The Great Guru
A young man by the last name of Monedero, who belongs to a Spanish political group called Izquierda Unida, which never receives more than 5% of the votes in that country, seems to be the new ideological guru of “the process” in Venezuela. In this position he succeeds Norberto Ceresole and Heinz Dieterich, that pair of charlatans who’ve already been exiled by Chávez from his ideological library of mummies. In the interview conducted by Alejandro Botía, published last Monday here in TalCual, Monedero taught us how the social democratic models of Europe cannot be repeated in Latin America: “The European welfare system, as I’ve been explaining, functions with certain previous elements that aren’t viable in Latin America.”
There’s a supremacist stance in this attitude, an ethnocentric, European arrogance, an imperial and discriminatory world vision that, like all the radical leftists from over there, Monedero never manages to conceal. Democracy, a mixed economy, the balance of State and market, social security, in sum, social democracy – Monedero tells us –, is something that belongs to us white people, the educated, the inheritors of two millennia of Judeo-Christian civilization, but you Latin American mestizos, Venezuelans, Caribbean people, loudmouths, precariously educated, inheritors of caudillos and rebel armies, who, moreover, never lived through two world wars, what you end up with is Chávez. He doesn’t even try to camouflage it. In another part of the interview, which we’ll soon publish, in a Homeric moment of sycophancy, he let loose this marvel about indefinite re-election: “Can we, by means of something that is correct in theory, which is term limits, sacrifice the possibility a country has, right now, to escape the 19th century and which is called Hugo Chávez?” How about that? To establish term limits is a “correct theory” for us politically sophisticated Europeans; you Latin American pieces of shit, you have to accept your caudillos for life or else you’ll never escape 19th century backwardness. Monedero adds: “The president knows that he’s an essential factor, and that’s how the masses see him, in order to escape the 19th century and truly belong to the 21st century.” Someone in his entourage should inform him that Vallenilla Lanz (1) used this type of idiocy to validate the tyranny of Juan Vicente Gómez, the “necessary policeman.” It’s impossible to be more of a caveman.
But there’s more. Speaking of decentralization, he puts himself in the frame of mind of the Spanish People’s Party, of another Jurassic type, Aznar’s party, and he once again denies our access to it. “Regional autonomies” are for us, the civilized Spaniards; “It will be hard for you,” Venezuelans, “to understand what’s happening now if you don’t establish where you come from.” And immediately, putting on an eye patch and a peg leg, with a parrot on his shoulder, he informs us where we come from: “You come from a political model where, in the name of decentralization, what was generated was the country’s fragmentation and the abandonment of a large part of the population in the name of that democratic principle, decentralization.” How’s that seem to you, readers? One would imagine Aznar is speaking about all the calamities Spain will undergo because of its autonomous “decentralization.” It turns out, then, that this ultra-centrist republic, whose provincial administration – and with it the quality of life of a portion of Venezuelans – improved somewhat with the timid decentralization that was implemented starting in 1989 – after almost a century of hyper-centralization –, would have “become fragmented” beginning in that year, when we started to elect governors and mayors. So, how many fragments did we break into, kid? Venezuelan poverty and inequality are somehow related to decentralization? The centralization imposed by Franco, according to Monedero, is unacceptable, but the one imposed by Chávez, oh, that’s something else. It’s revolutionary and, above that, it’s Third World-ist. And we all know that when a radical European leftist discovers “anti-imperialist” guerrillas or colonels in the Third World, he has an orgasm. And he comes running to teach us the secrets of revolution.
(1) By the way, Monedero, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz was a Venezuelan positivist from the previous century who believed in providential men who remained in power for life.
{ Teodoro Petkoff, TalCual, 16 May 2007 }
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