Hugo Chavez – Page 2 – The Pull Of The Land

A Venezuelan Second Amendment?

September 20, 2019September 21, 2019 Richard Barnes

Since I believe the articles alluded to in this post are worthy of the reader’s time and consideration, I will keep my own words brief so as to afford you the time to read the articles and ponder them on your own.

The group, Rumbo Libertad, has proposed a Venezuelan Second Amendment. Unsurprisingly, the official “opposition” opposes this and has gone so far as to ratify the Chavez era’s gun control policy, “also known as Ley Desarme [Law of Disarmament], implying with his arguments that criminals and law-abiding citizens are equal…. Guaidó used the fact that socialist thugs disguise themselves as police to attack unarmed citizens as an argument to keep self-defense weapons out of … citizen’s hands.”

The current Venezuelan constitution stipulates that only the State can possess arms and that this must be enforced by the official armed forces.

How convenient.

I have no connection with Rumbo Libertad. I do not know any of its leadership. I do not know anything about it other than what I am presenting to you in this post. However, I am tickled to see that there is a brave group in Venezuela who appeals to Natural Law (presumably they mean the law of Nature’s God, as in our Declaration) and to the United States Constitution.

The second link below is to the Rumbo Libertad position on self-defense. Please note that it is in Spanish.

For a more general-readership, the World article (first link below) is excellent.

“The idea of having the means to protect your home was seen as only needed out in the fields. People never would have believed they needed to defend themselves against the government,” Vanegas explained. “Venezuelans evolved to always hope that our government would be non-tyrannical, non-violator of human rights, and would always have a good enough control of criminality.”

That is an astounding statement which could only be made or believed by a people unwilling to look beyond yesterday’s headlines.

Venezuela’s “revolution” was perhaps the most violent and bloody of the lot. “Leaders” ranging from Bolivar to Bove spilled countless gallons of civilian and prisoner blood, as is usually the case in “revolutions” which attempt to impose an ideology as opposed to a defense of hearth and home. After the revolutionary wars, criminality was incredible. Once dictators began to rule, criminality receded to a point where ladies and children could walk freely, undisturbed, even at night. Then criminality made a comeback, along with tyranny. By the late 90’s, it spiked back to the frightening levels of today.

“Much of the crime has been attributed by analysts to government-backed gangs — referred to in Spanish as ‘collectivos’ [sic]– who were deliberately put in place by the government.”

“So while Venezuelan citizens were stripped of their legal recourse to bear arms, the ‘collectivos’ [sic]– established by Chavez when he came to power — were legally locked and loaded. Deemed crucial to the survival of the socialist dictatorship, the ‘collectivos’ [sic] function to brutally subjugate opposition groups, while saving some face as they aren’t officially government forces, critics contend.”

The article doesn’t mention it, but the use of armed thugs as collectives is based on the Cuban model. Nor does the article mention that Chavez and Guaidó are in agreement with experts in modern history, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, who also believed in disarming their citizens. Most recently, the China-controlled Global Times published a smarmy article about the need for gun control in the United States.

Thanks for the advice.

Maribel Arias, 35, who fled to the Colombian border with her family two years ago – living mostly on the streets as she and her husband take turns finding odd jobs while sharing the parenting duties for their four children – said Venezuelans cannot rely on the nation’s law enforcement.

“Crimes are committed by police, a lot of the criminals are police themselves,” Saul Moros, 59, from the Venezuelan city of Valencia (left). Luis Farias, 48, said gun violence was bad when guns were freely available – but became much worse after the so-called prohibition. (Fox News/Hollie McKay)

Having been born in Venezuela, the photos and captions above strongly tug at my heart.

One final pull quote: “The problem from the beginning and still now is that there are too many people in Venezuela who are lawless.”

Well said and very applicable to us here in the United States. To be free, we must know how to govern our own selves. Put another way, the most basic government is self government.

I think it was William Penn who said, “You will be governed by God, or, by God, you will be governed.” Put in another, more contemporary way, “Either govern yourself or be governed by tyrants.”

That’s a problem not only in Venezuela, but increasingly here in the United States as well.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/venezuelans-regret-gun-prohibition-we-could-have-defended-ourselves
Policy to institutionalize the right to bear arms.

The link below is in Spanish. If you are able to read in Spanish, you will note the appeal to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:

https://rumbolibertad.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/PROPUESTA-DE-POLÍTICA-PARA-INSTITUCIONALIZAR-LA-PROPIEDAD-DE-ARMAS-EN-VENEZUELA-1.pdf

Nationalization and Military Dissent

August 25, 2019August 25, 2019 Richard Barnes

In the late 1970’s, I took an extended leave to visit the country of my birth. During that most memorable trip, I had the joyful pleasure of meeting countless individuals and families, who, in true Venezuelan fashion were not shy in sharing their opinions about the direction the country was taking at the time.

