Delusions of the Conquered

[Siblesz]

The article summarizes the struggle of mind for which I fought and lost dearly for. Must read for anyone interested in any form of politics.

As Elections Loom, Venezuela’s Opposition Won’t Commit to Participation

Last Thursday the New York Times ran a remarkable profile of the Venezuelan opposition. Titled “Rifts Plague Anti-Chavez Venezuelans[1],” Times reporter Juan Forero details the chaos that marks Venezuelan opposition parties in the run-up to this year’s presidential elections. Significantly, these rifts are not ideological in nature—precious little of the discussion centers on values, ideas or agendas. The split within the anti-Chavez faction involves whether or not they will participate in elections at all. Having controlled all aspects of Venezuelan political life for generations before President Chavez was elected in 1998, the traditional parties are fighting over whether they will commit to democracy.

The Times describes presidential candidate Julio Borges as a lonely voice within the mainstream opposition for encouraging participation in the elections. While other anti-Chavez leaders claim that despite repeated failures at the ballot box, they actually represent the hearts and minds of most Venezuelans, Borges seems to understand that a large majority of Venezuelans are happy with their president.

"We spent seven years trying to get Chávez out of Miraflores," Mr. Borges said, referring to the presidential palace. "What we have to do is get Chávez out of people's hearts."

In other political realities, this condescending statement might be seen as a negative way to frame a campaign, but within the often-bizarre psychology of Venezuelan opposition leaders, it represents a huge step toward facing reality. For the first time, a major anti-Chavez candidate recognizes the deep support of the President by his countrymen.

Self-Destructive Tactics

Attend any pro-Chavez rally in Venezuela, and you’ll see T-shirts, signs and hats that read “Chavez los tiene locos.” Loosely translated, the meaning is “Chavez has ‘em going crazy,” in reference to the opposition. The Chavistas have a good point. In the past six years, guttural hatred of the president and flat-out denial of his broad support have plagued the opposition, and led to catastrophic tactical choices.

In 2002, when rebel military officials conspired with Venezuelan business leaders and a corrupt labor federation to kidnap President Chavez, and then enlisted the help of national media outlets to spin the coup as a “democratic” move, Venezuelans came out to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to demand the return of their elected leader. Coup leaders were shaken when democracy was restored after two days, as many of them honestly believed that they had widespread popular support for the takeover.

Later that year, when oil executives tried forcing Chavez out of office through a three- month worker lockout that collapsed the Venezuelan economy, the opposition further alienated themselves from the Venezuelan electorate, many of whom suffered profoundly from shortages of food, cooking oil, gasoline and electricity.

During the 2004 recall referendum, opposition groups, led by the U.S.-funded NGO Sumate, publicized phony exit polls to undermine President Chavez’s decisive 60-40 victory. International observers immediately condemned the move, and former President Jimmy Carter held a press conference to denounce Sumate who, in his words, “deliberately distributed this erroneous exit poll data in order to build up, not only the expectation of victory, but also to influence the people still standing in line.”[2] Anti-Chavez groups responded with a campaign of harassment against Carter, and many continue to deny the international observers’ conclusion that the results were legitimate.

Last fall, the largest opposition parties pulled out just days before congressional elections were held, when polls showed they would lose by wide margins. A week earlier, they had gone to the Organization of American States (OAS) with a long list of demands to be met before they would participate. When the National Electoral Council met their demands, they walked away anyway, handing over every seat in the National Assembly to pro-Chavez candidates.[3]

Democracy and the Venezuelan Character

Clearly, these tactics play better in the international press than among the average Venezuelan. The editorial writers at the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal can applaud the point being made against the president they love to hate, without directly suffering the short term hardship (job losses, food rationing, etc.) or the long term damage (dismantling of democracy, aggressive civic polarization) imposed on the Venezuelan people.

But on the home front, the opposition leaders are in disarray not because of the failure of these actions, but because of the nature of their tactics. Venezuelans like living in a democracy, and they are fiercely proud of their tradition of peaceful government transitions. While much of South America languished under military dictatorships in the 1970s and 80s, Venezuela remained free and democratic (albeit with an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor).

