Chavez the orator: brilliant incoherence

On Friday, under a geodesic dome half an hour outside Caracas, Hugo Chavez gave a one-hour, forty-five minute speech that made little sense and drew huge applause. The question that seemed most interesting to me at the time was, How is this not totalitarian?

Although the speech was slated to start at 7:00 pm, it would have been dangerous not to get there early. Some friends and I got into a cab just after 4:00. For a long time, we waited in our seats (picture a round stadium with a capacity of about fifteen thousand; it was never more than half full) for something to happen. Every now and then, some officials would run up the aisles with free fruit juice, sandwiches, posters of Chavez, or propaganda booklets. Although a cynic would have thought of bread and circuses, an organizer would be impressed by the command of logistics—you don’t want your cheering hordes to dehydrate before the show.



To warm us up, instead of trotting out hapless sub-ministers, the organizers brought out a number of bands: the “cultural revolution”. The choice was generally inspired, although it’s unclear why one folk band was dressed like a string quartet from the Titanic. The singers were, of course, politicized. In other words, they had talking points, ranging from “viva la revolución anti-imperialista” to “viva la unidad Latino-Americana.” Well, maybe not such a range.

The most energetic cheering contingent was obviously the Cubans. It’s not hard to guess why.


Finally, a little after 7:30, the man himself appeared at the centre of a long table of dignitaries placed at the head of centre stage. To their left, a man and woman spoke into a microphone to contextualize the Bolivarian Revolution for us. They ceremoniously intoned, one at a time, “The blood of our martyrs is still flowing in the veins of...” Followed the list of notables up on stage with Hugo, among them journalists Richard Gott and Ignacio Ramonet (obviously not from the school where those critical of power do not appear on stage with Presidents), Cuban politico Ricardo Alcarón (see “First Impressions”, below), and American super-mom Cindy Sheehan. Also, two indigenous leaders, both women, who helpfully sat on either side of Chavez—not, I’m sure, to deliberately frame him with two small, exotic women.

Before Chavez spoke, we also got to see him and the other dignitaries at his table hold hands for a Spanish rendition of the Internationale (Chavez, who smiled throughout, didn’t seem to know the words). There was, naturally, a group of young people holding up banners adorned with the logos of corporations who were routed in a mock battle by toy-machete-wielding activists whose banners read “No to GMOs”, “No to war”, etc. And of course, there were the costumed indigenous people who pranced around in front of the stage waving translucent fibres. All to set the mood.

It was in fact the incredibly kitsch nature of the spectacle, as well as its obvious lack of production values and order, that together were the greatest distinction between this event and the staged mass rallies of totalitarian governments.

And, it is true, Chavez’s rhetoric places a great emphasis on peace and diversity. Whatever might be said about the obvious cult of personality, the aesthetics of war and the rhetoric of combat were noteably absent. Chavez extorts struggle against poverty, but his insistence on respecting the diverse strains of his movement, be they indigenous or Christian socialisms, distinguishes him from the more dangerous megalomaniacs of recent years.

That doesn’t mean his speech was coherent. Much of the time, he seemed to stumble drunkenly from one talking point to the next. Early on, he was rambling along incoherently when Africa came up: “y Africa, pause, viva Africa! Viva Africa!” Followed lucid declarations about Africa’s place in the very soul of Latin Americans and its great potential, themselves followed by new bouts of random assertions, eventually landing by pure chance on a new chance for indignation, this time about the cynicism of the American empire, another time about the destructive nature of capitalism, yet another about the arrogance of the Latin American right—on the verge of suffering its worst defeat in “five-hundred-thousand years”.

Because of this pattern, it’s hard to say exactly what Chavez’s speech was about. It’s said that he’s a great communicator, and it is strangely fascinating to watch him speak endlessly off the cuff, frequently delivering rousing bits, but he didn’t exactly develop an argument, which I’m told is fairly typical.



This morning on Aló Presidente, his all-day TV show, in the middle of reading a long list of statistics demonstrating the triumphs of his health policy, he broke off suddenly, saying,

“Now, you may say Chavez, why are you always talking about numbers, about math? But numbers and math are important, they’re important to understand life. How tall are you? How much do you weigh? Uh, how much does your house cost? How big is it? Or even, what is the velocity of a vehicle? When you’re eating, it’s important, to know how many calories, how much protein. Numbers are important, math is important to understand life.”

