Tales of two men in red

Hugo Chávez and an outspoken cardinal are feuding over the future of democracy in Venezuela.

There are places where one channel-surfs andfinds it hard to tell the difference between a political broadcast and a comicmonologue. One of these is Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez spendscountless (dozens, actually) hours in front of a camera every week ranting at hisopponents––no matter who they are. This past week, when the country celebratedits bicentennial, it was the turn of Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, the Catholic Archbishopof Caracas.

Chávez took a few minutes from his speech at thecelebrations on July 5 to lament that the Cardinal is a “troglodyte” forclaiming that his government is leading the country down the road to asocialist-Marxist dictatorship. Elevating his gaze to include the wholeassembly, El Presidente proclaimed that the Venezuelan people “don’t deservethis cardinal” and that “this man is unworthy of being a cardinal of theCatholic Church”, of which he proclaims himself a true member of the faithful.

Because of people like Cardinal Urosa, theVenezuelan people feel “distanced” from the hierarchy, while they continue tosupport and love the “people’s priests”, in spite of their bishops. Finally, fixinghis gaze on Archbishop Pietro Parolini, the papal Nuncio, he instructed him totell the Pope that he has his “own candidate” for Cardinal, Bishop MarioMoronta of San Cristóbal, who has been known to disagree with Cardinal Urosa onsome social questions.

Within 24 hours both the Caracas council of the“people’s” priests and Bishop Moronta issued repudiations of Chávez’s savageattack, declaring full solidarity with Cardinal Urosa and all the Venezuelan bishops.Bishop Moronta acknowledged, as does Cardinal Urosa, that they don’t alwaysagree on social issues, but he made it very plain that “the unity is notbroken”.

The country’s bishops also issued their ownforceful condemnation through the secretary-general of the EpiscopalConference, Auxiliary Bishop Jesús González de Zárate of Caracas. Thesemi-official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano was quick to expresssolidarity with the Cardinal. But most importantly, people from all overVenezuela moved hurriedly to show their solidarity and support for CardinalUrosa, who happened to be in Rome during Chávez’s rant.

The President’s attack came after Cardinal Urosahad denounced a recent scandal involving the decomposition and waste of over 20,000metric tons of food supplies in a port close to the capital. Chávez’sgovernment has progressively taken over the production of most basic goods,including food, and in this case, petty internal rivalries and the sheerineptitude of the enormous bureaucracy led to the loss of this colossal amount,with a dubious inquiry and unlikely prosecutions ensuing.

Cardinal Urosa took the opportunity of this lastfiasco to warn caraqueños that thegovernment, by excluding citizens and private companies from basic economicactivities, is taking one more step toward completely dependence on the publicsector (and on foreign producers).

The fact is that despite his anti-Colombianrhetoric (if it deserves such a noun), the destructive results of Chávez’seconomic policies have forced the country to import more and more from its neighbour,to the point where more than half of Venezuela’s food comes from abroad. Andthis is happening in a country that is considered by economists to be one ofthe world’s richest in natural resources. Oh, the bane of tropical politics!

Corruption, waste, and fear have been growingexponentially. Weekly revelations of gross misdeeds and open deceits by topofficials are eclipsed in the next week by worse scandals. To calm the outrage Chávezhas shuffled around some ministers but with an eye on upcoming legislativeelections. This is a procedure that he repeats once a year anyway.

But the problems of the Venezuelan people rundeeper. As he explained in an interview on June 30, before the President’s outburst,Cardinal Urosa has been forced into the public square because of what he and anincreasing number of his countrymen see as the true marks of a totalitarianscheme: brainwashing propaganda, deceit, an omnipotent state, and a grotesqueoligarchy.

The food scandal shows that the government isopenly violating its constitution––which guarantees private property andprivate initiative in the economy––and even the people’s mandate, which on December2, 2007 rejected a clear-cut statist remodelling of the legal system. It is merelyone more (albeit gross) symptom of how committed Chávez and his associates are toestablishing a full-blown communist totalitarianism.

All the signs are there: a grotesque personalitycult around the leader, a burgeoning and all-encompassing bureaucracy on whichpeople depend more and more for survival, and––what worries Urosa most––the useof religious symbols to further the official ideology.

The figure of Christ––“the world’s firstsocialist”, according to Chávez––is routinely referred to by the government tobring home their message to the people, in an attempt to separate people,priests, and bishops. The Cardinal knows what will result: the dissolution ofpluralism and the end of religious freedom.

Chávez calls himself a Catholic, just as hecalls himself a “people’s man”, a poor boy from the lower classes, a trueVenezuelan, etc., who is trying to unite the experience of BoliviarianCatholicism, equality and Venezuelanness into a single symbol: himself. The personalitycult, the ever-more violent curbing of the media, the expulsion of privatecitizens from the economy, and now, a direct attack against the Church, showhow accurate Cardinal Urosa’s misgivings have been.

Thousands of Venezuelans have left the country insearch of basic freedoms and to escape fear and uncertainty. As in otherproto-Cubas in Latin America continent (Ecuador is the clearest runner-up), noone knows where the country is going. No one knows if their houses will beconfiscated––Chávez strolled through downtown Caracas a few months ago andexpropriated three or four private buildings with a single wave of his hand. Noone knows if their business will be nationalized tomorrow or next week. No oneknows if they might be put in jail for voicing a contrary opinion. Who knowswhen Chávez will want to nominate his own cardinal? Why not, after all, sincehe has already replaced most of his opponents with his toadies?

I am a Latin American. I am also a Westerner.Not because of race or politics, but because I believe in personal rights, inequality, in liberty, in pluralism, in the tradition that proclaims rationaldiscourse, critical thought, and committed freedom. I consider this (paceSamuel P. Huntington) a part of my heritage as a Latin American.

Why does no one turn their eye southward to ourtropical republics other than to watch us play football and to hear our leadersheap creative insults upon each other?

Even raising this question suggests an answer:no one cares for that most anti-political, most childish of vices, self-pity. Iagree, and I think Cardinal Urosa agrees. I am a Catholic, and I defend theCardinal’s right to preach and tend to his flock freely, and to remindVenezuelans that, notwithstanding Chavezian schools of theology, “Jesus Christis above all systems, ideologies, and regimes”.

But I especially celebrate the Cardinal as apatriot, as a citizen who is not afraid to speak truth to power, and who ismanly enough not to wallow in victimhood. How many Ciceros, how many ThomasMores, how many Jeffersons and Adamses, how many Havels and Mandelas arestifled by the sun-tanned defeat of Latin American self-pity!

Venezuela and Ecuador, like Cuba, are on theroad to tyranny. As Cardinal Urosa told his fellow Venezuelans, what they needis not a hero or a saviour––too many of those have been enthroned andtoppled––but fighters, thinkers, patriots, men and women of heart and hope whoare willing to sacrifice their comfort, their security, their nationalself-pity, and “with afirm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, mutually pledge to eachother their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honour” for the cause of homeand right.

Pedro José Izquierdo is an Ecuadorian PhDstudent at the University of Navarra (Spain). He is currently a visitingresearcher at Columbia Law School in New York.

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