What’s Happened to Chavismo?
HAVANA TIMES – Cartoonist Manuel Guillen gives us his vision of the current state of the populist policies funded by the oil revenues of the state PDVSA company that marked what is called chavismo (from Hugo Chavez) in Venezuela, now facing a severe economic and political crisis.
There is no excuse for insulting the Canadian NDP by suggesting that the members of that party would concur with your nonsensical parroting.
If as you claim, Obama recognized “the great progress made by the Cuban people” why was the venemous letter dated March 28th, 2016 and purportedly written by Fidel Castro read in full on Mesa Redondo and why did Bruno Rodriguez Carilles make his speech of March 29th, 2016 saying that there would be no reciprocity?
As for the current Jesuit Pope (Fidel Castro is an ex-communicated Jesuit and Stalin was another), his support of the communist oppressors in Cuba is in direct contradiction with the views and actions of Pope John Paul II who openly supported the oppressed represented by Solidarity against their communist oppressors in Poland. You may find the subject of the Cuban people suffering repression a matter of humour enabling you to “laugh and laugh and laugh” but that only serves to consolidate the view that you have a sick mind.
Confront the authorities? You really don’t get it, do you?
Not at all. They were duped because they believed in all that socialist BS.
First, I am far from being a right-winger, not to mention old. Second, even progressives like me, once made aware of the tyranny of the Castro dictatorship, should come to reject the revolution. Neither universal health care nor public education should have cost the Cuban people their freedom. While we can applaud successes in both of these areas, we decry lack of basic human rights as the price.
You two old right wingers make me laugh and laugh and laugh. You are from another time and another place that never really existed. All you seem to do is complain about the revolution and the great progress made by the Cuban people which even the Pope and Obama recognize.
I trust and admire the Pope. I don’t trust you. IF you really are in Cuba and things are as you say, why do you stay? Confront the authorities with your complaints, not just sit there and enjoy the quality of life the revolution has provided for all.
It seems if others don’t agree with you then they were “duped”. Duh!
I am a noncommunist democratic socialist in the mode of Bernie Sanders, the Canadian NDP, and the late Maurice Bishop of Grenada. Neither am I a counter-revolutionary, and will give credit where credit is due. I also believe in nonintervention in the affairs of others, respecting the sovereignty of all. You have chosen another path. If you have a problem with Cuba and the revolution then approach the leadership and tell them. Do it. Don’t just sit there and enjoy the fruit of the land, crying in your rum.
I believe CErmle’s use of the phrase “off the wall” is a mistranslation of “al pardon!”, a phrase made popular by the Revolution he so admires.
http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55
The Venezuelan people were duped. It is a fact that Chavez remains very popular. But his leadership will suffer from the decline of Venezuela because of his decisions.
Humorous? You are being very kind.
Well said.
With regard to the death of Fidel Castro:
“Although the current Argentinian Pope a fellow Jesuit chose to make a personal visit to the ex-communicated Fidel in 2015 and to be filmed holding hands, even he cannot erase the realities of history. The defined purpose in Pope Francis having 2016 declared as a Holy Year was to promote pardon and forgiveness with priests especially tasked with hearing confessions and giving absolution. In searching for a way to try to save the soul of Fidel Castro Ruz the Pope as a priest has much to overcome to provide absolution. For the undeniable full legacy is there of multiple affairs, of executions, of persecutions, of hatred,of the insatiable thirst for power and control, of pursuit of nuclear conflict and of that over-whelming arrogance that brought about the boasted conviction that:
“History will absolve me.”
The Pope has spoken of: “The balm of mercy” but in considering Fidel Castro he is examining a man who has never shown any. When eventually able to access all the facts currently hidden behind the veil, freed Cubans will undoubtedly fail to share Fidel’s self-satisfied egotistical opinion or indeed the Pope’s enthusiasm for forgiveness.”
Pages 15/16 Cuba Lifting the Veil Carlyle MacDuff
The originating metaphor “off the wall” is believed to have come from one of the indoor racquet sports. It implies unexpected. My feelings regarding the tyrannical Castros and their bitch Chavez are well-documented here at HT. So this comment is hardly “off the wall”. What will most likely bring me peace in my “old age” when that day comes is a free and democratic Cuba. Fidel has his share of detractors the world over as well. Few national leaders, upon their passing, have or will provoke the partying in the streets that the death of Fidel Castro will ignite. His legacy is at best mixed.
