There was an election a week ago

 After years of covering in detail Venezuelan elections I would be remiss not to mention last Sunday regional "elections" in Venezuela. Then again, as I put in a tweet, the same day Chilean elections seemed more important to follow. At least for me.

Once upon a time, say before 2015, one could still find enough information, enough semi reliable data to look for trends in Venezuelan voting results. I did not do too bad in my analysis predictions. But after the debacle of 2015 the regime made sure no vote meant anything anymore. I am not going to go into tiresome details. Remember, they are mostly pre electoral fraud, from happily banning candidates the regime dislikes to go all out and take over political parties. Amen of all the treachery in voter registration, excessive use of state means for chavista campaign, etc, etc. On election day you keep having all the unfair interventions from the army forcing people to vote, holding results, etc, etc.

All very commie banana republic.

Thus since 2015 I stopped wasting time in electoral analysis. The more so that in addition to the great heights in election treachery we have a large abstention movement and probably up to 4 million Venezuelan voters in exile, and thus with no option.

This being said, there are a few details worth commenting.

First, there was after many years the return of serious electoral observers. Namely proven and tested teams. There are only three sources of reliable electoral observation today: teams set up by the UN, the OAS or EU. Some countries I suppose would also do serious electoral observation, democratic countries like Japan or Canada. Maybe even the Carter Center. But that is all, and certainly not the countries that the regime invited previously for what is at best electoral tourism (Russia or Bolivia, for example).

Why did the regime accepted the European Union to send an observing team? This is the question, the more so that as expected the preliminary report under diplomatic language indicated that the vote of last Sunday was shit.  I suppose that the regime having survived three years of sanctions and pressures and general exhaustion about Venezuela assumed that the world would recognize Maduro if this one held semi palatable elections with a selected few handouts to the opposition, preferably to the opposition that it has tried to build through payoffs. Well, if that was the reason, it did not work out.

Another reason is the need for the regime to reach some form of agreement with the US so that some sanctions are lifted.  But the regime, to begin with, is incapable of seriousness when it is negotiation time. Whether the regime offers decent elections is not really an issue there, though it could help. But as the scorpion crossing the stream on the back of the toad, the regime cannot help itself and it will sabotage any opening, be it formal negotiations or semi fair elections.

This new PR failure behind us, what else can we rescue from last Sunday?  As expected the regime won handily but not that great. Abstention was here and with a copious dose of opposition division it still lost on the total vote but carried all states but 3, while loosing a bunch of town halls.  In fact that townhall fall back should be worrisome for the regime: for once the regime did better in big cities than in the country side towns where the opposition struck a few interesting wins. The provinces, apparently, are starting to be tired of being taken for granted.

Thus, in spite of all the treachery, the regime vote count keeps sliding down, fast enough that it cannot be hidden.

What else is worth noting? The opposition division. This one is basically 4 fold, believe it or not.

First, the 4 million + overseas. Where would those go were presidential elections carried tomorrow?

Second, the chronic abstention. Their number look good if you count in the 4 million abroad. But the fact of the matter is that some are starting to vote again. Why? Because the abstention promoters offer nothing in exchange, and people want solutions, not speeches on morality.

In third we have the pro Chavez opposition. Those are a set of individuals that came from the opposition but decided to try to reach political deals with the regime. All for naught of course, nobody is fooled. In last year parliamentary election the regime had to fudge some dubious vote count to make sure a handful of them would get elected! But they are very useful for the opposition in a way I am surprised people do not talk about. Last week they got more votes than what we could have expected. Me thinks that many chavistas voted for them as a protest vote against Maduro! And remember: when you have been attached for two decades to a political idea, the first vote against is the more difficult; it gets easier after. And those fake opposition parties are a good stepping stone for transitioning.

Finally we have the remains of the real opposition, those that did jail, were tortured, are in exile, whatever. They did not do too good, though they took 1/6 of townhalls and two states. That is, a little bit more than last time and in spite of abstention exile and divisions. For better or for worse, the so called G4 remains the true opposition and is still recognized as such after last Sunday show.

That is all.  We'll see what's next.

Dreams of constitutional repression

That ever self serving pseudo panacea of our sub continent, calling for a constitutional assembly to solve problems that politicians have no resolve to deal with directly, is being invoked all around. After all, the brilliant example of Chavez who called for a constitutional assembly to solve Venezuelan problems is there for all: not only he did not solve any of his country problems, but he made them worse, and he certainly did solve the financial future of his relatives and friends, ending himself as a president for life.

These weeks we heard from different points a call for some form of constitutional assembly, and in all cases it comes from a group of people that are unable of unwilling to have their way and thus want to use the mechanism.  Let's not be afraid of words here, what they all want really is a soft, legal repression, that will silence down those that are not allowing them to get their way.

Marian stunts: part 1, at La Divina Pastora

La Divina Pastora, my second ever tweetpic

I do not know what to think of that coincidence.  On Friday a woman called Maria did bring religion to many people by calling Hugo Chavez a thief.  And today I went to Barquisimeto to watch that other miracle, a Madonna image called La Divina Pastora bring to the streets millions, with S, of people to march along her side.  We will start with the procession of La Divina Pastora.

I am not a believer, I am an agnostic and as such you need to read this photo essay, making sure that any belief you hold is not offended.  And yet, the intensity of the moment with the huge crowds that one has to face can raise troubling feelings, if anything of jealously for not being able to be a believer of anything.

But I digress.  I had wanted for years to attend one of these events, the easier for me that I do have relatives in Barquisimeto and I can arrive the day before to dodge the bullet of massive traffic jam on the 14 in the morning.  Already I did write about this event in 2004, which by the way was the first time ever that blogger allowed me to post pictures in the blog.  It is kind of fitting that 8 years after I post above my second ever twitter picture taken from my berry.  Technology advances.  But I digress again.

Lara State stand handing out water and tangerines for free

The thing is truly impressive and if you ever have the chance to attend do not miss it.  It is not that it is particular beatiful (it is not) or spectacular (it is but not in your usual ways), and yet  it is something quite unique that can be seen only perhaps at La Guadalupe in Mexico or maybe some Hindu festivals and pilgrimage shrines.  The atmosphere, you know.

Manuel Caballero is dead

I missed all the news today as I was travelling between San Felipe and Caracas. Only now, as I check on my blog, do I learn that Manuel Caballero died early this morning.  Venezuela loses today one of its finest thinkers ever, a great historian and one of the few that opposed the Chavez regime since 1992 even though Manuel Caballero has an impeccable career as a leftist who became on time a social democrat.  His Sunday column in El Universal was one of the half a dozen weekly must read for me, always bringing to me a political smile, always giving ideas, always reminding me that the anti military anti fascist fights in Venezuela are the just cause, worth any sacrifice.

We are a miserable country and we deserve what we get

UPDATE: This morning the government claimed it was all under control courtesy of the wonderful equipment, organization, people, etc, etc...  tonight the mountain is still burning.  They do not even have the decency to shut up for a few hours....
 ------------------------------
I cannot describe my mood tonight as I learn that my beloved mountain, Caracas Avila National Park is going up in flames.  Not only that, but the part actually burning in part, so far, is one that had not burnt in a century or more, carrying vestiges of the rain forest before the Spaniards moved in, not that Native Americans did not burn woodland on their own.

