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December 9, 2022

That’s the origins of Venezuela’s name: “Little Venice.”  And for you journalist mavens, here’s your quick quiz of the week.  Who is the most famous man in Venezuela or her history?  A. Nicolás Maduro, B. Hugo Chávez, C. Simón Bolívar, D. Fidel Castro.  Any choice but Simón Bolívar is wrong, really wrong.  Go get a good book on Latin American history.  Try A New History of Modern Latin America from University of California Press.  It’s surprisingly good, and I know some of the authors.  They would appreciate your interest.

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Venezuela is in the news this past month.  In fact, it has been in the news for a few years now, since Hugo Chávez came to power in the late 1990s with a nationalist, socialist agenda.  Chávez swept away much of Venezuela’s wealth in an explosion of populist socialism whose legacy is a nearly bankrupt nation today.  Chávez died of cancer in 2013, and his old chauffeur, Nicolás Maduro, succeeded his chief and continued his march to communism.

Venezuela was one of the world’s major oil exporters and an old ally of the U.S. during the Cold War.  In a kind of odd event, a presidential election was held in 2018, and Maduro declared himself the winner.  Then Juan Guaidó, who was president of the National Assembly, declared himself president because the election was fraudulent.  The incumbent Maduro said, basically, “Nuts to him, he’s just a flunky for old American imperialism, and I’m still president,” and we’re off to the races.

President Trump recognized Guaidó’s government, and so have all the major Latin American republics with a few exceptions like Cuba, Bolivia, and Mexico.  Russia and China support the socialist Maduro.  Diplomats have been expelled, and the macho leaders in both the U. S. and Venezuela are slinging insults and threats at one another.

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So what’s in it for the U.S.?  At stake is basically the political organization and future of the American states, or all the countries in the Western Hemisphere.  We support democracy and republics, free and independent institutions, the power of the vote, free enterprise, and a government that truly encompasses all of the needs of all of the people.  Add individual rights, marketplace competition, freedom of speech, the rule of law — all included in a Constitution that guarantees most of the above, especially the rights of individuals, kind of like a bill of rights.  And there you have it.  That’s what we support — not a socialist dictatorship like the one presided over today by Maduro.

Venezuelans have much admired the U.S. over the years.  Venezuela declared its independence from Spain on July 5, 1811.  They recognized the one passed on July 4, 1776 by the American colonists of North America as a historic document promoting the autonomy and freedom of the old English colonies.  Venezuelans wished to emulate it as much of it as possible, including the date, but they missed it by a day.  They fought a long and hard war against the Spanish, who had governed the land and people for almost three hundred years, and emerged as a republic, just as had the American colonists to the north.

The similarities between the two countries include two leaders of immense stature and vision: George Washington in the north and Simón Bolívar in the south.  Bolívar not only commanded the armies that freed his fellow Venezuelans from Spanish dominion, but also led Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to independence.  I’m not sure if we’ve banished George Washington these days as a sexist, racist, misogynist, slave-holding hypocrite, but in Venezuela, they still revere Bolívar.

My first trip to Venezuela was in the late 1970s, when the country was riding an oil boom.  I was invited to a week-long historical conference and read a dull paper on something like the Spanish maritime empire of the colonial period.  But the high point of my visit proved to be a party given by the powerful Mendoza family.

“You going to Venezuela, eh?” my father chatted as we talked over the phone about the trip.  “Well, call up the Mendozas when you get there.  We built a paper mill together and have some other joint projects.  They’ll remember the old man.”

So, I called one of the Mendozas when I got to Caracas, and sure enough: “Harold Clayton’s son?  Wonderful.  We’re having a party Friday.  Come on!”