Petroleum and progress

Chávez's over-the-top rhetoric all too often makes the news in the English-speaking world, with the "antics" of the Venezuelan President serving as an effective distraction. We hear about Chávez when he "insults" the Mexican ex-President Vicente Fox, calling him "imperialism's puppy". We were expected to cheer the King of Spain when he asked Chávez to "shut up" at an Ibero-America summit last year in Chile. And when, in 2006 at the United Nations, Chávez called George W. Bush "The Devil", the international press went into a frenzy.

Generally, Chávez's statements are tongue in cheek, a colourful trademark which has won over millions of Venezuelans.

While this may work at the national level and in some parts of Latin America, on the world stage, Chávez's imprudence all too often plays into his opponents' hands.

Recently, Venezuela's Communications Minister Andrés Izarra wrote to the Washington Post, questioning the paper's coverage of the Chávez administration:

President Chávez has been referred to in Washington Post editorials and OpEds during the past year as a "strongman", "crude populist", "autocrat", "clownish", "increasingly erratic", "despot" and "dictator" on eight separate occasions and his government has been referred to seven times as a "dictatorship", a "repressive regime" or a form of "authoritarianism".

Such claims are not only false, but they are also extremely dangerous.

The US government has used such classifications to justify wars, military interventions, coup d'états and other regime change techniques over the past several decades.

A brief review of US papers like the Washington Post or the New York Times will amply confirm Izarra's point.

When Chávez was briefly ousted on April 11, 2002 by a US-backed coup, the Financial Times headline read simply "End of Autocratic Regime".

Richard Lapper wrote: "The undignified end of Mr Chávez's three-year autocratic regime marked the climax of a rebellion of the armed forces in the space of four hours."

With the exception of journalists like Australia's Bentley Dean, who in October 2002 filed two excellent reports on the April coup for SBS's Dateline program, most media outlets failed to address Chávez's restoration to power within 48 hours by tens of thousands of ordinary Venezuelans plus the military.

While it may seem easy to dismiss Chávez from a distance, a visit to Venezuela quickly shows why he has won election after election - under the eager scrutiny of international monitors.

Throughout 2005, I studied the policies of the Caracas administration, particularly in Health and Education. It was an unavoidable conclusion that prior to the Chávez government the prospects for most Venezuelans in these areas were utterly appalling.

With only 300 public hospitals in the entire country, most Venezuelans, according to one expert, had two options: either stand in line "for days at public hospitals in the hope of receiving attention", or pay Bs35,000 (US$18) to visit a private clinic.