That the Avila should burn should not surprise anyone as the government of Chavez has been remiss with the care of all of Venezuela's National Parks and natural areas, be them the Upper Caroni basin where the military does business tolerating illegal garimpeiro strip mining which is increasing the mercury levels of the Guri dam to letting the National Parks near Caracas and Valencia be invaded by squatters.

Oh, but Chavez is great at changing the names of National Parks!  The Avila now supposedly wears the Native name of Guaraira Repano which no one for sure knows exactly what it means or what Natives used it and for what. But someone within chavismo decided that the words described the park or the mountain or something and that was all what it took.  Just as the hour was arbitrarily advanced by thirty minutes while the government stubbornly refuses to consider retrograding 30 minutes which could save quite a lot of the electricity that the Guri is producing.

An annoying bicentennial? 19 de Abril de 1810

Starting last year and through 2011 most Latin American country will celebrate or commemorate a series of events that lead to the proclamation of independence from Spain.  The coincidence is simple to account for: Napoleon had invaded Spain and under the pretext of supporting the legitimate dynasty of Spain the elite of the time used this excuse to exert first a provisional autonomy that quickly became a declaration of Independence.

Emparan summoned back to the Cabildo

Venezuela was no exception, and in fact the clearest text book case, as on April 19 1810 the Caracas Cabildo forced the Spanish Capitan General to resign and leave the colony.  A year was enough to reach the official Independence proclamation on July 5th 1811.  And thus we have two national holidays to mark our Independence. 

One would think that the bombastic government of Chavez would take the opportunity to appropriate the two celebrations.  After all, such a centennial milestone is reached, well, once every hundred years only.  But no, nothing significantly out of the ordinary is planned.  No major festival is under organization, and we are at barely 30 days of the April date.  No literary competition has been offered that would attract the best pens or keyboards.  We do not know of any major gathering of LatinAmerican head of states in Caracas next month.

How come?

A strong democracy off the rubble, while another ex-democrcay shorts out...

Morales and Lugo shaking, for real!

Today Chile inaugurated its new president.  The day is not significant because, say, Lugo of Paraguay not used to earthquakes looked a little shaken while Morales of Bolivia used to quakes found it interesting.  The real significance is that in spite of a never ending quake that is shaking the foundation of Chilean prosperity democracy goes on, as planned, with all political actors holding hands to deal with the emergency.

I was maybe too optimistic when I first wrote about the Chile earthquake of February. It turned out that the amplitude and repetitive nature of the disaster also shook the response of the government, a response which seemed very good at first.  But when the GPS detects that the city of Concepcion might have moved several yards into the Pacific, well, there is some excuse to be offered for some not so adequate response.

Rafael Caldera

Rafael Caldera, twice president of Venezuela (69/74 and 94/99), passed away just before Christmas.

I am no fan of the man those no eulogy from my side. I will only recognize in him his civilian values and that he managed successfully the first democratic political transition in Venezuela history. Until Caldera transitions were always violently contested and never finished their term, starting with Vargas in 1834 (all historical parameters taken into account!). Caldera together with Betancourt and Villalba understood that democracy in Venezuela would be possible only when political opponents would be looked upon as mere opponents and not as enemies that had to be destroyed. That was the foundation of the "Pacto de Punto Fijo" who brought to Venezuela 40 years of civilian discourse and democratic culture. That is why chavismo is so bent in discrediting these years as chavismo is a throw back to the era of violence and segregation that existed before 1958.

But together with Carlos Andres Perez, Caldera suffered from the reelection bug. He went as far as wrecking the political party he founded, COPEI, when this one did not want to give him the nod for reelection. As such his return to power was ensured by him riding the consequences of the 1992 Chavez murderous coup and accepting to preside over an electoral alliance including small and/or unsavory parties, most of them finding their way to Chavez in 1998. Trapped in his own discourse, and probably feeling threatened by the military, he gained time to finish his second term by allowing Chavez go unpunished from the murders of 1992 and thus allowing for a military regime to take office through the vote in 1998. Today Venezuela is a military regime and in my opinion Caldera is one of the main culprits, if not the main one when we put him with Alfaro Ucero.

At least his family had the good sense to refuse state honors from the regime they helped come to office. Not that much honor would have come anyway if we look at the dismal treatment offered Herrera Campins when he died. But what can you expect from the vile uncouth soldiers controlling Venezuela?

You can find in Spanish a summary of Caldera's life here.

Book review: Polar launches its complete geography of Venezuela

On occasion I run into an intellectual construct that truly excites me. During my last trip to Caracas I finally met what I had been waiting for long, a follow up to the paradigm setting "Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela" [DHV] (1).

The new "Geo Venezuela" starts where DHV stops, with the historical maps of Venezuela to move then into the description of all that comprise the physical reality of Venezuela. It is not complete yet as only the first Volumes have been edited and published from a total of a promised 9 to which I understand a sort of Atlas will be added (2).

The DHV has become the reference book for anyone writing about Venezuela and wishing to have a factual and accurate account of the different names, events and places that made Venezuelan history. As an historical dictionary it is unmatched and represents one of the cultural highlights of Venezuela intellectual creation even if it is an austere set of 4 encyclopedic books. Written in the 80ies and 90ies, at a time of general foreboding as to the future of Venezuela, I suppose it was also meant as a record of all that defined us as a people before history swept over us to destroy our past through active demolition or simple neglect and "oubli". As such with the arrival of Chavez in 1999 that premonition came to pass since almost from the start chavismo has been busy rewriting Venezuelan history, distorting it and changing names. I wonder if today it would still be possible to write again the DHV with the same criteria of objectivity that prevailed then.

But the DHV suffered of a major flaw; if it had a lot of tables in its last volume, it lacked a map section, something that this blogger deems essential in any history book, even written in a dictionary form. I was hoping all these years, thinking about that almost whenever I used the DHV, that Fundacion Polar would remediate this lack. They did, not all, but they did.

The new Geo Venezuela will carry all the maps you can think of, national and regional, political and geographical, with many pictures to back the description and even Audubon like drawings of plants and animals.

The opus index promises us 7 sections in 9 volumes covering historical geography, physical and natural resources, human activities and settlement, regional diversity, a cultural geography with a yet unpublished volume for "geo-strategy and integration", something put very much in fashion in these recent years, except that we can expect Fundacion Polar writers to offer us practical aspects of this integration rather than the wishful thinking in vogue at Miraflores Palace. The general index is on the left side and you can click for a larger picture, as you can do on all other pictures of this post. I apologize that the quality is not as good as I wished it to be because my scanner is of awkward use with books, and the thin paper of the edition allows for a background sometimes difficult to clean up.

Each volume consists of individual major chapters written by different authors, many of them well known top specialists in their fields, and I am sure none of them an unknown first timer (this is my way to admit that I have not heard of all of them). I have purchased only the first two volumes because, well, they are expensive and I will need to work out my shelves space to include Geo Venezuela next to my DHV. Thus, for the rest of this blog entry I will review only volume 1, which is the only one of the volumes to be divided in two parties, while perhaps being the thinner of the lot. However I can assure you that volume 2 is equally fascinating and that starting next month I will purchase the other ones, tome by tome, so as to give me plenty of time to peruse them at leisure.