He gets away with it, I think, because of his charm while he tells tangential anecdotes, and eloquence during his moments of lucidity. At least for a foreigner, a President unscripted, speaking at length off the cuff, is mesmerizing. It appears that his thoughts, while he’s speaking, are completely transparent. And who says you have to pay attention constantly? It’s easy to tune in and out without, any more than Chavez, losing the thread of the argument. Still, it’s obviously grating over time. As one of our taxi drivers said, “He does good things, but he talks way too much.”

The relationship between Chavez and the Social Forum is somewhat tense. The Forum released a statement on its web site insisting that while a great experiment is taking place in Venezuela, the forum’s presence is in no way an endorsement. Chavez recognized this in his speech, saying he didn’t care how the forum worked, before insisting that now was the time for action and that forum-goers needed to figure out their priorities and a plan for action.

Certainly, during seminars, I’ve witnessed sophisticated debates about the strengths and weaknesses of the Bolivarian revolution. But it’s also clear that the forum’s presence here is beneficial to Chavez. The Latin American left, a little like the hip hop scene, is all about guest appearances and connections. Evo Morales’ victory gives strength to all of Latin America’s left, just as he draws support from them. Chavez benefits from his association with the bottom-up world left through the forum, just as Castro basks in Chavez’s democratic glow and Chavez in Castro’s revolutionary credentials.

This kind of strength through networking is what the Forum is supposedly all about, except that in theory, it’s meant to reject the supremacy of state power. And indeed, judging from the individual seminars, there is clearly no danger of the Forum (at least on the global level) morphing into a powerful entity. More troubling is that there still seems to be no sense that the Forums are leading to the elaboration of something intermediate, that is, a strategy or common platform that is bigger than the constituent parts. It is thanks to this vacuum that in Venezuela, Chavez can steal the show.

Why the WSF works

The streets of Caracas smell like petrol. Many resemble an open-face garage. The cars are generally in a state of functional disrepair, as are most of the roads and sidewalks. Every few blocks you’ll see vehicles being worked on, some raised on jacks with a man lying underneath, others with their hoods open and no one in sight. Yesterday, I wove around a driver who was washing his taxi on the edge of an intersection.

The etiquette of the road is equally improvisational. Crosswalks are where people start crossing, and are perfectly safe. Drivers do obey red lights, usually, during the day; hardly ever at night. The chaos doesn’t seem dangerous, though. I’ve only seen one near-accident and besides, in most cases, the damage of a fender bender would be invisible on most cars here.

The Social Forum’s indoor activities are in some ways an extension of this dynamic. Many scheduled seminars don’t take place. And when they do, you never know when, after an excruciatingly dull hour of yakking, a man will rise energetically to scream to the classroom about his father’s eviction and subsequent death, his own year of homelessness and learning to eat grass, the perversities of Venezuela’s property laws, and, after sitting down and rising again, declaring that anybody kicked out of his or her home will be his brother or sister.

You could call the unpredictable fluctuations of the Social Forum postmodern, but it may be more honest to use the word disorganized. Around one hundred thousand participants, thousands of NGOs, and more workshops than one could possibly even read about, all with the barest of centralized coordination—it’s inevitable that things be a little crazy.

Frankly, it’s a plus. Searching for one thing and ending up with another, by the strange universal rule of spontaneity, almost always produces a superior outcome.

Yesterday, I found myself in a seminar that was everything the didactic speeches of the previous night were not. Picture thirty adults in a small classroom squished into stiff, old wooden chairs with built-on mini-desks on their right-hand side. Up front were the two facilitators, one of them a highly dignified Bolivian community activist, Fernando Moya, who made the case for direct democracy. A partisan of Evo Morales, he was as good an explanation as any for the indigenous leader’s stunning victory. As a speaker, he was humble, passionate, clear and disciplined.