That direction was, in a word, “nationalization” or forced divestment, principally of the iron ore and petroleum industries. This phenomenon was worldwide at the time, especially in Africa and Latin America, and it had devastating consequences.

What I saw — gargantuan enterprises with protean manufacturing plants, power centers, chemical processors, and assorted buildings and dormitories, accompanied by massive hirings of blue and white collar workforces and countless foreign workers, some of whom were housed on cruise ships docked on the Orinoco — did not “pass the sniff test”.

I had a number of vigorous but mostly friendly debates on the merits of government-run versus privately run operations. Already the mining camp where I was born had shown deterioration. One lady expressed sincere surprise at this, “How is it that now that this belongs to us, we haven’t managed to maintain it, let alone improve it?”

“Could it be that when something belongs to ‘us all’ it actually belongs to no one?” was one refrain I found myself repeating throughout the trip.

At my expressed concern about the immense power and wealth being concentrated in the Venezuelan government, something usually seen in Communist or Socialist regimes, the usual reply by those who disagreed with my concerns, was along the lines of, ‘it’s about time that “our” wealth remained here instead of being transferred to the United States.'”

Conversely, the reply by those who somewhat agreed with my concerns was along the lines of, “the Venezuelan military would never allow the government to devolve into outright Socialism or Communism.”

Interestingly, neither camp was concerned about what all this nationalization activity would lead to. In one heated and less friendly exchange, a more recent acquaintance at the time ridiculed my concerns, expressing disdain that I would question the massive wealth now owned by the Venezuelan people. He mocked my assertion that the people actually “owned” nothing. It was all owned by the state.

According to a scholarly analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City in 2013, “Nationalization brought considerable declines in productivity in the oil industries of the sample countries. Productivity fell by more than 70 percent in the Venezuelan oil industry. Despite enormous efforts put into expansion, it took Venezuelan’s nationalized industry about 20 years to return to its early 1960’s productivity levels.”

Sadly, shortly after the 20 years, another, more serious wave of nationalization was launched with even more catastrophic results. To take just one example, the enormous Venezuelan steelworks, Sidor, the crown of Venezuelan heavy industry, saw its production go from 4 million tons of steel in 2007, the year before its nationalization by the Chavez Socialist government, to 1.5 million in 2014, with triple the number of employees. Between late October, 2013 and August 2014, it had operated for only 90 days. I have no access to more recent figures nor would I trust them if I did.

Well, the wealth is gone for the most part; other than the billions in the private foreign bank accounts of a relative handful of Socialists. As for the massive mineral and petroleum reserves, those await the capital and the expertise to extract it. That explains the intense interest and activity in Venezuela on the part of both China and Russia.

As to the military, in later trips, friends were more subdued as they told me of the heavy Cuban influence in the Venezuelan forces. Why was this not being reported, they wondered.

Fidel Castro ruthlessly applied the tactic of buying or otherwise coopting the military. A tactic he taught Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. Hence, the failure of the Venezuelan military to “never allow the government to devolve into outright Socialism or Communism.”

To read more about the emasculation of the Venezuelan military, refer to the Reuters article linked below, “How Cuba Taught Venezuela to Quash Military Dissent”. The article is appreciated, but why did it not appear a decade ago when it might have made a difference?

https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=CEF2014&paper_id=90
The macroeconomic analysis of the negative impact of nationalization on productivity

https://www.yahoo.com/news/special-report-cuba-taught-venezuela-121454933.html

Envy

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019 Richard Barnes

“He was the greatest Argentine since San Martín. But two things can never be forgiven him. He created class hatred in a country that had never had it, and he ruined agriculture by siphoning off labor into the towns.” — Inside South America, p. 184

“Los débiles invocan la justicia: déseles la justicia: déseles la fuerza, y serán tan injustos como sus opresores.” [The weak invoke justice. Give them justice; give them force, and they will be as unjust as their oppressors.] — Andrés Bello, Estudios de Crítica Histórica

The former quote was spoken by an Argentine when asked for his opinion about Juan Perón. The quote is most perceptive and applies not only to Perón but to a majority of western 20th and 21st century politicians. Like the more successful ones, Perón was — to Peronistas — charismatic, with big teeth and a wide, easy smile. His method was to preach unity while inciting class hatred. In this regard, class includes wealth, race, religion, sex, fill-in-the-blank. The method also requires perpetuating a permanent sense of guilt for events that may have taken place long before the current generation was a twinkle in its parents’ eyes. Guilt weakens a people and also destroys their love for their country. It makes a people more easily manipulated by politicians. The unscrupulous know this. It would behoove the rest of us to know it too.

