President Hugo Chavez Dies, Cheney Still Lives?

"Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ- who I think was the first socialist- only socialism can really create a genuine society" - Hugo Chavez (1954-2013)


Upon hearing the news that President Hugo Chavez died, I must admit, I was deeply saddened. Chavez served as a light in the dark days of the drummed-up conflict against late President Saddam Hussein by George Bush and Dick Cheney. He stood oppose to the war and boldly labeled Bush, at the United Nations General Assembly, as what most Americans would later come to believe: the Devil!

"The devil was here yesterday, proclaimed Chavez, "And it smells of sulfur still today!"

He's opposition to capitalism was legendary in his long, but patriotic speeches to the Venezuelan people. An admirer of socialist revolutionary Sam Bolivar, Chavez even named his beloved country the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela.

"After many readings, debates, discussions, travels around the world, etc., I am convinced-and I believe this conviction will be for the rest of my life- that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism. The path is socialism", said Chavez.

After two inappropriate wars, rising health care cost and unpunished Wall Street thievery, one could find little argument with me on this declaration. For all it's advertised niceties, capitalism has made the United States its perpetual lab rat. It has given cause to lust of material wealth, greed for excess and excuse for murder and war. The quest for monetary social status has infected our youth with low self-esteem and a lack of appreciation for anything just that is deemed unprofitable. America places less honor in hard work and justice then in fame and a fast buck.

The very people- the poor- that capitalism is suppose to inspire, have been used as slaves to ideas by fighting the wars of the rich and bailing them out of the due fate of imprisonment and poverty with stimulus and tax shelters.

Chavez, who died from cancer today at the young age of 58, demonstrated to the world of capitalism just how to take care of the poor. A former paratrooper and coup-plotter, he saw to it that the profits his country's richest natural resource, oil, went to social programs and education for the poor of Venezuela. Such would seems absurd in the States where conservative pols, fight over taxing the wealthiest a percentage equal to the poorest Americans in any effort to sustain Medicare and Social Security. They continually filibuster any jobs bills or social programs, seeking to only cut those programs in an effort to keep the 1% of the richest Americans fat with excess.

Chavez, is not an innocent president.  In 2002, after a coup briefly removed him from the presidency, the revolutionary leader did tighten his reign on opposing leaders and the media like Globovision if they did not agree with him. Furthermore, he consolidated power and made partisan loyalist out of the independent judiciary branch. He was even looked upon as authoritarian for pushing through a constitutional reform that allowed indefinite re-election.

Cancer, did little to stifle Chavez's view on American and what he referred to as the  "Washington consensus"- a model of American economic reforms for developing countries.

"Would it be strange if (the United States) had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it", pondered Chavez after he and a string of Latin American leaders were diagnosed.

I wouldn't doubt that conspiracy theory. As an African American I am privy to the Tuskegee experiments of intentionally infecting Black men with syphilis. I believe one of the biggest enhancers of capitalism and the "Washington consensus" is the apathy of Americans. It gives people just enough of their own bread to not grow passionate from hunger for what is best for this world as a whole, while pacifying the palette to the the extent that it is quieted with indifference to the lost of the other half of  bread. Capitalism props up tyrants who rape the country of natural and human resource will denounces the goodwill of all those who seek fairness as radical class-warfare terrorist.

"Christopher Columbus was the spearhead of the biggest invasion and genocide in the history of humanity", explained Chavez.

Few Native Americans and minorities would argue this point. And as the years pass and brave leaders like Chavez are given chance on the world stage, I pray many more falsehood of human history will be corrected.

Hugo Chavez, will leave a legacy of socialist change for his people and the world. The twice divorced leader is survived by his four children...And "the devil" (Bush) and Dick Cheney are still alive.