He moderated a discussion that was very much like what you’d find in a small high school or university class. Participants raised their hands to ask questions, make pointed comments, or go on tangential rants. This, I think, is the beauty of the Social Forum: the opportunity for a diverse group of people, in a small, manageable area, to engage in serious dialogue about all sorts of issues. That doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes tedious, or the ideas occasionally ludicrous, but rather that at its most basic level, the WSF works.

Well, mostly. There is also, at times, the eerie silence of friendly lefties eager not to offend. As when, during the seminar on direct democracy, the other facilitator, a red-faced Venezuelan, distributed poorly made t-shirts with the picture of an international socialist leader on the front who’s name you’ll never guess. Go ahead, guess. Who do you think it is? Alright, you’ve probably already scrolled down. The answer is Muammar Ghaddafi (pictured below on front of shirt), with on the back of the t-shirt the assertion that ‘Another world is possible, through direct democracy’ (pictured below on back of shirt). For the record, I’m not the one wearing the offensive t-shirt.

Social Forum “nite life”, I should point out, is very cool. Last night, some friends and I went into the Cuba camp. We spent a good bit of time watching various Venezuelan and Cuban rappers at their political best. Rhyming about peace and brotherhood didn’t stop them from swigging rum on stage—a lesson we should all take to heart. Later on, we climbed a stairway in the concrete, modernist masterpiece that is Caracas’s downtown theatrical compound and found ourselves in a bar surrounded by ingenious salsa dancers as well as various more modest Social Forum goers who were content, after a long day of discussing how to change the world, to benignly sway their hips and shoulders.

First impressions of the Social Forum

Today was the second day of the Caracas World Social Forum, and my first as a real participant—though I’m still far from feeling the warm tingle of international brotherhood.

The unofficial slogan of the Social Forum and Caracas these past couple days has been ‘Another Bureaucracy is Possible.’ Because of capital controls in Venezuela, it’s very hard to change US dollars into local currency, bolívars or b’s for short. One of the only places this can be done, el Capitolio, is famous for its pickpockets.

A shopping centre there is also where I went with my friend David to pick up a local cell phone; we’re each planning to live in Caracas for several months. The city’s shopping centres are three-dimensional mazes. Some are fancy, with décor resembling North-American malls—picture shininess and fluorescent lighting. Others are more modest, built out of concrete with merchandise occupying small cells. All forms of shopping mall have several floors, though stairways and escalators often skip a floor, with the obvious implications for finding your way. (Remember that scene from Labyrinth?)

The cell phone situation here is flexible. There are millions of mini-stores that sell parts of various sorts but not the phones themselves. In markets, you can easily buy pink or green plastic casing to liven up your machine, and day. And if you don’t have a cell handy, you can call a friend from tables to which phones from each company are chained. These are set up all around the city.

To actually buy a phone isn’t too complicated. Though travel guides explicitly warn you to never let someone go into a closed room with your credit card and passport, David and I did exactly that. We also provided several copies of our thumb and index finger prints. Oh, and a healthy slice of our lives. It only took about 1.5 hours to get in and out of the store.

For simpler, more ideologically appropriate shopping, head to any of the hubs of World Social Forum activity. Here you will be surrounded by Bolivarian kitsch. It seems that in Hugo Chavez, Che has finally met his match. I’ll be taking pictures of the wares on offer in the coming days. In the meantime, just imagine every kind of trinket you can in the Red, Blue and Gold colours of Venezuela. And if at all possible, adorned with the beaming mug of Comandante Chavez. T-shirts, rubber bracelets, knapsacks, buttons, key chains, bandannas, et cetera, all in massive quantities.

I haven’t seen any ‘normal’ Venezuelans partake in Bolivarian Kitsch, unless you count the odd faded T-shirt. But this doesn’t mean there’s a lack of Chavista sentiment in the city. When one hundred motorcyclists roar by you after sundown with their fists in the air shouting “Chavez!” you know the revolution has popular sex appeal.

I can’t possibly hope to speak representatively of the elemental particles of the social forum, the workshops. Each day, hundreds are held. It’s impossible to attend even a decent smattering. Today, for instance, I couldn’t attend a seminar in Portuguese on the revolutionary importance of Adorno and Benjamin, even though in my twisted mind nothing could be sexier.

