How Chavez Changed History for the Better

From CounterPunch:

Hugo Chavez died in early March. Heads of state came to his funeral and sent condolences to his family— except for the US President. Even in death the White House maintained a resentful tone toward a man we had names as an enemy. But what did Chavez do to us? He offered cheap fuel to the US poor to heat their homes in winter time. Or does Obama take personally what Chavez said in his UN General Assembly speech in 2006. He still smelled the sulphur aroma left by “the devil,” meaning, as he explained, George W. Bush who had preceded him to the lectern. But, why do US Presidents lean so strongly against other heads of state who promote progressive social policies that help their people? Why does Washington kiss the behinds of Saudi Arabian royalty and other degenerate Arab oil state leaders while denigrating Chavez who promoted popular health, education and food for the poor? The European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, and the Carter Center confirmed that Chavez’ had won all four of his electoral victories freely and fairly.

More here.

So since he died a few weeks ago, I've been trying to finally make up my mind about Hugo Chavez.  Official US policy has been that he was an evil dictator, the new Castro, someone so evil that we supported the failed coup against him a few years back.  But the worst I've been able to dig up on him has been that he played hardball with his domestic politics, nothing outside the spectrum of what we see every day here in American politics.  I mean, he couldn't have been a dictator.  Dictators aren't usually elected and then reelected in fair elections.  And his fiscal policies were apparently unsustainable.  But then, neither are ours.

No, after digging into this, it's totally obvious that, even though there's lots of room to criticize him, just as there is lots of room to criticize countless American politicians and leaders, the reason the US establishment was hell bent on branding him an enemy is because he did good things for his people, stuff that doesn't benefit the global corporate capitalist order, and he sought to forge a new Latin American alliance defying that order.  That is, his biggest "crime" isn't that he was a "dictator;" it was that he was a leftist.  They hated him for his leftism.  And they hated him because he was fairly successful in making his leftist views become reality.

Consequently, it's a total drag that he died so young.  Farewell, Hugo Chavez.

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