Volume 1 starts with a one page introduction written by the president of Fundacion Polar, Leonor Gimenez de Mendoza, whose place is guaranteed in Venezuelan cultural history for the initiative she took with DHV and Geo. I am going to translate below the middle paragraph because it says it all.

If we accept, as Braudel says, that geography is the first chapter of History, which in in a way it is a very obvious truth, thus this geographical opus is a work that was awaiting us for a long time, possibly since the very moment we decided to face the making of the DHV.

And a later paragraph

To gain the development that we are destined to, we need the conscientious study of what we are and what we have. That was the fundamental reason that accompanied us to defeat the natural roadblocks that come up when one faces a work of the magnitude of this one.

This way she set tone, without any ambiguity and great ambition.

As it should be the first chapter, written by Simon Alberto Consalvi, of the series is dedicated to those giants, or lesser lights, who have penned and drawn the first descriptions of Venezuela, a long obscure colony of Spain which came into prominence with its cacao commerce that allowed for the education of a generation of Illustrated Venezuelans who drove the independence of almost half of South America. Foremost, of course, were Alexander von Humboldt whose patronymic can be found everywhere, from the second highest mountain of Venezuela to the maker and unmaker of El Niño off Peru's shores and Agustin Codazzi who made the first realistic maps of Venezuela shortly after independence.

The book then enters into matter, trying to describe the geography of Venezuela when Columbus encountered it. For this, exquisite maps are united to pictures of native objects, pictures of country side and the like. The more interesting part perhaps for me was the description on how the settlement of Venezuela progressed and I am sharing with you some of the maps and graphs of the book.

The first one is about the early discovery of Venezuela which shows clearly that it was one of the earliest areas of the Americas to be explored before Spain lost interest for Venezuela once the empires of Mexico and the Inca were found and destroyed. Note by the way in red, the expedition of Amerigo Vespucci who accidentally would give his name to the new continent from observations he did mainly from Venezuela, including Venezuela's name.


We can also see a map of the first looting of Venezuela, the expedition of Guerra and Niño in 1499. This fascinating map tells us how a small ship touched Venezuela in many a place and got whatever it could find, from live monkeys to river gold. A perfect premonition of what would be Venezuelan history to these days when characters like the Cabello and Chacon clans are properly looting all what they can from the public treasury. Then as today it was qualified "trade" when in fact it was done through the superiority of weapons or the abuse of law.

What we can retain from these two maps is that by the first year of the XVI century Spaniards had already a good idea of the Venezuelan shores, the first continental area to be duly explored, something often lost even by serious historians who think that only the US has the right to call itself America, when it can aspire at best to the label of NORTH America. America is one, from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuai. OK, sorry for this small rant.

Next I would like to show you some of the maps of the first settlements of Venezuela. But let's start first by what was the general division of the social constructs existing in the indigenous population. I liked very much this next map because in its simplicity it kills some of the chavista racial propaganda that we are suffering today. See, chavismo has that mythic vision that the natives before Columbus arrival were walking around naked, in loving peace and living off a few fish they caught and some fruits and manioc they dug. Nothing further from the truth. If indeed Venezuelan natives had no society organized as in Mexico or Peru, it still had two general areas as indicated in the map: an area of structured and hierarchical societies, and another area of "egalitarian" societies, those which naturally happen in sparsely settled area where a nomadic way of life is the norm. We can imagine that in the light green area conflict already existed as proto states were evolving. But certainly in the "egalitarian" darker green areas conflict must have existed. After all, the reports of cannibalism in Venezuela, true or not, ritual or not, we might never know for sure, come from this area.

Whatever the case might be, one thing is certain, culturally the Venezuelan natives were divided into two general cultural areas and to this day we can still feel that division as it influenced the racial mix that would follow discovery.

For the settlement of the country I have chosen three maps, the general foundation of "cities in Western Venezuela, the expansion in Eastern Venezuela and the state of settlement in Eastern Venezuela when independence came (and what Humboldt found a very few years before independence wars started).



In this first map you can observe three directions of settlement for the Western part of Venezuela. From the Eastern part, explored first, came some occasional forays into the Western part of the country (in blue). That Western part had two focus of settlement. The first one from Coro to El Tocuyo and then farther, to Caracas (in red). The Andean settlement came from what is today Colombia (in yellow).

It is easy to guess the effects of culture and ethnic mix since these "conquistadors"/settlers came with a varied mix of help. For example those who came from Colombia brought the Chibchas. Those who came from the East brought Carib and later black slaves. Those who came from Coro and El Tocuyo, well, they carried all sorts of people to every corner. Adding this mix to the existing division of native cultural areas you can start understanding much better the current cultural divisions of Venezuela, from the Zuliano to the Guayanes, another distinction that chavismo is hard at work trying to erase, in particular in Zulia for which cultural specificity Chavez has the deafest of hears.

The fact remains that all through our history there were always the elites from Barquisimeto to Caracas distinct from the ones from the Andes and they only started to mix to some extent when the Andes folks took over in 1899 (3). It is to be noted that both elites had always significant misgivings for the Llanero groups which were the last ones to be "settled" by the Spaniards, and from where Chavez comes. Never mind the historical figures of Boves and Paez.

The next two charts are specific to the settlement of the Eastern part of the country. The first one illustrates the slow penetration of the area, limited at first to the shores. As long as pearls were available the shores thrived, but once the "placeres" were exhausted of their oysters and gold was found in Mexico, that area was sort of forgotten. Still, its strategic importance at guarding the Southern entry of the Caribbean, and the exploitation of salt pans at Araya slowly brought it back to life and to colonization. In fact Cumana and Araya show the most impressive fortifications of Venezuela since they defended Araya salt pans from the greed of Dutch sailors in particular. Note also that Trinidad was settled first by French and Spaniards but that for many reasons the settlement was never strong enough and allowed the English eventually to take over.

The next map is the human occupation at the eve of the Independence Wars, what Humboldt found when he landed in Cumana. This map fulfills my heart desires since it describes very well the reality of the area then. You can see clearly that there was no major cities, which were the major settlements, which were the communication roads for trade (and later such as military campaigns). This map is perhaps the best way to understand why Bolivar run to the Eastern part of Venezuela when the Second Republic felt to Boves, but also why Bolivar understood that the Independence of Venezuela needed to restart from that area, far enough from Spaniard control then as they were too busy trying to retain the bigger pieces of their crumbling colonial Empire.

To finish this sampling of Geo Venezuela two more items. First, a chart of the percentage of Urban Population in Venezuela.



There is no difficulty in interpreting this chart. When oil arrived in the 20ies, not even 20% of Venezuelans lived in urban centers. Today barely 10% still live in the country side, the dramatic breaking point in the switch of Venezuelan society being between 1940 and 1970. We must keep in mind this chart when we hear the Chavez nonsense of a return to the country side. Chavez inherited a country where nearly 90% of the people are urban dwellers. And yet his conservative and reactionary mind makes him see Venezuela as still an agrarian country. As such he has devoted his decade to redraw the country side while the most pressing problems of the 90% urban residents were only too often ignored. The sad part is that the destruction of the rural areas operated through chavista agents will hurt decisively the well being of the 90% that have chosen long ago to live in town. But that is another story.