I did, however, spend a couple hours in an auditorium where the perils of groupthink were on magnificent display. When divided societies open up, apparently, there’s often a process that occurs called “ethnic outbidding”, which refers to the tendency of the leaders of an ethnic group to compete with each other over who can be the most jingoistic. Tonight I witnessed leftwing ideological outbidding, which can also be found in most coffee shops.

A series of speakers, ostensibly on the topic of militarization, took turns emphasizing a) how far from invincible imperialism is, and b) just how much work it will take to overthrow imperialism. With each successive speaker, imperialism became more vulnerable, while the difficulty of overthrowing it grew ever more immense (and noble). One of the last speakers, an Argentine intellectual called Atilio Borón, thus indulged in Biblical regional solipsism, arguing that it was the fate of South America to be the location of the bloody Last Battle against imperialism. We’d better be ready.

He had little hope getting a rise out of the crowd, however, as the preceding speaker, the longstanding President of Cuba’s National Assembly Ricardo Alcarón (apparently, it’s difficult to dislodge incumbents in Cuba), received a standing ovation for his stirring call to never give up the struggle against tyranny. Because I think that Cuba, for all that it offers in alternative economic models, is still a dictatorship, I was in the minority who remained in our seats.

Not so the best speaker of the night, a feminist Quebecer, Michelle Asselin, of the Fédération des Femmes du Québec and Marche Mondiale des Femmes. Although she stood with the rest of the panellists to celebrate Cuban communist hypocrisy, and applauded a speaker who called on Latin American nations to prepare for peace by readying for war, she gave to my mind quite an intelligent speech.

She argued that fundamentally, global violence is an extension of societal violence against women, pointing to the fact that when war happens women and children suffer disproportionately. Around military bases rates of sexual assault and HIV infection rise, while in the long term the toxic leftovers of war poison women’s reproductive systems, while the social damage often leads to an upsurge of dangerous abortions. She characterized our current system as capitalist and patriarchal, saying it was not only misogynist but also racist and homophobic as well.

Having studied the intersection of gender and politically sanctioned violence myself, I think she was well-spoken and on the mark. She didn’t indulge in over-dramatic rhetoric. She also, judging form her reaction to her co-panellists, needs to work on her Spanish.

On the whole, I should point out that Venezuelans are extremely friendly. Yes, the taxi drivers here are constantly asking pedestrians for directions. But the overall hospitality is truly impressive. The Chavista biology professor who’s putting David and I up for the duration of the forum is a true revolutionary hero, as far as I’m concerned, while those who hate Chavez have also shown me the most incredible kindness.

Stay tuned for more on the Social Forum. Now that I’ve completed my basic administrative tasks, you can expect more on the forum events themselves, as well as the truth behind the Bolivarian Revolution.

10 questions for my local Marxist-Leninist candidate

My sincere apologies to loyal readers (2 or 3 of you) who've been disapointed by my lack of writing these last few weeks. My excuse is a shabby one: I buried my head in the sand.

In closing, instead of an endorsement, a final query about the issues -- these being, apparently, famously important.

The fact is, I have been to two all-candidates debates in my riding (Trinity-Spadina) and the Marxist-Leninist party candidate, a Mr. Nick Lin, has each time spoken at length without referencing any Marxist or Leninist language at all. Shocking. He didn't even say, "What is to be done?" or "The worse things are, the better things are." Hello! Even their TV ad is bereft of theory. So to lift the veil of secrecy, I'm posting an open letter to my MLPC candidate to get some answers on where he really stands.


1. Orthodox Marxists and others insist, citing Marx, that the economic base wholly determines the shape and nature of the ideological superstructure. But revisionist neo-Marxists like Terry Eagleton claim that in fact the relationship between economics and culture is dynamic, and that each can influence the other. Where does the MLPC stand on the materialist theory of history?

Okay, the rest of my questions suck. But I have emailed this first question to the MLPC media person (no contacts listed for my individual candidate) and I will post any response I receive.