This democratic nature of the Venezuelan electorate was made evident last fall, when continent-wide poll results were made public by the Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro. While citizens of other Latin American countries expressed growing reservations about democracy as the best tool to address their problems, Venezuela, along with Uruguay, topped the list of nations that prefer democracy over all other forms of government. What’s more, Venezuelans were more likely than citizens of any other Latin American country to describe their government as “totally democratic.”[4]

The Formation of an Un-Venezuelan Opposition

So how is it that the traditional ruling parties believed that strategies that violate the very character of their culture would ever be effective in Venezuela? And why have they clung to anti-democratic tactics after each one has blown up in their face? A number of historic and cultural factors help shed light on the situation.

A Lazy System: the Punto Fijo Pact

In the late 1950’s, Venezuela’s dominant political leaders signed a power-sharing agreement that allowed two political parties, Accion Democratica (AD) and Social Christian Copei (Copei) to effectively shut out all other parties from participating in political life. In theory, the Punto Fijo pact was intended to prevent extremist social movements from taking power and destabilizing the young democracy, but in practice it led to decades of patronage, and created an enormous amount of political apathy in the majority of Venezuelans who believed, credibly, that their voice would never be represented by political leaders.

Another unintended consequence of the pact was that national political leaders were not required to spend a lot of time with the Venezuelan people in order to be successful. Certainly, they had to engage in a lot of politicking within the two political parties, but the party makeup represented a narrow slice of the Venezuelan public. Once an official had gained prominence within the party structure, he was virtually guaranteed a seat in office because voters simply had no other alternative.

President Chavez was the first Venezuelan since Punto Fijo to win the presidency as a third-party candidate. While he was boosted by a number of historical and cultural factors that came into alignment by 1998, Chavez’s presidential campaign, out of necessity, was grounded in an enormous grassroots mobilization effort. For this reason, Chavez the President has his finger on the pulse of the Venezuelan electorate in a way the opposition never did.

Life in a Bubble

The Venezuelan upper classes, which make up the bulk of opposition leadership, truly live in a world apart from the rest of the country. Caracas’s finer neighborhoods are made up of gated communities and high-end shopping malls. Many have never set foot the barrios and working class neighborhoods populated by the majority of Caraquenos. When a nicely dressed Venezuelan woman living in Caracas’s fancy Altamira neighborhood told me she didn’t know a single person in the country who supported President Chavez, I don’t think she was exaggerating.

What’s more, this upper-class worldview is reflected in the majority of the Venezuelan media. Telenovelas and reality programs are teeming with rich and fashionable Venezuelans with expensive tastes. Today you have to turn on state television to see the diverse cultural makeup of Venezuelan society. Before Chavez, even on government TV it was rare to see, for example, an Afro-Venezuelan, even though afrodecendientes make up a significant share of the Venezuelan citizenry.

So when the returns from the recall referendum were broadcast, and Chavez had won by a sweeping margin, it is almost understandable that some people found it easier to believe in an elaborate conspiracy between Chavez, Carter, and the OAS, rather than concede that they may have misjudged the nature of their own country. For many wealthy Venezuelans, the slow understanding that they are in the minority is only now beginning to sink in.

[Siblesz]

Continued:

Influence from abroad

Of course, there is well-documented evidence to suggest that many of the tactics used by the Venezuelan opposition are not—to use a particularly chavista term—endogenous. It makes sense that strategies that violate the Venezuelan character were never dreamed up by Venezuelans in the first place.

