Record turnout is expected in Venezuela as the people go to the polls to decide whether or not to keep populist Hugo Chavez in power.

The election pretty much breaks along class lines. The media/political consensus in the US is pretty anti-Chavez, not surprising considering he's bucked Washington's policy priorities and is buddies with Fidel. On the other hand, if you look at the relative conditions in places that went along with US Central/South American policy -- Nicaragua, El Salvador, Argentina, etc -- vs places that directed their own affairs -- Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, et al -- it's pretty hard to argue that the advice coming out of DC was sound.

It will be interesting to see what happens. There's a lot of hype on either side of this, but it seems to me that most of the negative stuff about Chavez seems to be scaremongering, fear about "what he might do" rather than problems with what he's actually done so far. Venezuela has a lot of oil wealth, and he seems to be attempting to use this to bring up the general standards of living.

Here's some more interesting perspective in an interview on the state of politics throughout Latin America. I found this exchange particularly interesting:

The Global Justice Movement is wary of Chávez’ populism, his military background, and what they fear may become a top-down ‘revolution’ that excludes the grassroots. How do you think the GJM and Chávez can be reconciled?

As long as the poor in Venezuela support this government it will survive, when they withdraw their support it will fall. But I think it will be useful if the Global Justice movement—and there are many different strands in it—came and saw what’s going on here. What’s the problem? Go into the shantytowns, see what the lives of the people are, see what their lives were before this regime came into power. And don’t go on the basis of stereotypes. You cannot change the world without taking power, that is the example of Venezuela. Chávez is improving the lives of ordinary people, and that’s why it’s difficult to topple him—otherwise he would be toppled. So it’s something that people in the Global Justice movement have to understand, this is serious politics. It’s pointless just chanting slogans, because for the ordinary people on whose behalf you claim to be fighting getting an education, free medicine, cheap food is much much more important than all the slogans put together.

So I'm interested to see the results, and even more interested in seeing if they can resolve the divisions, if real progress can happen. In this country we think we're divided, but people have died in Carachas in political streetfights. Here's hoping that democracy allows people to steer their destiny with other means than violence. I think it's dead-on that unless shit happens people get turned off to the political process really quick.

That's what we've got a lot of in the USA, I think. After three decades of innefectuality on the left and a highly organized media campaign from the radical right, here's a broad class of people who don't believe there's really any such thing as good government. Millions are apathetic, thousands are radicalized beyond the point of vesting in any structured systemic progress. My work really comes down to reconnecting people to the idea of the Public, but without results it's going to be a hard sell going forward.