Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A traveler in Venezuela
I”m reading a book called Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer’s Memoir of Venezuela by a young English writer named Jamie Maslin. The facts he presents by visiting so many people there have completely changed my opinion of a man who I once thought of as a force for evil–Hugo Chavez.
Maslin visits crime-filled Caracas, the island of Margarita, and the oil epicenter of Maracaibo and each time finds a couch or a bed to sleep on using the lodging website couchsurfing.com. Each time he asks his hosts what they think of their president. He presents a portrait of this vast, untamed country and in fact, most of them do like Chavez, yet have their gripes as well.
In one city a squadron of nurses goes house to house, checking to see if they can be of service to residents, and whether they need to go to one of the thousands of free clinics. Others talk about how the government uses oil funds to pay for cut rate home loans and lending to people who want to start small businesses. Another talks about how Chavez took his oil-rich country’s money out of the World Bank, which makes enormous interest by transferring high interest loans using low interest funds. He has spent billions to help the majority–the poor–and so the rich hate him, and the middle, well, they understand.
What Chavez has done, the book shows, is to direct oil money to the 80 percent of the people who have never had any money, instead of to its traditional recipients–a tiny handful of families and multinational corporations. These actions infuriated the US and that’s why in 2004 we helped to try and overthrow him. Yet he’s won five elections and his guards remained loyal, so after 46 hours he was back in the palace.
June 24, 2011 @ 5:09 am
If this is the idea you get after reading the book… as a venezuelan I have to say I’m really dissapointed. Chavez is not an evil force -u got that right. He’s a delusional man. And he’s dragging the rest of us down the drain with his socialist dreams.
I’ve been to one of the thousand free clinics. I was left unattended for over one hour, and was not given one single shot to treat my severe back pain. I had to have someone else buy my shots and had to return home walking funny, cus the cuban doctors there just took a lot at me and basically guessed a diagnosis. The x-rays were so poorly done I had to go to a private clinic and get new ones (the private clinics chavistas in power go to when they get sick but the rest of us can’t afford).
The rich hate him. The middle are dissapearing. And the poor are being indoctrinated.
What Chavez has done is spent millions of dollars in a world crusade against “imperialism”, trying to establish his own socialis empire. Giving dollars away to other countries to buy their affection. We’re in the verge of a serious economic crisis. The money I make is barely enough to buy the food I need.
I’ll just say it again. I’m dissapointed. You could say that the person typing this message is clearly anti-chavez, and disregard my opinion because of that. That’s fine. Let this message be nothing but an expression of the way I felt after reading this review.