With regard to the 2002 coup, we know that at least two of the top military leaders were trained in the notorious School of the Americas in Columbus, Georgia.[5] We also know that the Congressionally-financed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S Department of Defense provided training and financial support to the individuals and organizations involved in the bloody uprising.[6]

In the run-up to the 2004 recall referendum, we know that Sumate, the very organization chastised by President Carter for attempting to undermine the results, received more than $50,000 from the NED,[7] and that the Democratic Coordinator, the umbrella organization representing all of the organizations that led the effort, received training and strategy advice from the NED-financed Center for International Private Enterprise.[8]

And last February, the Christian Science Monitor ran a jaw-dropping story on efforts by a little-known subsidiary of the U.S. Agency on International Development (USAID), known as the Office on Transition Initiatives (OTI), which distributed $4.5 million dollars to opposition parties in 2005 for “overtly political” work aligned with U.S. “foreign policy goals.”[9] If Venezuelans seem paranoid about U.S. intervention in their democracy, they have good reason to fear.

All this helps explain how the traditional Venezuelan opposition has become so disconnected from its countrymen, but also why candidates like Borges are beginning to buck the trend, rolling up their sleeves and actually interacting with the Venezuelan electorate.

Not that it will make much difference.

The Presidential Election

Barring extreme unforeseen circumstances, President Hugo Chavez will be elected to a second term this December. As described above, the opposition is in utter disarray. But more importantly, new data indicate that the extent of popular support for President Chavez appears deeper today than pundits on either side may have imagined.

Candidates like Julio Borges may be refashioning their tone and image in the wake of polling results, released in March, which surprised even the Chavez camp. The results came from the firm Consultores 21, an opposition aligned polling firm with 20 years experience in Venezuela, confirms a large base of support for the President. Full results are available here: http://www.noticierodigital.net/encuc21marzo06.pdf

Let’s look at the most significant findings:


Nearly a quarter of likely voters offer their “unconditional” support for the President, meaning virtually nothing will change their minds. The largest group of Venezuelans, fully one-third of the electorate, supports Chavez “conditionally”. In other words, if the opposition unveils a truly spectacular candidate, they might switch, but for the most part, they are casting their lot with the President. Before this poll was released, conventional political wisdom held that the undecided voters would make up the largest chunk of the electorate, but it turns out that even if every undecided voter decides to vote for an opposition candidate—a near impossibility—Chavez would still win with 56% of the vote.

What’s more, it appears that the depth of the opposition is as weak as it is small. International press attention often focuses on just how passionate the Venezuelan opposition is. But according to this poll—again from a respected firm aligned with the opposition—only 8.5% of the electorate would vote against Chavez no matter what. Most of the opposition may be inclined to vote against Chavez, but would consider voting for him in the right circumstances. Add the two opposition figures together, and you just barely surpass the level of “unconditional” support that Chavez enjoys.



To get a sense of why Venezuelans have so little faith in the opposition, the graphic above demonstrates the way they feel about the boycott of the congressional elections last December. The question asks, “With whom do you agree most: with those who say that the [opposition] candidates boycotted to defend the right of the people to clean elections, or with those who say that they boycotted because they knew that they would lose since they did not have the support of the people?” Fifty-eight percent said it was because they were going to lose. Barely a third said it was a statement on clean elections.

And on the positive side, here is why Chavez enjoys such wide support:


The question is about President Chavez’s ability to achieve important benchmarks in the country’s social development. From top to bottom, Venezuelans give him high marks in improving:

-Education (69.4%)

-Housing (65.3%)

-Health Care (65.2%)

-Road Construction (56.3%)

-Purchasing Power (54%)

-Employment (53.6%)

The President gets middling marks on two of Venezuela’s oldest and most chronic problems: Security (49.8%), and the Struggle against corruption (49.3%).

In general, Venezuelans think the country is heading in the right direction. They are happy with President Chavez, and often disgusted with the opposition, who rarely seem to understand the average Venezuelan. These facts can’t make the anti-Chavez factions happy.

The question remains: will opposition leaders make a commitment to democracy this year? To be sure, they have almost zero hope of winning the presidency this December. Yet time and again, each anti-democratic action they’ve undertaken has marginalized them in the eyes of Venezuelan voters. If they choose to boycott, as they did last year, they will further alienate themselves at home. Worse, over time their actions may cause a more chronic problem by undermining Venezuelans’ faith in democracy itself.

