Sean Penn and Hugo Chavez

One might have thought that with Mao and Che dead and Castro an aging invalid, communist-sympathetic Americans would have no places to which to make pilgrimages in search of budding utopias to admire. But there are still a few who have managed to try to construct a hero out of the thoroughly thuggish Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. most notably Sean Penn, who really is fine actor. Reason ran a rather good piece on the phenomenon by a native Venezuelan that tries to provide some insight, the essence being that voyagers in search of utopia have long been willing to overlook shortcomings and brutality (perhaps even to admire the brutality just a mite?) if they have been able to convince themselves that a utopian foundation is being built. The human capacity for self-delusion is pretty extensive.

Or maybe, as I suggested elsewhere, he's just a fatuous fool.

Hugo Chavez: doomed caudillo

The New Republic had a rather long but very interesting piece on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez this week. The argument is that however much Chavez may consider himself a man of the laft, a socialist or even a MArxit, he more closely resembles a rightist adherent to the "great man " theory of history promoted by Thomas Carlyle. The good news for the rest of the hemisphere (and eventually for Venezuela's residents) is that this is the kind of power that usually crumbles under pressure, and Chavez is facing a lot of pressure just now, with the decline in oil prices, the mismanagement of the Venezuelan oil business that usually follows outright nationalization, and the fact that so many opponents of his regime are students.

Brazil countering Venezuela nicely, thank you

There's little question that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is an enormous pain in the ass, with all his talk of establishing socialism, his attempts to create an anti-American coalition, and his nasty talk about the U.S., all facilitated by high oil prices, which keep filling his coffers despite the state oil company losing efficiency since he filled it with his cronies. A few neocons have even advocated military action or some CIA-style subversion.

As this story explains, however, Brazil is doing a pretty good job of neutralizing Venezuela, a game played with a certain amount of skill by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio da Silva. Da Silva ran as a leftist but governs like a moderate, and oil reserves dwarfing Venezuela's have been discovered offshore (though it will be expensive and take a while for the oil to start flowing). Lula is always lavish in his praise of Chavez, but he is making Venezuela more dependent on Brazil than vice-versa. Brazil's effort to establish a continental trade alliance is succeeding, while Venezuela's is sputtering. And on and on.

When countries (or their leaders) get rambunctious, it's usually their neighbors who are in the best position to counter them. The U.S. would be smart to stay out of it.

(I must confess to a certain identification with Brazil's da Silva because he looks like my doppelganger. The resemblance is so striking that when his picture appears in our paper my colleagues joke with me, wondering where I was over the weekend and why you never see a picture of me and da Silva together.)