Chavez' Revolution which Humala wants to replicate

Look at the successes of Chavez' Revolution which Humala wants to replicate

VHeadline.com guest commentarist Hector Dauphin-Gloire writes: I write at the cusp of a tumultuous time in the history of both North and Latin America, and there is much on which I would like to share my opinion. To begin with, this year will involve three important national elections, in Brazil, Peru and of course in Venezuela.

In each of these, the country's future will be held in the balance, as will the path that it chooses between socialism and capitalism, justice and justice.

There is, of course, much to say about the choices that face Brazil and Venezuela, but at this moment, with only weeks left to go, the eyes of us all should be focused first and foremost on the race for the Peruvian presidency.

While the product of its own unique history, economics and culture, the political struggle in Peru bears much in common with recent popular struggles in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and elsewhere, especially in its blurring of the line between a failed parliamentary 'democracy' and the rising specter of renewed popular armed struggle. For this reason alone it has relevance for all the nations of Latin America and for all those of us in the rest of the world who love and respect this great continent.

Currently tied with the former frontrunner, the conservative woman candidate Lourdes Flores, is an ex-colonel who shares much in both his ideology and character with the great leader Chavez of Venezuela -- most strikingly of all, his political model, like that of President Chavez, is perhaps the greatest leader in the twentieth century history of Peru, the Great General Juan Velasco Alvarado, leader of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces which seized power in a popular coup d'etat in 1968 and ruled till 1975.

Colonel Ollanta Humala is described by his enemies, including the loathsome and unrooted cosmopolitan Mario Vargas Llosa, best known for his racist and classist attacks on the poor and Indian majority, as a 'racist' 'fascist' and 'militarist' but what does this really mean?

In practice, it means nothing more than that Ollanta Humala is a courageous and pure-hearted man of vision, who sees the tragedy and disaster that so-called 'liberal democracy', capitalism, and pro-Western individualism- the forms of the false goddess of modernity, so-called Freedom, the new form taken by the scarlet woman of Babylon, have wreaked on his people. Capitalism means nothing but the freedom of the merchants and moneylenders, the fat-bellied businessmen and the usurious bankers, to prey and batten on the suffering of the hard working peasants, miners and fishermen.

Liberal democracy means nothing but the freedom of the bourgeois parasites to rest comfortable, safe from any physical or even rhetorical threats on their right to wealth, and the alternation in power of opportunistic elites.

Ollanta Humala, like Felipe Quispe in Bolivia, rejects this all root and branch envisions a benevolently authoritarian socialist regime of the future based on the greatest traditions of the Inca Empire, and in which the Indians, the long suffering, tough, and justice-loving descendants of the Incas who have never forgotten the glories of their past and who have never buckled under to the smothering incubus of brute force nor to the slithering succubus of capitalist temptation, will enjoy a special and sacred role.

Like Quispe, Ollanta Humala seeks to resurrect Qullasuyo, the great Inca Empire of old, in which every man had a place, the means of subsistence, and a part in working to construct society. No man stood alone, but rather everyone was provided for and in return had the duty to work for the good of the whole.

I have mentioned before, and I say again, that the Spanish were so struck by the harmony of this society, one without hunger, unemployment, prostitutes, thieves or beggars, that the last of the Conquistadors repented on his deathbed of his crimes in helping to destroy this earthly paradise.

Never was this Andean Utopia of old, the inspiration of Thomas More, forgotten by the heirs of the strong and noble men who had built it. They ever resisted the landlords, passively when they were strong, actively when they were weak, always remembering the lands lost to the coming of capitalism, until at last the suffering of three and a half centuries were requited in the coming of the General Velasco, who carried out modern Peru's first great agrarian revolution.

Mr. Llosa and other elite critics of Colonel Humala accuse him of being racist for trying to make Peru a nation for the Indigenous. But this is both factually and morally false. Factually, Humala only wants to spiritually invigorate the Indigenous people and make them aware of their great heritage and their claims to participate as equals in Peru's society.

Referring to the Indigenous as the rightful rulers of Peru, heirs of the Incas, and the rightful controllers of their own land is not racist, any more than saying that Greece is a Greek Nation, or that China is a Chinese nation. He is not going to expel anyone because of their race, nor take away their citizenship; he couldn't practically, given that most Peruvians at this point in history are of mixed race, not pureblooded Indigenous.

Giving special consideration and rights to the original inhabitants of the country is not the same as giving no rights to anyone else.
Moreover, discrimination and preference in favor of the oppressed is not the same morally as racism, which is discrimination in favor of the oppressor race.

Who would say that a Jew who fought the Nazis, or a Haitian slave who killed his French master, is as bad as his oppressor? When one is the oppressor and another the oppressed, justice does not mean treating them equally, it means actively fighting for the oppressed until oppression ceases to exist.

'The Lion shall lie down with the Lamb,' says the Bible, but the implicit corollary is that first the Lion must be declawed, must cease to be a lion.

Equal treatment of the strong and the weak is not justice, justice means cutting the strong down to size and raising up the weak, as the Blessed Virgin Mary said in the Magnificat.
Mr. Llosa further accuses Colonel Humala of being a socialist who seeks to renationalize Peru's great industries and national resources. To which I say, Humala is guilty, guilty guilty! Humala sees, as increasingly do more and more men of goodwill, that capitalism is failing all over Latin America. Latin America's growth rates between 1980 and 2000 were only a fifth of what they had been in the previous age of import substitution industrialization. And almost all of those gains have gone to the already rich and powerful, while the poorer have become even more destitute.