--

Otherwise, this is the long goodnight of This Is Not a Horse Race. It's been a wild ride. On Monday I'll be flying to Venezuela for the World Social Forum and then will be reporting and researching a book there and in Bolivia for the next year or so (as well as finishing another project I'm working on, an anthology of personal essays by young Canadian activists/leaders.) Accordingly, this space will get a new graphical treatment and a new title. Email any suggestions to aldana@danielaldana.net. Keep in mind, we're looking for something snappy, focused on South America's revolutionary fervour, but devoid of embarassing earnestness (i.e., not the "motorcycle blog" or "blogga la victoria siempre"...).

After this election, a change of pace will be good for you. So be sure to check back starting Tuesday for all you ever needed to read about the World Social Forum. Also, because I'll be travelling and likely quite lonely, I may write a little more personally than you've so far come to expect. You know, get to know my readers. But only a tad. Nothing mushy. Actually, never mind.

Moderator nearly won debate

You can judge the nature of a political debate by the behaviour it induces in those who watch it. I’m about as proud of my behaviour last night as I am of my political leaders’ dreary rhetoric -- with the added insult that unlike me, they won’t be calling the Canadians they offended last night to beg forgiveness.

Someone during the debate should have pointed out that talking about national unity for a half-hour and the environment and climate change for no time was a dumb decision: a forward-looking democracy should focus on the future, not the past. Let’s focus less on keeping our political map united and more on keeping our landmass above water at sustainable temperatures! (Did you guess? I’m trying my hand at blog-bytes.)

And what about the rest of the world?! Jack Layton mentioned foreign aid once, and we heard plenty about the USA, but isn’t it strange to hear no more about any other place? Canadians donated unprecedented amounts to Tsunami victims and no Western democracy has a higher share of foreign-born residents than we do. And our international affairs are less important than provincial bickering?

It’s for these reasons that I insist last night’s debate was a draw. Had the lilac-tied moderator broached the poverty and potential of Africa OR climate change, I would have happily declared him the winner. (I'll point that I met a friend of the handsome moderator who begged him to point out that the biggest lump of discretionary spending in purely federal jurisdiction is foreign expenditures, over $5 billion worth spread through various departments. But alas, Mr. Moderator is just a pretty face: he claims he had no choice at over the questions.) He was certainly impressively nimble, despite the flat-top haircut.

Also, I should point out that I ought to eat at least a few of my words. My previous post argued that Jack couldn’t win the debate. Then today on CBC radio I hear the usually insight-allergic Keith Boag say that various mysterious opinion-trackers found that Layton alone among the leaders considerably exceeded the expectations of viewers -- though he was quick to point out that this didn’t mean that Jack actually won the debate or clearly improved his position.

I don’t dispute those findings. Jack was, in addition to being passionate and incisive, scripted and repetitive. But this was far more offensive to the minority who watched the whole debate (sadly, including myself) than to the majority tonly watched parts. It’s also plain that most reporters, while lamenting how Jack is tragically being squeezed out of view by the other leaders, curiously fail to note that unlike the democratic forum of a debate which gives leaders equal time, in the press (i.e., where the campaign mostly happens) it’s the self-same reporters who are doing the squeezing.

No one else is squeezing. Just you, Mr. Mainstream Media (MSM in bloggospeak). Squeezing away at the NDP orange, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, then drinking the juice and wiping it off your chin, and looking up with a sad, sad face and going: “Oh, that poor orange, squeezed right out of the picture by some mysterious campaign force we’re all at pains to comprehend.” For a perfect example, see this report by Terry Milewski.

This point about the media essentially covering itself and claiming to cover the ‘campaign’ is one I’ve made before and on which Star blogger Antonia Zerbesias agrees.

I’ll also point out that because Jack insists on running on a patchwork quilt campaign (patches, really – we haven’t seen the quilt yet) of ‘doing better’ for Canadians, and on saying nothing more at all, he is forced to be very slippery when asked how he would react to various minority situations. This is dumb. Of all the leaders, Jack is the one whose campaign promises most closely reflect what he actually thinks and will actually try to do. He should capitalize on this happy coincidence -- as Duceppe more or less has on his own pretty honest pledges to be a dick -- by also being the most straightforward, least slippery of the politicians. Opportunity lost, Jack. Didn’t have to be that way. Squeeze.

Also, all the ranting about corporate tax cuts. Could be less simplistic. Just once in a while. To remind you actually have a PhD in globalization. It's okay to be thoughtful in public, right? That is, if anyone's paying attention. Squeeze!

