Redstate

By AcademicElephant Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Bad Government, 1338-40.

In a little-noted news item last week, Hugo Chavez declared that Venezuela would withdraw from the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), of which he is currently president. A clearly-perturbed Mr. Chavez declared the group "dead," and suggested anything else would be better for the region because the insidious independent free-trade agreements that Colombia and Peru have entered into with the United States. Mr. Chavez fears, as the leaders of Colombia and Peru do not, that such arrangements will lead to a flood of American products that will destroy local economies. He invites Alvaro Uribe and Alejandro Toledo to break the "curse" of capitalism and embrace Mr. Chavez' populist socialism. It may seem curious that as Mr. Chavez tries to eviscerate CAN for increasingly free trade with the U.S., he is actually encouraging free trade in another regional trade block--MERCOSUR--which includes Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. Venezuela is on-track to become a voting member of the group, and has proposed tariff reductions to increase inter-regional commerce. But the apparent inconsistency is explained by Mr. Chavez' larger goal of creating a single, insulated Latin American socialist state; MERCOSUR has traditionally been more resistant to trade deals with the U.S. By building up MERCOSUR while destroying CAN, Mr. Chavez can simultaneously punish those who have strayed from his policies and more closely unite those he thinks will support him. I assume that the plan is that an increasingly dominant MERCOSUR will be able to absorb by force the economic dissenters. In an ominous step in this direction, Mr. Chavez announced new trade penalties against Peru and Colombia over the weekend.

Mr. Chavez' regional economic hardball is just the most recent example of his dictatorial and self-aggrandizing policies that are having dire ramifications for the citizens of Venezuela. These should be years of extraordinary prosperity for the country, which is largely at peace with its neighbors and sitting on the single most important natural resource in the world--a resource that brings with it instant international presence and clout. As one economist recently said, Venezuela can hardly go wrong these days with the massive influx of cash generated by oil sales. After a decline last year, the stock market is up year-to-date. Venezuelans are educated and sophisticated, and have an established tradition of democracy. The sky should be the limit.

But while Mr. Chavez plays the big man on the regional stage, his subjects are in an increasingly pitiful state--especially when compared to those in Colombia and Peru. As local coffee farmers can tell you, any resistance to his governmental controls are met with stern reprisals, which are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices and shortages. The infastructure of the country--bridges, roads, utility grids--is crumbling. The poor, whom he purports to champion, are wondering when exactly their promised relief will come. The property rights of private companies and individuals have been trampled. Democratic freedoms are threatened. The press is increasingly restricted. Violent crime is skyrocketing, and in perhaps the most eerie protest I have ever heard of, thousands of Venezuelans lay silent in the streets of Caracas over the weekend to protest the 70,000 unsolved murders that have taken place in the country under Mr. Chavez' watch.

The bodies strewn in the streets of what should be a prosperous capitol reminded me of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's 1338-40 Allegory of Bad Government. When Lorenzetti painted this wall of the Sala dei Nove in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico, he showed a body politic that should have been thriving--a Tuscan city state with natural and commercial resources--but that had foundered because of the bad government of a tyrant, attended by cruelty, deceit, fraud, fury, avarice and war. Disenfranchised citizens prey on each other while buildings crumble around them and the government siphons off resources for its own purposes. It's a depressing image of a debased civilization feeding off itself in its decline--and a powerful counterpoint to Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good Government on the facing wall. This fresco shows the same town with a free people under a democratic government. Interestingly for our purposes here, trade and healthy agricultural production are presented as literally the foundation of this society.

With some in the U.S., Mr. Chavez has a sort of international Robin Hood reputation, which he purchased with the revenues from his state-owned oil company. But the reality that faces Venezuela under his rule makes a mockery of the praise lavished on Mr. Chavez in such circles. Almost seven centuries ago, the rulers of Siena had a graphic visual comparison created for them in their seat of government to remind them of the consequences of their actions. As Mr. Chavez constructs a modern--and real--version of "Bad Government" in Caracas, it is time to remind Venezuelans that there is another option. Their country is still at least nominally a democracy, and this election year may be their last opportunity for them to show the dictator the door. Mr. Chavez has called capitalism a "diabolic" force; his people need to tell him that it is tyranny, not capitalism, that is the tool of the devil.