Et tu, Guardian? Rory Carroll tells all!

This Sunday morning is full of surprises. Now I come across the latest opus of Rory Carroll at the Guardian. It is a long review of Chavez tenure and a meditation on whether Chavez lost his political touch, whether he can come back to his past electoral glories. We can guess that Rory is skeptical.

He has a rather very accurate view on how things unfolded in Venezuela under Chavez, a praiseworthy thing considering that the Guardian represents a certain democratic left that supported and forgave Chavez for only too long. That probably explains some minor errors and can account for this major one when he parrots the "massive demonstrations" that supposedly returned Chavez to office in 2002. Demonstrations existed but were not massive, and even dismal when compared to the truly massive one that took place against Chavez two days earlier. I suppose he is of the school of "the revolution shall not been televised", those that are not aware of the extensive rebuttal of that propaganda video. Nevertheless Rory Carroll has been long enough in Venezuela and now he does not buy it, so we can let him indulge in some revolutionary romanticism which after the December referendum failure is now just that, romanticism.

One interesting aspect of his article is that he finally talks about his feelings and thoughts that famous day when on a Santa Fe beach Chavez used him to attack the West. I had defended him then, embarrassed that "mi presidente" would be so rude and vulgar with Rory Carroll. Apparently Rory was less upset than I was for him (or at least he is protecting any meager access he still has to chavismo). He dryly, very English humor like, writes:

In the absence of US marines storming the beach, a reporter for a British newspaper could fill in as the villain. Nothing personal.

Precious.

A must read article.

-The end-