Yet so far, Julio Borges is the only opposition candidate advocating widespread participation. Perhaps that explains why the relative newcomer is the surprise frontrunner for the anti-Chavistas. At 36 years old, Borges has a long political career ahead of him. He almost certainly realizes that a good faith campaign this year will position him well for future bids. He is counting on the fact that his countrymen will not look favorably on those willing to sacrifice Venezuelan democracy to score another political point against Chavez. The other potential candidates are nearing the end of their careers, and are not likely to run in 2012.

Here’s hoping the others put the greater good of the country before their personal goals.

Source: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1701

This basically echoes much of what I've been living through in the past eight years. I am one of the oligarchs that was born and raised in a high class family in one of the fancy neighborhoods of Caracas.

A few days after Chavez won the referendum of 2005, I remember how I told my mom that I thought Chavez had really won the election fair and square. She told me to stop spreading lies, that what I was saying was absurd, and got angry and frustrated at how I dare say such things. She had a point... I had no right to destroy my family's delusions. So I stayed hush, I never made my opinions clear about the situation in Venezuela, and I pretended to share the delusions of the conquered.

Still today, most of my family and friends in Venezuela live in delusions. It is mass insanity. No matter how much evidence there is to show that a large majority of the population in Venezuela love Chavez, they still lie to themselves and hide within the confines of their societal bubble. It is no use to tell them that they are not welcomed in their own homes anymore. They will never accept that.

The realization that home is nowhere to be found is one of the harshest tragedies of man. I was confronted with that perturbing truth, and where most have failed, I succeeded. I accepted my reality and gave up my nation. But I had it easy... I had not lived in Venezuela for four years, and though my birth place was very close to my heart, I let it go.

Today, I am truly objective. I support neither Chavez nor the opposition. In my opinion, both are miserable choices. Venezuela is a beautiful country... it has everything. Oil, and lots of it... diamonds... gold... natural gas... iron... a broad technological infrastructure... I mean, EVERYTHING. But it misses one thing. There's a joke in Venezuela that is often times repeated. It goes something like this:

God was creating the nations of the world one day when he was bored. When he created England, he made England cold and rainy all the time, but to compensate for that, he made the English strong, determined, and creative people. He then created China. China was big, and the Chinese were industrious, but he built huge barriers surrounding China so that the Chinese would always stay were they began. And so, he did the same with the rest of the nations of the world, giving them some good, and some bad. Finally, he went over to create Venezuela. He gave Venezuela everything... beautiful beaches, mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, farmlands, valleys, oil, diamonds, gold, etc. Once St. Paul saw what God was doing, he was dumbfounded and asked God, "I don't get it. You're giving Venezuela everything anyone could ever want. It has all this good stuff and none of the bad. How come?" And God replied, "Don't worry, my old friend. I have handled that. Wait til' you see the Venezuelans."

Sure, Venezuelans are quite fun and lively, especially when they're drunk, but they are also corrupt, lazy, and consumption-minded. The problem is not with Venezuela, it's with Venezuelans. They are spoiled with the oil earnings of the past seventy years. And there in lies the problem. That is why I cannot approve of Chavez' populist measures of giving the people exactly what they want and not what they need, and why I cannot approve now of the opposition's past stupidity of making only themselves wealthy while the country kept going down the gutter.

It is really frustrating. And yet you have all these passions running high for each side... And in the end, I can't help but think that if Venezuela were a child, I would spank it really badly.

Reminds me of the Alhambra...

[leeho730]

Good read.

...

Can't help but think that US could be one of Venezuela's biggest enemies of Democracy... funny.

[danzig]

Good read.

...

Can't help but think that US could be one of Venezuela's biggest enemies of Democracy... funny.

Yeah sometimes we gotta learn the best thing for us to do is do nothing and have a little faith in people themselves. Last thing we should do in cases like this is provide a point create a rally cry for people like Chavez.

