Reply #57: A note on this subject from a Guardian article [View All]

Sorry, I only have time to drop this off, but I felt I shouldn't let the evening go by without clarifying something we ALL know at D.U.

Racist rage of the Caracas elite

Venezuela's embattled president faces a Pinochet-style opposition

Richard Gott
Tuesday December 10, 2002
The Guardian

(snip) For the past year or more, Venezuela's upper and middle classes, opposed to Chavez's government, have protested in the wealthy new neighbourhoods of Caracas, while the poor (the vast majority of the city's population) have come from their shantytowns and demonstrated to defend "their" president.
(snip)

Perhaps even more significant than the changing attitude of the military and of the US is the fact that the poor are more mobilised now, to such an extent that there is talk of a possible civil war. Until the April coup, the poor had voted for Chavez repeatedly, but his revolutionary programme was directed from above, without much popular participation. After the coup, which revealed that the opposition sought to impose a regime on Pinochet lines, the people realised that they had a government that they needed to defend. The opposition's protest marches have now conjured up a phenomenon that most of the middle and upper classes might have preferred to have left sleeping - the spectre of a class and race war.

Opposition spokesmen complain that Chavez is a leftist who is leading the country to economic chaos, but underlying the fierce hatred is the terror of the country's white elite when faced with the mobilised mass of the population, who are black, Indian and mestizo. Only a racism that dates back five centuries - of the European settlers towards their African slaves and the country's indigenous inhabitants - can adequately explain the degree of hatred aroused. Chavez - who is more black and Indian than white, and makes no secret of his aim to be the president of the poor - is the focus of this racist rage.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,857027,00.html

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Sorry, I'm in such a rush, I don't have time to add more, but, by golly, they can be found in google by entering "Venezuela opposition racist" and you'll find more than enough to keep you busy. Here's another:

(snip) The opposition to President Chavez, for instance, has attacked him using racist language and imagery that would be totally unacceptable in public discourse in the U.S. President Chavez, it should be noted, openly proclaims both his African and indigenous background.

This seems to drive sectors of the opposition crazy. Our delegation, because it had received the invitation from the Venezuelan government, came immediately under the scrutiny of and a barrage of attacks from the opposition. In the opposition-oriented media, racist language and imagery were also used to characterize, if not caricaturize, our visit.

One paper described us as visiting "burned people," and this did not mean burn victims. Another paper had a racist cartoon. Yet another paper compared TransAfrica Forum Board chairman Danny Glover to a Black figure familiar to many in the Caracas carnival celebrations, a comparison that was not flattering.
(snip/...)

http://www.sacobserver.com/news/commentary/021004/venezuela_racism.shtml