Finally, and just for the sake of it, the map of what would be the "Capitania General de Venezuela" on a modern topographical map. Think about all what Venezuela has lost due to the ineptitude of its preceding rulers, and wonder about what else will be lost when the chavista nightmare is eventually over.


Observe the interesting detail that the Spaniard had made a rational division of their lands. Venezuela was a smallish settled area near the cost which was in charge of managing two of the major empty zones of the Spanish Empire, the Llanos and Guayana (the other ones being the Mexican North, the Argentinian Pampas and Patagonia, and the Chaco). Even though Venezuela strategic importance for the Spaniard was rising (the prosperous commerce of cacao and cattle products) in their mind Mexico and Peru, with rising Colombia, were the key possessions. The other ones were organized so as to be buffer and protect these regions.

The faithful reader that is still reading must have gathered by now that I am thrilled with this new collection from the Fundacion Polar, for which I am grateful. Yet, I must bring in some criticism.

First I have been surprised at a rather lax editing. I have found spelling mistakes more often than expected, and in Spanish it is rather difficult to have spelling mistakes if you have an average editor. Perhaps with all the political problems of today, and because the Polar Group, and its foundation, are a target of chavismo which will nationalize it any time soon, they decided to rush the work and wait for a possible second edition to fix all the little problems. It is certain that if the state were to take over Polar, such a book could not be edited anymore with the necessary objectivity, certainly not inside Venezuela. As such I will advise that whomever can afford it to get it as soon as you can, or at least the volumes that interest you. I know I will, and that I will use it extensively as support material for future blog entries.

The second criticism is that there are also silly mistakes in the maps, such as colors that do not match between the legend and the map itself. This, in my opinion, and perhaps because of my scientific education, is rather unacceptable. You can find an example in the Eastern map at the time of Humboldt when the green triangle of the map do not match the green triangle of the legend. And this is a minor error as I saw graver ones.

A third criticism is the lack of general index in each volume. I do understand that creating an index for such a genre is rather difficult and there is probably a general index planned for the end. But still, if a glossary of terms could be included at the end of each chapter (an excellent initiative) an effort should have been made to include a small index of the major terms and geographical areas discussed in that volume. Not to mention and index of maps, always welcome and rarely offered in general.

Still, I cannot tell you how delighted I have been this week reading random chapters of the two first volumes. Yes, random chapters as you need not read the whole thing linearly, even though I suppose it would be advisable.

However when everything is said and done, these books succeed for that rare quality in scholarly material: the narrative and material offered eventually make you dream of what Venezuela was and could be, make you want to travel and visit all the places you read about. This precious quality eventually will make you realize more than ever that the place where you grew up and live is always more than the sum of its parts.

A big BRAVO! for the Fundacion Polar, for showing us that all is not lost yet in Venezuela.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

1) Diccionario de Historia de Venezuela
Fundacion Polar 1989, 1997
ISBN 980-6397-37-1

2) Geo Venezuela
Fundacion Polar 2007 and on
ISBN 978-980-379-165-0

3) Elites is a very dangerous word to use in such narrative. All of the Venezuelan elites were relatively poor compared to the elite group of other LatAm countries since the Venezuelan cultural elite was devastated during the Independence Wars, from which they never recovered. All through the XIX century elite is best applied to the groups that hold power rather than wealth since wealth was land and the people who worked your land. Only when the easy money of oil came a change came in the way Venezuelan elites were formed and lived. Perhaps it would be better to use the word "caste" to describe Venezuela elite, if it were not that the constant historical upheavals of Independence, Federal war and Castro/Gomez reigns never allowed for a social caste system to establish permanently. Venezuela is perhaps the most socially mobile country of South America, no matter what Chavez would like us to believe.


-The end-

Clarines News and Views

I have escaped my daily routine for one week. And again I set my path to “Oriente” though to more civilized areas, as a manner of speech, than the wet lands of the Delta.


My first stop at lunch time was Clarines, old village of Venezuela noteworthy for having one of the best examples of early Venezuelan churches, simple as it corresponded to a rather poor colony of Spain, and fortified as the natives were restless for decades and would have none of the Spaniards religion or way of life. Clarines has always been in my memory, since as a kid my parents would take us at least once a year for extended holiday in the Cumana area where they had plenty of friends left before they moved to Caracas. I remember barely more than a toddler how empty of any comfort was the road, still in large part a dirt road, without any place to stop for a decent drink, and few gas stations so you needed to be watchful. In those days every Venezuelan had a roll of toilet paper in his car.

Although I have been to Margarita and Cumana since those years, I had not taken the road for more than two decades and this year I decided to make the trip as part of my brief vacation. The Church of Clarines was the same as I recalled, isolated on top of the hill as surrounding dwellings must have been cleared long ago. Still burning under the inclement sun of Clarines who is seared in my memory as one of the hottest places I knew. No wonder, we did stop always around noon time as it was the only place between Caracas and Barcelona where parents could let their kids run for a few minutes. As such Clarines is for me synonymous with bright sun and exhausting heat.

Then Clarines was empty. I remember that each time we stopped to visit there was no one on Bolivar Square in front of the church. Maybe a stray dog, that was all. Around ,the original adobe houses were shut tight, though now I think it was probably due to the siesta. One year they had opened a little bodega, with near empty shelves but where to our great surprise we could find some cold “uvita Grapette”, my favorite drink as it left my tongue purple.

Plaza Bolivar was as empty as I recalled, except for a couple of lovers on a bench. It has been redone nicely, taking advantage of the old trees planted a century or more ago. But the surrounding houses remained shut at noon, not a single café or joint in what is perhaps one of the highest points of Colonial architecture of Venezuela. The Bolivarian Revolution has no business to do with that history, even if its sturdy construction is a silent witness of the resistance of the natives so loved, we are told, by Chavez. From the road you would never know that you were driving past Clarines who probably received its latest care under the presidency of Luisinchi, who was born there.

The Church was closed. It looked rather worn out, more than what I recall. Though it must still be in use on Sundays. If the Plaza Bolivar was neat, the area surrounding the church was in dire need of a good sweep. All in all it was rather anguishing to observe the solitude of the Church, the only building of the square surroundings in need of a facelift, in need of a mere cleaning up.

The rest of Clarines has changed. The top of the hill might still be lonely without shops or places to have a drink but it has been scrubbed up some and two streets have been returned to an ancient cobble stone look. Far distant Colombians have arrived too, as they have arrived everywhere in Venezuela. If I remember Clarines as a totally noiseless place, this time I will leave with the sound of loud vallenatos coming from some house. And even a Colombian luncheonette, which was closed anyway.

But what has changed the most was the lower town, the one we entered first after we had left the main highway. This are did not really exist then but today it is a tawdry main street of stores and bustling activity in spite of the heat, where the only stores modern and clean are the now inescapable Movistar and Digitel dedicated to cellular phones and calling cabins. The new city has its back to its past, completely, full of PSUV slogans and personality cult to Chavez accompanying the local rojo-rojito potentate, whereas the hill is rather strangely scarce in those. If Clarines was in my mind close to Casas Muertas, today it is a new small town, probably rescued from oblivion by the need to provide with services the busy road and the nearby monstrous petrochemical complex. I wonder what the new people of Clarines think of their venerable church.

