El Universal roster of the Venezuelan intelligentsia

Friday 2, April 2004

Yesterday I was too engrossed by the translation of Milagros Socorro great opinion piece, and I was too tired to go on describing this great work of El Universal. This is an example of what makes this paper great and why yesterday it has reached 95 years of age in a continent where 20 years is a life time. Even if on occasion El Universal deserves justified criticism, as I pointed out early this week.

El Universal had the great idea to interview briefly some of the great minds of Venezuela in order to ask them if they thought that we were already into a authoritarian regime, or on our way to it. Miguel has covered some of the highlights. Thus I am spared from writing the review comments (not to mention that I have not read all the interviews yet).

I will limit myself to one reflection: the people interviewed, whether one agrees with them being another story, represent some of the best of the thinking world in Venezuela. All of them have taken position against Chavez, even if many of them have supported chavismo in its early stages. These last ones have felt out of favor because they are indeed thinkers and Chavez does not tolerate independent minds around himself.

It is striking to realize that if there were a real chavista newspaper it could not put up such a list of successful and bright people, so many of the Universal list having even transcended the borders of our small country. Indeed, one of the great failures of chavismo, in spite of all its resources, has been its inability to publish a paper that people "want" to read, a sure example of its intellectual failure. Probably the best that chavismo has produced is the original web site Aporrea where at least some folks are creative in expressing their anger and desire of revenge from real or imagined woes. Anything else is or was a hack job.

This is the very impressive list, even if many more names could have been added

Ex-chavistas, and probably the best (only?) minds of chavismo until 2001

Hermann Escarrá
Alberto Jordán Hernández
Francisco Rodríguez
Ricardo Combellas
Javier Elechiguerra Naranjo

Some ex politicians but mostly those that exert leadership in their area of expertise, goes to show you that the post Chavez government will have its pick for high quality public office holders

Fernando Luis Egaña
Gerardo Fernández
Luis Enrique Oberto
Eduardo Roche Lander
Carlos Delgado Chapellín
Miguel Angel Santos
Gustavo García
Juan Martín Echeverría
Román Duque Corredor
Gustavo Linares Benzo
Asdrúbal Aguiar
Manuel Cova
Carolina Jaimes Branger
Enrique Medina Gómez
Luis José Uzcátegui
Diego Bautista Urbaneja

And last but not least:
Cardinal Rosalio Castillo Lara (one of the highest Vatican ranking prelates, now retired in Guiripa, small village south of Caracas)