Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice floated the tortured formulation that while Chavez was elected democratically, he was not governing democratically. Venezuelan supporters of the revolution in turn remember the prescient 1819 comment on their national hero and liberator, Simon Bolivar, the "the US seems to be destined by fate to plague Latin America with misery in the name of freedom." The only updating necessary if that feigned concern of democracy currently provides the rhetorical cover for imperial interventions. What the Chavez government has done is to redirect the oil wealth into support for social programs in health and education that benefit the majority of the country instead of being used for the development of further private wealth.
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The above quotations are from Cowboy in Caracas A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy. Click here for other excerpts from Cowboy in Caracas A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy. Click here for other excerpts by Condoleezza Rice. Click here for a profile of Condoleezza Rice.
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