But all progress is not negative. After Clarines I did stop for lunch to a very nice place called La Medianidad, I think. The folks who manage it bring to this desertic area their cheeses produced elsewhere. And they opened a very busy restaurant where I had this wonderful cachapa below, accompanied with one of the best “papelon con limon” I ever had. Such luxury would not even have been a dream when I traveled first the old dirt road. (1)


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1)Cachapa is a corn pancake served with a generous portion of cheese “queso de mano”. Papelon con limon is lemon juice sweetened with the sugar cane juice solidified in brown cones after the first pressing of the cane. The only sugar available in Venezuela for centuries before refined white sugar was developed. It is difficult to have a more Venezuelan meal than the one in the picture.

As usual, click on the pictures to enlarge.


-The end-

Venezuela News and Views writes to president elect Barack Obama

President Elect Barack Obama

Care of the Honorable Congressman Rahm Emanuel

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Dear Senator Obama

I am allowing myself to write you this short note in order to congratulate you for your victory which shows once again the ability of the United States to reinvent itself at critical times. I have had to defend this virtue of your great country over the years that I have been blogging about Venezuela mostly to an US audience which quite often did not believe as much in your country as I do.

My objective here is to summarize as much as possible what the Venezuela situation is. You are in luck; you come to office at a time where the star of President Chavez is fading and I certainly hope that your new administration will not do anything mistakenly to brighten it up again. Fortunately whatever misfortunes Chavez is suffering they are not really due to the actions of your predecessor so your incoming staff will be able to start from scratch its Venezuelan policies.

I have been holding a noted Venezuelan blog since 2003 and I have had the good fortune to reach many people in the United States. I have observed with anguish the ineffective actions the U.S. had undertaken to try to weaken Chavez hold on power. Having lived for one decade and a half in diverse academic locales of the East Coast I do understand how difficult it is for a rational US State Department official to make any sense of what is going on in Venezuela since 1998 (or even earlier for that matter). The good news here is that the country has changed considerably since the Clinton administration and thus many of the huge archives on Venezuela lodged at Foggy Bottom may remain undisturbed in their dust collecting mission.

To deal with Venezuela it is essential to understand a very single point: the character of Hugo Chavez. He is an unstable narcissistic personality whose only objective in life is to find ways to be reelected president of Venezuela. All means are good for him; all sorts of scandalous abuses can be committed as long as they favor his hold on the country and destroy any possible emerging democratic group that could constitute an alternative. I can write that most of the important stuff that happens within or about Venezuela is related or due to this single fact.

Chavez success so far is due to the high oil prices that the Iraq war and the China/India economic growth contributed to create. With these prices going down in recent month, albeit briefly as oil prices are sure to increase again, the US has its best window of opportunity to act in the Western Hemisphere to recover its due leadership. That is right; any handling of Chavez must be made within an ample policy towards Latin America. Chavez has had enough money to finance a wide array of anti US groups that have even managed to reach power in several countries. Chavez’s intrigues were also helped by the understandable obsession of the US with Iraq and Afghanistan. I am with those who think that the real future of the US lies in this hemisphere more than in Asia or Africa. That the Hispanic community in the US is taking over in numbers your own community is as good as a red light I can think of. I believe that you are uniquely qualified to find ways in which all of these communities can communicate better; offering a general approach to Latin America can further help mutual understanding within the U.S. The countries that more resemble the US in its ethnic composition are Venezuela and Brazil where no ethnic group dominates, just as it is slowly becoming the case in the U.S. Luckily, if there is a mad house in Venezuela at least Brazil offers the U.S. a more reliable partner, something that your predecessor had the intelligence to understand before it was too late. Whatever policies he left you on Brazil they are probably the only ones worth following and expanding south of the Caribbean.

It certainly is not for me to even suggest you how to handle matters, you will have bright people doing these studies for you. I can only modestly state my wish list about what your policy should cover for Latin America.

The U.S. should seek by all means to improve trade with Latin America. Any one looking at the map can see that whether ships leave from the East or West Coast, shipping costs are lower if they are headed South. Our climates compensates for each one’s winters. As a continent our intellectual and cultural elites have long lost their hang-ups about English as a commercial and as cultural language, in ways that Europe and Asia still lack. In my small home town of San Felipe McDonald and Burger King, for better or worse, unite anti and pro Chavez families around the kids’ playground. This happens just as Mexican wonders have slowly conquered North American palates. I do not know of any “gringo” that resisted the splendor of Venezuela’s modest arepa. For us there is no North or South America, only one America that starts at the Bering straight and finishes at the Cape Horn. We have long ago understood this and it is time that your county joins us in this outlook. Thus my first wish: do not take us for granted because of our proximity and our affinity to Disney World family vacations for those of us who can afford them. That is exactly why the U.S. lost so much ground since 9/11 as you thought we would be waiting for you to solve your problems. Fidel Castro understood that very well and used Chavez and his money to score big points against you.

A trade policy should also be inspired from the European Union success. The United States should be generous at least in the first years of any trade treaty. You need to improve the wealth generation of your hemispheric partners. That is the only way that in the long term you will solve the immigration question. When I was a kid in France for holidays one could still meet a “Spanish” maid or a “Portuguese” handy man. These days are over; neither Portuguese nor Spaniards have any need to go to France to eke out a living. If Spain and Portugal were helped generously they also had to modernize their countries fast, creating a working legal frame and even becoming models of Human Rights respect after decades of ferocious dictatorships. Any FTA your country offers can ask such things and reward accordingly their accomplishment. We have an interesting advantage over your Asian trading partners. For all our awkwardness in embracing modern society and technology you will always find easier to inspect us to verify that we are complying with treaties on Labor and Human Rights. Outside of Cuba any country south of the Rio Grande is of much easier access and supervision than inner China.

And thus we reach my second wish: get rid of the embargo to Cuba. It has not worked, the result is for all to see. It offers a comfortable excuse to Castro abuses. Besides, the Florida Cubans did not vote for you and yet you carried the state. No U.S. president has had such a chance as to get rid of a self inflicted wound, one of the last inheritances of the Cold War. I can assure you that no other measure such as lifting the embargo would restore the image of the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere, repair years of neglect and weaken dramatically your adversaries, starting with the Castro brothers and their enabler, Chavez. However this also must meet certain conditions. You cannot do that for free and you should at least cash at home by telling down some of your most leftist supporters who think that glorifying a criminal by wearing his face on a t-shirt is the coolest thing. Offering Cuba to end the embargo while at the same time condemning energetically the crimes committed by the revolution will be a powerful first step, if you stick to that position. This means allowing trade and humanitarian help, but keeping frozen relations until at least all prisoners are released and circulation inside the island is reasonably fluid. There is an additional benefit about lifting the embargo on your own volition: you do not need to soil yourself by meeting with the Castro brothers. This by itself sends the final message that Cubans are great and the Castro brothers are scum. Imagine how this will work in the long run.

Cuba brings us finally to Venezuela since it is its life saver. Do not worry about Venezuela much. Do not worry about meeting Chavez; you do not need to do so. Iran is a much bigger problem for you. Your campaign talk about making it a national policy to decrease the U.S. dependency on Venezuelan and Middle East oil has already created wonders. The Middle East is no rush to bring back up oil prices that could bankrupt their precious investments in the West. And in Venezuela Chavez has felt obliged to salute your elections in terms that we would not have thought possible a few weeks ago. You just need to demonstrate that even if slow, the Federal government will indeed act steadily to drop Venezuelan oil imports. The very nature of your skin color and the very wish to become free of oil blackmail have neutered Chavez to an extent you will find amazing once your staff explores these issues. True, he is still dangerous and must be watched and weakened at every possible opportunity. How to do that?

