04:17 PM | 13 MAR 2008
Antonio Sánchez García.
(translated: G. Cisneros)
This is his column:
It has taken nine years for Chavez to realize one of his most cherished goals: to become a top priority for the State Department and the Pentagon. One of his greatest frustrations – being ignored and/or belittled by George W. Bush – is about to be rectified.
For the first time the North American Nation via its key institutions – the Southern Command, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the White House – turns its gaze on the “Chavez phenomenon” and decides to confront what they consider to be an issue of regional survival. The heavy North American machinery, which is reluctant to bang about in minor matters concerning a coup-plotting lieutenant colonel, in spite of how folksy and picturesque he may seam, is turning towards the Caribbean.
The lieutenant colonel’s satisfaction is now unmitigated: he is finally in the sights of the imperial power. The Harry S. Truman, one of its most fearsome aircraft carriers loaded with eighty-five combat jets, is cruising off the coastal waters underscoring the paucity of the recently acquired soviet-era air force potential at the disposal of the Bolivarian revolution. The North American justice system, meanwhile, lays bare her participation in money laundering, drug trafficking, and the support of narcoguerrillas and terrorism. Goliath shows its claws.
Hugo Chavez may not be fully aware of the terrain he’s entered, provoking not only the United States, but also his regional neighbors and the European Union. Even Cuba, concerned about improving her relations with the U.S. and initiating her transition back into the community of democratic nations and, of course, the OAS, is put off. Returning to the worn-out strategy mastered by Castro of galvanizing support via a confrontation-without-return with the U.S., and converting this into a matter of survival for his regime after the fiasco of the December 2 referendum, demonstrates a willful ignorance of the true correlation of powers arrayed on our country and, at the same time, reveals a vulnerability for misguided adventures which could cost him his head. This is not, as was the case of Cuba, a revolution standing up to the Empire, but rather a incompetent government caught between a rock and a hard place.
As for the domestic situation: the government of Hugo Chavez has more in common with the death rattle of Isabelita Perón’s which, without sorrow or glory was snuffed out in an abyss of rampant corruption and a terrifying absence of governability, than that of Fidel Castro on Playa Girón. And while Castro could count on the backing of the Soviet Union, Chavez only has Iran and Byelorussia. Even Cuba, in the hands of Raul Castro, marks her distance.
A case of lamentable political myopia could be pushing Chavez to the abyss. He has no one to blame but himself. God blinds those who want to be lost. Not even his chosen heir, Diosdado Cabello, will follow him down this road. Chavez has the mark of disaster singed upon his forehead. May God catch him confessing.
