I, Chávez

You can read an interesting analysis of Hugo's latest Speech to the Nation in El Universal (in English!).

Sociologist and university professor Ignacio Suárez went through the military caudillo's speech and got some fascinating insights into the caudillo's mind.

Just a couple of tiny details: Chávez mentioned 'Chávez' (thus in third person) 52 times. He also said "I remember" 48 times. We Venezuelans know what stories those "I remember" can produce. He also used the word "we" to refer to himself a lot of times.

I wrote about the particular use of third person from Chávez some time ago. I wrote back then, on a jocular mode, that Chávez was speaking like the Gollum. I would say today more Chávez is Venezuela's gollem.

Meanwhile, the military caudillo announces he will solve part of the housing problem in Venezuela with the construction of more flats in clogged Caracas...in the military area of Fuerte Tiuna. As the Chávez-close companies are too incompetent and Chávez does not want to finance private companies that are not under control of his boliburguesia, he has given the contract to the Chinese (after announcing it was to the Russians).

So: instead of Venezuelan engineers overseeing the construction, it will be 中国中信集团公司 or CITIC Group. Meanwhile, millions of Venezuela far aware from the presidential palace are in need of proper housing and proper jobs.

In the map below you see the proportion (%) of votes for the main alternative party in the Caracas area and that for the Chávez party.

Roughly speaking, Caracas's West is much poorer than Caracas's East, although that is a big simplification: Petare is rather poor and San Pedro is not.

Coche, where Fuerte Tiuna is, is one of the poorer areas. Notice, though, that Chávez has only half the people's support there. In some ver poor areas like Petare his party is definitely a minority now.














Chávez also said to the military in one of their bases that the alternative forces already have a secret plan to declare their victory in December 2012 and announce Chávez will commit fraud. Chávez is already saying this almost two years in advance. It seems Chávez does not even care about appearances and admits his party has already anointed him as candidate for 2012. After all: extreme left wingers, just like extreme right wingers, always depend on the one and only leader. And they call it a revolution.