Venezuela has been made a mess under Chavez. More than ever we depend from imports for our food. We produce nothing worth exporting except oil. We could not negotiate any FTA even if we wanted to: what could we possibly peddle in Chicago? In real life Chavez is a punishment that we bought on ourselves as a society. Decades of populism have created a social structure that thinks it is OK to depend from the state largesse. And this has affected our politics as we have indeed created the society “to the victors belong the spoils”. Thus anti Chavez and pro Chavez people are equally damaged and need to be taught together a lesson in real life. Chavez collapse, I believe, will bring that home. And Chavez collapse is inevitable as the country is producing less self sustaining items. But might still take some time and more importantly that collapse cannot be effected by the U.S. under any guise.


Large sectors of the Venezuelan opposition are unwillingly to oppose Chavez as they should because naively they think that one day or another you will get rid of Chavez. Paradoxically the help you gave the Venezuelan political opposition has made it even more incompetent as it sat down expecting from more from the U.S. It is not that things such as the NED grants were useless; they did create some of the best modern political structures within the opposition. But they also allowed a ruthless Chavez to create an “us versus them” feeling while the opposition quietly sat waiting for Sumate, to name an example, to get rid of Chavez. Paradoxically your help weakened the resolve of the opposition while it gave propaganda support for Chavez radical posturing. It was worth a try, but now it is over.

Your first task is to reassure Chavez that you will never support anything that can threaten his rule as long as he is elected in a verifiable democratic way (which he is not anymore). You must let the opposition know that they are on their own and that the only thing you can do for them is to offer political asylum to justified cases. The opposition must understand that if they really think that Chavez is a dictator then they should be willing to pay the price to regain their democracy. That price will never be paid with U.S. military, even if Chavez were crazy enough to cut off oil supply to the U.S. He will not do so anyway, oil production is falling and Venezuela is already discretely privatizing some sectors of Venezuelan oil. The new operators will be delighted to sell their production to the closest market at hand.

Thus armed with patience and a clear track of what you must do, you can sit down and wait for Chavez demise, saving your energies and scarce cash for countries more worthy of your attention. Sooner or alter, as the most culturally Americanized country in South America, Venezuela will rejoin the fold. The only thing you need to do is to denounce any deviation of Chavez from the democratic path and demand that democratic Latin American countries do so if they want to be partners in a Western Hemisphere area of prosperity, freedom and democracy. Trust me on that one, once your clarity and leadership rise many will be willing to follow you in ways they could never follow Clinton and even less Bush.

I am sorry that as a Venezuelan I must belittle my country this way, but I cannot find a redeeming quality in what pro Chavez people support today. Their “revolutionary” ideals of social justice have been long swallowed by the catastrophic corruption which has become the glue that holds together the Chavez edifice. And the opposition remains weak, too many of them hoping to reach some agreement with Chavez so crumbs will reach them. Very few have shown the mettle that was required in these difficult times. But this is changing; I want to believe that also in Venezuela “we can”.

May you bring some peace and rest to this weary world.

-The end-

Mallarmé and me

A few days before I reached Paris I read that the Petit Trianon had been restored after an arduous year of work and would re-open to the public just as I was making it to Paris. Of course I tried to plan to go but bad weather and the flu prevented me from completing an overdue visit. On my only visit to Versailles, in a year that I prefer not to recall, the Petit Trianon was closed to the public. We could only walk around and watch the stunning architecture all dirty as graffiti covered some of the walls. My young eyes were shocked, from my history book the charming but organized lines had always mesmerized me as the ideal palace.

In truth I suspect the French to have had a difficult relationship with Le Petit Trianon. After all it was the small palace constructed by Louis the XV for his most famous mistress, and then became the private playground of Marie Antoinette. All, of course, at tax payer expense, a symbol of frivolity difficult to stomach for a more austere Republican France.

But years have gone by and culture wars eventually rest under a soothing layer of dust. The restoration of the Galerie des Glaces was hailed and we also forgot or accepted that the German Empire was proclaimed there, at Versailles, in 1870. And now Le Petit Trianon becomes a full member in the hallowed ranks of French cultural masterpieces. French TV did not waste time glossing on the Austrian interloper anymore. In fact her good taste was more likely to be praised. We might not be ready to thank her for starving peasants so as to afford life in the palace, but at least we have learned to look at her in a more consequent way, not the caricature that my school history books still carried.

And thus eventually time reconcile us around a common heritage. Except in Venezuela where Chavez is busy reopening old wounds that we thought long ago sealed. My return was a few days before October 12 which is now the Day of Indigenous Resistance and Columbus a guy that purposely discovered America so its people could be enslaved. Or something to the effect. Now the Colombus monument, destroyed by chavista hordes, will not be restored and the site will be renamed for indigenous tribes. We are told the Colombus statue has been restored but we are not shown the picture to prove it.

If cultural wars occur it is because our past has a meaning. We have a choice between understanding what our past really meant, through understanding the context and free ourself of what stains our heritage. Or we may prefer to look at a context that is no more and make it truer than what has reached us. We can thus chose to embrace Le Petit Trianon without diminishing the pain of an era or destroy the Colombus statue pretending that there was no pain in that era. Such is the final paradox of culture wars when people confuse understanding and knowledge. But being denied a Trianon visit would not deprive me of more musings on this paradox as France is so rich in well digested cultural paradoxes.

Not going to Versailles gave me the chance to go to my most beloved museum: Orsay.


The Musée d'Orsay was built inside the old Orsay railway station, saving this magnificent building from destruction and revealing to us the magnificent temples to travel that were XIX century "gares", the door to the fantastic travels until then reserved to the minority willing to face the hardship of traveling before railways. Today the preserved entrance to the station is also the gateway to a magical trip through XIX century art, with the most magnificent collection of Impressionist paintings you can find anywhere, even though routinely some of the pick choices are on loan somewhere. Impressionism and Railways share in having changed our minds and views of the world.

When I have only one day in Paris, there is one thing I always do, rain or shine: Notre Dame and a walk through the Marais. If luck gives me a second day then it is the Musée d'Orsay, even for only one hour, to go directly to the Impressionists. Besides a few Renaissance painters such as Fra Angelico, the only thrills I get watching paintings are with Impressionists and their near sequels. I got cold sweats when I saw in Chicago the Après Midi à La Grande Jatte of Seurat, I lacked oxygen when I met Renoir's Le Dejeuner des Canotiers at the Phillips Collection and was forced to look for a bench to sit down the first time I was confronted to Mary Cassat's The Boating Party at the National Gallery. She and Lincoln are for me in Washington what Notre Dame and Orsay are in Paris.

The Impressionist collection at Orsay is for me as much a physical experience as a visual one. The power of these paintings reach me in ways that I do not understand, or rather that I understand too well if I start a Jungian archetype self study, not the subject of this blog. But not all, not always. This time Gauguin left me cold. Some of the great Manet were missing and noticing it disturbed me. Thus for once I was able to focus more on what a painting meant than what it did to me. The first one that arrested me was one that I had never paid as much attention before, as so powerfully hidden by the larger Manets. I am talking here of the extraordinary portrait of poet Mallarmé, which adorns any high school literature book in France. Or should anyway.

