This is a reprint of an article from Business Week on Hugo Chávez’s latest failure of socialist planning. Anyone who has read about the early days of the Bolshevik dictatorship in Russia will find this familiar.
I’ve portrayed Chávez as an international clown whose ignorance is only matched by his arrogance and his megalomania. It is very difficult to get rid of caudillos like Chávez when they control the armed forces. Usually they end badly (for the strong man) or, like Castro, they evolve into a totalitarian dictatorship in order to protect the mafia in control of the country. I believe Venezuela will end up like Cuba.
I thought of sending Chávez a Spanish copy of Economics in One Lesson, but that would be a futile gesture on my part. Perhaps I should send one to Sean Penn, his ardent apologist. Wait, Sean might wish to have me jailed for calling Chávez a dictator.
It is sad to see this happen at the end of history.
IN DEPTH March 11, 2010, 11:00AM EST
A Food Fight for Hugo Chavez
With his popularity sagging, Venezuela’s fiery President is seizing supermarkets from owners. But can he keep stores stocked?
By Geri Smith
Caracas – It’s 10 a.m., and tempers are already flaring at the Cada supermarket in Caracas’ San Bernardino neighborhood. The store has just taken delivery of two pallets of 4- and 11-pound sacks of sugar. With dozens of shoppers swarming around him, Rigoberto Fernández tries to pass out the bags one by one. The clerk hands a smaller one to a gray-haired woman, but she flings it back. “How dare you tell me I can’t have one of the larger bags?” she screams. The sack splits open, spilling sugar everywhere.
Within 10 minutes, the shipment has vanished. “I am so fed up with these food shortages,” Fernández mutters as he sweeps up the mess. “People get desperate and start behaving like animals.”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s response to the food shortages: find a scapegoat, in this case supermarket owners. On Jan. 17, the mercurial leader expropriated six Exito stores, controlled by France’s Groupe Casino. A month later he seized Cada, another Casino chain, with 35 supermarkets and eight distribution centers.
El Presidente’s efforts to transform his country into a Cuban-style socialist state are sputtering. With its vast oil wealth, Venezuela shouldn’t suffer from shortages, yet inefficient farms, government takeovers of supermarkets, and a 50% currency devaluation in January have thrown the food supply into disarray. That’s bad news for Chávez, whose anti-capitalist message and ceaseless drive to undermine U.S. influence in Latin America have made him Washington’s biggest headache in the region. Chávez’s approval rating among Venezuelans has dropped to about 45% from 70% three years ago.
Supplying low-cost food to the poor has been a centerpiece of Chávez’s presidency. He has expropriated food processors, stores, and more than 6 million acres of farms and ranches, convinced that the government can feed Venezuela better than the private sector does. Under state ownership, though, production has suffered. From 1999 to 2008, per capita, sugar cane was off by 8%, fruit declined by 25%, and beef production dropped by 38%, according to Carlos Machado, an expert in agriculture at the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies, a business school in Caracas. “The cooperatives have failed and our cattle ranching has been decimated,” Machado says. … Continue reading “How To Ruin A Perfectly Nice Country,” By Hugo Chávez
