Hugo Chavez did equitable distribution of his country’s resources to bring millions of his countrymen out of poverty.
JUBAIL, SAUDI ARABIA: Can one man’s hero be another one’s villain? Yes, but it all depends on one’s perception. Who could have thought to raise the flag of socialism in a post-Cold War world wherein the US was the sole superpower? In a period when socialism was on the retreat even in its pioneer states, it was Hugo Chavez who stood for the equitable distribution of his country’s resources to bring millions of his countrymen out of poverty. He was a ray of hope for billions of Third World people, making them believe that their countries can maintain sovereignty and still prosper without becoming satellite states of the US.
Venezuela’s opposition, which comprises only millionaires and billionaires from the media houses and large industries, wants to take the country back to its colonial past. Now is the time for the poor masses not to give in. Chavez might have been fighting an already lost war of socialism, but the war to get equal rights for his countrymen lives on. There is still a long way to go in a country that abolished slavery as late as 1948 with new forms of economic, political and cultural slavery emerging. Chavez might have gone but one of his supporters was tearfully singing, “Cemetery, Cemetery give us Chavez back.”
Masood Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 9th, 2013.