I have had a difficult relationship with Mallarmé, one of the great poets that I could not study in school as end of year constraints made our French teacher skip over him. Thus if I went deep into Baudelaire and Verlaine, Mallarmé I had to do on my own and I confess with little success and many frustrations. See, Mallarmé is the kind of poet that you do not understand much when you read but somehow you know as your read him that it is really great stuff. A little bit like pornography for a famous Supreme Court Judge who said that he could not define pornography but he knew it when he saw it. Mallarmé was not a pornographer that I know of but then again only him could get away with such a verse to close a sonnet:

Je pense plus longtemps peut-être éperdument
A l'autre, au sein brûlé d'une antique amazone.

Longing for the burnt breast of an ancient Amazon...

His most famous poem is perhaps l'Azur, at times a painful mediation on the curse to have poetry inside, with one of the most famous French verses, if anything for its visual bizarreness.

Je suis hanté. L’Azur ! l’Azur ! l’Azur ! l’Azur !

You can find some translations of Mallarmé verses as some brave souls dared to try, but you also must know that Mallarmé was an English teacher and as such he admired and was influenced by Poe. He translated The Raven. So was Baudelaire by the way whose translations of Poe tales, well, read almost better in Baudelaire's French than Poe's English, a very strange case in world literature where a translation actually brings something. I suppose that in a way, that ability to cross cultures allowed Mallarmé to work through his life towards breaking the ancient molds of French poetry.

Seeing that sobering portrait of Mallarmé brought to me an odd action considering the place I was. Tourists were flocking in front of more famous pictures so, as Orsay allows it, I could take my very own shot while I meditated at Manet's Mallarmé picture. I know, no matter how good my shot might turn out it will never be as good as the exquisite reproductions you can buy at the gift shop at the end. And yet, watching your own shots a few days later bing back that moment and the thoughts you had better than any reproduction. That is, if you shot your picture after your processed your emotions or if you are a compulsive picture taker.

The very relative solitude I enjoyed in front of Mallarmé made wonder how could he possibly be relevant to the immigrant children that the French system is actually raising with lots of problems in its school system. The winner of the Cannes Festival this year, Entre Les Murs, has been a movie about the problems of a "banlieu" classroom and the valiant efforts of teachers to reach the kids, not an alien concept I am sure to the teachers of some inner city areas of the States. A famous scene is the "subjunctive past" lesson, where one child simply said that he would not talk to someone that uses such a tense. I suppose he would not talk to me who rarely uses it but does use it. But is it a generation gap?

If you spit on the French subjunctive, can you reach Mallarmé? Can you also reach Rimbaud and Verlaine through their poetry or will these kids get interested in them for their scandalous liaison when Rimbaud was 16 and Verlaine a married man? It is not that these poets drop past subjunctive in any sonnet. They do not, but the key to understand how the French language works is to understand how its subjunctive works. This verbal mode is the soft form of possibilities and dashed dreams, a complexity so missing in English. Though some would argue that this lack of subjunctive might be a reason of the anglo-saxon energy.

The subjunctive is not the only obstacle to French High Church. Mallarmé remains still a difficult poet even if some managed to put him into music. Brise Marine is quite an example on how difficult Mallarmé can be while still remaining somewhat accessible enough for Serge Lama to sing it.

I would even say that a case can be made that Mallarmé is becoming more difficult for today'snew Frenchmen when the all Mallarmé site, mallarme.net, feels obliged to widget the word "angélus" so people can understand it. The practice of angélus had all but disappeared in France when I was a kid, but yet I knew what the word meant. It seems that today political correctness reserves such knowledge to rarefied elites. An indeed, in the banlieus angelus is as alien as past subjunctive.

I did not think these dangerous thoughts as clearly as I narrate them above today, but they kept coming to me with more precision as I kept my walk through the galleries. In particular how will Muslim children in France learn to appreciate the French cultural heritage, and even more important, can their own cultural and religious heritage allow them to get meaning from Mallarmé or Renoir? Can they also own?

Certainly I do not mean that Muslim children cannot cross the cultural line and appreciate the Orsay Museum, true art speaks to all except for cases like Bamiyan. Then again if the Taliban felt the need to blast Bamiyan's Buddhas it must mean that their ideological construct was perturbed by that art. Though I have yet to visit a Muslim country besides Morroco I know that I can marvel at Islamic art. I know that Isfahan would be marvelous for me. But will it speak to me the way that Mallarmé or a painting by Renoir do? One of my favorite Museums is a small one at the end of the Washington Mall where a treasure of Muslim calligraphy is exhibited, the Freer Gallery. I have been there several times, marveling at the delicate art that pervades all Islamic tradition. It does speak to me, at some level, and I wish I could have one of such hanging on one of my walls to spend at times long minutes of meditation in front. But it is not me. There is something missing for me and it is the physicality of man.

Can the "balançoire" of Renoir not shock a religious Muslim? Is the casualness of the woman, daydreaming as possibly two suitors sweet talk her, accpetable? What about the form fitting dress that follows no proportion giving her impossibly long (and sexy?) legs? No word about the little girl watching all of this ambiguity? True, all are covered enough according to the more modest standards of the time, and current Muslim fundamentalist wishes, but the body language is there for all to see.

France has been wrecked a few years ago about whether to allow Muslim girls to wear the veil at school. The secular French state tradition, from left to right, ruled that the veil was considered a religious symbol and as such had no place in the French public school system, sending a lot or Muslim girls to private establishments. In all fairness the state also forbade yarmulke and crucifix medallions unless totally invisible under shirts. Much talk went around but not that many dared to speak the real truth around the issue: that feminist women in France could not accept that a religion forced submission of women. I do agree about the issue and the measures taken then, but that is not the point I want to make here. I want to come back on how art speaks to us, and to this second Renoir painting at Orsay.

Again here we see a casual couple, the woman painted with exquisite details of near ecstasy while he companion has a more predatory look, a sober, less detailed portrait. He is handsome though, a certain sexy squareness, a sense of dominating strength to which the woman seems to be yielding. He also probably lost his hat in the whirlwind chase, on the right corner, an odd detail to leave as the hat is certain to be trashed as people dance over. But he has no care for it, too concentrated on his prey.

Whether you are straight or gay you cannot escape the sexual power of this painting. But what makes it great is not the erotic allusion, it is the need for human companionship that the people in it reflect, perhaps the animal lust of the man or the longing to be loved of the woman, it does not matter, we are always looking for someone to hold us tight. And yet that need might not be love. This painting has an exhilarating effect on me as it shuts down the workings of the mind, letting instinct surface politely, even in the middle of a crowded museum. Suddenly some tourists do not look as unappealing as they looked earlier.

And there is of course that wonderful ball scene, full of hopeful glances and of people looking at who is not looking at them, where the only people that do touch are two dancers and two women. What can we make of that? Such a scene would still be scandalous in some Western cultures of the Mediterranean, at least not that long ago. Imagine it in Afghanistan! or even Saudi Arabia! But there is also the price to pay for this apparent happiness, on the left side there is a woman that seems to be alone, or lonely, or abandoned, in darker shades. It almost seems that the only dancing couple that is clearly detailed has something to do with that lone woman, they seem to be looking at her. Did the man leave her for another floozie? Or is she sad not because he left her but because she coudl not retain him? Or her? There is a strange message of personal responsibility in that detail.