[Siblesz]

Dromikaites, you are right in most cases, but remember that Venezuela is a very rare case. For one, it is a very rich country. Since the 1920s, when oil was discovered and exploited, Venezuela became one of the richest countries in South America. It was the envy of the continent. By 1956, Venezuela enjoyed the best education, the lowest crime rate, and the best standard of living in most of Latin America, excepting Argentina. By 1973, illiteracy was eradicated (official estimate: 98% of the nation was literate). Venezuela was a very educated country.

The problems started in the late 1970s when a variety of factors started to take effect. First, there was a mass migration from Colombia to Venezuela of uneducated 'workers' due to the fact that the borders were opened by Carlos Andres Perez and that Colombia was suffering civil strife and economic depression. The new immigrants brought a wave of crime with them and drove most of the country to an economical stand still. Second, the rural population of Venezuela migrated to the big cities where the money was (Caracas went from a population of a bit more than 500,000 in 1950 to 3 million in 1975). And finally, in 1980, the Venezuelan collapsed, radicalizing the gap between the poor and the rich and increasing corruption to African levels.

A downward spiral for Venezuela was hence initiated, and the country went back half a century in progress. And whilst the middle class remained productive, the lower classes, mostly new to city life and in large proportion foreign to Venezuelan life and work ethic, led stagnant lifestyles in shanty towns surrounding the metropolis of Caracas. It is with this convergence of factors that Chavez was able to appropriate all of his power. He now had a huge base of people to work in.

The old Venezuela no longer existed. It was replaced by a new wave of people that were disenfranchised with the system and wanted populist action taken. Many of these people had no sense of any society. They were the lowest of the low, but they reproduced and reproduced, they had a wave of negative and foreign influence from Colombia, and they had to adapt from living in farmlands to living in shanties. That is what the situation became in twenty years time. And that is why most of the Venezuelan elite is dumbfounded when they find that the Venezuela of today is not the same as the Venezuela of the past. It's a new nation. A Barbarian invasion took place, and old Venezuela was conquered. We are the conquered.

[RusskiSoldat]

the Communist propaganda about the evils of capitalism is very true Do keep in mind that me and my friends absolutely hate communism

A fully understandable position as you (and a good amount of Russians) associate communism with the Brezhnev era, and the non Russians often associate it with foreign conquest.
Whenever one of my parents or grandparents hears some news about communists being elected (like that Romano Prodi is a socialist and his party had communists in it), they suddenly assume a Brezhnevite Italy will spring out of nowhere.
Which brings me to the next fact: just because something is understandable, does not mean it's not stupid.
The new age communism of the sort seen under Chavez (where he is maintaining a highly communist based, but far less extremist platform) seems to me like a very good choice for a nation.

What they did was to address problem #1: children received transportation and full boarding for free. Of course the level of comfort in most of those boarding schools was a little better than in a prison but:
1) Through the economies of scale achieved the State was able to keep the children in highschools at reasonable costs;
2) The hygene was better (before going to those "boarding schools" many children would take a bath less than once a week and had no ideea about what a toothbrush is used for), which resulted in healthier and stronger adults;
3) The families were ready to accept a lower income due to the fact the children were not working since they hoped better education would lead to a better life. The universal human nature is as such that parents are willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their children.

Very similiar for Russia.
During the Imperial era, IIRC about 75% of the people were illiterate.
By Khruschev's time, half the people in the country (quite needlessly, in my opinion) had higher education.

Some do fear what would happen if the lower classes would get a better education. Just last night I was having a conversation with a businessman from one of the Andine countries (I won't mention the country because I've heard the same from people from other countries of South America). He said that a better education is a two-edges sword because the members of the lower classes might develop expectations the society can not fulfill yet.

That's business talk for "they might realize just how bad the situation in the country is and attempt to solve it through radical means".

[Bwaho]

It's a new nation. A Barbarian invasion took place, and old Venezuela was conquered. We are the conquered.

They took our jobs! Ey tuk er jerbs! Derka duuur!