You are too ignorant of the reality of Cuba to make any intelligent informed comment. Far better for you to stick to your humorous comments rather than trying to indicate any knowledge.
It is that spirit which is driving the people of Caracas to stand in lines for hours hoping to get a loaf of bread, that spirit that drives them to demonstrate in the streets against the Maduro incompetence, that spirit which is causing millions of them to sign the petition calling for his removal for giving them the highest rate of inflation in the world and bringing Venezuela a country blessed with so many natural assets including the largest oil reserves in the world, to its economic knees. Unlike you, I do not need to copy what I write from others. Chavez record was as I described and even you in your evident ignorance cannot argue that! I note that in all your supposedly humorous contributions, you have yet to provide one substantiated fact as you live in a morass of communist thought.
Your imagination is really skewed, and your hatred of the historic leader of the Cuban revolution is totally off the wall. The revolution is The People and it has the support of the overwhelming majority. The historic leader is respected and admired throughout the world, even in most western democracies. Cuba is respected throughout the world. The 1950s are long gone. It’s time to put that era to rest so you can get some peace in your old age.
Nice try my friend. Good propaganda piece. Did somebody write that for you? Hugo Chavez was one of the greatest leaders of the century and is still deeply loved by the people. His spirit lives in millions of them.
I imagine that the “ministry of happiness” that was created a while back isn’t doing so well. I wonder what their current happiness index looks like…
Venezuela is the Castro family regime’s closet ally. The pugnacious Hugo Chavez led his country into economic chaos which was subsequently compounded by his successor as President, Nicholas Maduro a former bus driver who has demonstrated a reverse equation between personal physical expansion and economic understanding. When President, Chavez over the five years of 2008-2013 achieved average inflation of 28.5%, by 2015 Maduro had far surpassed that with achieving over 60%, but in 2016 has entered the inflationary stratosphere.
The ambition of Fidel Castro to unite Latin America under a one party socialist system was avidly promoted by his disciple Chavez in his vigorous promotion of ALBA (The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) and his own brain-child CELAC (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) with the HQ being divided between Caracas and Havana with the declared objective being ever closer socialist integration.
Immediately prior to President Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba, Maduro landed in the darkness of night on March 17th, 2016 being met at the airport by First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel with the purpose of a short two day visit being described as to negotiate terms of co-operation between Venezuela and Cuba from 2016 to 2030. Raul Castro held a ceremony at the Palace of the Revolution to award Maduro the Jose Marti Medal (by so doing insulting who sought freedom)as a consequence of which Maduro gave a typical tendentious and inevitably lengthy speech. He then went and visited the wheelchair bound Fidel Castro prior to flying back to Venezuela on the 19th March.
Maduro is very fond of waving around a Little Blue Book, similar in size to the Little Red Book of Mao Tse Dong but containing the Chavez version of the Constitution. His verbosity is of sufficient frequency and merit to remind one forcibly of Don Larson’s fabulous cartoon of the dog saying blah! Blah! BLAH!
Obviously like many dictators and would be dictators, Maduro suffers from paranoia and has endeavored to persuade Venezuelans to adopt a national paranoia, with forming the “Juventad anti-imp” (anti-imperialist youth) and the Minister of Defence decalring on March 8, a “fuerzo armada Bolivariano” (powerful Bolivarian type naval force). His strongest personal display of personal paranoia has been to declare that the US wishes to control Venezuela because it has the world’s largest oil reserves. He omits to say that 93% of Venezuela’s total exports is oil, and that 37% goes to the US.
Maduro is doing his best to copy the repressive policies of the Castro family regime, but just doesn’t have the necessary abilities and lacks the street smarts of Raul Castro Ruz.
Pity the people of Venezuela for ever swallowing the “socialismo” system.
I can imagine that the X-rated version of this cartoon shows the entire body of the muscle-bound caricature. His legs are puny and he is using his man-parts to pleasure himself with a bent-over Venezuelan people. Seated a few feet away in a barca-lounger is Fidel Castro counting his money.