More dribbles and drabs... A poster in the last installment posted some statistics about Venezuela, regarding comparisons before and after Chavez. The statistics were cited from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, a Jesuit university in Venezuela. Their site is in Spanish, so I couldn't really get more information about the research behind the stats, so I can't vouch for the the accuracy of them, but they do in many ways mirror what I have read elsewhere. A few:
1998: 49% of the Venezuelan population was poor.
2005: 57.9% of the Venezuelan population is poor.
That is a 8.9% increase in poverty since Chavez took office.
The GDP per head has decreased dramatically:
GDP 1998* *(PPP): US$8.500
GDP 2005 ***(PPP): US$6,500
However, Venezuela made 43% more money in 2005 than it made in 1998.
Venezuela’s revenue for 1998: US$ 35 billion
Venezuela’s oil earnings for 2005: US$ 81 billion.
Population grew, but not in a rate proportional to the revenue increase.
Population 1998: 22,803,409 ******
Population 2006: 25,730,435 *******
Increased 12%
Like I said, I can't verify the accuracy of these but if there's any truth to them, it seems like there may be something to that 'lip service' I mentioned previously, i.e. play the populist card while ripping off the people. The guy who posted the stats has a site called "Need to Know/Latin America", which is not supportive of the Bolivarian revolution, but isn't a super-pro U.S. site either.
And the U.S. thing is what is making this so difficult for me. Shit like this, a new video game where:
...a power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a warzone... You are a mercenary, and you profit from chaos. Mercenaries 2™ features a slew of potential clients, all willing to pay you to do their dirty work. Dirty deeds, done for exorbitant fees. These are world powers with deep pockets, deep grudges, and enough arms and ammo to start World War III. This is your kind of environment.
Now how much you wanna bet the U.S. State dept had their finger in that one? Now, it's very obvious why the U.S has Chavez a marked man. It's not about democracy or human rights abuses; our foreign policy track record has consistently shown that concern about those are almost always just cover-ups for behaving badly at the behest of the powerful. It's about our monied interests that have been raping Latin America since the dawn of time, and they're not happy with the possibility of not having such a big piece of the pie. Let's just suppose for a second that Chavez was actually on the level(which I don't think he is). Let's say that there really was an open, verifiable democracy in Venezuela, the political opposition could speak freely, and the court wasn't being stacked (more on that later). And let's just say that Chavez was actually using the nationalized oil industry to eradicate or at least dramatically reduce poverty. I don't think the U.S. position would be one bit different than it is now. They'd still be piling on the shit and propaganda, because of the oil thing.
Let me make this clear, and I'll say this with every post on Chavez if I have to. Whether there's truth to the human rights stuff and such to varying degrees or not, I don't support any U.S. intervention in the region, period. We've f-ed up that area so much over the last 150 years or so. Enough is enough. And even if Chavez's anti-imperial America stuff is just something to drum up support (easy enough to do these days-we're not exactly well-liked anymore), there is a lot of truth in what he says. More later.
2 comments:
take a look at the poverty numbers again:
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Poverty in Venezuela has increased since Chavez took over, seven years ago:
(Data from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello *)
1998: 49% of the Venezuelan population was poor.
2005: 57.9% of the Venezuelan population is poor.
That is a 8.9% increase in poverty since Chavez took office.
1998: 20.5% of the population was extremely poor.
2005: 13.3% of the population is extremely poor.
That is a decrease in extreme poverty levels of 7.2% in 7 years.
1998: 69.5% of Venezuelans were poor or extremely poor.
2005: 71.2% of Venezuelans were poor or extremely poor.
That is an increase in poverty and extreme poverty levels of 1.7% since Chavez took office.
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The first thing the commenter states is that "poverty has risen", and the first stat you see is 9%, but the overall poverty level has remained pretty close to constant. Check it out: "poverty" up but "extreme poverty" down by almost the same amount and overall poverty level almost constant... this says to me that people moved out of "extreme poverty" into "poverty", which in my book would indicate improvement, even after the bad sounding stat it leads off with. Some further questions for the poster: What income levels are considered poverty and extreme poverty for the purpose of the survey? Did these numbers also change between 1998 and 2006? Are these numbers genuinely applicable to life and cost of living in Venezuela? Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to split the poor up into poor and extreme poor and give seperate stats on each?
I don't know crap about the situation in Venezuela and don't know what to think about Chavez and I was searching the web for info when I found this. It looks like someone is trying to weezle you, its easy to lie with statistics. Not surprising in a world where more than 49% of people are below average at math.
Exactly.. I'm not sure if you saw my post from the following day, but it turns out those stats were lifted right out of the CIA World Facts Book.
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