...sorry I couldn't resist


I'm not too familiar with the history of south america.
what immigrants contributed the most to the (once) progressive nations of south america? was it the spanish/portuguese immigrants or was it the german immigrants or what?

[lawngnome]

It's also quite different for you because of your age. Obviously, you can't help that. As you grow older you become more stubborn about your beliefs and more sure of yourself... when you're young you are sure you're a genius, but you can more readily rewrite your own mental history to fit your current opinions.

I don't know much about Venezuelan politics, to be honest, but I can see how people would be so put out by Chavez (quite a flamboyant fellow) or taken in with him (he is at the very least a strong leader).

[Dromikaites]

I only have little experience with Latin America, having lived in Brazil for a while, the rest being what I get from the talks I have with the South Americans studying or doing business in Bucharest or from the Romanian friends that work in South America. Most of those people are members of the upper class in their respective countries or are in contact with the upper classes mainly (the Romanians working there). So the way they view the situation is undoubtly influenced by who they are and whom they intract with on daily basis.

My take on Brazil is quite similar to what the Romanians of my age who experienced the Communist regime and who currently work in South America think: in many ways, the Communist propaganda about the evils of capitalism is very true Do keep in mind that me and my friends absolutely hate communism (the Grim Squeaker and RusskiSoldat probably remember the polemics we had on the Coomunist-related topics). Let me explain what I mean about the Communists being right:

The upper classes in Brazil (direct experience) or from Colombia, Peru or Ecuador (my friends' experience) seem to not realize that the main cause of poverty is not due to the "laziness" of the lower classes but to the lack of education. Most of the South American countries have a Net Enrolment Rate in secondary education of around 50%-60% (based on UNESCO data). That means only 1 out of 2 young people get high school level education. Comparing that with North America and Western Europe (94%) or with Central and Eastern Europe (83%) might help understand the vicious circle that takes place in South America:

poor families can't afford to send their children to high school -> youngsters don't get education that would allow them to become more productive and therefore better paid adults -> their children would end up being poor and therefore unable to send their children to highschool

Laziness as such does not exist. A lazy person is actually a depressed person but not to the point of needing Prozac or committing suicide. The laziness comes out of the general belief no amount of effort would result in positive outcomes for the person. Most of the Westerners and Far East Asians do not share the same point of view so it's actually a cultural, not an objective fact of life. However anybody who wants to address the issue should not focus on the cultural differences between Westerners or Asians ond one hand and South Americans (or Africans) on the other hand. Culture changes too slowly. What can change faster is people's behavior when faced with radically different conditions.

In order to explain what I mean by radically different conditions let me look first at the reasons why only 1 out of 2 children get to high school in South America. There are 2 main reasons the families can't afford to send their children to highschool:
1) highschools are far away from home (many times in a city far away) and the costs of living there are more than the family can afford;
2) a teenager needs to work in order to support his/her family. It goes without saying that the youngster would only get low paid jobs but what little he/she makes is a much needed addition to the meager resources of the family.

Let's now rewind to Romania of the late '40s and early '50s, when the Communists took control of the country. Almost 70% of the population was illiterate. Even though the Communists wanted to industrialize the country fast there was no way they could do that without first investing into educating the workforce. Communists had no expedient means to solve problem #2 listed above. Even though they had seized all the assets of the rich people and took control of all the farmland and factories, there were simply not enough money available both for investing in industrial development and for providing money that would replace the income generated through teenagers' work.

What they did was to address problem #1: children received transportation and full boarding for free. Of course the level of comfort in most of those boarding schools was a little better than in a prison but:
1) Through the economies of scale achieved the State was able to keep the children in highschools at reasonable costs;
2) The hygene was better (before going to those "boarding schools" many children would take a bath less than once a week and had no ideea about what a toothbrush is used for), which resulted in healthier and stronger adults;
3) The families were ready to accept a lower income due to the fact the children were not working since they hoped better education would lead to a better life. The universal human nature is as such that parents are willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their children.

