By Bill Bonner, billbonnersdiary.
Today, we struggle to hold back tears. Another world leader has bit
the dust. This time Venezuela’s big chief. Some bleak corner of Hell
took him in on Tuesday, if not before.
Chavez was a great entertainer. Real life was too small for him. He
had to stretch the truth out… bend the real world into a larger, more
fantastic shape… and puff it up with hot air until it could hold him.
In real life people go about their business, taking what fortune
sends their way and doing their best with it. That stage was much too
restricted for Chavez. He aimed to play a more important role under a
much bigger proscenium arch. Naturally, he took up politics (the refuge
of all fantasists) and tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government; he
landed in jail.
The authorities let him out after a couple of years. He went right
back to his mischief. A few years later and he was elected president of
the country. But even that wasn’t enough. He conspired to twist the
nation’s constitution to make himself “President for Life,” which, in an
act of divine mercy toward the Venezuelan people, ended this week.
Chavez
was a great showman. He kept TV audiences entertained for hours,
concocting a larger-than-life fairy tale about how terrible the foreign
capitalists were and how his “Bolivarian Revolution” was setting things
straight.
Alas, his lines were written by hacks; perhaps he wrote them himself.
It took a real A-list actor to deliver his speeches with a straight
face. The idea of a 21st Century Socialism, for example, that he claimed
to have invented himself, was so transparently hollow and self-serving
that a lesser thespian would have been laughed off stage.
A Magisterial Presence
Chavez followed in a long South American tradition of crowd-pleasing
strongmen. Like Peron, Castro and Melgarejo, he was not only a leader
the masses could adore, but he was also one they deserved.
Melgarejo has been largely forgotten. But he was one of the great
standup guys of Bolivian politics. In 1854, like Chavez, he attempted a
coup d’etat against the legitimate dictatorship of the time. He was
captured. He was tried and found guilty. That should have been the end
of him, but he came out with a convincing argument for clemency: that he
was drunk at the time and not responsible for his actions.
President Belzu pardoned Melgarejo. A few years later, just to show
his gratitude, Melgarejo murdered Belzu. Then came a real tour de force
of political theatre, illustrating not only Melgarejo’s magisterial
stage presence, but also the masses’ deep attachment to their leaders.
A crowd had gathered in front of the presidential palace demanding the return of Belzu. “Viva Belzu,” they chanted.
Melgarejo appeared on the balcony. He had the dead body brought out and displayed to the crowd.
“Who lives now?” he asked them.
“Viva Melgarejo,” they replied.
Having whacked his rival, Melgarejo soon became perhaps the most
disastrous leader in the history of South America – a hotly contested
title. He is said to have signed the Treaty of Ayacucho with Brazil, in
which he traded millions of acres of Bolivian territory for a
“magnificent white horse.”
In 1870, France and Germany went to war. Hearing reports of the
German assault on Paris, Melgarejo rushed to defend the City of Lights.
He reputedly could not locate it on a map, but he was fascinated by
what he had heard of it. So, he told his army to march to Europe. His
military commanders informed him that they had no means to cross the
Atlantic Ocean. Melgarejo replied: “Don’t be stupid! We will take a
shortcut through the brush!”
Cash and Claptrap
That was the sort of Bolivarian tradition to which Chavez was heir.
But Melgarejo was hardly the only legator. Chavez learned from Juan
Peron too. Argentina had been one of the richest countries in the world,
in the early 20th century. You can see the residue of it here today –
broad, tree-lined avenues and beautiful beaux arts, belle époque and
arts nouveaux private buildings and public monuments. (The Argentines
were great admirers of the French too!)
Now, Argentina is way down the list of the world’s richest countries.
Today, it is No. 54 on the CIA Factbook list – with Trinidad and
Tobago, Equatorial Guinea and Greece far ahead of it. That, along with
periodic financial crises, massive strikes, disappearances and pointless
wars, is the legacy given Argentina by Peron and his Peronist
successors.
You’d think the gauchos and the porteños would have had enough of it
by now. But they still elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, a Peronist
candidate, just as they voted for Chavez in Venezuela despite an
economic record worthy of Mariano Melgarejo.
That’s what makes the masses so attractive to leaders like Chavez:
They are incredibly stupid. Consumer prices rise even faster in Caracas
than in Buenos Aires. The power goes out, too. Despite being one of the
world’s top oil producers,
supplies are so tight people are urged to take “socialist showers” to
conserve energy. And the murder rate is among the highest in the world –
so high that even people from Baltimore are afraid to go there.
Chavez made their lives more miserable, but the masses still loved
him. Of course, he paid for their affection. He took $100 million in
annual oil revenues and spread it around. Realizing that it would go
further in poor neighborhoods than in rich ones, he built his popular
support on cash and claptrap.
And now he is gone. The performances have come to an end. The show’s over.
“Now he belongs to the ages,” said Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
when Abe Lincoln died. Now Chavez belongs to the ages too… like Peron
and Melgarejo.
Good riddance.
Regards,
Bill
