SINCE he was taken the trouble to die, I suppose we must say a few words about Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan demagogue. His questionable accomplishments are greatly venerated by our leftish lunatic fringe although, here at the Mahogany Ridge, we're in two minds as to whether he really was a dictator in the classic Latin American mold.
True, Chávez observed the procedures of representative democracy. The country held multi-party elections on a regular basis. But he was able to rule by decree, and was thus able to introduce alarming changes to the economy, including the oil industry and the agricultural sector, with little or no public debate. Political opponents were persecuted; those not imprisoned were forced into exile.
There is consensus, then, that he was no democrat and, had he not succumbed to cancer, Chávez may well have blossomed into a full-blown rat-bag.
Still, he was a hero to many of Venezuelan's dispossessed - even though his populist social programmes were largely failures. The seizure of millions of hectares of farmland, often with little or no compensation, left a country that once produced its own basic foodstuffs now having to import them. Typical of oil-rich countries, it is one of the most socially unequal in the world, with a large number of its citizens living in some of Latin America's worst slums.
It is also incredibly violent. Crime, particularly kidnapping, has soared under Chávez. An estimated 155 000 people have been murdered since his inauguration as president in 1999. According to one NGO, the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, the death toll for last year alone was almost 22 000. In the pre-Chávez era, it was about 4 500 violent deaths per year.
To our hard of thinking, this murderous spike could be the enemy's handiwork. That, at least, is the opinion of Julius Malema, who visited Venezuela in 2010 on some business related to the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students fiasco. In his message of condolence to the people of Venezuela, Chávez Lite noted that his hero certainly had "massive resistance from rented imperialist puppets" in this regard. But, stout boy that he is, Malema has nevertheless recommitted himself to "the total onslaught against imperialism and imperialist masters, their corporations and puppets."