What the South American elite seems to fail to realise is their businesses would benefit lots from having access to a better educated workforce. Simply put, they will get a lot more bang for the buck they pay to their employees. One way a better education would be achieved relatively quicky would be by using a "full boarding" approach. The wealthy people from South America have the choice between being themselves those who would voluntarily contribute to setting up and managing such "boarding schools" for the poor or they'll have the semi-Marxist governments tax them till their faces turn blue (RTW style ). The second option would not only be more costly for the upper classes but would also increase corruption as the best way for the government to secure its grip over the country would be to use the money to create a huge, overstaffed bureaucracy instead of investing in education, housing, healthcare, etc.

Some do fear what would happen if the lower classes would get a better education. Just last night I was having a conversation with a businessman from one of the Andine countries (I won't mention the country because I've heard the same from people from other countries of South America). He said that a better education is a two-edges sword because the members of the lower classes might develop expectations the society can not fulfill yet.

While it is natural for some members of the upper classes to fear the power-sharing which comes with knowledge-sharing I still think it's far more dangerous to slow down the access of the lower classes to higher education. Hugo Chavez is not Fidel Castro but he might have been. The same applies to Evo Morales, the new Bolivian president who nationalised the country's natural gas. A more educated population would indeed want things to be done differently than the traditional South American way. But the same better educated population would be less inclined to embrace Communism which would phisically exterminate the upper class or the hardline Socialism which would nationalize and tax away the wealth of the upper class.

[Dromikaites]

For Brazil I would say the Germans and the Italians are more influential than the Japanese. However the Portuguese are the ones who shaped the culture of that country most decisively. Portugal of today might not be much due to a multitude of factors but that tiny nation of very entrepreneurial and hard-working people was able to create a huge empire which at one point stretched from Indonesia in the East to South America in the West.

Back to the topic of Venezuela of today: I didn't know about the Colombian immigrants, thank you for providing more information about the dynamics of a very interesting part (to me) of the world.

However a large influx of population can be very beneficial if properly managed. Only in very recent times (probably after WW2) immigration started to be seen as a problem. More people used to mean more hands to work and for developing countries increasing the population by any means was a good idea. The Russian government of today is interested in importing more workforce and the Romanian government is negotiating with the Chinese one a treaty allowing the Chinese to work in Romania, at Romanian government's initiative.

Of course you (Siblesz) know the situation in Venezuela better than I do so some of the stuff I say might be naive. However I'd like to point out that Venezuela is 4 times bigger than Romania in terms of territory, is much richer in terms of oil reserves accessible today (a recent estimate of Romania's oil reserves seems to indicate they are larger than Kuwait's but too deep to be profitably extracted today), has larger reserves of iron ore and bauxite (a mineral out of which aluminum is extracted), has almost 25% more inhabitants than Romania and yet has a GDP which is 86% of Romania's. Given the culture is quite similar in South America and Romania (based on my experience and that of the friends who experienced both), the only major diference which would explain the below-expectations economic performance and social development of Venezuela when compared to Romania is between the second grade and tertiary education figures of the two countries.

This is why I believe that emergency education programs are the most cost effective way Venezuela can achieve social peace and reduce the gap dividing its upper class from the rest. After all you can see how important education is for a country many consider to be a success story inspite of a huge gap existing already and widening fast between the rich and poor sections of its population. I'm talking about China, which is soo keen to make the Western know-how available to all its citizens that is franticly importing teachers of English language. Chinese universities are simply not producing fast enough as many teachers of English as they are needed.

The Venezuelan upper class is aware of the importance of education and has many means to contribute to such "fast-track education" programs (starting with funding them and finishing with running them for the workers' families in their factories and on their farms). It's much better to have them run by people who value private initiative and self-reliance than to have a government which seems to be mildly Marxist running them. Maths and Physics are the same taught by a Capitalist or by a Communist teacher but school is not only about pure knowledge, it is also about a philosopical attitude towards life and society. So the Venezuelan upper class would be better served by getting involved in the process, methinks.