Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died March 5 after a two-year battle with cancer.
The leader, who ruled from 1999 until his death, “projected himself in religious, nationalistic and radical terms as Venezuela’s savior, and it largely worked,” according to Daniel Wallis, a columnist for Reuters media.
But others viewed him as a power-hungry dictator, and his socialist reforms certainly did not earn support from the United States. After hearing the news, Rep. Ed Royce, R-California, said, “Hugo Chavez was a tyrant who forced the people of Venezuela to live in fear. His death dents the alliance of anti-U.S. leftist leaders in South America. Good riddance to this dictator.”
Venezuela, which shipped 49 million barrels of oil monthly to the U.S. in 1999, only shipped 31.9 million barrels in February 2011. This decline correlates with the increasing disparity between Chavez’s views and those of the U.S. leaders.
In the U.S., we tend to believe that most countries want to be our friends. Chavez, conversely, wanted no diplomatic relations with the U.S. But we should not vilify him for vilifying the U.S., which has a track record of intervening in Latin American affairs.
Despite criticism and poor relations with the U.S., Chavez’s leadership significantly aided the poor. The percentage of Venezuelans living below the poverty line peaked at 62 percent in 2003 but decreased to 29 percent in 2009, according to The World Bank. Illiteracy also declined from 7 percent in 2001 to 5 percent in 2007 under Chavez’s presidency.
Chavez invested the country’s oil wealth into social programs like “state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs” according to The Associated Press. But A.P. called these contributions “meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”
This statement dismisses Chavez’s social accomplishments entirely. A country’s buildings are not representative of its success or the success of its leaders. Surely Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi are largely regarded as two of the greatest leaders of all time for their social work.
The fact that A.P. suggested that the opulence of a city’s edifices shows greater success than the condition of its citizens signals a problem in our system of values. Graham Hill, writer for The New York Times, found that “[Americans] take up more than three times the amount of space per capita than we did 60 years ago.” The average size of a home in the U.S. increased from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,480 square feet in 2011. Super-sized drinks and hamburgers followed the obsession with huge homes. The quest for a spot in the Guinness World Records led to the creation of many unnecessary giant pancakes and tall buildings.
Our obsession with “bigger” should not outweigh the importance of programs that advocate for the betterment of the lives of citizens. From the American perspective, Hugo Chavez may not fall among the ranks of Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi, but his leadership should not be seen as faulty because he spent the country’s money on people rather than construction. Likewise, we should not discredit his social endeavors and achievements because he was not the biggest cheerleader for the U.S.