Have you noticed that this “method”, the inciting of class envy (although it is rarely, if ever, reported as envy), is intensely promoted by Socialist and Communist politicians? Those ideologies cannot survive without an incentive to “get even” or to create discord among a people. That alone ought to warn us to be wary of non-Socialist politicians who labor along the same path.

In the case of Venezuela, as alluded in prior posts, the country’s problems did not begin with Chavez. That gives him too much credit. The issues predated him by generations by men and women who prepared the way for him.

Venezuela was one of the most prosperous South American countries. Refer to the earlier post, Chile vs. Venezuela, for a 2-minute précis on this. She enjoyed great economic freedom, and this, under military dictatorships. I was born under one of those, the Pérez Jimenez regime. I remember in childhood rubbing shoulders with friends from all social and economic strata of society. I do not recall folks fomenting class warfare or envy.

Later in life I came to realize that under the dictatorship, we did not enjoy a free press nor did we have universal suffrage. However, we did enjoy high levels of freedom, including freedom of mobility, freedom of commerce, freedom in society, and, certainly, freedom in our homes. We had nowhere near the restrictions the peoples of Eastern Europe or Mao’s China, both atheistic regimes, were struggling under.

In the first half of the 20th century Venezuela became an economic powerhouse. As the petroleum, and later the iron ore, industries surged, Venezuela ensured it remained in private hands. The dictators understood that the state did not have the expertise to manage such vast, far flung operations; they left them in the hands of the international companies but did charge royalties and obtained other concessions in return. This arrangement ensured increasing prosperity for her people as well as great advances in local technology and culture. This was a period of phenomenal progress in research and discovery. To cite just one example, the diamond knife (or scalpel) was invented in the 1950’s by Venezuelan Humberto Fernández-Morán Villalobos (1924-1999). This “significantly advanced the development of electromagnetic lenses for electron microscopy based on superconductor technology and many other scientific contributions.”

As for state spending, it was mostly focused on the country’s roads, airports, schools, and universities. The Caracas skyline and the country’s expressways became the envy of South America. State-owned companies were few.

Nevertheless, the state began to encroach in the early 50’s, expropriating the telephone and other companies. This was very limited, but the seeds of intervention were sown and when Venezuela became a democracy, the whirlwind began to be reaped. Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president, one who is revered in Venezuela, was first a Communist who then forsook Communism and became a Socialist, although he spurned that label. Folks do not like to recall that he founded the Communist Party in Costa Rica when in exile there and had a hand in founding the Communist Party in Colombia as well.

We should not be surprised that he immediately proposed, and the legislature approved, price and rent controls, something previously unheard of in Venezuela; a solution seeking for a problem. He worked to create a new constitution which was not friendly to private property.

It’s easy to forget all of that because we had so much more economic and other freedoms back then than what is the case today. But it is necessary to remember that the process began generations ago. Hugo Chavez merely took it to the next level. Speaking philosophically, he was epistemologically consistent, unafraid to take his faith to its logical conclusion.

And his successor, Nicolás Maduro (or his regime’s philosophy) will remain in power so long as his “opponents” refuse to honestly declare their own complicity in what has happened to that stricken land. And an ugly manifestation of that power is the murdering of youth who are resisting what is happening to their homes and country.

A new regime will not arise so long as the opposition refuses to denounce its own love affair with Socialism and its accompanying appeal to envy.

During my last visit to Venezuela, in 2005, I conversed with a taxi driver who expressed satisfaction that the Chavez government had expropriated property that belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The taxi driver was a protestant and was pleased with Chavez’ denunciation of that Church. I asked him whether Protestants did not care for the Ten Commandments. “Of course we do!” he replied.

“Well, I am also a Protestant. However, theft is wrong, regardless whether the state steals from atheists, or Protestants, or even Roman Catholics. Don’t you agree?”

He, of course, saw the point. But the fact I had to point it out to him, was ominous. Chavez, with a wide smile and ingratiating style, was superb in fomenting envy and class hatred, even among the religious.

The country of my birth needs to re-discover its Christian roots and look beyond politics to the Creator and Redeemer God, to whom all allegiance belongs. She must, once again, see that salvation is not in the State or, heaven forbid(!), in politicians, who, like little Caesars, revel in usurping what belongs to God.

Meanwhile, we are left with the unhappy fact that Venezuelans struggle every single day. “The collapse of Venezuela has been the worst recorded for any nation in nearly 50 years, outside of war.”

Andrés Bello (see blog post “Simón Bolivar III — Influences”), was prescient when he wrote the above quoted citation, circa 1830, decades before the publication of Das Kapital and eighteen years before that of The Communist Manifesto. He understood the human heart and its wickedness and he knew that the politics of envy would never satisfy but rather foment anger and discontent. No ideology will fix man’s heart, which is the source of all human misery.

My heart yearns for and is pained for the land of my birth.