Chávez Leaves Behind a Polarized Venezuela

 

CARACAS -- On his way to catch up with thousands of President Hugo Chávez’s faithful in the state funeral procession, Victor Romero, a 51-year-old messenger, admits that he’s very concerned about Venezuela’s future without El Comandante.

“We had a great leader, a general, but now there’s another (Vice President Nicolás Maduro)…we don’t know how he’ll handle things,” Romero said.

While hopeful that the nation remains on course with Chávez’s 21st Century Socialist Revolution, Romero admits that even with the fallen leader’s chosen successor now in charge, “everything’s up in air….”

“His electoral base has been identification with the poor and working class,” said Herbert Koeneke, a political science professor at Simon Bolivar University. Koeneke said that the reach of the government’s social programs, especially the emblematic social agencies called Bolivarian Missions, gave the president the appeal of a holy man.

“I knew when I first saw him in the [’92] coup that he come to save the Venezuelan people,” recalls Francis Clisanchez, a 34-year old beautician from Catia, one of western Caracas’ poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods.

In many ways, Chávez has stayed true to Clisanchez’s early prediction, as his programs have made their way into most aspects of her everyday-life. The Missions provide Clisanchez with everything from eyeglasses to diapers for her three daughters. It even provided her with a high school diploma.

“Chávez has moved the meter in Venezuela toward a greater sensitivity toward social issues, to delivering benefits from the state to the majority of the population,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas in New York….

Read the full article here.