fidel:  “If each worker, 
if each laborer, would have had a rifle in his hands, the fascist 
Chilean coup against Allende would not have taken place”.

For years, Fidel was  a reference, above all moral.  In ideological 
matters, it could be said that I am partly, even though I am not 
communist, I am a follower of Martí and above all of Bolívar.  And I 
believe that Fidel has always been a bolivarian.  And if you study José 
Martí, you find Bolívar.

A little while ago I answered a letter to Fidel, because he sent me a 
long letter, a kind of treatise on morality, politics, history, 
reflections. Then I write to him after having read one of those 
manuscript pages. And in one of the sentences that I wrote, my soul 
poured out and I wrote at the end:  From now on I don´t know whether to 
call you brother or father”.

/In this “Matrix”, are you the chosen person?/

No, I don´t like the sound of that. I was elected, yes.  I am one of 
those elected by the people, I am not a chosen person.  I do not want to 
give it that connotation.

/How do you consider yourself as a leader?  You are not the typical 
president, a traditional westerner who has studied in Harvard 
University, you are not a blond-haired person who conducts himself as a 
formal President, according to your own functionaries you are considered 
as “the other President”./

You know, I am not President.  I am a citizen but I believe myself to be 
a soldier citizen, of flesh and bone, nerve and spirit.  Now that I have 
a jacket, a band that they placed on me, this is something else.  I am 
Chávez.  Will I be the other president?  I prefer to say that I feel 
like the first President of a wave of Presidents. I reached this 
position through the people, I did not arrive to betray that people.  In 
that sense I am Hugo, Hugo Chávez, the citizen, the soldier and, well, a 
President.

But not “The Other President.” I hope that those who come after me, come 
with a commitment, a line of thinking, and above all, what is important 
is to remove the poor, the needy from the situation in which they have 
lived for such a long time.

/When you wake up in the morning, are you afraid for how long your 
government may last?/

Do I think about that?  No, I don´t.  This is going to last a long time.

/Apparently, the Manual on the Perfect Coup D´Etat is being perfected … 
I don´t know if they are going to achieve it or if it is a strong desire …/

[laughter]  No, here they are not going to achieve it.  Here they 
couldn´t even apply the method that they applied to Allende.  They 
wanted to apply methods of destabilizers to remove a President, 
obligating him to resign.  Recently there was an African country with a 
similar situation.  Here they tried to apply new formulas.  Our formula 
is not perfect, but it has great strength.

Here there is a conscious people, a mass of people, every day stronger, 
a military mass joined with the people, there is a government that works 
a lot that does not rest during the day  or at night and there is a 
project in which we deeply believe.

Every day I feel greater strength in this project.  I see that new 
leaders are arising.  And the day will come when they will not see me 
any longer because I am not indispensable.  There are those who say that 
if I disappear, this whole project would crumble.  But that is not true.

I returned with such emotion because hundreds of thousands of people had 
surrounded Miraflores Palace.  Then little by little one begins to 
realize, above all in the last stage, when male and female leaders 
arise, and these beautiful flowers bud and full of hope (he indicates 
the red roses in front of him).  This process is an avalanche of the 
people.



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