Anyway, all this is a really a footnote next to the fact that Canada’s most conservative Liberal leader in ages and a very conservative Conservative leader are both campaigning like pink social democrats, a level of hypocrisy that should be declared a felony, with attendant minimum sentence and trial as an adult starting at age...two. It is absurd. But not new. Alas, we young ‘uns disillusion so easily.

Why Jack Layton can't win the leaders' debate

This year, the NDP campaign message is a random assortment of pledges, united by the principle of “getting results for people”. Even in Canada, this is unforgivably dull. To use a silly metaphor, no matter how striking this year’s NDP flowers, they do not constitute a bouquet.

No distinctive vision unifies the NDP’s propositions. Their famous budget only spread money around -- there was no standout item. For instance, climate change, the one issue where they excel, affords them the chance to paint themselves as the party of the future, to consistently trumpet that they will not only retrofit Canadian homes but the whole Canadian economy, so that it’s more competitive in the global market and more rewarding to workers at home.

The only way to achieve short-term gains in electoral politics is to harvest the fruit (one more botanical metaphor) of long-term labour. Over time, you have to show Canadians that you represent something and when elections roll around, play to the strengths of your long-term message -- something the NDP is now completely failing to do.

The Liberals, by virtue mostly of coincidence, can consistently claim to be Canada’s only national party. In fact, it’s the most appealing thing about them.

The federal Conservatives, after years of civil war, are finally returning to what they were back when they won elections -- progressive conservatives. In other words, vaguely awful people who are nonetheless tolerable enough to hold power while the Liberals find a new leader. They’re proving this now by showing a basic grasp of policy and smiling.

Each party also benefits, as one of my friends pointed out, from having a basic ideological orientation embedded in its name. Not the NDP. Who, other than the party’s candidates, employees, and volunteers calls him or herself a New Democrat? What does that even mean?

What has the NDP since Ed Broadbent been building itself into? What kind of Canada has it been trying to build? In all this time, it seems the only thing the NDP has managed is to become, under Jack, a little more professional, a little more respectable, a little less scary.

The NDP has become the pragmatic, progressive party that stands for … various pragmatic, progressive things. Like public transit. Or, say, treating seniors with dignity. Opposing climate change, of course. And against Star Wars missile defence. And, you know, tough-but-not-too-tough on crime. Oh right, and the NDP stands for Canadian values.

Today, the NDP is awkwardly straddling the two functions of resistance and proposition like a camper straddles the canoe and the dock with a foot on each -- this camper always lands in the lake.

Let’s be more concrete. The NDP employs the electoral tactics of a loser, claiming to be trying this time to win. NDP insiders are convinced that if they attack the Conservatives, they’ll scare their own soft supporters into voting Liberal. So they only attack the Liberals. It’s like ordering tofu at a diner. Don’t all Canadians already agree that the Liberals are rather grim? Aren’t most Canadians (especially progressive ones) deep down afraid of one thing only -- Stephen Harper, and desperate for a genuine alternative?

Sometimes the NDP tries to attack the Conservatives, but it’s painfully forced. Don’t want to show how scary they are. Layton’s consistent zinger on the Conservatives is to attack their policies as “wrongheaded” -- ouch. He sometimes adds that they’re “wrong on Canadians values” -- fiery stuff.

Why doesn’t Layton paint the Liberals and Conservatives as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, flip sides of the same coin? Why doesn’t he say,

“They both stand for policies that will hurt all but the elite, they both represent tired, old debates, they both have no effective plans for education, childcare, and climate change. Ultimately, they both totally lack a constructive, forward-looking vision for working Canadians, whereas we…

“We…”

And there’s the rub. Jack Layton can’t win the leaders’ debate because he’s got nothing to offer. A good bouquet leaves a distinct smell that is more alluring than the sum of its odours. Despite its diverse, multicoloured contents, a good bouquet screams coherence. The offer of a handful of flowers is kinda nice, but a bouquet demonstrates effort -- careful thinking and prudent selection.

My suspicion is that strategy and marketing have overwhelmed the NDP brain trust. When it comes to policy, the effort just isn’t there.