Chavez Distracts from Venezuela's Real Problems

In 1975, Gabriel García Márquez wrote The Autumn of the Patriarch.  This book mocked the dictatorships that were common in Latin America during the 1960’s and 1970’s.  In his desperate attempt to cling to power, the patriarch would create plots and fake enemies, surround himself in a tight inner circle of cronies, and order atrocities against all those who even thought of replacing him.  When I read this book many years ago, I thought that the patriarch’s behavior was merely inspired by the history of Cuba. I was wrong. Hugo Chavez’s recent illness, the secrecy around it, the intrigue about who will be the successor, and his brother claiming that he will take arms to continue the Bolivarian revolution are all worthy of being episodes of the Autumn of the Patriarch.

Many of my Venezuelan friends, who are not Chavistas, are convinced that the illness is just a distraction from what is happening in Venezuela.   They say that the illness will drive attention away from the fact that Venezuela is one of the most dangerous places on earth, that there is an ongoing electricity crisis, that the prison system has collapsed, and that the country is only outperforming Haiti (which, unfortunately, is not a very high bar).  Whether the illness is real or not, what is happening in the country should be the fiction, as opposed to the reality.

The uncertainty that Chavez’s illness has brought to Venezuela and its future is what the regime is really about.  It is about Chavez and his cronies, not about Venezuela.  It is about clinging to power, not about solving the country's problems.  The socialism of the 21st century is collapsing just like the socialism of the 20th century did. The rest of Latin America's leaders have a responsibility to their people to not follow Chavez’s recipe and to not turn their countries into chapters in a novel from the 70’s.