Perhaps it has been the common thread in the story of humanity but what speaks to me when I see these pieces is of the XX century to come, that from this sort of art came our social, sexual and even moral freedom that today at least some societies enjoy. The works of the Impressionists by freeing themselves form the rules of conformist art helped on our road to civil liberty, Human Rights, and shall dare I say it, better forms of democracy and cross cultural richness. It was after the Impressionists that Western Art really became open to the glories of other cultures, not just a fancy "chinese" room as palaces like the Petit Trianon might have acquired in their day. Perhaps the question I wanted to ask myself is what do we need to do to bring the equivalent of the Impressionist movement to today's Islamism before it is too late and one side tries to erase the other.

The temptation of cultural wars is really big. Even Chavez indulges in it even though Venezuela was, and is still, the Latin American society most open to external cultural influences. Chavistas with money do flock to Mac Donalds, love to go shopping to Miami. But in Chavez case his attitude comes from his ignorance and from the feeling that he has been rejected by Western Culture, an easy way to cope with his own insecurities and possible sense of failure. The consequences of Chavez will be dramatic for Venezuela's future though his manic and silly cultural crusade will eventually be a footnote in the history of the Americas.

What is more of a concern, and Chavez does sense that at some level as he wants to use it, is the clash of civilizations that so many want to avoid and that Chavez foolishly fosters at his own risks. I am talking about how to reconcile a Western World open to new experiences and to a world of risk taking and personal responsibility with a clearly more obscurantists world who stayed in the XVII century where ideas left it as they went ahead with the West. Today the far East and even India espouse many of Western values and Japan is the perfect example on how to retain your culture while burnishing some angles with interesting foreign values. Chavez is playing with fire by thinking he can manipulate the barbarians of today to his own profit, but what he does not realize is that when all is said and done the one that will be on the losing end of the stick is him.

And why will Chavez lose? Because when I was at Orsay Mallarmé talked to me, and Renoir did touch me. And if I go to the Freer gallery something will charm me, and if I go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts the Japanese weapon collection will make me daydream of my world of Kurozawa. What Chavez is trying to do is to erase as many cultural references as he can from us, an easy task as we are not blessed with a long cultural history and a lot of our history was very destructive anyway. Even from the few treasures that make us Venezuelans, that speak to us, even to me, the son of French immigrants, he wants to pick and chose what might serve him and discard most. There might not be a Venezuelan Mallarmé but there is Andres Eloy Blanco and all through my childhood I heard this.

Si queda un pintor de santos,
si queda un pintor de cielos,
que haga el cielo de mi tierra,
con los tonos de mi pueblo,
con su ángel de perla fina,
con su ángel de medio pelo,
con sus ángeles catires,
con sus ángeles morenos,
con sus angelitos blancos,
con sus angelitos indios,
con sus angelitos negros,
que vayan comiendo mango
por las barriadas del cielo.

And these verses speak to me with the same strength than anything that I might have seen in Paris two weeks ago. "que vayan comiendo mango ---- por las barriadas del cielo" nothing more Venezuelan has ever been written.....

And yet, even though the whole poem is one of the finest examples of anti racist literature to be found in any culture, chavismo has never embraced it. Because Andres Eloy Blanco was Adeco and that cannot be forgiven , as the accidental discovery of America by Columbus cannot be forgiven. Columbus must be charged with all the abuses committed after him. And thus Andres Eloy Blanco must be guilty, at some obscure level, if anything because chavismo has proven itself unable to write anything as inspiring and effective as that simple poem, and even if Andres Eloy Blanco died one year after Chavez was born and could not be held responsible for what the Adecos did later.

So Chavez is trying to gut our cultural heritage, without having some coherent system to replace it except his speeches and what are called his thoughts and his personal myths. Will Chavez speeches stir great emotions besides hatred? They will not because culture and art do not happen in a vacuum. If Muslims cannot feel what I feel in front of Mallarmé portrait it is because I cannot feel what they would feel at the Kairouan Mosque, it is because our emotions are constructed on our own cultural past and how it makes us relate to our environment and how they create a place for us.

But then again when Chavez makes Venezuelans stop caring about their real past they will also stop caring about him.

La chair est triste, hélas ! et j’ai lu tous les livres.

I think I am not afraid of Mallarmé anymore. He came to me when I needed him most.

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Translations:

La chair est triste, hélas ! et j’ai lu tous les livres.
The flesh is sad, alas! and I have read all the books.

Si queda un pintor de santos,
If a Saints painter remains,
si queda un pintor de cielos,
If a heavens painter remains,
que haga el cielo de mi tierra,
that he may do heavens of my land,
con los tonos de mi pueblo,
with the hues of my people,
con su ángel de perla fina,
with a mother of pearl angel,
con su ángel de medio pelo,
with a curly hair angel,
con sus ángeles catires,
with light haired angels,
con sus ángeles morenos,
with brown angels,
con sus angelitos blancos,
with white angels,
con sus angelitos indios,
with indian angels
con sus angelitos negros,
with black angels
que vayan comiendo mango
that they walk eating mangoes
por las barriadas del cielo.
in heavens neighborhoods.

And GP offers us this version

If there's a painter of saints left,
if there's a painter of skies left,
let him create my land's sky,
with the tones of my town,
with his fine pearl angel,
with his mediocre angel,
with his blond angels,
with his brown angels,
with his little white angels,
with his little Indian angels,
with his little black angels,
may they go on eating mangoes
through the neighborhoods of the sky.

-The end-

File under "truth is stranger than fiction" : Miss Venezuela gets the Miss Universe crown

This is about the little bit of trivia that is totally useless but that somehow will manage to stay with us for a long time.

Dayana Mendoza won for Venezuela its fifth Miss Universe crown. The fifth one for Osmel Sousa by the way, the guy that single handedly did more for plastic surgery world wide than any other person I can think of.

I suppose that for some people this bit of trivia is important, in particular for chavismo who know feels that the score is Uribe 1 : Chavez 1. Because get that, Miss Colombia was the runner up!!!!! Personally I could not care less about the result, having become quite PC about meat market activities and since a former Miss Venezuela, Irene Saez, allowed indirectly for the rise of Hugo Chavez in the late 90ies....

As if already the results in the Vietnam event was not weird enough, in these times of Colombia/Venezuela troubles, get that: Dayana Mendoza has been, in Venezuela, the victim of a kidnapping action!!!! The longer AP note, including pictures of the happy winner for those interested, also tells us that to crown it all Miss USA fell on her face on the catwalk. I mean, what better Sunday for Chavez can we possibly come up with!? I cannot wait for conspiracy theorists to say that Chavez paid for the whole thing. They are wrong, such happy coincidences money cannot buy...

I bet you we get a cadena with mention somewhere of the happy news as yet another success of the bolivarian farce..... Only in Venezuela revolutionary women have to be of course better looking than capitalistic countries.... You might be laughing at that last one but you just wait!

And let's not forget that Ingrid is the daughter of a former Colombian beauty queen. Will the news of the Colombia defeat affect her incessant TV appearances?

-The end-