Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez has died of cancer after 14 years at the helm. The controversial populist had proclaimed a “21st-century socialist” revolution at home and made waves abroad by criticising the West and forging alliances with Iran and Syria.
What the commentators said
Hailed by many at home and overseas as a hero, he was really just “Fidel with an electoral mandate” – and a “Christ complex”, said David Aaronovitch in The Times. His authoritarianism “sucked all the air out of Venezuela’s civil and political society”.
As for the economy, “the only thing that appears to be 21st-century about Chavez’s 21st-century socialism is the presidential Twitter account”, as Francisco Toro put it in The Guardian. Venezuela “is run along the same rigid lines that crippled eastern bloc economies”. Nationalised industries have become “outsized money pits unable to produce the goods needed”.
Foreign involvement in the economy was minimised. Price controls led to shortages and stoked inflation. The infrastructure rotted. Crime has soared. “Venezuela comes towards the bottom of just about every league table for good governance or economic competitiveness,” noted Economist.com.
But Venezuela’s oil wealth papered over the cracks. Millions mourn Chavez because “he was a kind of Robin Hood” who handed out oil revenues, alleviating poverty.
Chavez’s influence was pervasive, said John Paul Rathbone on FT.com. Not only did his redistribution of oil wealth help the poor, but it also created a new economic elite, the “boligarchs” of his Bolivarian revolution. The army benefited too. It looks as though “chavismo is here for many years to come”.