Millionaire playboys fly to Miami to buy a suit and feast on imported chocolate while the impoverished men and women of the shantytowns and the rural villages, who work harder every day than most North Americans could survive, are unable to have decent nutrition, education, clean water, shelter, or health care.

In one of life's great ironies, of course, these same men and women, in their generosity and purity of heart, are the most willing and quickest to share with each other; as Nancy Scheper Hughes has noted in her classic study of Brazilian shantytown life, and as I have seen in an even poorer African country, they live by the motto, 'The rich help themselves, but we poor help each other' and by the confidence that what they lack in material goods they make up in moral purity.

How have the remaining socialist states compared to this sorry record?

Well, the socialist states will perhaps need centuries to live down the horrors of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and other genocidal psychopaths. However, the successes of other less publicized regimes should be noted too. Look at the social progress that China has made since the death of Mao, in achieving 'market socialism'. China, one of the world's fastest growing economies, still has only 20% private ownership of its industrial production, a socialist country (though a market socialist one) if there ever was one. Look at the similar progress made by market socialist regimes in Vietnam, in Tito's Yugoslavia, in Hungary; look at the record of Cuba, which has achieved First World health and literacy statistics and which is leading the world in organic agriculture, which has virtually no crime and which has neatly avoided the AIDS epidemic.

Last of all look at the successes of the Chavez Revolution in Venezuela, which Humala in Peru wants to replicate.

Peru is one of the richest countries of the world in terms of natural resources -- the second biggest producer of phosphates and fish, the fifth of copper and silver, the fourth of tin and lead, with large reserves of oil, natural gas, and timber.

Why is Peru so poor, when it should be so rich?

Clearly the fruits of its production have been monopolized by a parasitic, idle and unproductive elite. It has been clear for a hundred years that Peru's natural resources have been squandered by the capitalist elite that owns them, men like Vargas Llosa and his ilk. A dozen different products have been touted as the economic savior of Peru, yet every one has been frittered away by the capitalists. These men have proved themselves inadequate stewards, in the Biblical expression, and deserve to be expropriated once and for all. If socialism was ever right for a country it is right for Peru.

It is not to be feared that socialized industry will fail, as too many have in other countries, as long as Humala's revolution makes sure to decentralize ownership and control, to use cooperative worker ownership and co-management whenever possible, and to rely on the market as much as possible.

The great advantage of cooperative or nationalized production, even when they operate according to market principles, is that all profits can go towards investment or increased wages instead of padding the pockets of idle aristocrats.

Yes, Peru needs to renationalize the mines, banks, fisheries, forests, aquaculture ponds, large farms, and other industries that it privatized in the last few years -- and for good measure it should also expropriate any other farms, mines, and other industries that are large scale and belong to a parasitic and useless capitalist elite. They should be the property of the men and women who run them, if at all possible -- or if they must be nationalized, then they should be run in a careful way with more attention to sustainability than to short term political gain.

What of Ollanta's authoritarianism, and his support for the death penalty?

I support the death penalty to be used in rare circumstances, although I recognize this will put me in a minority on this site. As a Christian, I note that St. Paul granted the State the right to use deadly force, and that Jesus failed to condemn capital punishment when given the opportunity to do so, when the thief said on the cross that he (the thief) 'received the due reward of his deeds'.

As Simone Weil pointed out, quoting Plato, the purpose of punishment should be to cure the offender's soul by redemption through suffering, to purify his soul by bringing him to reconciliation with God, to repentance and atonement. The ultimate act of submission to God is the acceptance of death, and so in the cases of the worst and most hardened criminals, the only way we can bring them to cleanse their soul is to bring them to the state of giving up their last possession, their life, and by doing this humbly and contritely to empty themselves before God. In this way we save a criminal by destroying them; destruction in this world and salvation in the world to come.

Humala would reserve the death penalty for truly antisocial elements like traitors and child molesters; it is worth remembering that the Peruvian congress itself is considering reinstating the extreme penalty, quite without Humala's help.

And as for authoritarianism, perhaps Peru needs the rule of a good and just man who has the ability to use extreme authority in his struggle against the entrenched political elites.
Just as the economic elites have shown themselves unqualified to rule, I would say the same of the political parties. In a region in which presidents routinely have less than 10 percent popular support, the existing political system has failed -- something new is needed, probably something of the mold of General Velasco, a benevolent authoritarian if there ever was one. Humala possesses charismatic authority, the purest and best form of all authority, the kind possessed by Savonarola, by Nasser, by Castro, by Napoleon- and how luch did all these rulers accomplish for their people?

Authoritarian methods should be used only in extreme circumstances, but few can doubt that the degree of misery that now oppresses the people of the Andes is not 'extreme'.

We can see that the charges against Humala are baseless and made in bad faith.

Peru is at a crossroads, and the stakes are too high for politics as usual.
All justice-loving men of good will should join forces in support, as President Chavez has done, of Humala, who twice risked his life for justice and love of his people, first against the vicious Maoists of the Shining Path and later trying to overthrow the corrupt capitalist regime that rules Peru.

Let us hope and pray that with God's will Humala will ride the popular tide to victory, and yet another member will be added to the ever growing and inexorable Axis of Good.

Hector Dauphin Gloire

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