[LINK] What's going on in Venezuela?

[rfmcdonald]

Alma Guillermoprieto's readable article in The New York Review of Books, "Don't Cry for Me, Venezuela", explains. Briefly, Venezuela's massive oil economy-fuelled social and economic inequities created a political space for Hugo Chávez' idiosyncratic brand of media-driven quasi-Peronist populism. There's no reason, Guillermoprieto concludes, why Chávez can't last.

In a country with an economy the size of the Czech Republic's, the value of Venezuela's currency reserves is now $30 billion. Oil prices are not expected to decline anytime soon. The Bush administration, for all its hostility to Chávez, does not seem able to hurt him seriously. There are local and national elections of various kinds scheduled every single year between now and 2013, and Chávez and his political parties (he has two) can reasonably expect to win in all of them. Best of all, he has no local politicians—certainly none in his own movement—threatening his popularity. He can smile and go forward, singing. Joyful. Solving problems. Looking to the future.