Several days ago a friend of mine sent me a video, which depicts an average American Joe badmouthing on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s speech at the UN General Assembly in its 61st annual session. I proceeded to post the video on my Youtube account and before I had logged off I already had a reply to the video. This has since been going for about a week now and as it might be expected that user always comes up with arguments that have absolutely no sustenance.
In order to keep up a healthy debate I have invited him on several occasions to come up with proof for many of the arguments he has used to defend President Chavez and the latest was an article posted by Greg Palast on June 25th, 2003. In this article the author expresses his concern regarding the media manipulation in the USA when it comes to Chavez and Venezuela. He also tries to quickly brief the reader on Venezuela’s history and how that history led to the democratic election of President Chavez, and here is his mistake. If you read the following quote and you are Venezuelan you might feel that it’s not in any way like what you learned in school; if you are not Venezuelan I encourage you to find less biased sources of information about Venezuela’s history.
This is how Greg Palast sums up 500 years of Venezuelan history:
“(…) Look at the Chronicle/AP photo of the anti-Chavez marchers in Venezuela. Note their color. White.
And not just any white. A creamy rich white.
I interviewed them and recorded in this order: a banker in high heels and push-up bra; an oil industry executive (same outfit); and a plantation owner who rode to Caracas in a silver Jaguar.
And the color of the pro-Chavez marchers? Dark brown. Brown and round as cola nuts -- just like their hero, their President Chavez. They wore an unvarying uniform of jeans and T-shirts.
Let me explain.
For five centuries, Venezuela has been run by a minority of very white people, pure-blood descendants of the Spanish conquistadors. To most of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are brown, Hugo Chavez is their Nelson Mandela, the man who will smash the economic and social apartheid that has kept the dark-skinned millions stacked in cardboard houses in the hills above Caracas while the whites live in high-rise splendor in the city center. Chavez, as one white Caracas reporter told me with a sneer, gives them bricks and milk, and so they vote for him.(…)”
I invite you to read the whole article at http://www.alternet.org/story/16255/
These statements are not only biased, but are also racist. Venezuela has never had any social unrest due to racism or any kind of segregation law or apartheid. Venezuela has always had a strong mixture of different cultures like European, African and Indigenous. All Venezuelan culture is a result of this mixture, this melting pot in which every culture that has found its way to Venezuelan soil has been accepted and assimilated. The slightest hint that any demonstration, by any political party or group of people, is conducted by a dominant or exclusive race is a dishonour to the Venezuelan society and it’s customs.
This is just one of many statements by Greg Palast in which he shows his complete disregard and disrespect to Venezuela’s history and values and it is sad to know how people will try to twist a nation’s history for a political purpose.
This is the mentioned video's link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq2lc82mh6c#S3mVIysQfLA
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