Today, we struggle to hold
back tears. Another world leader has bit the dust. This time Venezuela's big
chief. Some bleak corner of Hell took him in on Tuesday, if not before.
Chavez was a great
entertainer. Real life was too small for him. He had to stretch the truth
out... bend the real world into a larger, more fantastic shape... and puff it
up with hot air until it could hold him.
In real life people go about
their business, taking what fortune sends their way and doing their best with
it. That stage was much too restricted for Chavez. He aimed to play a more
important role under a much bigger proscenium arch. Naturally, he took up
politics (the refuge of all fantasists) and tried to overthrow the Venezuelan
government; he landed in jail.
The authorities let him out
after a couple of years. He went right back to his mischief. A few years later
and he was elected president of the country. But even that wasn't enough. He
conspired to twist the nation's constitution to make himself "President for
Life," which, in an act of divine mercy toward the Venezuelan people,
ended this week.
Chavez was a great showman. He
kept TV audiences entertained for hours, concocting a larger-than-life fairy
tale about how terrible the foreign capitalists were and how his
"Bolivarian Revolution" was setting things straight.
Alas, his lines were written
by hacks; perhaps he wrote them himself. It took a real A-list actor to deliver
his speeches with a straight face. The idea of a 21st Century Socialism, for
example, that he claimed to have invented himself, was so transparently hollow
and self-serving that a lesser thespian would have been laughed off stage.
A Magisterial
Presence
Chavez followed in a long
South American tradition of crowd-pleasing strongmen. Like Peron, Castro and
Melgarejo, he was not only a leader the masses could adore, but he was also one
they deserved.
Melgarejo has been largely
forgotten. But he was one of the great standup guys of Bolivian politics. In
1854, like Chavez, he attempted a coup d'etat against the legitimate
dictatorship of the time. He was captured. He was tried and found guilty. That
should have been the end of him, but he came out with a convincing argument for
clemency: that he was drunk at the time and not responsible for his actions.
President Belzu pardoned
Melgarejo. A few years later, just to show his gratitude, Melgarejo murdered
Belzu. Then came a real tour de force of political theatre, illustrating not
only Melgarejo's magisterial stage presence, but also the masses' deep
attachment to their leaders.
A crowd had gathered in front
of the presidential palace demanding the return of Belzu. "Viva
Belzu," they chanted.
Melgarejo appeared on the
balcony. He had the dead body brought out and displayed to the crowd.
"Who lives now?" he
asked them.
"Viva Melgarejo,"
they replied.
Having whacked his rival,
Melgarejo soon became perhaps the most disastrous leader in the history of
South America -- a hotly contested title. He is said to have signed the Treaty
of Ayacucho with Brazil, in which he traded millions of acres of Bolivian
territory for a "magnificent white horse."
In 1870, France and Germany
went to war. Hearing reports of the German assault on Paris, Melgarejo rushed
to defend the City of Lights.
He reputedly could not locate
it on a map, but he was fascinated by what he had heard of it. So, he told his
army to march to Europe. His military commanders informed him that they had no
means to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Melgarejo replied: "Don't be stupid! We
will take a shortcut through the brush!"
Cash and Claptrap
That was the sort of
Bolivarian tradition to which Chavez was heir.
But Melgarejo was hardly the
only legator. Chavez learned from Juan Peron too. Argentina had been one of the
richest countries in the world, in the early 20th century. You can see the
residue of it here today -- broad, tree-lined avenues and beautiful beaux arts,
belle époque and arts nouveaux private buildings and public monuments. (The
Argentines were great admirers of the French too!)
Now, Argentina is way down the
list of the world's richest countries. Today, it is No. 54 on the CIA Factbook
list -- with Trinidad and Tobago, Equatorial Guinea and Greece far ahead of it.
That, along with periodic financial crises, massive strikes, disappearances and
pointless wars, is the legacy given Argentina by Peron and his Peronist
successors.
You'd think the gauchos and
the porteños would have had enough of it by now. But they still elect Cristina
Fernandez de Kirchner, a Peronist candidate, just as they voted for Chavez in
Venezuela despite an economic record worthy of Mariano Melgarejo.
That's what makes the masses
so attractive to leaders like Chavez: They are incredibly stupid. Consumer
prices rise even faster in Caracas than in Buenos Aires. The power goes out,
too. Despite being one of the world's top oil producers, supplies are so tight
people are urged to take "socialist showers" to conserve energy. And
the murder rate is among the highest in the world -- so high that even people
from Baltimore are afraid to go there.
Chavez made their lives more
miserable, but the masses still loved him. Of course, he paid for their
affection. He took $100 billion in annual oil revenues and spread it around.
Realizing that it would go further in poor neighborhoods than in rich ones, he
built his popular support on cash and claptrap.
And now he is gone. The
performances have come to an end. The show's over.
"Now he belongs to the
ages," said Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton when Abe Lincoln died. Now
Chavez belongs to the ages too... like Peron and Melgarejo.
Good
riddance.
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